Lights on the sea and “surprising” fireworks:
this was how the three-day celebration in honor of St. Cristina ended in the late 1800s, organized by the specific deputation in a period that sometimes varied from the canonical date of 23 – 25 July, but still falling in the second half of that month. The acetylene illuminations, a brief parenthesis between the oil of the past and the electricity that was about to arrive, decorated the Corso Roma, which was then entitled XX Settembre and did not suffer any interruption compared to the contiguous cliff of tramontana: the train had just brought to the city “equality and freedom”, but the railway still did not reach the port and there was not even the waterfront between mountain. As a result, it was possible, although not exactly easy, to watch the spectacle of the lights that, lit and deposited on the water, with optimal sea weather conditions, drew a fairy-tale scenario.
The festival was held according to canons that have been repeated in future years, and For a long time, without major changes: preannuncio of celebration with the explosion of the civic cannon and the notes of cheerful musical pieces performed by the bands “municipal” and “popular” in the streets of the city and, in the afternoon, procession with the simulacrum of the Holy glorficate by the collaboration of the brotherhoods of Santa Maria della Purità and Santa Maria degli Angeli, as well as, of course, the faithful. In the evening, lights and lighting of a fountain.
On the second day the bands became three and sometimes four, with the addition of those foreigners chosen among the most famous, and since 9 o’clock they played “pieces chosen in orchestra” in public places; in the afternoon, race of sailboats, gala course in carriage and, “late”Fire from fireworks.
Finally, on the third day, more musical notes in the streets, after the sounding of the “sacred bronzes” at sunrise, then the “cuccagna a mare” in the afternoon, “bands in orchestra” among the illuminations and fireworks display.
| Chapel |
The Feast in the 1800s
With such a program set up by the deputation, “the rock” solemnly manifested devotion to its “Pitiful Protector,” but of course the feast also had another interpreter: the “devout citizenry” who followed the procession, panegyric, solemn vespers, and mass set to music performed by the town Philharmonic and “select foreign singers,” and in the evening animated the Corso the wide sidewalks hosted stalls: those of balloons, dolls and wooden toys; those of household items and tools for crafts, the availability of which had been awaited perhaps for months by housewives and artisans who had not had a chance to buy them at some fair in hinterland towns or at that of Our Lady of Canneto held in the early days of July, which was ancient but which the feast of Santa Cristina would later definitively absorb; and the stalls of peanuts, scapece and sweets.
In their jute sacks, “nuceddhe moddhi” (peanuts) and “toste” (hazelnuts) shared the space of the stall’s modest wooden planks with “samienti” (pumpkin seeds) and “fave e ciciri” (roasted too). Sometimes the apacitini of scapece flanked, as is still the case today, the peanuts, a clear sign that the stall was local: only Gallipolians had, and have, the necessary knowledge to bring to life this increasingly appreciated expression of the city’s gastronomy, which has its roots in Arab cuisine. It consists of fish, strictly separated by size, from the small latterino (minoscia) to the larger zerri (cupiddhi), fried in olive oil and crammed into wooden vats,alternating with layers of breadcrumbs watered with white vinegar, in which saffron has been previously dissolved.
Food lovers have no doubts: the flavors mingle and at the end of the marinating process you can no longer distinguish the individual ingredients, but the gusto, unique and original, of scapece.
Finally, the sweets. Next to “cupeta” (a mixture of toasted almonds wrapped in caramelized sugar, allowed to cool on a marble surface and cut into strips), among the many traditional sweets, the “scajozzi” were and still are found in the festivities: a mixture of flour, almonds and cocoa cut into small diamond shapes and baked; once cold, these cookies are nnasparati , that is, covered with cocoa icing.
Also a traditional presence in the festivities were the vendors who came from towns farther away than the hinterland, sometimes real barkers who knew they could count as much on the credulity of the audience as on the distance that, the next morning, they would put between themselves and the city; they proposed miraculous health products, extolled candies and balsamic pastilles, and extolled the gifts of the raffles.
The Feast in the 1900s
Newspapers of the early 1900s report some novelties, albeit in substantial continuity from the structuring of the festival as it was conceived from the beginning.
From the “Spartaco” , for example, we learn that among the collateral events, ample space was given to those organized by the Gallipoli Sporting Society, since a “foot-ball competition” between a local team and one from Salento, a bicycle race articulated along the Gallipoli-Galatone-Lequile-Lecce route and back passing through Galatina, and a swimming competition between the Lanternino and the reef called Sandulu, later transformed into the quay on which the Anmi headquarters currently stands.
