Templar Church of Santa Croce

In the locality of Collina di Purello stands the small rural church of Santa Croce de Culiano. The toponym Culiano is very likely Latin origin. Included in the Diocese of Nocera Umbra and, once, in the jurisdiction of Castrum Sigilli, or of the Castrum Fossati, the church, probably founded in the 12th century, is mentioned for the first time by archival papers during 1297, when he speaks of the intercurrent relations between the Perugian Templar monastery of San Giustino d'Arna and the bishop of Nocera Umbra. In the archival document, the Templar monastery elects such a Bonaguida as rector of the church of Santa Croce, who was then unprepared, asking the bishop for the express recognition of the rector himself. In the same year, the bishop of Nocera, having died the previous one, elects a new rector, already chaplain of the nearby church of Santa Maria della Ghea, Tomasso Bentivolli, candidate from such a legitimized to so much "from the Master and Preceptors" of the Templars and of the monastery of San Giustino. In Perugia, in the renovated National Gallery of Umbria you can admire a splendid wooden sculpture of the Virgin, dating back to the first half of the fourteenth century, which was located inside the church and perhaps, had been commissioned by them, just before the suppression of the their order in 1312.