The Matrice Vecchia is dedicated to the Archangel Michael and was built in the first half of the 14th century next to the ancient castle of the Ventimiglia princes. In fact, originally, it should have been their personal chapel, located behind the current high altar, where the image of the Madonna del Rosario is placed.

On the right wall you can still see what used to be an opening, which communicated directly with the rooms of the Barons, inside the outskirts of their castle (Scelsi, op. Cit.). It is therefore assumed that there were underground passages that from the castle went directly to the private chapels of the Princes. Even today that street, at the feet of the old castle and behind the bell tower, is still called Archeria, due to an original arched structure that led to Piazzetta Scala.

The interior of the Church has two naves, divided by five pillars; the main nave is covered by a single barrel vault, while the lateral one by a wooden ceiling, although, from some traces placed in the side walls, the pre-existence of a cross vault is evident. On the main altar today stands the Madonna col bambino, a work of the great Gaginian school and coming from the church of Nostra Donna del Rosario also called Santa Maria in Castro, which was located in the castle area.

Until 1873, in place of the current niche, which houses the marble image of the Vergine del Rosario, there was the case of the SS. Reliquie – now placed in the Nuova Matrice – engraved with the date of 1648 and inlaid in polychrome marble commissioned by Baron Lorenzo Ventimiglia and his pious wife Maria Filangeri.

The case with iron gate still preserves some precious relics of Jerusalem: the SS. Spine della corona di Cristo a piece of the chlamys of Jesus, a fragment of wood from the cross, a molar tooth of Saint Anne and a fragment of bone from the side of Saint James the Apostle (Scelsi, op. Cit.).

In the ancient rear apse, unfortunately occluded by the construction of the current high altar, there are two interesting funeral monuments in mixed marbles inside which rest the remains of Maria Filangeri, wife of Lorenzo Ventimiglia († 1650), and of his nephew Gaetano, prince of Belmonte († 1744).

The epigraphs on the Ventimiglia tombs present in the Vecchia Matrice of Gratteri are certainly of great historical interest. They represent, in fact, a significant document on one of the noble dynasties that held feudal power in Sicily for a centuries-old period, as well as the knot of the dynastic interweaving that brought the Gratterese barony, initially a cadet appendix of the county of Collesano, to become an integral and not secondary part of the principality of Belmonte.

The first epigraph is the one found on the funerary monument dedicated to Baroness Maria Filangeri, wife of Don Lorenzo Ventimiglia, who ruled the barony of Gratteri from 1642 to 1675, being at the same time baron of Santo Stefano di Bivona (or of Quisquina).

D.O.M.S
MARIAE FILANGERIAE
VIGINTIMILLIUM ET COLLISANI COMITISSAE
GRATTERII ET SANCTI STEPHANI DOMINAE
LAURENTIUS DE VIGINTIMILLIBUS
CONIUGI: NATALIUM SPLENDORE ∙ ELEGANTIA ∙
INTEGRITATE ∙ RELIGIONE ∙ MUNIFICENTIA
IN DEUM ∙ IN SUOS ∙ IN OMNES PENE SINGULARI
AMORIS OFFICII ERGO ∙ P.C. ∙
AN. SAL MDCL.

Given the documentary importance of the epigraph, it is not superfluous to add the English translation:
D.O.M.S. (Deo optimo maximo sacrum: consecrated to God excellent and maximum)
LORENZO DI VENTIMIGLIA
TO THE WIFE MARIA FILANGERI
COUNTESS OF VENTIMIGLIA AND COLLESANO
LADY OF GRATTERI AND SAINT STEPHEN:
ALMOST UNIQUE FOR CHRISTMAS SHINE,
REFINEMENT, HONESTY, RELIGIOUSNESS, MUNIFICENCE
TOWARDS GOD, TOWARDS HIS, TOWARDS ALL.
FOR LOVE AND FOR DUTY OF PITY THEN HE DEDICATED
IN THE YEAR OF SALVATION 1650

On the title of countess attributed to Mrs. Filangeri, it must be said that the barons of Gratteri always boasted it, even if for reasons of hereditary divisions the county of Collesano had a course that excluded the barony of Gratteri from itself.

The other tomb in the church is the one dedicated to his nephew Gaetano (1662-1724), also prince of Belmonte. Title, the latter, acquired by his father, Francesco, in 1658, after his marriage to the heiress Donna Ninfa d’Afflitto.

Two epigraphs can be read on what can be considered a real funerary monument. One, the lower one, covering the tomb, where a brief profile of the deceased is drawn and his desire to be buried in the place where the testimony of his love for his subjects can best be received.

The other, above, walled up twenty years after his death, in which a detailed praise of his uncommon virtues is woven. Here they are reproduced below in the order in which they are arranged on the monument, both in the Latin text and in the English version.

D . O . M
MORS NON HIC IN TERRAM DEIECIT, SED EXTULIT GAETANUM
XX:M?LIA PRINCIPEM BELMONTIS, GRATTERY, LASCARIS
ET S. STEPHANI: NAM DUM EI MORTALE SPOLIUM DETRAXIT EIUS DECORA
EMICUERE: HIC FAMA MORUM PERORAT, INTEGRITAS, PRUDENTIA DECLA-
MAT, COMITAS, LIBERALITAS, HUMANITAS, EQUANIMITAS CORUSCAT.
HEU PAUPERES MECENATEM PERDIDISTIS. EIUS FRATER D. PETRUS XX: C. R.
FACTA EXCOGITANS IMPRIMI MARMORE CURAVIT A. D. MDCCXLIV.

