STORIA DI A COMMUNA DI QUERCITELLU

With the collar of Prato bocca di U Prato, "Atlantis" and Mercy

Collar of Prato, one sees in the south on the way which goes up in San Petrone, with 800 meters at the top of a small slope, a church ruins some which would have been a cathedral (San Petrucolo). The poverty and the insulation of the building leave skeptic (13 m 57 length out of on 6 m 50 of dispatcher), this author of this site can confirm it to you. However, another oral tradition contradicts the preceding one and places the cathedral further and higher still in the mountain. Remainders of this second church are still visible, appears it, near the top of San Pedrone. But why a cathedral it would have been built in such a high and such a desert place?

San Pedrone, 1776 meters of altitude, is indeed regularly blocked by snows in winter and was never attended, in the past, but by herds and shepherds. What one knows it that San Pedro d' Accia was founded following the bubble Justus dominus (1133) to replace the vault San Petrucule d' Accia, one is évêché creates to grant to Pisa and Gêne an equal number of episcopal nominations in Corsica. Évêchés of Ajaccio, Sagone and Aléria depended on Pisa ; those of Mariana and Nebbio de Gêne, the diocese of Accia was thus creates of all parts by detaching Ampugnani and Rustino of their dioceses former and the cathedral founded to the limit of both pièves. The town of Accia would have been located close to the collar of Prato, the ruins are however untraceable and one must go to the obviousness : it y have undoubtedly never of city to the collar of Prato if it is not in the imagination of the local populations. Accia it is a little "Atlantis of Castagniccia". As for the church-cathedral of the collar of Prato (San Pietro or San Petrucolo, "the small" Pierre Saint with with dimensions of "Large" San Petrone), it was a modest oratory ; its semicircular vault lets appear a blocking small stones punts burst and badly squared rather frequent in the primitive sanctuaries and on the walls which separate the pieces from the cultivated grounds ; remain the rise in the heart and its apse and the bases of a nave of basilical plan. Not bell-tower nor of sacristy. San Pietro evokes rather the churches of mission founded in Corsica, at the end of the Romain Empire and the beginning of the Average Age, charged évangéliser the populations of the mountains ; relays of the faith to some extent, surely not of the cathedrals which are the principal urban transmitters of the Christian belief. It acted then, for the pope Gregoire the Large one saddened, into 596, by the return of cruelty and manners pagan on the island, to raise the buildings destroyed by the invasions and of évangéliser of the populations of the interior of the island which still adored "the stone and wood". According to the archaeological research undertaken on the spot, this building would be of a worthy seniority : this would be the church rested by Gregoire the Large one in the mountain of Nigeuno "in the honor of the happy head of the Pierre apostles and the Laurent martyr" (missives of the pope the bishop of Aléria of 596 and 597 ordering to him to devote and reside on the sanctuary) ? If cyclopean buildings remain near the collar, the ruins of San Petrucolo would correspond to that of the basilica but there is always no trace of the baptistry. The bishop of Accia sang his first mass in front of the door external of the church of the collar and never penetrated there (1560-1561), there of even setting out again the evening because it were no houses with Accia and to take refuge in Casabianda. One century later, the diocese had been removed, by fastening with that of Mariana and, about 1646, the mass was known as only two or three times the year with San Pietro. Nowadays, perpetuating this hurdy-gurdy tradition, a procession of "all the pièves" followed by a mass on August 1 is known as in the vault of the Collar of Prato.