Sala Consilina

This town was destroyed twice for the same reason. In 1246 it was Frederick II who razed it, to avenge a conspiracy; in 1497 it was the Aragonese, for exactly the same motive. In between, and afterwards, Sala Consilina went on rebuilding itself: the Norman castle and its walls are of about 1250, the mother church of Santo Stefano is of the twelfth century, that of Sant'Eustachio of 1130. The place was inhabited long before: a wide necropolis with tombs both of inhumation and of cremation, belonging to a settlement of Villanovan culture, goes back to the ninth century before Christ, and in Roman times the centre here was called Consilinum, while the present Sala was raised during the Lombard colonisation.

The sanctuary on the mountain begins with a shepherd who at first paid no attention. On 19 June 1213, tradition says, Saint Michael the Archangel appeared to him in the guise of a young man and asked him to build a chapel where the people could pray; the shepherd let it go. On 4 July the sky darkened over monte Balzata and a voice repeated the request — but this time his fellow villagers heard it too, so that when the shepherd told what had happened he was believed at once by clergy and inhabitants, who built the chapel. On 17 May 1715, during mass, drops of a liquid called manna flowed from a fresco on the altar; they are kept in an ampoule in the church of the Annunziata, and the chapel was enlarged until it became a sanctuary. The speech is curious too: the local unstressed vowel system has only four sounds, and this makes Sala Consilina, together with nearby Teggiano, an island of Sicilian vocalism.