{"id":3911,"date":"2025-11-25T15:25:41","date_gmt":"2025-11-25T15:25:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ilcamminodellapace.it\/point-of-interest\/st-thomas-becket-church-christmas-source\/"},"modified":"2025-11-25T15:25:41","modified_gmt":"2025-11-25T15:25:41","slug":"st-thomas-becket-church-christmas-source","status":"publish","type":"point-of-interest","link":"https:\/\/ilcamminodellapace.it\/en\/point-of-interest\/st-thomas-becket-church-christmas-source\/","title":{"rendered":"St. Thomas Becket Church &#8211; Christmas Source"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The monastic church of St. Thomas Becket is the result of a reconstruction at the turn of the 12th-13th centuries commissioned by the nobleman Richard Trogisio, on probable pagan pre-existence evidenced by the nearby discovery of a votive stipe with bronze figurines of Hercules and a spring-water well now incorporated into the church&#8217;s small crypt (the god was the protector of shepherds, roads and springs). The cult of the archbishop of Canterbury, who was slaughtered on the altar of the English cathedral by Henry II&#8217;s thugs on December 29, 1170, had spread rapidly in Europe after his canonization, which took place only three years after the barbaric murder, so much so that already Abbot Leonate of San Clemente a Casauria, around 1180, dedicated the oratory built above the portico of the famous abbey to the archangel Michael, the Holy Cross and Saint Thomas the Martyr. The other name by which the church is also known, St. Thomas of Paterno, may confirm the hypothesis of an initial connection with the abbey of Casauria (Paterno, in fact, was a casauriense fief), to which the decoration of the main and side portals also refers, all works influenced by the art of the great Benedictine coenoby. After various vicissitudes, church and monastery of St. Thomas passed from the hands of the Augustinians to those of the Celestines. Severely damaged by the 1706 earthquake, only the church remains today of the monastic complex, restored to Romanesque style in the 20th century. The fa\u00e7ade is tripartite and is characterized by three round-arched portals on which, in axis, are a rose window and two single-lancet windows; the central portal has an architrave richly decorated in high relief with figures of the blessing Christ flanked on either side by Apostles, while on the right one is the date of its construction, 1202. Also on the exterior walls are two different sculptural reliefs depicting the titular saint. The three-aisled interior, with a single apse placed to close the central one, preserves interesting 13th-century frescoes on the quadrangular pillars, including a St. Christopher, which find connections with contemporary frescoes in Bominaco and Fossa. Singular is the slender pillar in the right row, perhaps a reused element of the pagan temple (now protected by a crystal), much thinned at the bottom due to ritual rubbing by worshippers over the centuries. Beneath the chancel is the narrow crypt, with a holy well in the center.         <\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":3912,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false},"poi_category":[38],"tipologia_poi":[39],"class_list":["post-3911","point-of-interest","type-point-of-interest","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","poi_category-historic-buildings","tipologia_poi-historic-buildings"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ilcamminodellapace.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/point-of-interest\/3911","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ilcamminodellapace.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/point-of-interest"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ilcamminodellapace.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/point-of-interest"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ilcamminodellapace.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3912"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ilcamminodellapace.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3911"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"poi_category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ilcamminodellapace.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/poi_category?post=3911"},{"taxonomy":"tipologia_poi","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ilcamminodellapace.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tipologia_poi?post=3911"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}