CHURCH OF ST. MARY OF MELLITTO
Legend has it that one day a shepherd was bending over a well to collect water for his flocks. While the bucket descended into the shadows of the well, something caught his eye. With great difficulty he retrieved a mysterious package from the well and with trembling hands, he opened it. Inside the package was a painting of the Virgin Mary painted in light, delicate colours on stone, the light of the sun filtering through the leaves to illuminate it. That night, the shepherd dreamt of the Virgin Mary; she spoke to him in gentle tones, asking him to build a place of worship for her in the wood near the well. In the morning, the shepherd told the devoted townspeople about this, and they decided to build this church. The icon dated back to the 8th century, hidden to avoid the iconoclasm, only to re-emerge three hundred years later, a silent testament to the Byzantine past. Today it is preserved in a glass jar in the church, guarded by the devoted. The church has a single nave with barrel vaults and a sacristy next to the presbytery. On the gabled façade is an apex and a small bell gable on the left side. Inside the church, the fresco of Our Lady of Grace, dated 1697, covers the entire wall and is one of the few examples of a Baroque illusionism altar in Puglia.
Every year in mid-July, a group of people from Grumo gather at dawn ready to travel on foot to Mellitto, many barefoot. After five hours of walking, in prayer or in silence, they reach the small church where a mass celebrates their devotion before their return to Grumo. Two weeks later, the statue of the Virgin Mary is carried around the main streets of the town in a procession among flower-strewn floats, hundreds of tissue paper flowers prepared by the town’s families, balconies decorated with embroidered covers and showers of petals and leaves thrown at the icon. A long procession accompanies the Virgin with songs and devotion until its return to the church in Mellitto. In this way, the faith of a shepherd and the faith of a community come together each year in a centuries-old ritual. Every stone, every flower and every step tell the story of that hidden painting, the shepherd’s dream and the devotion which lives on in Grumo and Mellitto.