San Paolo Church

The Church of San Paolo is one of the oldest churches in the upper Treviso area. Of Paduan influence, dedicated to Saint Paul the Apostle, it still survives intact today along the western bank of the Lastego in the south of the town and is already mentioned in 1297 for the payment of Vatican tithes, when it was governed by a presbyter Prosdocimus and incorporated into the parish of Loreggia.

Subsequently, however, it was incorporated with the parish of Fonte (1330) under which it remained for the next 150 years. In the following centuries, San Paolo became a secondary church, marginally mentioned in the acts of pastoral visits only for some maintenance work. When the diocese of Padua began to extend its power, the ecclesiastical benefice of San Paolo became a very attractive area not only for the income assigned to its administrator but also for the fortieth part of the harvest that parishioners were obliged to pay to the parish priest. Lodovico Campana, a young Paduan who became rector of the churches of Crespano in 1480, pushed to aggregate the territory of San Paolo, first civilly (1481) then with religious incorporation (1488). It stands in a rural and artisanal reality which, in terms of administrative structure and economic profile, gravitates towards the Lastego torrent and is presumed to comprise a rather heterogeneous area recognizable today: on the west bank, the San Paolo hamlet, the Sgionfet, Baiocchi houses, on the east bank, the Cengia, the Formin hamlet, the Vidi locality. The two inhabited areas are connected by a stone bridge, modified several times due to floods of the torrent, which transversally connects the two road directions, north-south, on the tops of the torrent’s sides. Similar in architectural features to the churches of San Pancrazio and Sant’Andrea di Fietta, San Paolo is, in comparison, particularly softened by its modest dimensions, re-proposing the Romanesque typology integrated with humility and balance into the rural environment. The facade, facing west, raised with its churchyard by a few steps from the transit road that connects it to the rest of the town, has a wooden entrance, two windows on the sides, and an oculus in the center of the pediment ; on the north side, the bell tower forms a single body with the nave and silently dissolves among the branches of the pines. Inside, a small rectangular nave, subject to a roof with wooden trusses and terracotta tiles as per tradition, heralds the valuable wooden altar of 1613 which was already placed, with dedication to S. Francesco, in the previous parish churches. It is animated by an altarpiece depicting the Madonna with Child and Saint Paul among priests and faithful. At the back of the nave is a graceful stone holy water font.