The church of Sant'Agostino, in Modugno, stands between via Tagliamento and via Veneto. It grew out of a sixteenth-century family chapel dedicated to Santa Maria delle Grazie, belonging to the Faenza family, which stood outside the walls, in the area known as the «porta staccata». On 17 March 1591 Maria Faenza gave the adjoining land to the Augustinians, who moved to Modugno in 1593: they had been wanted by the noble families who had come from Lombardy in the retinue of Isabella of Aragon and Bona Sforza. The new church, which incorporated the chapel and was attached to the convent, was consecrated on 18 March 1618. In 1807 church and convent passed to the state, then to the town council, which in 1820 entrusted them to the Sacro Monte di Pietà to make a hospital; the church fell into decay. Handed over to the archiepiscopal chapter and restored, it has been a parish since 2 December 1950; the works, which went on until 1967, altered the façade and the interior.
What to see
The rectangular wooden door bears the date 1858. Above it is a triangular pediment with a bas-relief of the Madonna delle Grazie with the Child and the date 1609; on the architrave are the arms of the town and of the Faenza, a bas-relief of St Augustine and the inscription «AUGUSTINUS LUX DOCTORUM – FIRMAMENTUM ECCLESIE». Higher up, in a small niche with a shell vault, is a bust of the Ecce Homo, and then a large rectangular window with a frame of bands of foliage. The friezes are by Giovanni Colella and Tonno de Attolico, of Modugno, and Stefano de Piscioia and Scipione Cagnazzi, of Altamura. On the left side rises a bell gable with two openings; to the left of the entrance you can see the cloister of the former convent.
The interior has a single nave, with a lunetted barrel vault, four family chapels on the right and four large arches on the left. The stuccoes, with plant and angel motifs, are of 1721, by the Neapolitan Maurizio D'Alesio. The first chapel, formerly of the Stella family, is dedicated to St Nicholas of Tolentino: the altar in Lecce Baroque, with twisted columns and putti, was commissioned in 1716 by Giuseppe Stella from Pasquale Simone, and the wooden statue of the saint is of 1785, by the Andria sculptor Arcangelo Spirdicchio. Above the presbytery is the choir loft in wood painted green and gilded, with a large double-headed eagle and the symbols of the order, the heart pierced by an arrow and a book; the positive organ of the Neapolitan school dates from 1718 and was restored in 2003.
Visiting
The fourth chapel, the sixteenth-century one of the Faenza, was turned into the sacristy in the fifties. Opening and Mass times should be checked with the parish.
Our editors' tip
In Modugno the Good Friday procession of the mysteries is called «du monde», of the Monte: it used to start from this church, seat of the confraternity of the Sacro Monte di Pietà, and until the works of the fifties the statues were kept here, in a series of niches. With the Augustinians the town's patron saint changed too, from St Peter Martyr, a Dominican, to St Nicholas of Tolentino.
