Il pellegrinaggio, pratica antica e profondamente radicata nella storia umana, rappresenta da sempre un viaggio tanto geografico quanti interiore, un cammino in cui la dimensione del corpo si intreccia indissolubilmente con quella dello spirito.
(Pilgrimage, an ancient practice with deep roots in human history, has always represented not only a geographical voyage but an inner one, a walk in which the physical dimension is indissolubly linked with the spiritual one).
- Vicenzo Mirto, ed., "Pellegrini, pellegrinaggi, mete e simboli"
Leaving Viterbo via a sort of secret passageway underneath the Papal Palace beside the cathedral, we soon found ourselves walking a spectacular sunken road, said to date back to Etruscan times. In the Middle Ages, such roads were useful for defensive purposes, ideal places to ambush an enemy army. Today, they are travelled by cars, bicycles - and pilgrims on the road to Rome!
The sunken road is about two kilometres long, after which the road becomes a normal one and then a gravel road beside the Via Cassia (the modern highway, not the ancient Roman road), with the highway on one side and vast fields planted with cabbages on the other.
Our route then left the highway to proceed along a dirt track through vast olive groves, where the harvest was in progress. We climbed a hill to a pilgrim rest area with a picnic table, where we caught up with Walter and Antonella. After our lunch break we continued walking with them, coming to the Fossato Callo, a natural oasis and spring. The spring water feeds a drinking trough, an ancient washhouse, and a series of vegetable gardens, and was until the mid-twentieth century also used for the cultivation and maceration of hemp. Following maceration, the hemp fibres were separated from the woody part of the plant, spun and woven. The cloth thus obtained was, however, dark in colour; the fabric had to be bleached by repeatedly soaking the cloth and exposing it to the sun for several days, so the process required a lot of water! Hemp was also needed to make ropes and cords, very important for agriculture and livestock raising; hemp and terracotta production were Vetralla's traditional industries, according to the information board beside the spring.
Just 250 metres farther along the path, we came to the tenth-century church of Santa Maria di Foro Cassia.
A bit of history: Foro Cassio and the church of Santa Maria
Forum Cassii was a Roman post station built around the middle of the second century B.C. at a strategic location connecting the Via Cassia with the Via Clodia. Initially it was a Statio, a sort of barracks for the Roman army, and a resting and post station, the most important settlement in the Vetralla area; it even had its own thermal baths with mosaics, waterworks, luxurious buildings and a small amphitheatre, as documented by Stefonia Quilli Gigli in an article in Archeologia Classica in 1977.
The settlement of Forum Cassi is mentioned in three of the "itineraries" of Late Antiquity: the Tabula Peutingeriana, the Itinerarium Antonini and the Cosmographia of an anonymous writer from Ravenna.
In 852, the conglomerate of Forum Cossitis was recorded in a bull of Pope Leo IV as an agricultural estates with farmhouses, land, vineyards and woods. The original structure of the church may date back to this time.
In 990 the English archbishop Sigeric returned from Rome to Canterbury after receiving the Pallium from the Pope. The archbishop recorded the 79 stages of his itinerary in a diary, which specifies that he was hosted in the church of Foro Cassio, which since then represented the fifth stage of the Via Francigena (heading northwards from Rome).
Between 1130 and 1145 the conglomerate of Foro Cassio was donated to the Hierosolymiton Order, and it is known that by 1276 there was a hospice for pilgrims and the sick. Early in the 16th century the area became the property of the Knights of the Order of Malta, but in the early 19th century it was sold to a private citizen who left the church to decay and collapse. The City of Vetralla purchased the church in the year 2000, by which time everything removable had been removed and sold or reused elsewhere, and the roof had collapsed so that the 11th- and 12th-century frescoes were exposed to the rain and largely washed away.
The church is now open to visitors between ten and four, with a volunteer from a local association who will explain the history of the place, stamp your pilgrim credential, and make you a cup of coffee, if you want one!
From here it is only a short walk to the centre of Vetralla, and to the pilgrim hostel beside the church of San Francesco.
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