Church of the Santissima Trinità in Zorzone

On 24 September 1636 the bishop of Bergamo, Luigi Grimani, canonically erected the church of Zorzone as a parish; on 21 June 1644 it was consecrated by his suffragan bishop Giovan Battista Dovera, titular archbishop of Aleppo, with the title of the Holy Trinity. During the visit of bishop Gregorio Barbarigo, in the mid-seventeenth century, the parish belonged to the vicariate of Dossena, its patronage was held by the village community and it had a single priest.

The 1666 summary of churches calls it “mercenaria”, that is served by a curate paid by the villagers, and records the school of the Cintura and 173 parishioners. At the visit of bishop Giovanni Paolo Dolfin, between 1778 and 1781, there were three altars: the school of the Blessed Sacrament at the high altar and the confraternity of the Madonna della Cintura at the second; there were 185 parishioners and a chaplain assisted the curate. In 1861 the parish counted 260 parishioners, an oratory dedicated to Santa Maria and only the parish priest.

By the mid-eighteenth century the seventeenth-century church was no longer large enough. Rebuilding began in 1745 to a design by Giovan Battista Caniana, born in Romano di Lombardia in 1671 and died in Alzano Lombardo in 1754, and according to the diocesan survey lasted until 1755. Bishop Dolfin consecrated the new church to the Holy Trinity in 1780. The new high altar arrived in 1795, paid for by the Palazzi family of the Sotaralli district, who held the patronage of the church.

It is a late eighteenth-century altar that the Centro Storico Culturale Valle Brembana describes as close to early neoclassicism, rich in coloured marbles and with a fine relief medallion on the frontal; the diocesan survey specifies that the round frontal depicts the Holy Trinity. In the choir hangs an eighteenth-century painting of the Trinity by an unknown artist.

The porch in front of the entrance has a single cross-vaulted bay, carried by two pillars and open on three sides with tie-rodded arches, under a three-pitched roof. The two-pitched façade is divided into three sections by groups of pilasters ending in entablature, cornice and pediment; at the top, in the centre, a splayed window lights the nave, and below is the stone doorway.

The interior has a single nave divided into three bays by groups of pilasters with shafts in stucco imitating marble and Corinthian capitals. The first and third bays have barrel vaults with lunettes that make room for the windows; the second has a dome on pendentives resting on four great arches. In the centre of the dome a medallion shows the Madonna of the Assumption, others the virtues, and the pendentives hold the four evangelists. On the inner façade, above the draught lobby, a stucco frame encloses Jesus among the Doctors: the diocesan survey describes it as a fresco, Wikipedia as a canvas.

The sacristy holds a Madonna della Cintura (Our Lady of the Girdle) painted by Antonio Festi in 1628, a few years before Zorzone became a parish. The Centro Storico Culturale Valle Brembana points it out for its style and lively composition: the Virgin offers the girdle to a group of saints, including Stephen, Anthony Abbot, a St Nicholas, a bishop saint and a female saint in a nun's habit.

The subject is no accident. The 1666 summary records in Zorzone the school of the Cintura, which looked after the altar of the Madonna della Cintura, and a century later bishop Dolfin found the confraternity of the same name: the canvas is a trace of a devotion that has accompanied the parish from its beginnings. The sacristy also keeps silver crosses, reliquaries, altar cards, lamps and vestments from the seventeenth century onwards.

In 1911 the painter Umberto Marigliani worked on the dome frescoes and the interior was repainted. The diocesan survey writes that Marigliani painted two of the evangelists on the pendentives, completing the existing decoration; Wikipedia credits him with the evangelists and other frescoes.

The present peal of five bells in A major was cast by the Crespi foundry of Cremona and consecrated by bishop Adriano Bernareggi on 3 March 1951, the same day as the bells of San Bartolomeo. In 1985, with the liturgical adaptation, the Comana firm made the altar facing the congregation and the ambo in grey, pink and yellow marble; on the front of the ambo is fixed a small angel's head in white marble, probably eighteenth-century.

The chapel of San Rocco stands on the old mule track from Oltre il Colle to Zorzone, just after it crosses the Parina stream, at the place called Mulino: the name recalls a mill driven by the stream's water. It was built in 1640 by the villagers in thanks for escaping the plague and completely rebuilt around the middle of the nineteenth century, when it had fallen into ruin, with a contribution from Stefano Scolari, who owned the land. On the small bell gable, with a bell dated 1898, a stone statue shows the saint; inside, a wooden statue of St Roch 80 centimetres tall shows him as a pilgrim, with hat, staff and the dog at his feet.

In an alpine setting at Peta stands the small church of the Beata Vergine del Miracolo, built in the eighteenth century and completed in 1784 according to the diocesan survey: a rustic façade with a sandstone doorway, a single barrel-vaulted nave and a small apse. The Wikipedia entry on Zorzone mentions a chapel at Peta dedicated to the Madonna della Gamba.

The parish of the Santissima Trinità is at via Santissima Trinità 20; the directory of the diocese of Bergamo gives telephone 0345 95083 and email zorzone@diocesibg.it, but no mass times. The parish priest is the same as for San Bartolomeo and Zambla. The Holy Trinity is also the patron of the hamlet.

The church, the museum and the frescoes on the façades can be seen on the same walk, as they are all within a few hundred metres of each other.