Santa Venera - Between East and West

One, three, a thousand saints? Born in Italy, France or Turkey? In the end, it does not matter.
The story told in this book is a journey through Italy in the footsteps of Santa Venera, also known as Veneranda or Parasceve, a figure who has managed to cross almost two thousand years of history uniting East and West.

From the earliest testimonies in the Roman catacombs, the cult spread like a river branching into a thousand streams: the Baroque processions of Acireale with the silver bust carried in triumph, the sober Lombard celebrations of Mortara, the Byzantine icons of the Arbëreshë communities. Each place tells a different story, yet the same: that of a devotion capable of speaking different languages while maintaining the same essence.

But this is not only a story of art and tradition. It is also the story of a "lost geography": disappeared churches, ruined monasteries, toponyms that like dormant seeds preserve the memory of ancient faiths. A heritage that risks dissolving if we do not recognize its value.

After analyzing the different iconographic traditions between East and West and offering an overview of Orthodox Europe, the work presents a survey of the places of worship and sacred art dedicated to the saint. It thus helps document how a figure considered "minor" in the West, but highly venerated in the East, has woven invisible threads between distant communities, creating bridges where history had dug trenches.

A book that is both historical research and an invitation to discovery, devotional map and reflection on the meaning of the sacred in the contemporary world. Knowing Santa Venera means encountering a piece of our deepest identity, one that even today silently continues to unite distant places and communities.