The area in Naples where we find the church of Santa Maria del Carmine is bristling with history. The church adjoins the Piazza del Carmine, which is in fact an extension of the larger Piazza del Mercato. As the name of the latter square indicates, it was used for markets, starting in the final quarter of the thirteenth century. But that was not its only purpose. The Piazza del Mercato was also the spot where public executions were held for over five hundred years. The string of executions started in 1268 with the beheading of Conrad of Swabia, the last king of Sicily from the House of Hohenstaufen. In 1799 and 1800 the leaders of the Parthenopean Republic were executed here. This republic was basically a French satellite state.[1] When at the end of 1798 French forces were advancing on Naples, King Ferdinand IV of Bourbon fled to Palermo.[2] A republic was then declared on 23 January 1799. The republicans ultimately managed to hold out for just about six months, and after the collapse of their state King Ferdinand was able to return. What followed were 105 death sentences, of which 99 were carried out.
After the restoration of the monarchy Ferdinand decided to erase the memory of the seventeenth-century rebel leader Masaniello, who had been buried in the Santa Maria del Carmine. Masaniello was a fisherman who had been born in a house behind the Piazza del Mercato. In 1647 he had led a revolt against the Spanish viceroy of Naples which had started on the market square. Masaniello was appointed captain-general of the people, but at the time he was already showing signs of insanity. In the end, on 16 July 1647, he was shot dead in the convent of Santa Maria del Carmine and later buried inside the church. His bones rested there for over 150 years, but after the dissolution of the Parthenopean Republic Ferdinand – who hated revolutionaries of whatever kind – had them dug up and removed.
History and things to see
The history of this church of the Carmelites in Naples goes back to the thirteenth century. However, very little remains of the original Gothic church. The splendid apse has much inlaid marble from the seventeenth century by Cosimo Fanzago (1591-1678), while the present interior of the church dates from the eighteenth century and is the result of a thorough remodelling in Baroque style between 1753 and 1766. This project was led by the local architect Nicola Tagliacozzi Canale (1691-1763). The façade of the Santa Maria del Carmine was completed in 1766 and is a work by Giovanni del Gaizo (1715-1796). On the right side of it we see the most important attraction of the church, i.e. its bell-tower. This tower from the seventeenth century is 75 metres high and can be seen from many spots in Naples. Although the tower is largely a creation of the architect Giovanni Giacomo Conforto (1569-1630), it was only completed in 1631 by Fra Giuseppe Nuvolo (1570-1643), who added the characteristic spire with the majolica tiles. Although he was a monk himself, Fra Giuseppe was not a member of the Carmelite Order. He was, in fact, a Dominican.
The eighteenth-century interior of the church has been embellished with frescoes and paintings by famous artists such as Francesco Solimena (1657-1747) and Mattia Preti (1613-1699). The coffered ceiling is beautiful, but it was also heavily damaged by Allied bombardments during World War II. After the war it was fortunately thoroughly restored by skilled hands. In the back of the church, in the apse, we find the object that, from a religious point of view, is by far the most important item here: the so-called Madonna Bruna (image here). Each year this icon takes centre-stage during the Festa del Carmine, which is celebrated on 16 July (it is certainly not a coincidence that this was also the day that Masaniello was killed; he entered the Santa Maria del Carmine right at the time when a mass was held there on the occasion of the holiday). Although we still sometimes hear the story that the icon was taken to Naples by the Carmelites when they were expelled from the Holy Land by the Muslims, it is in fact a work from the Tuscan school that dates from the end of the thirteenth or beginning of the fourteenth century. In the church we also find a wooden crucifix (image here) to which a miracle is attributed. When Naples was bombarded in 1439, Christ on the cross supposedly ducked for a cannonball.
Conradin
I have already mentioned Conrad of Swabia in the introduction of this post. He is usually called Conradin, on the one hand to distinguish him from his father (whose name was also Conrad), and on the other to emphasise his young age. To get a complete understanding of Conradin’s story, we must go back in history many decades, something I have already done on a previous occasion. In 1130 the Norman kingdom of Sicily had been founded when Roger II de Hauteville was anointed in the cathedral of Palermo by a legate of Antipope Anacletus II (the legitimate pope, Innocentius II, recognised the kingdom in the Treaty of Mignano of 1139). The kingdom was composed of not just the island of Sicily, but also all of Italy south of the river Garigliano. After the death of King William II “the Good” in 1189 a succession crisis broke out in the kingdom. William had died childless, and after five years of conflict the crown passed to Constance of Sicily, a posthumous daughter of William’s grandfather, the aforementioned King Roger II. Constance was married to Henry VI, Holy Roman Emperor, who now also became King of Sicily. With Henry starts the Hohenstaufen dynasty on Sicily.
By far the greatest monarch from this dynasty was Henry’s son Frederick II, also known as stupor mundi, “astonishment of the world”. During his long reign Frederick was constantly at loggerheads with the popes Gregorius IX (1227-1241) and Innocentius IV (1243-1254). In 1250 the great prince breathed his last breath, his son Conrad following him to the grave just four years later, at the tender age of 26. The crown then passed to Conrad’s two-year-old son Conradin. The true power behind the throne, was however, a man called Manfred, Frederick II’s favourite illegitimate son. As of 1258 he began officially calling himself King of Sicily.
This situation was not to the liking of popes Alexander IV (1254-1261) and Urbanus III (1261-1264). These popes had never been great friends of the Hohenstaufen dynasty, and as far as they were concerned the throne of Sicily was simply vacant. In his search for a suitable heir to that throne Urbanus – whose real name was Jacques Pantaléon – found his compatriot Charles of Anjou (ca. 1226-1285), the younger brother of the French king Louis IX. Charles decided to take up the cause and, on 5 January 1266, was crowned King of Sicily by five Roman cardinals (Pope Clemens IV, Urbanus’ successor and also a Frenchman, resided in Viterbo). Freshly crowned, he took the field and on 26 February 1266 defeated Manfred’s army at the Battle of Benevento. Manfred was killed and Charles became the new King of Sicily. Two years later young Conradin tried to win back control of the kingdom, but on 23 August 1268 he was defeated at Tagliacozzo. Conradin was taken prisoner and decapitated on the Piazza del Mercato on 29 October 1268. At the time of his death he was just sixteen years old.
In part thanks to an intervention by his mother Elisabeth of Bavaria (ca. 1227-1273) Conradin was granted a decent burial in the nearby church of Santa Maria del Carmine. In the nave of the church, on the left side, we find a statue of the young king. Apparently his bones are still kept in the pedestal of the statue, which is clearly not a thirteenth-century work. It was in fact made in 1847 by the German sculptor Peter Schöpf (1805-1875), to a design by the Danish sculptor Bertel Thorvaldsen (1770-1844). As we can read on the pedestal, the commission came from the Bavarian crown prince Maximilian. In the cloister next to the church I found a funerary monument that, unlike the statue, may very well date from the thirteenth or fourteenth century. We see an effigy with a sword in his lap and two little dogs at his feet. I have not been able to identify the deceased, so anyone who can tell me the name of the man is free to leave a comment below.
My Capitool travel guide for Naples (2018 edition, p. 77) served as a base for this post. Additional information came from John Julius Norwich, Sicily, p. 220-225 and from Basilica santuario di Santa Maria del Carmine Maggiore – Wikipedia
Notes
[1] For the Parthenopean Republic, see John Julius Norwich, Sicily, p. 220-225.
[2] He was also Ferdinand III of Sicily. Between 1816 and 1825 he ruled as Ferdinand I of the Two Sicilies.
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