The “Goliardo,” on the other hand, informs that the 1939 edition of the festival registered a novelty that the chronicler shows he greatly appreciates: the displacement of the circular wooden cassarmonic platform that hosts the band concerts, raised above street level and usually covered by a dome with an acoustic function, which was installed “between the café and the tourist company,” that is, at the height of the present Italia Theater, thus leaving the sidewalk in front, where it had been located in previous years, free for strolling; and where it returned, and for many lustrums, in the following years.
Finally, it should be mentioned that, in the context of the “crowded and joyous” festival, a prelude to a fun fair was also set up, which in the future would always be enriched with new and imaginative amusements: from the small merry-go-round with horses stuck on a wooden wheel spun by calloused hands, to the seats supported by chains that the whirling motion of the first electric motors made spread with perfect regularity around the axle; and always in constancy with shooting galleries that drew young men eager to show off in the eyes of apparently distracted girls.
The interpreters
Young people, after all, were the first actors in the feast, which represented one of the few opportunities offered to girls and beaus to meet perhaps at a distance,to exchange a glance and, if one was lucky, to slip, in a hand quick to hide it, the card proposing a date. Understandably, the anticipation for the occasion was, therefore, very great: weeks, sometimes months in advance, women would begin to prepare the dress, shoes, bonnet, purse, and gloves they would wear for the occasion; while the daughters dreamed of meeting their sweetheart, the mothers were foretasting the novelties they would be able to ogle and gossip about.
And if the heat raged but the feast falls at a time that does not disdain to give citizens and guests even stronger gusts of north wind than the tagione would suggest the salacious comments could always be hidden behind the devotional fans purchased at the feast itself: a wooden wand on which was grafted a flag-like cardboard reproducing an image of the Saint.
The participation of “outsiders” was also very large, fueled by those who reached Gallipoli for targeted appointments, from the religious service to the evening festivities, and by bathers; who as a rule at the end of June moved, carriages laden with provisions, from neighboring towns to the houses rented for the summer season and thus had the opportunity to fully immerse themselves in all the appointments, sacred and profane, of the festivity. Among the guests who, over time, visited the city of their own or during the festive period, Gabriele D’Annunzio deserves a mention.
The poet happened to be in Gallipoli on July 28, 1895, and noticed, and noted, “the great uproar of marching band, of grand chests, of bells as in a fair” that took place near the long masonry seat that for decades was called the promenade; before the expansion of urbanization shifted the center of gravity of the city toward the Alba-Dogs.
The Steddha
Various episodes suggest that in the past Gallipolians cultivated a special relationship with the deity, which led them to humanize her. Evidence of this is seen: in the respective feasts of St. Agatha and St. Sebastian, in which the silver simulacra are both carried in procession, the reverse order of parade with respect to the feast day, as if the holder of the feast wanted to make a gesture of all-human solicitude toward the city’s co-patron; the affair of the wooden statue of the Malladrone displayed in the church of St. Francis of Assisi, which by popular faith suffers the systematic deterioration of the fabric of its clothes, unlike that of the good thief Disma, and this is because guilt claims the evidence of supernatural execration; the divine punishment in case of failure to sanctify the feast on the feast of the Saints,and of St. Christina in particular, the so-called steddha.
It is difficult to understand why the naming, which may simply refer to a higher, distant, bright and indecipherable entity like a star; the belief is wanted to be related to the story of a boy who did not give up a swim in the sea, on a religious holiday that would have instead required a penitential renunciation of daily pleasures, and died by drowning.
It is said, therefore, that the Saints bring the steddha, and popular piety does not grasp the contradiction of attributing feelings of revenge for transgression, precisely to those who have distinguished themselves for the heroic practice of the Christian virtue of love, which can only be a source of forgiveness.
Contingent facts, by the way, have fueled the belief, since in the course of time other people have drowned on St. Christine’s Day; and this is explained by the arrival in the city, drawn precisely by the feast, of merchants or “outsiders” unfamiliar with swimming. The last recorded incident dates back to the early 1960s, when the amusement park was set up on the vast Giudecca Square and a carny drowned due to congestion, having taken a bath after having lunch.
