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The lost church of San Martino Vescovo

The church of S. Martino was demolished in the year 1954; located north of the village of the same name, it likely resembled the church of S. Michele in Selda di Trivignano Udinese. 

The church featured a façade with a bell gable and two symmetrical side windows. The nave was rectangular with a perimeter bench in masonry on the sides; the apse and choir were semicircular. The walls of the church were painted; the frescoes were reportedly removed at the time of the church's demolition and are currently preserved at the Civici Musei di Udine. 

The frescoes are dated 1482 and depict the following scenes: the Virgin on the throne with the Child and S. Paolo, S. Martino and Saint, and S. Martino giving the cloak to the poor. The altar, in simple masonry, was adorned with an altarpiece depicting the Saint in the act of giving the cloak to the poor. 

The small church was very ancient, and the same dedication refers us to the Lombard era, when in Friuli the spread of the cult of the knight Saint replaced the Arian faith: suffice it to say that in 561 one of the largest and most sumptuous basilicas of Aquileia (that of Beligna) was dedicated to him; these same events led to the veneration of the warrior Saints Giorgio and Michele. 

The typical iconography of S. Martino is that which depicts him, in the gesture of cutting a piece of his cloak to give it away, as a bishop with a dragon and a snake in hand. The popular customs connected to his cult largely depend on the calendrical position of his feast (November 11), which falls in late autumn, a period of wine-making and a time of abundance after the harvests and simultaneously a moment of climatic change. His feast, mostly in the past, constituted for the Friulians the date of the annual renewal of agricultural contracts or of moving.

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