This section unites
documents, articles, stories customs and uses of caulonian tradition
"
A chjiamata da Madonna "
Following
the washing of feet and the blessing of the Easter lambs, in Caulonia
as in Naples, begins what is known as the “Struscio”.
An
air of melancholy still pervades our churches expanding throughout
the town, people wander back and forth, slowly dragging their
feet: the sepulchres are visited. The two set up in the parish
churches are particularly poignant. Even these used to be a reason
for rivalry between the two religious sides (now not so much).
Silence used to reign sovereign, in the churches apart from the
sound of footsteps and the long dresses dragging, the only sounds
were those of a muttered prayer or a soulfelt burst of song from
one of the old women willing to participate in the “wake” which
was held in the church for the whole night. The dawn of Holy Friday
saw the slow and solemn approach of two processions, all the participants
bearing a crown of thorns known as “spina santa” or “spina santara”.
The same thing could be made from “sparacaro” (asparagus plant)
which, if not picked when young and tender to make salads and
omelettes, becomes evergreen prickly bushels. On the same day,
at three o’clock in the afternoon, in the church of the Immacolata,
the ceremony of the three hours of agony begins. In this ceremony,
the last “seven words” uttered by Jesus before dying, are used
as guidelines for hymns, prayers and meditation, ending with the
so called Mass of pre-sanctification, or “missa a storta”. The
Mass is deprived of the consecrations and thus of Communion, both
substituted by “lamentations”, while in the preface the Gospel
according to Saint John is read.
It
is in the evening that the day of Holy Friday becomes strongly
suggestive, when from the church of the Rosario the statues of
the Vergine Addolorata and of the Cristo Morto are led silently
and sadly to the entrance of the Matrice church. Inside this church,
which is already full of people, the ceremony of the “Calling
of the Madonna (A chiamata da Madonna)” is celebrated.
It
is during this ceremony that the priest gives proof of his oration
capacities. His speech reaches its culmination when, having called
the “Croce” and the “Ecce Homo”, Mary is invited “to gather her
son on the Cross”. This is an almost theatrical moment of drama,
because the human emotion joins with the Christian “pietas”. The
heavy door of the church is opened and the Madonna enters. After
a solemn walk around the three naves of the Matrice church, the
Holy Friday procession begins.
The
emotional notes of the most famous funerary marches accompany
the Addolorata and the dead Christ followed by the people of Caulonia.
The procession winds through the streets of the high area of the
town and late at night returns to the church of the Rosario where
everyone joins in the singing of the hymn “I dolori della Madonna”.
With
this hymn, even the singing reaches its culmination and sees its
most suggestive moment. Within the different ceremonies, singing
has an unequalled importance because it helps make the rites of
the Holy Week more fascinating and emotional. Our singing is a
kind of lament which, even if delivered crudely and off key, manages
to be appreciated anyway; at least by the people of the place.
The hymns are choral, with simple structures, which are based
on the men’s grave tones and the women’s acute tones, which are,
anyway, a characteristic of our way of speaking. All these hymns
find their own peculiarity in their both sing-song and elagiac
expression, with phrases enriched by utterances which, to us,
express pain. Their rhythm is slow, without any particular rules,
with choruses which repeat the same cadenzas; all in all, they
are simple structures, easy to hear. Should these songs be interpreted
by professionals they would acquire a more gracious and harmonious
quality. Usually it is a member of the clergy to guide the choir,
if one is absent, then a person acting as “Corifeo” steps in,
while the others try to respect the rhythm, the intonation and
the characteristics that the hymns impose.
At
midnight, the people, full of melancholy and compunction, go home.
In the early afternoon of Holy Saturday,
loud noises of crackers announce the opening of the “incanti”.
These
are a kind of auction which in exchange for money enables a person
to have the honour of bearing some sacred object, Cross degli
Spogliati, Candelabrums or a statue in the imminent procession
of the “Passione”.
Usually the mule drivers did all they
could to obtain the privilege of bearing the statues on their
shoulders and the lanterns of Saint John. The “Massari” did all
they could to bear the statue of Cristo alla Colonna, the youngsters
the statue of the Ecce Homo, the women and girls the chest of
the Cristo alla Colonna and the Cristo Morto with his statue while
the statue of the Addolorata was wanted by those who had taken
certain votes. Often this resulted in competition for glory and
social status among the contenders.
The
last notes of the auctioneer open the renowned and original rite
of the “Caracolo”, this was also the highest point of this time
of year for the Caulonian people.
The
“Caracolo” is a strange and tragicomic procession on the Thursday
and Friday. Now it is losing strength but once all social classes
took part in it; it was talked about all year round both in preparation
for the next year or remembering past years. It is a heritage
of the Spanish occupation. “Karacol” in hispanic means “spiral”,
it derives from the arabic “karhara” (to turn) and can be applied
instead of zig-zag or doodle. Charneg talks about a zig-zaging road
in his “Through the Pampa”: <We began
the Karacol pass: and the last hill. It is long, steep, interminable
and its name comes from the amount of squiggling needed to reach
the top>. This
procession is carried out in pairs, according to social condition,
sex, age and the social stature of each class or corporation.
The
march opens with a black banner and a naked cross between two candelabrums
without candles. The “raganella” (rattle) for the young boys and
girls, the black dress for men and women, and the prickly crown
is obligatory for everyone. When the interminable line emerges from
one of the corners of Piazza Mese, with its windows, balconies and
roofs full of spectators, instead of crossing the square to enter
the church on the opposite side which would take five minutes, the
head of the line proceeds along the side of the square opposite
the church and almost completely retrace their steps turning their
faces towards the corner from where they entered and offering their
side to the lines of successive people in the procession, who, in
turn occupy the same lines as the people before them.
