“An ancient stone path; Worn deep by feet and their untold stories; Winds its way down to the packhorse bridge; And into the woods — airy now in winter, but dense in summer …”
Nigel Fawcett, 2007
A historic long distance trail
La Via del Volto Santo or, in translation, the Way of the Holy Face, is a trail that starts in Pontremoli and ends in Lucca after winding its way through la Lunigiana and la Garfagnana. It roughly follows the route that the pilgrims took when they carried the famous wooden statue of the Volto Santo that can be seen in the Duomo di San Martino in Lucca. Not everyone has the time or the wish to walk the whole trail in one go so, as many of our walks with angellightphoto incorporate sections of the Via del Volto Santo within their routes, it is possible to walk much of those parts of the trail that fall within la Lunigiana while enjoying some of our delightful circular walks.
Legend of the Holy Face (Volto Santo)
The principal legend of the Volto Santo is that it was carved by Nicodemus — he who helped Joseph of Arimathea to carry the body of Jesus Christ from the cross to the sepulchre — but, when it came to carving the face, he found that he couldn’t conceive how to create Christ’s likeness and fell asleep with the carving still unfinished. When he awoke the following morning, he was astonished to find that the face had been completed by, he assumed, an angel.
Nothing further is heard about the carving until, in the 8th century, having been revealed to him in a dream, the Bishop Gualfredo discovered the statue in a cave in the Holy Land. Following the revelations he had received in his dream, he put the image on a boat that had neither a helmsman nor a sail. The boat carried the statue to the port of Luni in Italy where the bishop of the See of Luni attempted to persuade the boat to dock but where it remained steadfastly off the coast until Johannes, bishop of Lucca — who had also been guided by a dream — arrived and called upon God. The boat miraculously came to Johannes and extended its gangplank. Johannes recovered the image and loaded it onto a driverless ox-cart. In a further miraculous event, the oxen pulled the cart, through Lunigiana and the Garfagnana, to Lucca. The image was initially taken to the church of San Frediano but, in yet another miracle, the statue translocated to the church of San Martino over night.
Seeking the truth
Copies of the Volto Santo are known from history and from other churches around the world. The legend had the original arriving in Lucca in AD 782. Again, there is plenty of evidence to support this from the writings of pilgrims (AD 1050, after passing through Lucca on a pilgrimage to Rome, the abbot of Bury St. Edmunds, England, commissioned a copy of the Volto Santo for his abbey. AD 1087, also in England, King William II swore a solemn oath in the name of the Holy Face).
Over the ensuing centuries, there was considerable debate about the age of the statue displayed in Lucca’s duomo. For most of that time, it was considered that the present image was yet another copy that had probably been carved during the second half of the twelfth century. This was not to doubt the existence of an older Volto Santo, which was hypothesised to have somehow been destroyed.
Science to the rescue
In the summer of 2020, during the 950th anniversary of Lucca’s cathedral, fragments of wood and fabric from the statue were Carbon-14 dated. The results have indicated a date falling somewhere between 770-880 AD, proving once and for all that, even though it was not the work of Nicodemus, the Volto Santo of Lucca is, indeed, the original carving of circa AD 782.
Walks that include sections of the Via del Volto Santo
On ancient paths of untold history
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Hidden gems 1
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Fair Mountain
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The medieval bridge in the woods
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The flowering thorn
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The same river
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To the border and back
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The path of greatest resistance
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