The feast of Saint Colomba, celebrated each year on the first of September at the hermitage bearing her name, situated at an altitude of 1,234 metres on the slopes of Mount Infornace, on the northern side of the Gran Sasso d’Italia, constitutes one of the most ancient pilgrimage cults of the mountainous area of the province of Teramo, tenaciously preserved thanks to the particular devotion paid to the saint by the inhabitants of Pretara. Sister of Saint Berardo — bishop of Teramo from 1116 to 1122 and today patron saint of the city — and daughter of the Counts of Pagliara, who dominated the Valle Siciliana between the ninth and fourteenth centuries, the hermit saint withdrew while still very young to the northern slopes of the massif during the early years of the twelfth century, where, according to local tradition, she died in January 1116. Her relics, preserved for almost five centuries in the hermitage, were translated in 1596 to the church of Saint Lucia, situated near Isola del Gran Sasso along the road ascending from the main town towards the hamlet of Pretara, where they are still kept today. The wax processional statue, formerly housed in the same church, was instead transferred in 1955 to the new parish church of Saint Donato in Pretara after turbulent disputes that required the intervention of the prefecture and the police forces in order to quell what contemporary accounts describe as a genuine popular uprising. The memory of this conflict reveals the depth of the community appropriation of Saint Colomba by the hamlet of Pretara. Still, it resonates today within the internal hierarchies of devotion, where the hermit saint prevails, in the sensibility of the inhabitants of Pretara, even over the much nearer and more celebrated Sanctuary of Saint Gabriel of Our Lady of Sorrows, the principal centre of organised Catholicism in the valley.

The pilgrimage unfolds along a ritual itinerary of approximately one hour’s walk, beginning at Piana del Fiume and ascending through the beech forest across three successive ridges — the First Ridge, the Ridge Colle Crocetta (Little Cross), marked by a wooden cross placed by the inhabitants of Pretara, and the Prato (Meadow) — before emerging onto the panoramic clearing where the small rock hermitage stands. Along the route, the faithful stop at places where tradition holds that the saint paused during her lifetime, leaving behind anatomical traces of her passage later invested with sacred significance and believed to possess thaumaturgical powers. Among these are the Stone of the Seat, a rock bearing an anthropomorphic hollow against which pilgrims lean “for the good of the bones”; the Stone of the Hand, a cavity with finger-like morphology attributed to the imprint of the saint’s hand; and the Steps of Saint Colomba, a petroglyphic sign of ancient origin — perhaps dating back to the Neolithic period — crossed by a series of parallel incisions interpreted by the faithful as the teeth of the comb with which the saint was believed to have arranged her “thick hair”.

Throughout the day, the foundational legend of Colomba’s sanctity is repeatedly narrated: in January 1116, when her brother Berardo visited her seeking advice on whether to accept the bishopric of Teramo and she had nothing to offer him for the meal, the hermit saint is said to have caused a cherry tree near the hermitage to blossom and bear fruit in the depth of winter, before dying during the following night.

The central moment of the devotional practice takes place inside the small church, where, on the left side of the altar, a narrow niche opens — according to tradition, the bed or burial recess that housed the saint’s mortal remains for centuries — into which pilgrims progressively insert their heads, and sometimes even their arms, for protective and therapeutic purposes connected with the treatment of headaches and migraines. Inside the same niche, the faithful leave small objects — hair clips, hairpins, rosary beads, candles, coins — material signs of a personal request addressed to the saint and of a desire to maintain a lasting contact with her benevolence. The ceremonial action, interpretable as a practice of lithotherapy through bodily inclusion within a space sacralised by the proximity of the relics, is documented in similar forms in only a few other places in central Italy, such as the cave of Saint Michael the Archangel at Colli di Monte Bove (Carsoli) and, above all, the hermitage of Saint Venanzio in Raiano, where the studies of Giovanni Pansa and Annabella Rossi documented the ritual rubbing of pilgrims against the rocks identified by oral tradition as the saint’s resting place and as traces of his earthly presence.

Once the Mass has concluded, the brief procession around the hermitage takes place, opened by the instrumental ensemble Li tamurrë of Pretara. Along the return path, the faithful gather the “cross of Saint Colomba”: a small, young branch of silver fir whose characteristic arrangement of needle-like leaves creates a distinctly cruciform shape. It is taken home as a protective symbol or given to a loved one according to an essentially affective form of transmitting the saint’s thaumaturgical powers.