The Church of Sant’Agostino

San Leonardo al Lago Hermitage

A short distance from Lecceto is San Leonardo a Lago Verano, the oldest of the Sienese hermitages. Half-hidden by thick underbrush, the hermitage rises near the Montagnola Senese overlooking the plain once occupied by Verano Lake and now called Pian del Lago. Because of their close vicinity, Lecceto and San Leonardo have often been mixed up with each other by historians, feeding the legends.
Sources document the presence of San Leonardo as early as the ninth century, when a monk named Benedict built a church in an isolated place called Selva del Lago Verano (“the forest of Verano Lake”). From the twelfth century on, the hermitage enjoyed a favored relationship with the bishopric of Siena, which culminated in the concession of the special protection of the papacy. In 1244, the small community gathered together in the hermitage adopted the Augustinian Rule. But in the course of the century, since it was in difficulty, it was absorbed by the nearby hermitage of Lecceto to form one sole community. Immersed in deep silence, San Leonardo al Lago was chosen as his spiritual retreat by Blessed Agostino Novello, who died here in 1309.