Oropa, Sanctuary of

OROPA, Sanctuary of. - One of the major Marian shrines of Piedmont, 11.68 km. from Biella in the province of Vercelli, at 1180 m. above sea level in the alpine basin of the same name.

There is venerated a medieval wooden statue of the Virgin with the Child in her arms. A tradition, recorded in the first Biella chronicle of Orsi of 1488 and in the stone document of 1593 near the shrine, would have it that the statue was brought from the East by St. Eusebius of Vercelli (v.), exiled there by the Arian emperor Constantius

(from Villes d'art de la Suisse, Neuchâtel 1860, pl. 3)
CLOCK - Work by the master Spoeth of St. Gall (ca. 1667), Sion, Town Hall.

Once the two aforementioned priories with their commendatory priors had in fact disappeared toward the end of the 14th century, and by law with the bull of Pius II (1459), which assigned the church of S. Maria di O. to the Chapter of S. Stefano of Biella (today the Cathedral), and then with the Royal Establishments of 1644, 1711, 1735 and 1748, which associated with that of the Chapter, in recognition of the merits acquired, the superintendence of the Municipality of Biella with a permanent administering congregation made up of four canons and four representatives of the city under the presidency of the bishop, the period of the shrine's greatest development began. After the little church built beside the primitive sacellum was demolished around 1600, the latter was enclosed at the center of a larger church, which still stands today. Once the old dwellings that had arisen in the vicinity were for the most part torn down, construction began - through the offerings of the people and the generosity of the Savoy princes - of the grandiose buildings for lodging the pilgrims, whose complex now presents a double series of structures, rising along the slope of the mountain and enclosing four successive squares. Along the first two are lined religious shops and restaurants; the third - reached by the monumental staircase and the royal gate, both by Juvarra - is the true sacred courtyard, very spacious and entirely surrounded by severe porticoes framing the Basilica that rises at the center, most beautiful in the sober line of its stone architecture; higher up one climbs to the immense square at whose far end the new temple stands imposingly. In the surroundings rise the 18th-century chapels illustrating the mysteries of the life of the Virgin and the monumental cemetery.

The devotion of the subalpine peoples, which found its greatest expression in the four centenary coronations of 1620, 1720, 1820, 1920, has enriched the shrine over the centuries in the middle of the 4th century,
and brought by the same Saint
onto the mountains of
O., both to preserve it
from other persecutions
and to consecrate the
Biellese pre-Alps, then the seat of residual
pagan cults. "Apollinis nemus et fa-num," indeed marks
those mountains in a table of the Descriptio or-bis antiqui of Koeler,
and the recent discovery
of a vast pre-Christian necropolis at the northern
limit
of the city of Biella proves the existence in the region
of a conspicuous center of Romanity. The
crosses, still detectable, carved by the primitive devotees on the
erratic boulders near
the first deposits of the
sacred statue, and the rising near the
rough sacellum of a
first and then a
second "cella"
(those which
later the documents
call "ecclesias
S. Bartholomei et with gifts most precious for history and art, from the 14th-century frescoes of the Sacellum to the panels, furniture, vestments and sacred vessels today preserved in the Museum, the Treasury and the Library. - See plate XXIII.

Mario Trompetto