The miracle
St. Cristina, along with Agatha and Sebastian and on a par with saints such as John Chrysostom, Pancratius, Faustus, Marina and others, is among the protectors of the town community. The accentuation of a cult that the presence of the small chapel dedicated to the Martyr of Bolsena signals to be ancient and deep-rooted, is to be traced back to an episode that occurred in 1867, when already for more than a year the confraternity of Santa Maria della Purità, accepting the solicitation of its father rector Don Serafino consiglio, had introduced in its temple a solemn celebration of the anniversary.
In February 1867, cholera broke out in the city, as in the rest of the province, which would cause much mourning in the following months. One morning in July there was one of those rumors whose source is impossible to trace: it claimed that bi dreamed invoking the help of St. Christine. The population took refuge in faith, and a triduum of prayer to the Saint was organized in the Church of the Purità: after the first day, July 20, 1867, the spread of the infection miraculously ceased.
The confraternity provided itself with a statue, but quarrels that arose among the brethren suggested, the following year, that it be replaced. A deputation commissioned the work from Lecce papier-mâché artist Achille De Lucrezi (1827-1913), who had previously performed other works for the city to general satisfaction. Once the simulacrum, “of most felicitous interpretation,” arrived, the deputation handed it over to the confraternity for safekeeping in the church of the Purità, and from July 23, 1868, the first anniversary of the city’s liberation from cholera, solemn celebrations began, taken care of by the confraternity on the religious side, and by the deputation, over time increasingly supported by the municipality, on the civil side.
Statue
The work by Achille De Lucrezi, whose workshop specialized in sacred art,
presents us with a figure with a very sweet face, blond hair, her gaze turned to heaven, tied to a tree trunk, pierced by two arrows, one in the side and one in the heart, and glorified by an angel holding a crown of roses in his right hand and a flowering branch in his left (which in iconography is usually a palm tree, the symbol of martyrdom). At the Saint’s feet is a small dog. De Lucrezi’s art is all in the suave face and soft draperies of the red robe, the blue cloak folded over her waist tied by a golden cord, and the green handkerchief around her neck. A very beautiful statue, indeed, to which the latest restoration, carried out in 1999 by Valerio Giorgino, restored the original colors.
The previous restoration had become necessary because of a mishap that happened during the 1962 procession: the statue, installed on a truck, near Tellini Square bumped into a cable stretched to brace the illuminations and broke into two stumps at waist height. The procession continued with another simulacrum, provided by a private individual who worshipped her in his home located near the site of the accident. Later , restoration, financed by entrepreneur Otello Torsello, was carried out by Uccio Scarpina, an eclectic local artist figure.
Worthy of brief, further mention is the presence of the little dog, which in the iconography of the Saint shares a presence with a dragon. The latter recalls the miracle, which occurred during the persecution that ended in her martyrdom or, of the statue of Apollo, which, in the presence of the young girl on whom a sacrifice was to be imposed in honor of the deity, shattered, leaving a dragon to emerge. The little dog, on the other hand, whose faithfulness is celebrated par excellence, represents the Saint’s constancy of faith.
In this regard, a legend has flourished that appears contradictory to the very concept of fidelity it is supposed to symbolize: it is said that, having disappeared during the cholera epidemic, the little animal then reappeared at its end. This gave rise to the belief that the disappearance of the little dog would have the omen of misfortune for the town community; but this can also be read in a positive light, in the sense that as long as the little dog is next to the Saint, and there is nothing to suggest that this should not be perpetuated, the town will be protected by the miraculous presence of the Saint of Bolsena.
Returning to De Lucrezi’s statue and the iconography that the papermaker chose to model the Saint, it must be saidthat he was inspired by a canvas, kept in the church of Canneto, whose image was based on the story of the ancient “Martyrologi
o Roman” revIsioned in the 16th century by the religious, and later cardinal, Cesare Baronio (1538-1607).
The martyrdom
Cristina was probably born in Rome in 270 CE and, in her twenties, had followed her father Urban, who had been sent by the emperor Diocletian to suppress the spread of Christianity in that province, to Vulsinium. Hagiographers do not give his name, but it is certain that he assumed the name inspired by Christ at the moment of the secret baptism that followed his conversion. Urban, informed by a handmaid, could not allow the very reason why he had been appointed prefect to be disavowed in his own family and, faced with his daughter’s refusal to sacrifice to the god Apollo, had her locked up in the dungeon of a tower.
Imprisonment, threats, and scourging did not bend Cristina’s faith in Christ, and Urban ordered that she be subjected to a series of tortures, which divine help enabled her to overcome by remaining unscathed: a wheel covered with nails that should have torn her body apart; the fire that should have devoured her, charred her tormentors; a boulder that should have dragged her down into the waters of the lake, turned into a floating shell that brought her back to shore.
