Sacralization of Landscape and Sacred Places in Apulia:The case of “Hermitage of San Nicola

In the relationship between man and space, sacred spaces are a privileged way to investigate the social and cultural history of a territory. During the Late Antiquity Christianity changes and expands the boundaries and the perspectives of the sacred: this is made evident, for instance, in the "sacralization of the borders" by means of suburban sanctuaries or by the use of the expression limina in the funerary epigraphy. During the Middle Ages the dimension of the sacred is reflected in a specific socio-political organization of the space and is often configured as a "landscape of power". The perception of a physical space held as sacred seems to be crystallized: in this way areto be explained some examples of continual use of the same spaces that remain sacred in different periods and cultures. The sacred spaces are signs and markers in the perception of the physical, symbolic and cultural space: therefore we have to study local contexts through the analysis of all the available sources, including the spatial distribution of the holy places, according to the perspective of global history of the "Landscape Archeology". In the organization of the territory, the sacred space can be considered as a result of a cultural construction that interacts with the tangible and intangible heritage of the community. This is the case of the so-called “Hermitage of San Nicola”, on the Gargano promontory (Apulia): an early medieval church with an apse and a single aisle, to be linked with the important Benedictine Abbey of St. John de Lama, mentioned by the sources in the eleventh century, possibly a xenodochum for the pilgrims who passed by here to the important sanctuary of St. Michael Monte Sant'Angelo.