Caves have always struck the imagination of mankind because of their symbolic value at the origin of numerous cults, myths and legends. It is no coincidence that the oldest sanctuaries of mankind have been located in caves since prehistoric times.
In the medieval collective imagination, the gloominess of the cavern and the inaccessibility of the site created an atmosphere of mystery and impenetrability, of limitation, as well as physical, psychological and moral.
The entrance door, in a church built or dug into the rock, represents the dividing line separating the space of the sacred from that of the profane, but also the line of passage between these two dimensions.
John the Evangelist writes: ‘I am the door; if anyone enters through me, he will be saved’.
Crossing the threshold constitutes in itself a true rite of passage, an initiatory rite, which allows one to enter directly into contact with the divine.
The entrance door to the grotto-sanctuary of the Archangel Michael in the Santeramo area was originally decorated with a painting, enclosed by a red frame with a yellow background, of which only a few fragments remain: the body of a fish can be recognised on the right.
This is a very recurrent Christian symbol, derived from the acrostic IXTUS = fish, containing the initials of the phrase ‘Jesus Christ Son of God the Saviour’.
In this case, considering the complicated devotional path of the cave, fraught with difficulties, it could be linked to the iconography of Jonah being swallowed by a large fish, well documented since early Christian times and associated with the death and resurrection of Christ.
Matthew reports that ‘As Jonah remained in the belly of the fish for three days and three nights, so the Son of Man will remain in the heart of the earth for three days and three nights’ .
This is why the entrance to the cave represents the beginning of a cosmic journey and begins in the ‘death’ of sinful man, who upon entering the cave descends into the ‘underworld’.