La fondazione della chiesa e dell’ospizio di S. Sepolcro di Parma: tra imitatio hierosolymitana e riforma

After the crusade of 1100-1101– led by the archbishop of Milan Anselm IV from Bovisio and the count Albert from Biandrate and joined by a significant army of milites led by count Albert II from Parma –, in Parma as in many other towns, a church and an attached hospice were founded dedicated to the Holy Sepulchre. This church rose probably when the bishop of Parma was Bernardo degli Uberti or in the period of passage between the episcopacy of Guido and the Bernardo’s one (1104-1106). Despite the sparce information around the initial phase of this foundation, a persuasive hypothesis around the history of the first century of this Emilian imitatio hierosolymitana can be formulated, whose main elements are the following: the lay origin of the foundation (due to the crusaders), the strong relationship with the bishop Bernardo and his reforming pastoral care, its affiliation to the community of regular canons of Saint Felicola in the XII century, its insertion in the urban context, its ability to polarize the charity of the population and its politics of property expansion, in competition with others urban and out-of-towner ecclesiastical corporate bodies.