San Lazzaro, Sarzana

San Lazzaro is a 19th-century, Roman Catholic church located on Via Aurelia number 298 in the neighborhood of San Lazzaro di Sarzana, just south-east of Sarzana, region of Liguria, Italy. The parish church happens to be located, for historical reasons, within the region of Tuscany. The church is the remaining structure of a medieval leprosarium on the Via Francigena, and houses a master painting of Domenico Fiasella, once found in a chapel of the hospital.

History

As was typical, leprosariums were erected distant and outside of the walls of towns. A number of hospitals lined the routes of Via Francigena, to minister to travellers, often ill travelers fulfilling a final pilgrimage to Rome. The hospital of San Lazzaro, also called the hospital of Servarecia,^[1] is almost certainly one mentioned in the Codice Pelavicino from about 1150,^[2] and recalled in documents and testaments from 1228 and 1262. It may have been on the route taken in the year 990 by Sigeric on his itinerary on the Via Francigena. The flank of the present church runs parallel and adjacent to the south-bound lane of the Via Aurelia, on the road from Sarzana southwest to Avenza and subsequently Massa.

The city of Sarzana was disputed between Genoese Republic and Tuscany, and while the town resisted a siege by the Medici armies in 1487 during the War of the Serrezzana, the Tuscans did maintain control over the area of San Lazzaro and the stretch of road on the Via Aurelia.

In 1469, the hospital was placed under the administration of the cathedral of Sarzana, but over the centuries ebbed in importance. In the 19th-century the present church was constructed by designs of Nestore Pucci^[3] to replace the chapel or chiesetta of the hospital, which now lay abandoned and in ruins. To this church was moved the altarpiece (1616) of Fiasella, depicting San Lazzaro Imploring the Virgin for the health and safety of Sarzana.^[4][5]

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