Sicily - part six

After visiting in 1804, the Romantic poet Samuel Coleridge declared the number of churches in Sicily hard to believe. ‘The superstition of the peasantry and lower orders generally in Malta, Sicily, and Italy exceeds common belief.’ (Specimens of the table talk of the late Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Volume 1 - 1835)

On Sicily, with an abundance of much else worth seeing, there’s still no escaping churches. Some are, indeed, worth visiting, if only for direct links to the island’s history. 

The Norman cathedral of Monreale with royal tombs and stunning mosaics was the idea of a king who wanted to compete with the local Archbishop of Palermo. Here, below Adam, Eve and the serpent, Abraham is stopped from killing Issac.

Sicily is still ‘more practising Catholic’ than, say, northern Italy. That said, as elsewhere in the secular West, I suspect many of Sicily’s churches would be hard pressed to remain open without tourists. 

In Palermo visitors tour the cathedral looking out (likely without knowing) on where the Catholic Inquisition dispatched heretics to a fiery fate. 

At the shrine of Monte Pellegrino overlooking Palermo, a priest prepares to process a representation of Santa Rosalia, the city’s patron saint. She apparently lived in a cave and, when her bones were found 500 years later, a plague is said to have ended.

In Mazara del Vallo over the cathedral’s main entrance …

… is a representation of Roger the Norman, who in 1072 freed the city from Arab rule. He is shown trampling a Muslim.

Mazara’s 1680 Chiesa di San Francesco is chock-a-block with completely over-the-top sculptural decoration, including enthusiastically hosannaing cherubs. Baroque was never my taste.

In Trapani, I peek in the 1688 (same year as England’s Glorious Revolution) Chiesa del Purgatorio, but quickly put off by grim life-size figures of Jesus being scourged …

… and in the tomb …

… two of the many carried in annual processions. In this case, the flagellation is borne by local pasta makers and glass casket by bricklayers and stonemasons.

Having never been present for a miracle, nor even having seen supposed after the fact evidence, I was intrigued to learn there had been a miracle in Mazara del Vallo.

In a country struggling to find priests, the Chiesa Parrocchiale di Maria SS. del Paradiso was, surprisingly to me at least, open on a weekday morning. 

There, above the altar, is the Virgin in a marble frame.

Apparently ‘It was precisely on November 3, 1797, around 9:00 pm, that the Blessed Virgin, sad and sorrowful in appearance, deigned to turn her merciful eyes toward those present. The miracle was repeated several times during the night and the following day, and the sacred image was transferred to the Cathedral. This was done with great solemnity and a large crowd of people.’

This also said to have happened in 1807, 1810, 1811, 1866 and, most recently in 1981.

At this point, I’ll say - no surprise - I’m a skeptic. However, such happenings are important to those who believe and, in Mazara, many do and others, often from far away, come for the annual processions that carry the painting through the city. Nothing is gained by pooh-poohing such beliefs. 

And I’ll give full credit to the simply delightful priest who chanced on me, but for the custodian, alone in his church. Father Romain, who speaks excellent English, spent nearly half an hour showing me around. I was very impressed and grateful. I now know more about this particular Virgin than any other I’ve ever - and usually idly - considered.

Here she is a couple of days later, having been taken down for her yearly outing, something I'm sorry to have missed.