DESCRIZIONE:
La chiesa di Santa Barbara è situata su un’altura poco distante dal centro abitato di Capoterra.
Questo luogo è legato all’antico culto delle acque.
Secondo un’antica leggenda la vicina fonte (detta “Sa scabitzàda”, la decapitata) iniziò a sgorgare nel punto esatto dove tagliarono la testa a Barbara, la martire cagliaritana.
Nella chiesa è conservata una statua lignea di pregevole fattura dedicata alla santa e venerata dai pellegrini.
Costruita nel 1280, ospitava inizialmente monaci eremiti Basiliani.
Nel tempo ha subìto diverse modifiche, incluso l’adattamento da parte dei Frati Minori Conventuali di San Francesco.
La facciata è stata spostata sul lato settentrionale, e un campaniletto a vela è stato aggiunto nel XX secolo.
NARRAZIONE:Sometimes evocative landscape settings and elements of the past are inextricably intertwined, giving certain places the power to convey to the visitor a feeling of continuity, where history, legend, and tradition transcend the natural boundaries that separate them.
An explicit confirmation of this characteristic is the church of Santa Barbara, located on a rise not far from the town of Capoterra, where the legend of the martyr Saint from Cagliari gives rise to a long tradition linked to the ancient cult of water in Sardinia. According to legend, in fact, the nearby spring of the same name, known as ‘Sa scabitzada’ (the beheaded one), began to gush forth at the exact spot where the saint was beheaded.
The Romanesque church of Santa Barbara de Montes, of which we know the exact year of construction thanks to an inscription, originally walled on the ancient façade, which dates the end of the work between 25 March and 23 September 1280, is located within the 19th-century hamlet of Santa Barbara di Capoterra, built on the ruins of small 18th-century village.
The place originally housed Basilian hermit monks who were then granted permission to reside at the church in 1335 by King Alfonso IV of Aragon. From the end of the 16th century to the 19th century, the monument underwent several interventions that changed its original layout. Between the end of the 16th century and the beginning of the 17th century, the archbishop of Cagliari, having regained full possession of the place of worship, donated it, in exchange for the church of Santa Maria di Uta, to the Friars Minor Conventual of San Francesco di Stampace in Cagliari, who needed an isolated and healthy place to spend their periods of retreat. The friars decided to adapt the building to their needs and built a portico with wide brick arches along the northern side and the old façade, in order to create a sheltered connection between the church and the new convent built on the south-western side.
At the same time, the roof of the Romanesque hall was slightly lowered so as to create a roof with a single pitch of tiles that would give architectural uniformity to the new complex. In the 18th century, the Confraternity of Saint Barbara made further adaptations by moving the façade of the church to the northern side where it stands in its current state, and by adding a room used as a storage room to the old façade. Inside the worship building, they opened an arch in the back wall and built a chapel surmounted by a dome with a presbyterial function.
The last substantial intervention the church underwent was in the early 19th century, when the original round-arched side door was enlarged and rebuilt in brick with a lowered arch, again by the Franciscan friars.
The current porticoed façade of the church, facing north, has a bell gable in reinforced concrete that replaced the older one destroyed by lightning in the 1970s. The sloping roofs are surrounded by small arches (rounded in the old façade and three-lobed in the current one) with corbels decorated with phytomorphic, anthropomorphic and geometric-abstract motifs, accompanied by numerous cup-marks intended to hold ceramic basins, of which only four are currently preserved.
BIBLIOGRAFIA:Vittorio Angius, voce “Capoterra”, in Goffredo Casalis, Dizionario geografico,storico,statistico,commerciale degli Stati di S. M. il Re di Sardegna, Torino, G. Maspero Edizione, 1836, Vol. I , pp. 446- 447
Dionigi Scano, Storia dell’arte in Sardegna dal XI al XIV secolo, Cagliari-Sassari, G. Montorsi, 1907
Luigi Cherchi, Karalis nostra, Tipografia Virgilio Musanti, 1956
Mauro Cabras, La chiesa di Santa Barbara di Capoterra in Sardegna, Cagliari, 1958
Gabriele Piras, I Santi venerati in Sardegna nella storia e nella leggenda, Cagliari, Scuola Tipografica Francescana convento San Mauro, 1958, Vol. I, pp. 264-265
Emanuele Atzori, Capoterra storia dimenticata di un paese, Cagliari, Valdès Edizione, 1968
- VV., La provincia di Cagliari. I comuni, Cagliari, Amministrazione Provinciale di Cagliari, p. 62.
Gian Paolo Caredda, Sagre e feste in Sardegna, Cagliari, Della Torre, 1990, p. 169.
Roberto Coroneo, Architettura romanica in Sardegna dal Mille al primo ‘300, collana “Storia dell’arte in Sardegna”, Nuoro, Ilisso, 1993, pp. 223-225.
Adriano Vargiu, Dizionario dei santi venerati in Sardegna, collana La luna nel pozzo, Edizioni Sardegna da scoprire Edizione, 1993
Emanuele Atzori, Capoterra da baronia feudale a periferia urbana, Sassari, 1996
Luigi Spanu, Sagre e feste popolari nei Comuni della Provincia di Cagliari, Cagliari, Provincia di Cagliari. Assessorato alla Cultura Edizione, 1997
Tommaso Casini, Iscrizioni sarde del medioevo, in Archivio Storico Sardo n. 1, 1905, p. 327
Alberto Boscolo, Rendite ecclesiastiche cagliaritane nel primo periodo della dominazione aragonese, in Archivio Storico Sardo n. 27, 1961, pp. 35-36
Olivetta Schena, Note sulla presenza e sulla cultura dei Basiliani in Sardegna, in Archivio Storico Sardo n. 30, pp. 77-90
Carlo Franceschi, In vacanza tra i boschi, in Almanacco di Cagliari, 1987
Grete Stefani, Un’epigrafe medievale da Capoterra, in Studi Sardi n. 28, 1988, pp. 371-377
Massimo Delogu, La chiesa di Santa Barbara di Capoterra (Cagliari), in Soprintendenza ai Beni Ambientali Architettonici Artistici Storici di Cagliari e Oristano n. 1, 1991
Olivetta Schena, Portatori della cultura greco-orientale, in Sardegna Fieristica, 1998
COMUNE:Capoterra INDIRIZZO:Strada 58, 09012 Capoterra CA MAPPA:Array