The Hermitage of Santo Spirito

It’s ten kilometres to the Hermitage of Santo Spirito from Roccamorice.  The road takes us from the airy green foothills of the Maiella and plunges us deep under the leafy archways of an oak and beech forest.  Sunlight filters through the upper branches and spangles the road as we drive along.  The road ends in an open space and there, backed onto a rocky outcrop, is the Hermitage.

Oh for the contemplative life. No wonder the poet Petrarca mentioned this place in his De Vita Solitaria as being conducive to asceticism. Even the most arid soul must surely be nourished by such beauty and silence  – silence, that is, if you don’t count the forest, with its rustling and twittering and the constant burble of its streams and fountains.

The hermitage goes back to at least the year 1000 and a famous inhabitant, whom we’ve already met, was Celestine V, he of the Great Refusal.  He lived here in 1246 and made big changes, transforming a primitive shelter into a monastery. The hermitage is actually called Celestiniano and pilgrims come here to confess on the day of the Perdonanza at the end of August. Celestine left his mark on various hermitages all over Abruzzo: we will no doubt come across him again.

We pay 5 euro each and enter the tiny chapel through its beautifully handcrafted wooden door.  Alongside the chapel a tunnel burrows inside the mountain. The rock is roughly hewn and dark patches of moisture near the ground allude to an uncomfortable, damp existence during the winter.

The hermitage is on three levels and, paralleling the spiritual aspirations of the hermits, the higher we climb the more it opens out and the more beautiful it becomes.  The tunnels are now galleries, roofed by overhanging rock and open on one side. By the time we reach the third level we are far above the forest, far above the hills.

There is so much green we feel refreshed and replenished just by standing still and breathing it in.

The last climb is up the Holy Staircase to the Oratory of Mary Magdalene, a bare room save for the fresco of the saint at the Deposition of Christ.

I have, of course, been anxious to reap the benefit of my new trekking shoes. For sure they would be put to better use scrambling over tree roots and scuffing the undergrowth in the forest, rather than here in the hermitage. Despite the uneven ground, even children could negotiate the climb, probably even better than unfit adults (but hand-holding is needed on the Holy Staircase).

Descending is another matter. I imagine that in wet weather these worn-down steps could be treacherous and even now my companions take it gingerly, hugging the rocky side or the wooden barrier for dear life. With my trekking shoes I, on the other hand, skip down easily.

Just as well I bought them.