The origins of this church are very remote, so much so that St. Gregory the Elder makes it the theatre of a miraculous episode that occurred in the 6th century.
The saint narrates of an Arian bishop who, having dared to celebrate mass, was stricken by sudden blindness. From this moment the church became the object of numerous reconstructions and changes in use.
In the 10th century it became a Benedictine convent. The church was rebuilt in the style of mature Spoleto Romanesque and was consecrated in 1234 by Gregory IX, while the nuns embraced the Rule of the Clarises.
During the 16th century the clashes between the city factions led to the closing of the convent, which in the following century was ceded to the Lesser Observants.
Entrusted to this order until the 19th century, it was then turned into a refuge for beggars.
The work done in the 18th century transformed the building inside and outside: the present look is the result of the restoration done in the middle of the sixties, which restored its late Romanesque character.
The façade with two slopes and central raising divided by pilasters with Corinthian capitals and dividing cornices on small hanging arches, has an arched portal with three insets and a rose window constituted by old elements.
[The façade is now defaced with graffiti, as eventually to be shown below. Civic prose is likewise to be retraced with hyperlinks, all in good time.]
The interior, which has a nave and two side aisles and a big transcept, is divided into six parts. Worthy of note is the cycle of frescoes from the beginning of the 13th century, an important testimony to the figurative culture of southern Umbria: they were detached in 1953 and replaced after the latest restoration (2011), and depict scenes from the Old Testament.
