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Cortona History
FROM THE KINGDOM OF ITALY
TO TODAY
In the second half of the century, to
honor the results of a public vote which had been posed to the population
of Santa Margherita, work was started to expand the old church which
had ben designed by Pisano, which in the first half of the 18th
century had undergone notable transformations.
This last expansion erased the remaining architectural traces of
the old Romanic Church and demolished the tiny church of San Basilio
next to where Santa Margherita had died and first been buried.
The new church rose from a plan which was worked and re-worked by
architects Presenti, Falcini and Castellucci and presented in its
entirety a style which was not very unified.
The works were supervised by archetects Paolo Mirri and Domenico
Mirri, who left behind an interesting work journal which has recently
been re-printed.
During the first world war 600 cortonese died in the battle fields.
A memorial was erected in the church of Saint Margaret in the form
of a votive chapel with a large wall mural by Osvaldo Bignami in
1924.
  In
the public gardens the fallen soldiers are remembered with a bronze
monument, work of the Cortonese sculptor Delfo Paoletti (1895-1975).
After the second world war, in August of 1944, at the initiative
of Bishop Giuseppe Franciolini (1932-1989), the city decides to
give thanks for being spared from the destruction of war. After
taking a quick vote they comission the Cortonese artist Gino Severini
(who was in Cortona at that time) to paint 14 stations of the cross,
which were later realized in mosaic by the mosaic artist Romualdo
Mattia and placed in the niches along the road which ascends from
Porta Berarda to the Sanctuary of Saint Margaret. Gino Severini
re-embraces his cubo-futuristic style for this project and expresses
in this work his decades of experience in decorative murals. The
work is the expression in this century of the artistic continuity
of the city.
Another important event in the history of the city took place on
September 30, 1986 when the "Congregation of Bishops"
decreed that the dioceses of Cortona, San Sepolcro and Arezzo would
be united. And again, the diocese which had been reinstated or instituted
on June 19, 1325, was to disappear. Among the causes one might site
the same " sign of the times" which caused its abolishment
in paleo christian times: the decline in the population and the
shortage of priests.Of what existed (if it did exist) of the first
diocese in the fourth and sixth centuries, there is no trace, as
the tomb, the church and what is even more disturbing is that the
historical memory, personal identity and the devotion to he who
should have been the first bishop-martyr Vincenzo has disappeared;
he is an identity, a historic memory and a devotion which the Cortonese
have a duty to reconstruct.
As for the history of the diocese from 1325 to the present day,
it has been amply covered by Rector Giuseppe Mirri (1854-1911) in
"I Vescovi di Cortona" printed by Calosci in 1972, which
remains a fundamental resource to have a deeper knowledge of the
events which took place in the Diocese community of Cortona.
Now, since 1986 the signs of the time have grouped together Arezzo,
Cortona and Sansepolcro under one bishop's throne and it is their
duty to insure that the historical memories of the ex dioceses do
not vanish, watching over all the remains of them in yhe churches,
in the monasteries and convents, but overall in the archives.
Great testimony to that wich has been until now, on display and
built on the local sandstone left to us by the man who have been
succeded in the various centurie: the wall and the doors, the houses
the palaces, the churches and the numerous works of art that they
contained and still contain. Many of wich are housed in the two
prestigious museum: the Accademia Etrusca and the Diocesano del
Capitolo della Cattedrale. In the end and even the tombs are historical
treces of those man, the memory ogf ehom remain alive in every corner
of this city in the indelible testimony of their prestigious works.
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