Monastery and Church of Santa Teresa - Erice

The Monastery of Santa Teresa was founded in Erice in 1671 by the wealthy brothers Tommaso and Maria Badalucco, descendants of the Erice patrician Giuseppe Badalucco who in his will had arranged that, in the absence of direct heirs, his assets should be spent on the foundation of a Carmelite monastery . Because the two brothers were the last representatives of the family, they had their palace adapted to its new purpose.

In 1701, the first group of nuns, the Discalced Carmelites of St. Teresa of Avila, entered the monastery.

After the dissolution of the religious orders in 1866, the monastery remained closed and abandoned for years and the church was often at the mercy of thieves, attracted by the valuable works of art and the majolica floor.

The monastery building was used as the seat of a study college in the first decades of the twentieth century; during the last war the church became a food depot.

Erice's archpriest Andrea Messina founded the Sales boarding school . Messina managed to restore and make functional the former Carmelite Monastery of Santa Teresa, which began to function actively from 1925. The sober headquarters, called Palazzo Sales , was completely renovated in the 1980s and is today a valuable location for conferences , demonstrations and events of great cultural importance.

However, the Monastery of S. Teresa is mainly remembered by the elderly for the production of ceroplastic art objects: the nuns were involved in this activity for a very long time, especially from the first decades of the 18th century. until the death of the last two nuns in the middle of the last century.

The church was built between the end of the 17th century and the beginning of the 18th century. Like most of Erice's churches, it has a simple facade with a flat Renaissance-style portal and above it the bell cells that were accessible from the sacristy.
The interior, with a single nave, is paved with 18th-century Neapolitan majolica , distinguished from those of other churches (S. Martino, S. Carlo, SS. Salvatore) for its delicate colors .

The first altar on the left, now undecorated, originally housed a canvas depicting Saint John of the Cross by the Trapani painter La Bruna, donated, like the crucifix of the second altar, by Maria Badalucco. In the first altar on the right we see a statue of Saint Joseph with the baby Jesus, in tuff stone, while in the second altar there is a Our Lady of Mount Carmel, on canvas, from Palermo.

The organ is from 1850, the pulpit from 1853. The steps to the main altar are made of red Libyan marble.
In the large chapel of the main altar there is an inscription recalling the transport of the body of Maria Badalucco from the Church of Carmine within the monastery. On the right and left the statues of two prophets so dear to Carmelite religiosity: Sant'Eligio (right) and Sant'Elia (left).
The altar, decorated with silver plates and mirrors, was considered by the people to be the most beautiful of the churches of Erice . Vandalism has unfortunately stripped it of almost all of its refinement, but what remains, if looked at closely, can give an idea of the skills of the Erice craftsmen of the 18th century.
Finally, the ceiling frescoes are also from the 18th century, but extensively reworked around 1953 by the Erice painter and decorator Augugliaro, known as "'u scarvacchiu".

Willem Vandenameele