User:Deliso mary/Church of Santa Chiara (Bari)

The church of Santa Chiara is located in the homonymous street of the città vecchia (old town), near the streets of San Vito and Tresca

In the past it was seat of the Teutonic Order and kept the sacred image of Madonna degli Alemanni

History
At the end of the 12th century, the number of Germans who stopped in Puglia on their way to Jerusalem increased considerably after the Swabians settled there. Jerusalem was a destination for pilgrimages and crusades, but the birth of the Order of the Teutonic Knights also contributed to increase the flow of people. Currently the mysteries of Vallisa Church are kept there. Mysteries are the statues representing the charachters involved in the Passion of Jesus Christ. Returning in 2006, the procession started from this place once (in 1994) while in the previous years the procession started from the church of Santa Teresa dei Maschi, still in the Borgo Antico (Barivecchia).

Before the current church dedicated to Santa Chiara, there was the church of Santa Maria degli Alemanni or Santa Maria Theotonicorum, which was annexed to the domus in Puglia of this order, which depended on the mother house of San Leonardo in Siponto. The domus had someone called Arnold as a tutor, in 1239, and housed the "preceptor domorum in Apulia", who was called Gunther.

In 1492 Pope Innocent VIII, following a request from Ludovico il Moro, passed the church to the Poor Clares, and the name changed to Santa Chiara. However, the church remained under the jurisdiction of Cardinal Giovanni Giacomo Sclafenato, protector of the Teutonic Order, and then of the tutors of San Leonardo da Siponto. However, Archbishop Ricciardi later reduced the number of nuns from 46 to 31.

In 1539 the church was restructured with donations from Bona Sforza, queen of Poland and duchess of Bari, during the priory of the Swabian abbess. Later the church disengaged itself from the Teutonic Knights. With the abbess Laura Gironda a reconstruction took place in 1730

The monastery, after being suppressed in 1809, was sold to the nuns of Santa Maria del Buonconsiglio in 1815; it was occupied by the military in 1861 and transformed into barracks. In 1897 the upper part of the eighteenth-century bell tower was demolished. It then became the seat of the confraternity of San Luca, was restored in 1934 and in 1975 was officially closed to worship