Description

Small building with a rectangular plan consisting of a single nave surmounted by a barrel vault quite intact, although over time has been affected by small collapses. Above the small altar there is a small splayed window, while on the right wall there is a deep niche. Internally there are no traces of decoration. On the left side was made a second entrance, now walled up. Externally there are no traces of masonry that can testify to the presence of housing structures, although it is possible to assume the existence in the past. The church of S. Croce del Morrone - also called "hermitage of S. Pietro" - already existed in the XII century and depended on the bishop of Sulmona. A century later, at the time of his arrival near Sulmona, Friar Pietro del Morrone restored it and adapted it to his needs of hermitic life. Catania (wife of the notary Giovanni di Riccardo and daughter of master Benedetto, doctor of Sulmona) and her sister-in-law Gemma (wife of Panfilo di Riccardo), at the "Process of canonization", testified that among the religious places built or restored by fra Pietro there was also the "place of S. Croce del Morrone". From the fourteenth century onwards if you lose track of it in the sources, probably because of its mountain location was abandoned or used in an occasional way. It was definitively suppressed in 1807 together with the abbey of S. Spirito di Sulmona of which it was a dependence.