Daily prayers in the Kingdom Season with USPG: (7) 11 November 2023

The Duomo, facing the Piazza Vescovado) is the spiritual and social centre of Ravello (Photograph: www.ravello.com)

Patrick Comerford

In this time between All Saints’ Day and Advent Sunday, we are in the Kingdom Season in the Calendar of the Church of England, and tomorrow is the Third Sunday before Advent (12 November 2023) and Remembrance Sunday.

The Calendar of the Church of England in Common Worship today (11 November) remembers Saint Martin (ca 397), Bishop of Tours.

Before today begins, I am taking some time for prayer and reflection early this morning.

In recent prayer diaries on this blog, my reflections have already looked at a number of Italian cathedrals, including the cathedrals in Amalfi, Florence, Lucca, Noto, Pisa, Ravenna, Saint Peter’s Basilica and Saint John Lateran, Rome, Siena, Sorrento, Syracuse, Taormina, Torcello and Venice.

So, this week, my reflections look at some more Italian cathedrals, basilicas and churches in Bologna, San Marino, Pistoia, San Gimignano, Mestre, Sorrento and Ravello.

Throughout this week, my reflections each morning have followed this pattern:

1, A reflection on an Italian cathedral or basilica;

2, the Gospel reading of the day in the Church of England lectionary;

3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary.

Entering the duomo in Ravello through the museum on a side street on the north side of the cathedral (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

The Duomo, Ravello:

Ravello on the Amalfi coast is a small town (population 2,500), but it was once an independent city state and today it is a Unesco World Heritage site. It is known for its beautiful views of the coast below, for the Ravello Festival and for the Villa Rufolo, built in 1270, and its gardens.

Boccaccio mentions the villa in his Decameron, it inspired Richard Wagner’s stage design for his opera Parsifal (1880), and it was there DH Lawrence wrote part of Lady Chatterley’s Lover.

But visitors often miss out on Ravello’s much older duomo or cathedral on the other side of the square, built in 1080 in a combination of Baroque and Romanesque styles with the support of the Rufolo family. The duomo, dedicated to the Assumption and Saint Pantaleone, h has undergone extensive modifications and restorations over the past 900 years. The shining white façade dates back to the last major restoration in 1931.

The entrance to the cathedral has two bronze doors depicting 54 scenes of the life and Passion of Christ. The doors, which were temporarily removed for restoration in 2010, were built in 1179 by Barisano da Trani. These bronze doors are one of only two dozen pairs of bronze doors in Italy, three of them by Trani.

Although the cathedral was being prepared for a wedding on the afternoon I was visiting, I was welcomed inside, entering through the museum on a side street on the north side of the cathedral.

Inside, the cathedral’s richly ornamented interior is a riot of sculpted white marble, which holds a third century sarcophagus, marble slabs decorated with mosaics, and the skull of Saint Barbara. Behind the altar, there is a vial that is said to hold the blood of Saint Pantaleone, the town’s patron saint, and a fragment of the hand Saint Thomas placed in the side of the Risen Christ.

But the gems in the cathedral are the two 13th century, decorated, marble pulpits in the central nave, adorned with glittering mosaics: the Gospel Pulpit on the right of the central nave, and the Epistle Pulpit on the left.

The Gospel Pulpit, dating from 1272, displays dragons and birds on spiral columns, supported by six carved lions, and the heraldic arms of the Rufolo family who built the Villa Rufolo, with profiles of family members above the doors of the pulpit. The Epistle Pulpit depicts the story of Jonah and the Whale.

The Chapel of Saint Pantaleone the Healer commemorates a third century physician who was beheaded on orders of the Emperor Diocletian after he converted to Christianity. The chapel has a small phial of the saint’s blood, which is said to liquify every year on 27 July, the anniversary of his martyrdom. The chapel also has a silver bust of the town’s venerated saint.