page_title: Sanctuary of the Virgin of Taburnus
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Sanctuary of the Virgin of Taburnus / History
caption_attribution_description: Italiano: Santuario di Maria Santissima del Monte Taburno a Bucciano (BN): la grotta della Madonna con resti di un affresco medievale.
context_page_description: The Sanctuary of the Virgin of Taburnus, also known as Sanctuary of Saint Mary of Mount Taburno, is a religious structure built at the end of the 15th century at the foot of Mount Taburno. It is located in the comune of Bucciano, in the province of Benevento of Southern Italy. For more than two hundred years it was used by Dominican friars.
context_section_description: According to popular tradition, in 1401 a deaf-mute girl named Agnese, from the nearby town of Moiano, was herding sheep when a statue of the Virgin Mary located in a cave called her, asking to be moved to a better, nearby place. The Virgin Mary also returned hearing and speech to the girl. The news spread rapidly in the area, and Carlo Carafa, count of Airola, had a chapel built in the vicinity of the cave. The apparition of an effigy of the Virgin Mary was a common reason for the foundation of sanctuaries at the time. 
   In 1494 a convent was built by the grandchild of Carlo Carafa, at the time count of Airola and bearing the same name, both out of devotion, and because of the growing fame of the place, to ingratiate the devoted populace.p. 23
  The sanctuary was given to the Dominican friars in 1498. The prior of the convent acted as priest for the population leaving near the Fizzo source of Bucciano, and since 1571 the monks held the Corpus Domini procession by themselves. From 1669 to 1672 Vincenzo Maria Orsini, who later became Pope Benedict XIII lived in the convent.p. 26 The sanctuary became one of the most important religious centres in Campania.
  In 1743 the monks decided to leave the monastery and move to a new one built near Airola, and the decision was approved in 1753 by Brancone, State Secretary of the Kingdom of Naples. The people of Moiano and Bucciano protested to Charles III of Spain and later, in 1779, to Ferdinand IV, arguing that the state of neglect claimed by the Dominicans was a mere need of maintenance, and that architectural elements had been taken from the sanctuary and used in the newly built convent. Ferdinand IV ordered the monks to celebrate mass daily at their own expense, but this did not stop the progressive decline of the structure.p.32
caption: The cave with the remains of a painting of the Virgin Mary.
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