The veneration to St. Oronzo brought every year a big flow of pilgrims toward the sanctuary of the necks ostunesi and people afoot or to horse, of every class social, secular and ecclesiastical, it put on in trip from every angle of the Salento and Puglia to express his/her own devotion to the saint and to implore some grace. The pleasant necks ostunesis in every period of the year saw to unthread the pilgrims and the thick woods and the natural hollow placed among the ravines of the Murges, they offered a valid shelter to the necessity, in the case of sudden atmospheric reverses, to the wayfarers. It was natural besides, comes on the place, especially in the warm months, to stop in the daytime to the shade of secular oaks and to consume how much contained in the haversack. To testimony of this we bring an unpublished work document risalente to 1752 that it allows to frame entirely the devotional phenomenon toward St. Oronzo in a normal context for that times. And' the description of a day lived by a wealthy city ostunese, Donato Antonio Life, to the insignia of the devotion and the pilgrimage in the Sanctuary, that concludes him with a lunch offered by the same devotee to a big number of people, surely poor and behavior up to the church of the "Morrone" on a wagon driven by some vaticales. A precise temporal scanning of the cultured events with extreme naturalness from the notary-reporter allows us to gather to full as lives the day of a devotee in the XVIII century. The action, compiled by the notary Tommaso Baldari February 6 th 1752, ago reference to a testimony made for the magnificent Donato Antonio Life to attest the spirit of charity and the attachment of it to the religious practices: "In publico witness personally constituted in our presence Vito Oronzo,
1) The statue - 2) The cippo (1691) |
1) - 2)Two paintings in the Sanctuary |
Francesco Paolo Tanzarella and Giuseppe Marzio of this city of Ostuni, them what you/they have attested as they remember very well him that in the day eight of the month of July fallen year 1751, he being brought in the church of St. Oronzo out the boundaries of this city together with Mr. Donato Antonio Life and his/her family and some foreign ones of the city of Barletta for cause of devotion, ivis found again the priest Mr. Oronzo You Ghezza that it held back him until the time of lunch of the motto day and then if of it andiede street and it Mr. Donato Antonio done doppo its devotions it was set to have lunch to table with all of its party and the finished one, that could be 5 pm (the eleven) of the morning, after having rested for the space of another hour they returned in this city of Ostuni (the building Life had been being for few years built by ledger Nicola Anthony Maldarella, above the arc and the tower of Door Nova) together with the sopradetto Giuseppe de Martiis, more it ledger Vito Oronzo and Giuseppe attest that Giuseppe Pomes vaticale of the sudetto Mr. Donato Antonio Life, in the same day eight July more times it brought him from Ostuni in St. Oronzo and from St. Oronzo in Ostuni to take robbe that served for the lunch, as above, and to also bring people to horse and finished doppo the lunch conducted a load of robbe in Ostuni in the house of it Mr. Donato Antonio Life, and then he/she again returned in St. Oronzo from where the evening was returned in this city of Ostuni in party of the sopradettis and strangers of Barletta...".
