The church of Sant'Adoeno, also called the abbey of Sant'Adoeno, is a Romanesque church in Bisceglie built in the eleventh century in the oldest, walled part of the town, on strada Sant'Adoeno. It is one of the most archaic and pure examples of Apulian Romanesque.
What to see
The building, built entirely of local limestone, has a three-nave plan without a transept; the central nave, of four bays, is marked by sturdy pillars. In the seventeenth century the interior was transformed with ornaments and decorative hangings and three chapels were added against the side of the right aisle; in the nineteenth century the old trussed roof of the central nave was replaced by a lunetted barrel vault. The floor of local stone slabs bears tomb slabs recalling bishops and illustrious families such as the Soldani, the Tafuri, the Tupputi and the Veneziani. The facade, with a truncated gable, has walling in carefully cut blocks of dark limestone laid in courses of different heights; it is crowned by an eagle above a beast and has in the pediment a small eye decorated with four lozenges alternating with seven sawtooth teeth, representing the lunar calendar. In the middle, under the pediment cornice, opens a rose window ornamented with reliefs and plant motifs, flanked by two pairs of corbels carrying Romanesque lions and, below, by a corbel with a small statue presumably depicting the saint to whom the church is dedicated. In the lower part open the main portal, arched and enclosed in an ornate frame, and two side entrances; to the right of the central portal is a funerary aedicule with a pediment and a Latin epigraph recalling a dead man named Bartholomew.
In January 1074 the bishop of Bisceglie Dumnello granted the church to many citizens, formerly inhabitants of the hamlets of Cirignano, Primignano and Zappino; the building, consecrated in the year of the grant, was dedicated to the Virgin Mary, to Saint Adoeno and to Saint John the Evangelist. According to tradition it was physically built by Norman soldiers, who wished to dedicate it to Saint Audoenus (Saint Ouen), bishop of Rouen in the seventh century and their protector; a small relic of the saint, from Normandy, is kept in the church. In 1367 Bishop Simone de Rayano reconsecrated it with the participation of six other bishops; in that period, as a reward for loyalty to the Angevins, the abbot received as a gift three precious illuminated antiphonaries, now in the diocesan archive. In 1387 Nicolò Petracino, elected schismatic bishop of Bisceglie by the antipope Clement VII, placed his cathedra there. In 1769 the church was declared, by decree of the Sacred Congregation of Rites, ad instar Ecclesiae Rothmagensis, that is, in the image of the church of Rouen.
Visiting
The church is on strada Sant'Adoeno, in the old town of Bisceglie. The sources consulted give no opening hours or visiting arrangements: check them.
Our editors' tip
To the right of the main portal is an interesting stone baptismal font of the eleventh century, decorated with six high reliefs showing the baptism of Christ and the symbols of the Evangelists; its restoration was completed in 2010.
