In the middle of the Pian di Ripoli fields is a quadrangular building covered by a rounded tile scale dome. This is the Oratory of the Crucifix of the Light (oratorio del Crocifisso del Lume).
Two windows with iron gratings allowed the view of the altar to the faithful even from outside, when the door was closed. During the night, an lit oil lamp would hang in front of the crucifix and the dim light was dedicated to the sacred fresco painted image in fresco which would appear to refer to an unknown “Florentine artist from the fifteenth century, very close to the ways of Andrea del Castagno.”
The oratory was already the subject of faith in 1305 when the procession coming from Pieve a Ripoli would stop there. The light burning inside it certainly was not there to light the way for the few travelers or carters who ventured at night but rather was there so as not to interrupt a religious devotion that, by day, the farmers expressed by offering a bouquet of wildflowers and the first fruits of the season.
But the history of this chapel is much older seeing as it is located on what was the important Etruscan road which connected Volterra with Fiesole, near the ford of the Arno (today Via della Nave).
Tradition has it that it was born on the site of a memorial stone, turned into an aedicula by the Romans and then into a tabernacle where the traveler would have stopped to thank the gods for having allowed him to pass the mountains unhindered and to pray before tackling the river crossing by paying a toll with an olive branch or a grain of wheat thrown into the water. Even the shepherds from the Mugello stopped and, mindful of old traditions, would leave a little cheese and fresh ricotta praying to God to protect them during the long journey to the Maremma which was infested by malaria.
Massimo Casprini
