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Traduzione di cortesia a cura di Pasquale Guglielmucci - info: pguglielmucci@libero.it
Developed from the wise union of genial artistic creativity belonging to Paolo Saverio di Zinno and the skill of the talented local blacksmiths, the Mysteries summarise not only undoubted artistic and craft qualities but also folklore, religion and popular devotion creating an evocative procession believed to have very few rivals in Italy and in the world. The Mysteries are “machines” or “creativities” that, built on a wooden base in which an iron forged structure is positioned, develop vertically expanding into branches at which endings are placed harnesses in which children are put in. The children represent angels, devils, saints and madonnas and they seem to hang in the air because their costumes camouflage the structures and the harnesses. On the bases of the Mysteries there are other personalities that are enacted, in relation to the role, by adults or children. The Mysteries, during the procession, are carried on shoulder along the streets of the town and the cadenced pace of the bearers, which makes the structures swing, creates the illusionary sensation of seeing angels and devils flying at a few meters from the ground. The artist’s intelligence must be underlined together with the great professional capabilities of his blacksmiths collaborators that well dimensioning the structures and using some constructive artifices (boiling technique) managed to develop creativities that still today, after more than 250 years, can be admired in their perfect functionality. The expression “living paintings” well adapts to these creativities in which the figurants’ dynamism melts perfectly with the staticness of the iron structures. Mr di Zinno, around 1740, invented twenty four Mysteries but six did not pass the tests and another six that represented respectively The Body of Christ (“the big chalice”, so-called by the population for the presence of a big chalice), the Holy Trinity, St. Mary at the Cross, the Madonna of the Rosary (in which the main iron of the structure could rotate on itself when the Mystery was still), St. Stephen and St. Laurence, were destroyed during the 26th July 1805 earthquake due to the collapsing of the buildings in which they were kept. Since that day the remaining twelve Mysteries have paraded representing St. Isidore, St. Crispin, St. Gennaro, Abraham, Mary Magdalene, St. Anthony the Abbot, the Immaculate Conception, St. Leonard, St. Roch, the Assumption, St. Michael and St. Nicholas until 1959 when the Tucci cousins created a thirteenth Mystery, the Sacred Heart of Jesus, on the basis of a drawing attributed to di Zinno. The Mysteries represent scenes of the Old and New Testament with clear references to concepts such as obedience to God (Mystery of Abraham), the punishment of the rebels (Mystery of St. Michael), the grace of God that accompanies Virgin Mary from the beginning till the end of her life (Mysteries of the Immaculate Conception and of the Assumption), the love of the son of God for mankind (Mystery of the Sacred Heart of Jesus) and scenes belonging to the lives of some Saints with the invitation to follow their virtuous example and to rely upon their intercession. The Procession opens with the Mysteries of St. Isidore and St. Crispin, respectively the patron saints of the farmers and of the shoemakers, in memory of the Torches (Faci or Faglie - fig.1) which in the past were created by the colonists and the craftsmen to thank God for the year gone by and that preceded the procession of Corpus Christi.
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