St Agatha

The paintings and statues depict St Agatha as beautiful and curvaceous with blonde hair and blue eyes.  She is always serene or gazing ecstatically heavenward even when torturers are standing by waving their enormous nut crackers having just cut off her breast.  The only depiction I've seen of her as distressed and powerless is in the dungeons in Mdina, Malta where the life-size model shows her bound and screaming.  Yet even after three days of the feast of St Agatha in Catania, I still feel I haven't moved beyond the cult of St Agatha.

The rituals of the three day feast are amazing.  The streets of Catania are thronged with residents and visitors, the processional routes are decorated with lights and banners, the churches with statues, candles and flowers.  There are fireworks every night and the procession goes on a different route around the city on each of the three days.  It is likely that people who know what to expect and what they want to do can organise themselves to be in a good place at a particular time so that they can engage without having to battle the huge crowd.  I didn't have this luxury so I found that what I enjoyed most was when I stumbled on the procession by chance and when I walked around the route calling in on the churches during non-processional times.

The first day of the feast, February 3rd, I wandered through the street markets towards Via Etnea and caught the eleven candelore for the first time.  The candelore are elaborate candle-shaped constructions carried by a team of six to twelve burly men who wear sacking protection on their heads as they shoulder the carrying poles.  The candelore represent the guilds including floriculturalists, fishmongers, greengrocers, butchers, makers of pasta, grocers, bakers and vintners.  They are so heavy that the bearers can only move them for short distances at a time and then they stop for a while so everyone in the crowd can walk around and look at them.  When it's time to move on, someone blows a whistle so everyone gets out of the way as the bearers bend their knees and take the strain.

I learnt later that this first glimpse was part of the solemn Midday procession when civil, military and religious authorities follow the procession from the church of St Agatha down via Etnea to the Cathedral for "the offering of wax."  Although I saw the candelore often over the next two days, this was the only time I saw the costumed trumpeters and mace bearers with suited dignitaries wearing gongs around their necks.  There were also white horses and carriages with liveried footmen.

On the afternoon of that first day, we went on the excursion to Acireale so missed the St Agatha's International Cross-country race that takes place from 3.00pm through the old and new streets of the town centre.  But after dinner in the evening I managed to catch the fireworks display as I walked down via Etnea towards the piazza Duomo to enjoy the lights.

On February 4th, the procession takes all day to go on the "outside tour"around the outer ring road of the town taking the candelore past the port area and across to piazza Risorgimento and piazza Palestro.  We went on our bus tour to Giarre that day which I will write about in my next post.  In the morning I wandered the streets, refound Teatro Bellini with the poster that heads my last post and caught the candelore again as they came down via Umberto.

Day three, February 5th, is the big day when the procession goes up and down via Etnea stopping at all the places that are significant for St Agatha.  We had no bus trips scheduled today and were organised to have lunch rather than dinner at the hotel so that we could stay in town in the evening.  By this time I had found my guide in English with a street map of the processional route and I decided I would spend the morning walking the route and visiting the places on the way.  

From our hotel on via XX Settembre it is a short walk to piazza Cavour where Chiesa di Sant'Agata al Borgo is located.  In the early days, this square was on the outskirts of the town.  The church is devoted to St Agatha and there was a statue of her at the front with flowers and candles.  When I slipped in, there were several people sitting quietly and I also sat down.  Several people went and stood in front of the statue from time to time and offered flowers or put something in the offering box.  A nun spent some time praying and when a young mother with her daughter went up, the nun showed the little girl how to cross herself correctly.

From piazza Cavour, I walked down via Etnea to Chiesa di Sant'Agata alla Fornace in piazza Stesicoro.  It was here that St Agatha was finally martyred by fire after being held in prison and mutilated.  The story is that it was in piazza Stesicoro that Agatha first encountered the flattery of one Quinziano, who I think I heard somewhere else was from Rome but I have no idea what his position was.  Agatha resisted and somehow Quinziano was able to torture, imprison and burn her.

There is a cluster of significant sites around piazza Stesicoro each claiming an aspect of St Agatha's story.  Two places, the church of Santa Maria dell'Annunziata and also Sant'Agata la Vetere, claim to be the first resting place of St Agatha's first sepulchre as they were both cemetery areas at that time.  Also in this square is the church of Madonna del Carmelo, an important sanctuary.

Nearby, in piazza della Borsa, is the sanctuary of Sant'Agata al Carcere where St Agatha was imprisoned.  A few people went into the tiny underground space, squeezed past an old timber reliquary, through another door and into what is supposed to be the actual cell with a barred window and an elaborate moorish lamp hanging outside.  There is also the footstep of St Agatha miraculously imprinted on a lava slab when she tried to defend herself from her torturers but somehow I missed this.  This is where she had her breast cut off and somewhere I saw a painting of a male saint visiting her in this prison to bring her some comfort after the torture.

The last stop in this cluster of holy places is the church of Sant'Agata la Vetere.  This was the first cathedral in Catania and St Agatha's burial place.  It is too small now to be used in the processions but was significant up until 1094 when the present cathedral site was chosen by the Normans.

After dropping in to all of these sites and spending a few moments sitting and contemplating the steady stream of other visitors, the morning had disappeared so I made my way back through the market squares to the hotel for lunch.  I'll write briefly about the evening procession in my next post.