Parish church of San Bartolomeo

A church dedicated to the apostle Bartholomew already existed in the fifteenth century and in early times gave its name to the district. By a decree of 5 April 1449 the bishop of Bergamo, Polidoro Foscari, separated it from its mother church of San Giacomo di Lepreno and made it a parish: the deed was drawn up in Bergamo by the notary Giovanni Francesco Cavagnis of Cornalba, in the presence of the syndics and agents of the district of Grimoldo. When rural vicariates were created by the diocesan synod of 1568, the parish became part of the pieve of Dossena.

Pastoral visits allow us to follow it through the centuries. On 28 September 1575 the archbishop of Milan, Charles Borromeo, counted four altars and a community of about 500 souls, with the Misericordia confraternity and the school of Corpus Domini; the church's patronage belonged to the community. During the visit of bishop Gregorio Barbarigo, in the mid-seventeenth century, there were two priests and the confraternities of the Blessed Sacrament and of the Rosary. By the visit of bishop Giovanni Paolo Dolfin, between 1778 and 1781, there were five altars, the third dedicated to Our Lady of the Rosary, and the Misericordia was shared with the parishes of Zambla and Zorzone. Dolfin himself consecrated the church in 1780.

In the twentieth century the parish followed the diocese's reforms: in 1971 it joined pastoral zone V and from 27 May 1979 the local vicariate of Selvino-Serina. The diocesan directory now places it in Territorial Church Community 4, Valle Brembana, with the same parish priest as the parishes of Zambla and Zorzone.

The diocesan survey records a restoration of the stucco decoration and capitals in 1803, the same years in which Vincenzo Angelo Orelli was painting the vaults. In 1930 the bell tower was raised. In 1935 the church was restored and enlarged to a design by Luigi Angelini: this work, which the Centro Storico Culturale Valle Brembana dates between 1935 and 1937, gave the church the three-sided portico that wraps around the façade.

The last major change was the liturgical adaptation that followed the Second Vatican Council: an altar facing the congregation was placed in the middle of the presbytery, with a new ambo, both in pink marble and bronze by the sculptor Piero Cattaneo. The diocesan survey dates the work between 1975 and 1985; Wikipedia gives 1975 and names the architect Bruno Cassinelli as designer.

The façade proper stands behind the portico, which is built in masonry, open in arches and covered by a timber roof with clay tiles. The doorway is in shaped stone, topped by the bishop's coat of arms; higher up a large arched window, set in a stone aedicule with pilasters and entablature, lights the nave and is crowned by a broken curved pediment. The roof has two pitches.

Inside there is a single nave on a rectangular plan, divided into six bays by fluted pilasters with Corinthian capitals carrying the entablature and cornice; the vault is a barrel vault. The presbytery, raised by three steps, is covered by a shallow dome, which the survey calls a “tazza”, a cup, and ends in an apsed choir with a half-dome. Bay by bay, the layout is as follows:

The vaults were frescoed by Vincenzo Angelo Orelli (1751-1813), a painter born in Locarno who worked for a long time in the Bergamo area: the brightest scene, notes the Centro Storico Culturale Valle Brembana, is the Glory of St Dominic. In 1803 Orelli also painted two frescoes in the small church of Grimoldo, nearby.

The best-known canvas hangs in the atrium: the Death of St Joseph painted in 1872 by Enrico Scuri (1806-1884) of Bergamo, an intense work, neoclassical in its composition but with echoes of the eighteenth century, according to the same source. The church also holds paintings by Francesco Coghetti (1802-1875), mentioned by Wikipedia and L'Eco di Bergamo without their subjects, and on the Madonna's altar a wooden statue by Angelo Virgilio Vavassori (1885-1961).

The church's heritage also includes furnishings, chasubles, crosses, chalices and lace from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century, as well as twentieth-century paintings and sculptures of craft quality. The table below lists works, makers and dates with the source of each item.

The bells carry the marks of the wars. The diocesan survey records that the five bells blessed by bishop Pier Luigi Speranza in 1860 became eight when the bell tower was raised in 1930; after the wartime requisitions, the surviving bells were recast by the Crespi foundry into the present peal of eight bells in D major, consecrated by bishop Adriano Bernareggi on 3 March 1951. The Wikipedia entry on the municipality speaks instead of eight bells in B by the Capanni foundry: the two sources do not agree.

The organ is by Carlo Bossi. The Centro Storico Culturale Valle Brembana dates it to 1804 and describes it as one of the most intact and elegant known; Wikipedia gives 1805.

Grimoldo is the oldest name in the basin: at the end of the thirteenth century it was the main community, and in 1449 it was the representatives of the Grimoldo district who attended the founding of the parish. Here, at the top of a flight of steps, stands the small church of Santa Maria Nascente, which bishop Dolfin recorded as the oratory of the Nativity of the Virgin. According to the Centro Storico Culturale Valle Brembana it was built, with later rebuilding, on a medieval chapel dedicated to the Holy Cross and the Nativity of Mary; the façade has eighteenth-century frescoes, the interior eighteenth-century stucco and two frescoes by Vincenzo Angelo Orelli dated 1803. The diocesan survey also records two paintings of the Presentation of Jesus in the Temple and the Adoration of the Magi.

On the parish churchyard is the chapel of Our Lady of Lourdes: three arches on stone columns lead into a single room with votive offerings on the walls and, at the back, the statues of the Virgin and Bernadette on a base of tufa. The original chapel dates from the seventeenth century and a gravestone of 1761 recalls the dead buried there. Opposite the church, on the ground floor of a reinforced-concrete building, is the Domus Mariae chapel, a simple room with a crucifix on the end wall.

The directory of the diocese of Bergamo gives the parish address as via Roma 171, telephone 0345 95095, email oltreilcolle@diocesibg.it, but publishes no mass times for the churches of Oltre il Colle. There are no fixed opening hours: the church is usually visited before or after services, or by asking at the parish.

St Bartholomew is the patron saint of the municipality and his feast falls on 24 August. The three parish churches of the basin, here in the main village, in Zambla Bassa and in Zorzone, can be seen in the same morning.