Abbey of Saints Fidentius and Terence

It is one of the most interesting Romanesque churches in the region of Umbria, it was erected by the nobles of Massa Martana in honour of these two saints, who, according to legend, came from Syria. They left Rome to spread the Christian religion and when they arrived in the territory of Todi at the time of Emperor Diocletian, they were captured and martyred “”in Civitate Martana, Tuderto proxima”” (“In the city of Martana, near Todi”). Their bodies were then secretly buried in the place where the church now stands. The relics of their bodies were exhumed in 1629 by Cardinal Boncompagni and transported to the village of Bassano di Orte.
The stone façade with red and white rows has a characteristic Umbrian mullioned window with two lights with two rhombuses above the round arch of the entrance door. The interior, nowadays rather bare, certainly unlike the original one, has one nave, and in the back wall are set about forty slabs of Lombard inspiration, sculpted with zoomorphic, anthropomorphic and geometric elements from the 10th-11th centuries. The polychrome tile ceiling with the coats of arms of Todi and a precious Byzantine marble ambo built with two large slabs of marble sculpted with different decorations between one façade and the other are quite unique. The apse contains a fragment of a fresco depicting the Madonna and Child attributed to Bartolomeo da Miranda, a 14th-century painter active in the area. Of particular interest is the early Christian three-light crypt, supported by a central Roman grey marble column with a beautiful Ionic capital and two side columns of travertine, and the characteristic bell gable, built on an ancient bell tower with a dodecagonal base of large travertine blocks. Like other places of worship, the church of St. Fidentius and Terence has undergone numerous modifications; in the adjacent monastery, a community of Benedictine monks settled there and governed it until the end of the 14th century. It was an important parish church, with many churches and castles dependent on it.