Carved on the little fountain beside the church is the name of Roberto Avalerio, lord of Matrice at the time of the consecration: he is widely believed to have given the land on which the Benedictine abbey was founded. It is one of the few solid footholds in a story built largely of hypotheses.
The consecration took place in 1148 at the hands of Pietro, archbishop of Benevento, with the bishops of Vulturara, Civitate and Boiano present. Before that date one works in the dark: a castrum of Santa Maria della Strada appears in a parchment dated 1039 concerning the boundaries of Montagano, but the handwriting belongs to at least a century and a half later, and it is unclear whether it copies a lost original or is a forgery. The name of an abbot, Landolfo, could still be read on the church floor in the mid-nineteenth century; another, Nazzario, appears in 1176 settling a dispute. The monks enjoyed an unusual freedom: jurisdiction over the village as sub-vassals of the lord of Matrice, yet exemption from feudal obligations, a balance the lords of Lupara tried more than once to break by force.
What to see
The church counts among the highest achievements of Romanesque art in Molise, and the reason lies mostly outside: the external walls carry a complex decorative programme on which scholars have never agreed. The name is a puzzle too. Sancta Maria de Strata: which road? The building sits on no significant route today, and it has been suggested that the reference is to a branch of the drove road linking Matrice to Petrella Tifernina and joining the Celano-Foggia tratturo, or to a Roman connection between the Samnite interior and the coast; or, more simply, to the Madonna Odigitria, the one who shows the traveller the way.
Our editors' tip
Do not look for the village: the farming settlement that grew around the abbey dissolved, perhaps after the earthquake of 1456, leaving the church alone in the fields north of Matrice, restored and reconsecrated in 1703 by Archbishop Vincenzo Maria Orsini. Come when the light is low: that is when the carvings outside read best.