History of the Hermitage of Santa Caterina del Sasso

The Hermitage of Santa Caterina was founded by a rich merchant, Alberto Besozzi this. Ritrovatosi in the midst of a shipwreck on Besozzi was entrusted to Saint Catherine of Alexandria, doing penance vote if it was saved. The merchant was saved by clinging to the rocks and there retired, as promised, to do the hermit in that place now stands the Hermitage.

 

In 1195 Alberto intervened to counter the plague that struck the surrounding areas and, as a result of an angelic revelation, he built a chapel similar to the one that held the remains of St. Catherine of Alexandria on Mount Sinai. At his death in 1205, Alberto was buried next to the chapel of St. Catherine, and was later beatified: Blessed Alberto Besozzi whose remains are still the Hermitage.

 

The Hermitage then saw another miraculous: in the seventeenth century when the came tumbling boulders falling on the vault that housed the tomb of Alberto, as fate would have them to stop not far from the ground, then slowly lie down on the floor after years. This fact contributed to permanently associate the place of prayer with the miracle.

 

During 1300 it was inhabited by a community of Augustinian monks. In 1379 they succeeded the Romiti Ambrosini and in 1649 the Carmelites. Since 1970 the 'Hermitage of Santa Caterina belongs to the Province of Varese, who assumed responsibility for whose restoration work was completed in 1986. The property was then entrusted to the Benedictines.