The Crocodile in the Church

The quiet fields of Mantova hide a lovely little town called Grazie, meaning Grace or Thanks, but in this case grace means miracle, like Amazing Grace.

 This little town is about as big as St. Marcs piazza in Venice, or as big as a football field in American terms. It is small, difficult to find, there are at least 2 dozen hidden speed checks on the way there but totally worth visiting. I first heard about this town on the TV show called Passpartout hosted by a man wearing thick glasses and a bow tie called Philippe Daverio.

Philippe Daverio: journalist, historian and art critic

Here is a little clip from one of his shows where he tours a castle in Tuscany.

Mr. Daverio was discovering some of the secrets in churches of the Mantova region, just south of Brescia. Mantova is in the flattest part of Italy called the Po Valley or in Italian, la Pianura Piadana. This area is rich in agriculture, raises the tastiest livestock and has the thickest fog. It is also my favorite place to visit and explore. My favorite city, Cremona, happens to be in the Pianura Piadana. You can imagine how happy I was to see Phillipe Daverio walking around the marshlands of the Mincio and Po Rivers discussing the churches.

The Mincio River

Old homes where the fisherman used to live along the Mincio

He walked through the small town of Grazie towards a giant church built in the 12th century, the size of the town, called Santuario della Beata Vergine delle Grazie, or Sanctuary of the Blessed Virgin of Graces. Their website is here. Mr. Daverio pointed to the ceiling of the church, I thought he was pointing out the pink chandeliers  and intricate paintings but no, he was pointing at a floating crocodile! Get out! A real crocodile in a church in Mantova?! This is one place that I had to visit! I convinced my husband to go with me last Sunday because I wanted to see this floating crocodile in person. We drove through the flat lands, saw the rivers, ran into some amazing birds and finally saw the church with its crocodile and art.

The flat lands of the Po Valley are mysterious and heavenly at the same time. Usually they have a thin layer of fog laying above them like a halo from the heavens. It is quiet, serene, and the perfect place for a romantic movie or a mystery movie to be filmed. "Murder on the Mincio" featuring Colin Firth and a young Sofia Loren, I can see it now.

An old barn in the Pianura Piadana

Fiume Mincio

The fishermans house along the Mincio River

The  Mincio River was frozen in some spots. I was a wimp and not brave enough to stand on the river but my husband went ahead and took his only opportunity to walk on water. I was impressed to see how thick the water froze because it actually held him up!

A fallen tree from the winter storm

The ice was at least four inches thick (9 cm.)

As we got closer to the church we saw a flock of chickens fluttering around. I don't know if chickens are really called flocks, but there were many and so cute too. I was slightly scared of them but they really just wanted to see if we were bringing any food. It reminded me of Fatty and Bentley. I wonder how the cats would react if they saw some of these big birds.

cluck cluck

So pretty

"They call me Mr. Tasty"

"They call me Pilgrim"

Keeping an eye on his back, he never knows if he might be the dish of the night!

Finally we got to Grazie.

You can sort of see a painting on the left showing the river town

We made our way towards the church.

The back of the Santuario della Beata Vergine delle Grazie

inside the courtyard

A kitty walking along the walls of the church courtyard

The front of the Santuario della Beata Vergine delle Grazie

The first thing I looked for as we entered the church was the crocodile and sure enough, it was there at the entrance hanging down from the ceiling.

So how did Mr. Crocodile get there? I was hoping there would be a terrific story like he was hungry and swallowed a farmer who ended up asking Mary for a grace and was able to climb out of Mr. Crocodiles mouth, dragged him to the church and strung him up. But the story is actually pretty lame. In the 15th century Mr. Crocodile was an exotic pet of the royal Gonzaga family who ruled the Mantova region. In those days it was declared that dragons, snakes, crocodiles and like reptiles were symbols of the devil and sin. Mr. Crocodile was thus given as a gift to the church as a symbol of blocking out the devil from the church. Poor Mr. Crocodile! I am still pretty impressed that he was able to survive dangling there for the last 500 years! And he is the only crocodile in a church in Italy so he can be proud of that. I hope he has a spot past the pearly gates of Heaven where he can splash in warm ponds and eat as many symbolic farmers as he likes!

The Crocodile is visible on the upper right

I still can't get over that there is a reptile hanging in a church.

The name of the church is special because it indicates that the people from the area had asked help from the Virgin Mary during a time of crisis. Most of these miracles that she helped with are seen along the walls of the interior of the chapel to the Holy Mother. The people who received a miracle, or grace, would have a painting made depicting what happened. Many of them were related to farming accidents.

Paintings from people that received a miracle after asking for it.

1659: some poor guy got stuck under his cart

The horse ran off and left his owner in bad shape.

The other thing that I noticed about this church was the art along the walls. Usually there are the stations of the cross showing the life to death of Jesus and then paintings of the scribes of the Bible. Maybe they were there and I didn't see them because the predominant art was that of martyrs. There they were in real life sizes, carved out of wood and getting hacked to death, pulled out of wells, decapitated and getting their legs chopped off. How lovely!

Plan B didn't work

Should have taken swimming lessons.

 In heaven there must have been an inside joke before we were all born. There were the candidates for humanity sitting in Orientation on Life getting told by the angels, "You will all have to kick the bucket someday, so rather than make you all die in a boring way, we decided to make things festive and creative. Under your chair you will find your ending written on a slip of paper. We hope you are as amused by it as we were coming up with it! The choices are: choking by chocolate, getting tossed in a well, sacrificed by the Aztecs, getting your noggen chopped off or inducing a slow death via gluttony. When you are done reading it take your slip to the stork who will bring you to your semi-functional family."

This is how he rolls.

"Hello!"

I can't imagine taking any children in there and figuring out how to answer their questions, "Aunty, why is there a dancing angel next to a man getting his head chopped off?" I would respond, "Oh honey, God likes to show he is boss from time to time." or..."Its just a game..." What would you respond to this? There were many kids there that are from Grazie and were not fazed at all with the crocodile or martyrs. "What this? It's normal, silly Americans..." Another thing, there were dancing angels with carved breasts or apples, we couldn't decide, adorning the wooden pillars between the martyrs.

Look at the pillar, what do you think the light brown things are? For sure hearts and hands but the third item?

 This was by far the most peculiar church I have ever seen. I don't remember who said that in the country crazy things happen but it is so true, you can't hear the cries of the scared, the laughter of the happy or see the crocodiles getting strung up in churches. The only other place matching this level of peculiarity would have been in Pennsylvania where I went to camp with my students, got lost and was told by the police officer to watch out at the campground. Brrr... Creepy.

Nevertheless I loved this Sunday trip and hope there are more special places like this to visit in the future!