Until 1603, services at Barile were held only in the Greek rite. That year Placido della Marra, bishop of Rapolla and Venosa, sent a Latin-rite priest to the town as well, so that both rites could be celebrated, and two years later the Latin-rite families paid for the church to be repaired. The building was already old by then: in 1325 it appears among the properties of the bishops of Rapolla, while nothing is known about its foundation. In 1621 the parishioners had it repaired again and gave it an icon of the patron saint; the bell tower went up in 1658. In 1769 Ferdinando De Vicariis, bishop of Melfi and Rapolla, found the fabric in poor condition and ordered it rebuilt: work began almost thirty years late and finished in 1804. It did not last. The earthquake of 1851 flattened the parish church, sparing only two pieces, the high altar and the balustrade. Rebuilding resumed in 1860 to a design by Giuseppe Piacentini and ended with the consecration of 27 October 1883.
What to see
The gabled front faces south-east and is divided into two registers by a string course. Below, the architraved doorway stands between two niches with statues, and four pilasters carry a pair of small pediments; above, between two more pilasters, a semicircular window opens under a triangular gable. The bell tower attached to the church has a square base, one single-light window on each face of the belfry and a four-sided roof.
Inside, the plan is a Greek cross: a single nave onto which the transept arms and the side chapels open through round arches. The pilasters end in capitals that carry a moulded, projecting entablature, and the vault springs from there; at the far end the presbytery is raised by a few steps, closed off by balustrades and by a semicircular apse. The finest work here is a panel of the Madonna and Child from the fifteenth century.
Visiting
This is Barile's parish church, in the diocese of Melfi-Rapolla-Venosa and the pastoral zone of Rionero in Vulture: you get in around service times, not museum hours. The last restoration began in 2010 and dealt mainly with the interior, wiring and heating included, along with the adjustments required by post-conciliar liturgy; the church returned to worship in the spring of 2013. Once inside, read the plan before the details: from the door you take in both transept arms and the raised presbytery at once.
Our editors' tip
Come in the morning. The front faces south-east, so it is in the early hours that the light rakes across the two niches and lifts the small pediments off the plaster. Then look for the panel of the Madonna and Child: it is four centuries older than the church that holds it, and it was already here when this parish still celebrated only in Greek.