Church of San Giuseppe

The Church of St Joseph is known in the Chiaravallese tradition as “the Church of the Dead”, because it was the seat of the “Confraternity of Good Death” from the date of its establishment in 1820 until its final extinction in 1870. Its history is lost in time ... when Chiaravalle was still known to everyone as the “borgo della Badia” and there was a small church outside the town, practically a wayside shrine, where the dead who did not live in the town centre, peasants and emigrants, and who could not therefore be buried in the town, were received. The small church was dedicated to the “Madonna del Fuoco”, whose cult was born in the 15th century in Forli, following a fire that broke out in a school and which, thanks to the miraculous intervention of the virgin (whose portrait on the site remained intact) did not cause any casualties. However, the little church was so small that in 1805, when, following Napoleonic regulations, the dead could no longer be buried within the city, a larger one was built across the street: a single-altar building with a sacristy, mortuary and cemetery area in front. Meanwhile, in 1820, the Confraternity of Good Death and Oration was also founded, which was assigned the custody of the cemetery church by the municipality. After the first vestments, there were already more than 80 members in 1826, so that in 1827 an extension was made to the church, which assumed, more or less, its present size. Gradually, the name changed from Our Lady of Fire to the Church of St Joseph, patron saint of the Confraternity and the protagonist of the painting that is still on the altar today. The painting is a 19th-century copy of a work by Benedetto Liuti. The part in front, which is fenced off, houses what was the cemetery until the current one was built in 1867. But if the church has changed its name, even today a chiaravallese saying recalls its origins Cu curri, la madonna del fogo ? Which sounds more or less like this: ‘ ...it is useless to bother because we all end up at the cemetery’.