A mixture of Gothic and Romanesque, the Capuchin church in the lower part of Varzi is the first parish church built in the Staffora valley. It was built at the request of the people after the death of Saint Germano d'Auxerre. Legend has it that the body of the saint, who later became the patron saint of Varzi, stopped in the village on its way to France for burial (448 A.D.), arousing such emotion among the inhabitants that they consecrated the parish church to him. In 1576 it lost its parish status in favour of the church of San Germano, located in the heart of the historical centre of Varzi. The old church was abandoned until the arrival of the Capuchins in 1623.
The arrival of the Capuchins
The Capuchins breathed new life into the old parish church. They built a convent next to the church and carried out the first Baroque interventions. The original trussed ceiling was covered by a heavy vault and the single lancet windows were replaced by rectangular ones.
The Napoleonic Axe
After 180 years of monastic life, the advent of Napoleon in 1802 snatched the church out of the hands of the Capuchins. The Napoleonic reforms attempted to establish tighter state control over religion and to reduce the temporal power of the clergy. Following the Concordat of 1801, between Napoleon and Pope Pius VII, some monasteries and convents, considered unnecessary or excessively numerous, were closed. Several churches were converted to other uses, such as warehouses or hospitals, others were suppressed or demolished. Underlying these choices were financial reasons and administrative rationalisation with the aim of reducing the power and influence of the Catholic Church.
The Capuchin church and convent also suffered badly, being auctioned off and rented out. The convent became the residence of farmers, while the church was turned into a barn and tool shed.
The monks regained possession in 1903 and found an architecturally disfigured church, which was immediately reconsecrated to restore the dignity of the place.
Work in the 1970s
At the beginning of the 1970s, on the initiative of Father Giovanni Maria Tognazzi, works began to restore the church to its original Romanesque style. They were completed in 1996.
The project involves the restoration of the old exposed trusses and the reopening of the original windows. During the work, an important artistic event took place. In fact, a fragment of a fresco that originally covered the entire front wall came to light,an Annunciation attributed to two monks, Franceschino and Manfredino Baxilio of Castelnuovo Scrivia (1484). Originally the fresco covered the whole right side, today only the figure of the Madonna remains.
The apse contains a Baroque wooden altar with a painting of the Madonna of the Snow, St Francis and St Lawrence of Brindisi. In the left aisle is a painting by Guglielmo Caccia, known as Moncalvo, and in the right aisle is a Madonna with St Felice of Cantalice, attributed to a son of Moncalvo. The floor is in rough Tuscan terracotta.
The beautiful façade is in brick in the upper part, and in bands of sandstone, light and dark, in the lower part, with a 14th-century splayed columned and ornate portal. The entrance porch still has the original medieval structure and decoration. In the entrance lunette is a fresco from the Baroque period. The stone statuette depicting the Blessing Redeemer above the portal dates back to the 13th century.
In 1982, on the eighth centenary of the birth of Saint Francis, a monument to the saint was unveiled by the sculptor Ferdinando Saccomani from Voghera.
