If for a long time the Counts Guidi represented the catalysing agent of all the local equilibria, and projected this zone into the framework of the more general regional politics, kneading it with the epic struggle between the Guelphs and Ghibellines, on a religious level the same function of a link with the more general political and social events was, instead, traditionally attributed to the parish church of San Pietro at Gropina.
This was an interesting mystification of the role and of the prerogatives of this monument that, in itself, was certainly significant, but more on a cultural than a political level. The fact is that it was desired to connect the parish church with the Contessa Matilde. We find the "Matildian" invention of Gropina, if we can call it this, well expressed in the Bossini volume, for which it was reportedly one of the brilliant examples of the capacity to govern and of the dedication to the church of Matilde, Countess of Canossa, who is said to have built it or had it rebuilt over some miserable ruins (Bossini, 1964: 24-25). In this way, this monument supposedly testifies to the importance and to the antiquity of the territory of Loro, and corroborates its very precocious religious devotion.
The parish church of Gropina is a unique document, not so much for its fanciful Canossian ascendancy, but rather because it testifies to a much deeper connection with early-medieval artistic reality in Tuscany.
If the parish church was assumed over the course of time to be the religious and cultural fulcrum of the territory, this did not depend only on the imaginary events in which it was involved, nor on the fact that in its construction had contributed such a heterogeneous aggregate of labour coming from far away. Rather, it depended on the fact that it was located on a very important road system along which - in addition to serving for "local" traffic -pilgrims passed on their way to Rome or to the Holy Land.