FORCELLA: THE BLACK LEGEND OF S. ARCANGELO IN BAIANO
Behind Corso Umberto, in the historic district of Forcella, hides the memory of a scandal that shocked Naples during the Viceroy period, a majestic place of which today remains only a structure suffocated by degradation and surrounded by modern buildings. I’m talking about the mysterious church of Sant'Arcangelo in Baiano, founded in the VI century on the remains of a pagan temple by Basilian monks who dedicated the place to San Michele Arcangelo, called Baiano for the presence in the area of a colony of inhabitants of Baia. The church was built in the XII century by the king Charles I of Anjou, while the annexed monastery was given to the Basilian nuns. Here lived Maria of Anjou, daugther of Roberto of Anjou, in addition to the famous Fiammetta – the woman who made Giovanni Boccaccio fall in love – and many young novices belonging to families of the oldest Neapolitan nobility.
This mysterious place has numerous legends attached to it: esoteric meetings, black masses and orgiastic meetings with the nuns who, forced by their families to take their vows, had sinful relationships with local nobles. It was thus that in a short time the locals learned of what was happening within the monastery walls, until the Vatican decided to suppress the structure and transfer the nuns to San Gregorio Armeno. In the meantime, however, several murders had already taken place in that convent, where at least two nuns died poisoned because they had been accused of blasphemy and sodomy. A legend claims that, among the ruins of the monastery, you can see the ghost of Chiara Frezza, one of the youngest nuns involved in the scandal, forced to drink the hemlock to atone for her guilt.
The most gruesome mystery among those kept in the former convent of Sant’Arcangelo in Baiano is hidden under a trap door that leads to the basement of the monastery: here the remains of some newborns were found, result of the sinful relationships of the novices.
The philosopher Benedetto Croce was also struck by these stories and wanted to preserve their memory in one of his writings: <<Of terrible memory, but for different reason, not because infested with spirits but because horrified by facts of lust and blood and sacrilege, was the alley of Sant'Arcangelo in Baiano, where you could still see the surviving church of the ancient monastery of Benedictine nuns, abolished in 1577>>.