Such a prodigy was the last to be nightly brooded over by the snarled father: the next day he was found dead in bed, and Rome assigned Dion to his charge, who began the tortures again, but had to witness new prodigies: Cristina remained unharmed by burns from the boiling oil of a cauldron in which she was immersed and which soon afterwards shattered; and a statue of Apollo, in front of which Dione would have liked the young woman to sacrifice to bring closure to the affair, as mentioned above shattered and a splinter struck the prefect, killing him.
Her substitute, Julian, ordered Cristina to be burned in a furnace , but the flames, kept away by the movement of the wings of some angels, did not even touch her; and thereafter asps and vipers did not pounce on her, but on the executioner, who died poisoned by their bites and returned to life only through Cristina’s intercession; and when her tongue was cut out so that she could not be heard praising the Lord any longer, her voice continued to rebuke Julian and exalt Christ. It was arrows, finally, that caused her death on July 24, 290.
Chapel
The legendary account of her martyrdom contributed to the spread of devotion to St. Christine both in Italy, as is also evidenced by the fact that numerous municipalities, from Piedmont to Sicily, bear her name, and in Europe and the Eastern church, where she was venerated as a thaumaturge.
In Gallipoli a chapel located outside the city walls was dedicated to her, which is said to have been built in the 13th-14th centuries. It consists of a small room, roofed, but flat facade surmounted, in the center, by a cross and is enlivened only by the door adorned with a simple pediment, obviously of later date.
The chapel, on the other hand, has been restored several times, having been exposed to storm surges for centuries, before the creation of the piers of the seno del Canneto (mare piccinnu) protected and isolated it. It turns out to have been restored as early as 1576, having been found to be without a roof, as evidenced by the pastoral visit of Monsignor Cibo; but the same report of the prelate confirms the popular devotion, noting that the faithful had already collected the necessary sums to redo the roof and restore the bell suspended from the small sail located on the right wall.
The decay, however, recurred and it is not known how many times the chapel was abandoned, deconsecrated, restored and returned to worship. All that is known is that some subsequent pastoral visits make no mention of the chapel, which was turned into a storehouse for nets and fishing gear. Its radical recovery would coincide with the aforementioned return to devotion to the Virgin of Bolsena promoted by Don Serafino Consiglio in 1866.
In 1882 the municipality, which had acquired the property, entrusted it in concession to the confraternity of Santa Maria degli Angeli, which famously brought together fishermen, interested in cultivating worship in the chapel that watched over the landing of fishing boats. The entrustment ended in 1905, when the nearby church of Santa Maria del Canneto was erected as a parish. The last, more radical restoration of the chapel took place in 1960.
Currently, the small hall has two statues of the saint inside: a larger one, in a niche above the altar, and a smaller, graceful and exquisite one, placed in a sort of niche-tronetto that is a gilded triumph of columned, molded cornice.
Holy images
Previously the chapel had held a canvas that, evidently to be safeguarded from the deterioration of the structure, was placed in the nearby church of Canneto. It is an image of Martyrdom that Elio Pindinelli argues can be attributed to Nicola Malinconico (1663-1721).
Inspired by the aforementioned Martyrology of Cesare Baronio, it proposes the image of the blond Virgin pierced by arrows, archeries of soldiers holding stationed the handmaiden faithful to the Saint, Julian holding a statuette of Apollo, fire and dragon, representing the Saint’s victories over torture; and there is also, almost confused among the figures, the little head of a dog.
A second canvas having the Saint as its subject, the last, to our knowledge, among those kept in sacred place, is in the sacristy of the church of Our Lady of the Angels. The confraternity commissioned it, in 1886, from the Gallipolino painter Giuseppe Forcignanò (1862-1919) for the purpose of placing it in the chapel; in 1905, leaving its management, it transferred the painting to the premises annexed to its temple. Forcignanò made the Saint half-length, in accordance with the iconography that wants her tied to the tree and pierced by arrows, but the gaze turned to the sky gives a feeling of ecstasy to the entire face, which attracts the viewer’s attention and makes everything else take a back seat. Among the images worth mentioning are: one made by Luigi Consiglio, lithographed in 1867; a sketch by Andrea Stefanelli, which like the other images is reproduced below, in this case for the first time in color; and a chromolithograph from a drawing by Agesilao Flora (1863-1952).
