Santo Spirito (1675-1689)

The earliest surviving documentary reference to the “monasterium Sancti Spiritus de Parione” on this site dates to 1014.  It had become a Benedictine nunnery by 1239 and was united with the nearby Dominican nunnery of Santa Maria delle Vergini in 1385, although the two communities kept their separate rules.  Pope Boniface IX ruled that the nuns should all follow the Dominican Rule in 1391, and Pope Martin V moved them to Santa Margherita in 1428.

In 1576, Bishop Francesco Bossi gave the abandoned site to the Minims of San Francesco di Paola, who had arrived in the city two years earlier and established a temporary convent at SS Stefano e Biagio (see Walk VII).  [The Franciscan, St Francis of Paola had formed this order of Franciscan hermits at Paola in 1435].  Bishop Bossi wanted them to take over the functions of the many parish churches in the area that had been demolished in ca. 1540 to make way for the construction of the Rocca Paolina.

It was some time before the brothers could raise the finance for their new church: construction finally began in 1579 but was suspended in 1605 and resumed some seventy years later.  The church was consecrated in 1691 but its facade was never completed.  The earlier church, which was later used as a wine cellar, survives under the apse of the present structure.

The convent was suppressed in 1860.  The church is now a parish church and the adjoining ex-convent, the entrance of which is to the left of the apse, is now a school.

Return the Detour II of Walk VII.