Pieve of Saint Emiliano

The church was included in the diocese of Verona with a document of Pope Eugenius III in 1145 in which he named the church, some smaller chapels and the castle;

Pieve of Saint Emiliano is located near the intersection of the road that links the village of Pratello, the castle, the town of Padenghe, Abbey Maguzzano, the lake and the way Brixiensis. The pieve of Saint Emiliano San Cassiano (the reference to San Cassiano means that it had assumed the title of the church built on a Roman villa built by the lake) it had jurisdiction over two chapels, Santa Maria built in the village at the foot of the castle (current parish) and San Michele, now disappeared and has no location; bordered accrual with the pieve of Santa Maria in Tenesi in Manerba, the pieve of Santa Maria of Pontenove Bedizzole, with the pieve of San Zeno in Lonato and in that of Desenzano but was replaced in the role by church of Santa Maria in the center of Padenghe that over time grew in size and importance over the district; closer to the shores of the lake there was also a church dedicated to San Cassiano but who played a marginal role already in the eleventh or twelfth century.

The complex of the church consists of the church and outbuildings around a courtyard, built with poor materials and simple construction systems of the area as ashlar stone and pebbles of different sizes, the walls are irregular and the whole complex is had use housing and rural as well as religious, is supposedly inhabited by a small group of monks who led rural life and at the same time is also devoted to the liturgy and pastoral.

The present church, the result of a radical restoration in 1958-62, has Romanesque forms and can be dated to the beginning of the 12th century; has a rectangular plan oriented in an east-west with a single hall, double pitch roof, a small bell tower, semicircular apse with three small lancet windows in red Verona and decorated with small hanging arches on the facade is an oculus above the small portal in stone red Verona, there are traces of frescoes dating difficult.

The rustic buildings leaning against the southern side of the church, on which stands a 15th century dovecote tower, have replaced a previous domus annexed to the church. In 2002 two phases of frescoes were discovered on the north side of the nave. The oldest, dated to the end of the XIII century, represents the archangel Gabriel with a fragment of inscription: … PARATUM EX VOBIS A (NGELUS) QUO … perhaps freely taken from the Gospel of Matthew, 25.34 (Come benedicti Patris mei; possidete paratimi vobis regnum a constitutione mundi). The scene would therefore represent a part of the final Judgment with the introduction of the elect in the presence of Christ. The second phase, of the fifteenth century, always shows the archangel Michael with other saints. The insistence on the representation of the archangel is probably in memory of the disappeared church dedicated to that saint.

informazioni tratte da “Garda Romanico” di Renata Salvarani and from G.P. Brogiolo: “The medieval churches of Garda Brescia”