Thus winding
and rewinding the people form a movement of parallel lines which
do not cease moving until the entire square is full. After having
entered it time and time again, at last they enter the church. This sounds impossible to do in an eighty
metre square but it takes over an hour! San Giovanni is borne
in the procession along with Cristo alla Colonna, the Ecce Homo,
the Cristo Morto and the Addolorata. The youngsters make their
rattles whistle, the tambourines are not tuned, the music played
are funerary marches and the clergy sing the miserere. Amidst
all this the lines meet, but do not touch, the banners hanging,
the crosses naked, the statues wandering lost between the excessive
riches of the participants’ costumes, and the beauty of the women
and the gatherings of old people and the young people which all
contributes to the strange and curious ordered chaos.”
The page by
Prota regarding the Caracolo is very vivid: yet again the Caulonian
historian managed to paint a clear fresco of reality, so well as
to avoid any attempt at further descriptions of the most important
liturgical procession of Caulonia. From reading this beautiful and
suggestive page, we are struck by how the author comes close to
our rites towards which at first glance he seems almost disrespectful
when he begins by calling the procession tragic-comic. Then it becomes
apparent that his outlook is very different, that he wants to maintain
the scholar’s detachment and the objectivity. Nonetheless, the author
of the passage underlines, already in 1913, the procession’s decline,
we are able to see that all through the 1950’s it was still in fashion.
From the beautiful
description one obtains not only the etymology of the word “Caracolo”
and the route that the procession takes, once Piazza Mese has
been reached, but while it reminds us that we are observing a
heredity from the Spanish occupation, it also enables us to observe
its singular status of Baroque style procession, especially when
the people produce a series of ellipses while winding and rewinding
around the square. Prota synthetically and precisely shows us
a cross section of his contemporaries in Caulonian society and
with an exact choice of words manages to give us documentary evidence.
Undoubtedly this document acts as the first short film about the
Caracolo and our director uses written words rather than video
cameras. He describes the sounds of the rattles, and the discordant
tambourines, he shows us the drooping banners and the crosses,
the wandering of the statues and the behaviour of participants
and spectators: all these are elements which make the procession
a unique and curious event.
It is surprising how Prota, usually so
precise in his descriptions, chose to describe only five out of
the eight statues belonging to the procession
This is odd
also because of three unmentioned statues, Christ in the garden,
Christ under the cross and Christ on the cross, all belonging to
the “Jusu” congregation, were already part of the Caulonian religious
heritage in his day. He even published a photo of them in his work
about the Caracolo on Holy Thursday in which the Christ in the garden
is clearly visible. So why did he not include them to his description?
From the same source we know that the Caracolo is a Holy Thursday
and Holy Friday procession, but we now know that with the new liturgy
it happens in the afternoon of Holy Saturday.
Until the first ‘50s of the XX century,
the Holy Week’s calendar develops according to the following schedule:
Holy Wednesday did not
see Christ’s procession and Holy Thursday, at around nine o’clock
in the morning, presented the Caracolo with three of the four statues
belonging to the arch-confraternity of the Immacolata (Christ in
the garden, Christ at the column, and Christ under the cross); at
around eleven o’clock the Messa della Cena began in the church del
Rosario and immediately after that, in the early afternoon, there
followed a visit to the sepulchres. In the late afternoon in the
Matrice church the function of the “tenebre” (darkness) took place.
In the evening there was the procession of Cristo Morto which began
with the calling of the Madonna.
Holy
Friday was occupied by the visits to the sepulchres, by the “not
consumed” Mass, and so, along with the closure of the sepulchres,
the denuding of the altars and the elimination of the purple drapes
from the sacred images, the Caracolo began. Holy Saturday was the
“Glory day, and around ten o’clock in the morning, in the Matrice
church, the ceremony which would end around midday with the ringing
of the bells which mark the Resurrection, began. While waiting for
the bells of easter to ring, many Caulonians used to hold a “posta”
(small lump) of one of the dried sausages; once the bells started
ringing, they would eat it and say “Groglia sonandu, sazzizzu mangiandu”.
The food of that day, other than dried sausage, was lamb, wine,
gelatines and ‘nguta, home made cake made of flour, sugar, lard,
and eggs, it was decorated with ritual and symbolic decorations.
Still at midday on Saturday, while waiting for the “Glory”, all
the youths used to hang along the architrave of a door or a banister
or the railings of a balcony, because if the sound of the bells
found them upside down it would help them to grow taller. “Groglia sonandu ed
eu allongandu”.
After the festive and
sudden ringing of the bells, an odd character known as “u sciummicaturi”,
carrying a kind of thurible with lighted incense, used to enter
people’s houses to remove the “malocchio” (evil eye) reciting,
in indistinguishable tones, the following formula:
"Occhju
e malu occhju,
e s'é puru magaria,
vattindi fora da casa mia.
Santu luni, santu marti,
santu mercuri, santu jovi,
santu vennari, santu sabatu,
dominica i Pasca
e l'occhju 'nterra u casca"
(
Words to the effect that the evil must leave the house it is occupying
because by the end of the Holy Week it will die anyway ).
As anyone can see our
two souls, pagan and Christian, continued to live in symbiosis.
This was the ancient
ritual, before the reform of the 1950’s, and that is how the entire
Saturday was passed until Easter Sunday when the “Svelata” (unveiled)
let humanity explode in the entire Mese square.
The
story of Lent, otherwise said the
rites of the holy week in Caulonia.
The Caracolo
by Gustavo Cannizzaro www.caulonia2000.it
- March 2001
