The Legend of San Giulio and San Giuliano

A Story of Dragons, Miracles, and a Hundred Churches
San Giulio was born in 330 AD on the Greek island of Aegina. It is said he had a brother, San Giuliano, who followed him in his wanderings around the world. As a young man, after clashing both with local pagans who opposed Christians and with early Christians who were already arguing over the interpretation of Christianity (and who appeared to San Giulio's eyes as heretics), he left Aegina and landed in Italy.

During his pilgrimage through Italy, he obtained authorization from the Emperor to tear down old pagan temples and build Christian churches on top of them. Wandering through the land, he finally arrived in the area of Lake Orta. He saw the island and was fascinated by its beauty and isolation, thinking it would be wonderful to erect a church in honor of Christ in such a marvelous place.

He asked to be ferried across by a boatman to begin building yet another church. It is said this was to be the hundredth church that he—together with his brother, who had remained in Gozzano—was destined to build. However, he could find no one who dared to take him to the island. All the inhabitants of Orta refused to land there, claiming it was infested with dragons, serpents, and terrible, dangerous, gigantic beasts.

And so, San Giulio performed his first miracle: he spread his cloak (or carpet) over the water, stepped onto it, ordered it to carry him to the island, and arrived there fresh, happy, and completely safe from being swallowed by the waters.
Once on the island, he managed to drive away all these monsters. As proof that there were indeed enormous and dangerous beasts, a very large vertebra of a frightening creature, of absolutely abnormal dimensions, still hangs today from the ceiling of the sacristy of the Church of San Giulio, suspended by a small cord.

Having reached the island, San Giulio began the construction of his church. The legend says that this was meant to be the hundredth church. Meanwhile, the existence of his brother Giuliano is sometimes called into doubt—historians cannot identify whether there were truly two brothers, Giuliano and Giulio, or if Giulio was sometimes referred to as Giulio and other times as Giuliano. The question has never been fully resolved, so to this day, two different saints are venerated: San Giulio and San Giuliano.

The idea that there was a brother seems to stem from the fact that it was said the body of one of the two brothers, San Giuliano, was once on the Island of San Giulio, before being transported and preserved in Gozzano, where it remains today. Meanwhile, the body of San Giulio remained on the island and lies in a beautiful crypt beneath the altar, which can be visited, where his body is still visible to the faithful today.

The Island of San Giulio has borne his name ever since. It was San Giulio who, having founded a church there, first decreed the possession of the island by the Christian Church—specifically the Bishops of Novara—and placed the island under the protection of the Novarese Curia.