Federica Scibilia

In the Kalsa district, just outside the medieval walls, between what is now Piazza Magione and Via Lincoln, in the first years of the 16th century there was built the Santa Maria dello Spasimo church of the Benedictine fathers of Santa Maria di Monte Oliveto. From 1508 there dates the deed of foundation of the church, whose protagonist was the Palermitan jurisconsult Jacopo Basilicò. The latter gave the Olivetan monks a very big plot of land with a garden, just outside the Porta dei Greci gate, in the Kalsa district, for the construction of a church and an attached monastery. This donation also included an annuity of one hundred onze for the building of the complex, which had to be completed within six years, subsequently reduced to fifty onze, for the maintenance of the monastic community and the performance of the functions connected to it. Among the conditions imposed was the prohibition of the construction of other Olivetan monasteries inside the city. The founder of the building Giuseppe Basilicò also seems to have been responsible for the name Spasimo given to the new complex, by analogy with the church of the same name in Jerusalem, commemorating one of the Stations of the Cross of Jesus. Once the project was specified, the fathers undertook the construction of the complex, which had to include, besides the church, a dormitory, a cloister, the infirmary and various other parts. The work was certainly on its way in 1509, the definitive papal approval for the new place coming in the same year. Recent archive researches would suggest attributing to the magister fabricator Antonio Belguardo the role of master builder, perhaps right from the start; he was certainly involved in the yard, with a directive role, from 1514. A skilled builder well affirmed in the Palermo work milieu in the early sixteenth century, he was probably responsible in particular for the imposing vault system covering part of the church. The work lasted a long time him, and in 1533 the church was still incomplete, as we know from a supplication sent to the abbot general of the order to urge payment of the income from the monastery of Santa Maria del Bosco at Calatamauro, so that the building could be completed, this supplication being signed by the most famous city authorities. In 1535 in the documents the name of Belguardo appears again, paid for carving jobs for the church, now on the way to completion. Because of its strategic position, the Spasimo complex, still incomplete, was affected by the work for modernization of the city walls, set going in 1536 by the military engineer Antonio Ferramolino, at the behest of the viceroy of Sicily Don Ferrante Gonzaga.