D. O. M
Death did not descend into the earth (buried) here, but raised Gaetano
Ventimiglia Prince of Belmonte, of Gratteri, of Lascari
and of St. Stephen: in fact, while she took her mortal remains, her titles of glory
stood out: here the fame of his (good) customs speaks, integrity and prudence declaim,
affability, generosity, meekness and equanimity shine.
You poor have lost a patron. His brother Don Pietro Ventimiglia,
noting the works of such an extraordinary joint, he took care that they were imprinted in the marble
in the year of the Lord 1744

D. O. M
D. CAIETANUS DE VIGINTIMILLIIS ET AFFLITTO
PRINCEPS PULCHRIMONTIS, BARO CRATTERIS ET S. STEPHANI
POST CELIBEM OMNINO VITAM IN QUA TAMEN FILIORUM
LOCO PAUPERES EGENOSQUE PERAMAVIT, SUISQUE SUMP-
TIBUS ALUIT LARGISSIME, DIEM EXTREMUM OBIIT
XXIII IULI AN: MDCCXXIV AETATIS ANNO LXII
ATQUE HIC MORTALITATIS SUAE EXUVIAS
CONDITAS VOLUIT,
SUBDITIS SUIS, QUIBUS APPRIME VIXIT,
PATERNI AMORIS IMMORTALE MONUMENTUM.

D.O.M
Don Gaetano of Ventimiglia and d’Afflitto,
Prince of Belmonte, Baron of Gratteri and S. Stefano,
after a life of absolute celibacy, during which however in place of the children
he loved the poor and needy very much, which at his own expense
supported with supreme generosity, reached the end of his days,
on 23 July 1724 at 62 years of age,
and here the spoils of his mortal life
he wanted them to be composed;
to his subjects, for whom he first lived,
perennial memory of his paternal love.

In the presbytery, surmounted by a cross vault decorated with plant motifs in 1905 ex magno pietatis opere, you can admire two canvases: one on the right side, which depicts St. Leonard of Noblat intercedes for the liberation from the chains of the evil one, the other on the opposite side, depicting the Madonna della Sapienza (both from little churches that no longer exist).

In the left side chapel, dedicated to St. Joseph, was the ciborium of the SS. Sacramento of 1494, probably the work of Giorgio da Milano, the latter also uprooted and transported to the Nuova Matrice at the end of the century XIX.

The golden wooden statue of St. Joseph, on the other hand, comes from a church of the same name that was once located in the castle area. This image, sculpted by Francesco Reyna and painted by Vincenzo Di Giovanni (the same authors of the statue of St. Andrew the Apostle in the church of the same name) was commissioned by Antonino Mogavero towards the eighties of the century. XVII (Scileppi, op. Cit.). Inside the same chapel there are two paintings that respectively depict the Last Supper and the Child Jesus on the bank of a river fishing for hearts (both from 1767).

Two other small ovoid-shaped canvases are located behind St. Joseph: on the right side the Heart of Jesus (where we read ex devotione magister Dominici De Maio, year 1767), in the left one the Good Shepherd of the same style.

The presence of these two canvases, depicting Christological Eucharistic subjects, confirm that in the apse of the same chapel, there was placed the marble Eucharistic case today admirable in the Chapel of SS. Sacrament of the Matrice Nuova. The church building houses several chapels with related sacred images.

On the wall on the right side, next to the small statue of Saint Catherine of Siena, there is a chapel with a canvas depicting Saint Dominic, the founder of the Order of Preachers. Further on there is the chapel with the wooden statue, presumably from the end of the sixteenth century, depicting the Madonna del Soccorso called “Madonna della mazza”, coming from a church of the same name located in the lo spitali district but no longer existing today.

This is followed by a small image of the Archangel Michael and a precious wooden pulpit with the emblem of the Ventimiglia Lords sculpted on the back. Thus, as in the pulpit of the Mother Church, here too there is a protruding arm holding a precious ivory crucifix of the century. XVII with a cartouche in which there is the inscription – I.N.R.I. Jesus Nazarene King of the Jews – in three languages: Latin, Greek and Hebrew.

On the right-hand side wall is dedicated to scenes from the Passion of the Lord: the chapel with the canvas depicting the Flagellation of Christ on the column, commissioned by Maria Culotta in 1719; the chapel of the Crucifix with the Virgin of Sorrows at its feet and finally, the Urn with the dead Christ with articulated arms, a wooden statue from the second half of the seventeenth century, attributable to the masters of the school of Frate Umile da Petralia.

Above the urn there is a canvas depicting the Deposition of Christ from the Cross, stylistically very similar to the works of Caravaggio with the typical chiaroscuro games. In the past – as can be seen from ancient documents of the clergy of Gratteri kept in the State Archives of Palermo – there was also an altar dedicated to Saint Lazarus and St. Mary Magdalene, of which a small canvas is still preserved today, an imitation of the one found of Caravaggio.

Finally, above the entrance door, there is a wooden choir loft that houses the oldest organ kept in Gratteri, the one built in the eighteenth century. Next to the church, within the enclosure of the disappeared Ventimiglia castle, stands a bell tower with an octagonal spire that houses seven bells of different sizes (from different churches), renovated in 1936 by the emeritus citizen Carmelo Cirincione.

One of these bells bears the date of 1390; another that of 1587, commissioned for devotion to San Leonardo by Pietro and Carlo Ventimiglia; that of the Rosario was built in 1712. In the church there are the two oldest Confraternities of Gratteri: that of the SS. Sacramento, under the title of Saint Joseph , and that of the Madonna del Rosario founded in 1570.

Information taken from:

Scelsi I. Gratteri. Storia, cultura e tradizioni, Palermo 1981.
Scileppi S., Cercherò le mie pecore e ne avrò cura. Vita ecclesiale a Gratteri (PA), Tip. Le Madonie 2009.
Terregino G., Chiesa della Matrice Vecchia e i Baroni Ventimiglia, in gratteri.org 2020.