The church of Santa Maria della Valle di Josaphat, also called the church of the Gancia, stands on the hill of Paternò, not far from the Norman castle. It was commissioned by Countess Adelasia del Vasto, wife of Great Count Roger, and given to the Order of Santa Maria di Valle Josaphat, from which it takes its name: the Normans favoured Latin-rite Benedictine monasteries over Basilian ones. As well as a place of worship it was also a fortress, built after the revolt of Catania in 1085 led by the Arab Benavert.
What to see
In the early twelfth century the bishop of Catania, Ansgerius, made it a priory, and on 30 September 1114 he exempted it from episcopal jurisdiction; the church was consecrated in 1123, and the Benedictines built the monastery beside it. With gifts from Adelasia, from her brother Henry, Count of Paternò, and from the kings of Sicily, the abbey grew rich, and even traded with the East from the port of Messina. In 1445 it was joined to the monastery of San Nicolò l'Arena in Catania. The name Gancia comes from «grangia», a grange: produce from the monastery's estates was gathered here, bound for the order's other houses or for the Holy Land.
The building, plain but massive, still shows its double military and religious role; the style is Chiaramonte Gothic, the result of fourteenth-century work. The façade has a pointed-arch portal with a rectangular window above, the bell tower on the left and merlons on top; on the side is a walled-up portal. The interior is a single rectangular nave with a wooden trussed ceiling, and the presbytery, which outside corresponds to the crenellated tower, has a cross vault. There remain seventeenth-century canvases of the Apotheosis of Saint Benedict, the Martyrdom of Saint Barbara, the Assumption and Saint John the Baptist, a late sixteenth-century wooden crucifix and a fifteenth-century relief with the emblem of the abbot of San Nicolò l'Arena.
Visiting
Since 1951 the church has been dedicated to the Assumption, and it was restored between the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Opening hours should be checked on site.
Our editors' tip
After 1866 the Santissimo Salvatore hospital moved into the rooms of the adjoining monastery; today the building is the Palazzo delle Arti, a civic art museum.
