This chapter explores a rural cult in central Italy through an interpretation inspired by European religious ethnology and the anthropology of Christianity. The field research, carried out in the two-year period of 2014–15 and still in progress, is sustained by the meticulous exploration of historic civil, religious and family archives – as if carrying out consultation with ethnographic interlocutors. The close historical examination opens the spectrum of the ethnological investigation to an interpretation stratified by the present-day context of the research topic revealing otherwise invisible aspects of current behaviour and practice. According to the legend on the founding of the church of the Madonna of Alno in Canzano, a rural village in the province of Teramo in Abruzzo, the Madonna appeared upon a white poplar tree to a farmer named Florio on 18 May 1480. Non-human intermediaries to this supernatural encounter were oxen, and in the following days a horse, kneeling in the presence of the Virgin. A herbal substance, to which miraculous powers are attributed, gushed from the tree. This gave origin to the tradition of pilgrimage in the form of a duplicate procession that brings the faithful worshippers and the statue of the Madonna from an urban church to a rural one built on the site of the apparition. In the perspective of analysis initiated by Robert Hertz, the history of this local cult reveals the complexity of symbolic procedures and social strategies that preside over the progressive definition of devotional practices, translating into ritual language the succession of political struggles and relations of power between the urban elites, the local church and the farming population as well as the continuity between liturgic and folk rites, the semantic logic that organizes the universe.

Continuity from local cult to ‘accepted’ ritual / Spitilli, Gianfranco. - STAMPA. - (2018), pp. 8-18. - CABI RELIGIOUS TOURISM AND PILGRIMAGE SERIES.

Continuity from local cult to ‘accepted’ ritual

Gianfranco Spitilli
2018

Abstract

This chapter explores a rural cult in central Italy through an interpretation inspired by European religious ethnology and the anthropology of Christianity. The field research, carried out in the two-year period of 2014–15 and still in progress, is sustained by the meticulous exploration of historic civil, religious and family archives – as if carrying out consultation with ethnographic interlocutors. The close historical examination opens the spectrum of the ethnological investigation to an interpretation stratified by the present-day context of the research topic revealing otherwise invisible aspects of current behaviour and practice. According to the legend on the founding of the church of the Madonna of Alno in Canzano, a rural village in the province of Teramo in Abruzzo, the Madonna appeared upon a white poplar tree to a farmer named Florio on 18 May 1480. Non-human intermediaries to this supernatural encounter were oxen, and in the following days a horse, kneeling in the presence of the Virgin. A herbal substance, to which miraculous powers are attributed, gushed from the tree. This gave origin to the tradition of pilgrimage in the form of a duplicate procession that brings the faithful worshippers and the statue of the Madonna from an urban church to a rural one built on the site of the apparition. In the perspective of analysis initiated by Robert Hertz, the history of this local cult reveals the complexity of symbolic procedures and social strategies that preside over the progressive definition of devotional practices, translating into ritual language the succession of political struggles and relations of power between the urban elites, the local church and the farming population as well as the continuity between liturgic and folk rites, the semantic logic that organizes the universe.
2018
Local Identities and Transnational Cults within Europe
9781786392527
antropologia religiosa; leggende di fondazione; culto mariano; animali; bovini
02 Pubblicazione su volume::02a Capitolo o Articolo
Continuity from local cult to ‘accepted’ ritual / Spitilli, Gianfranco. - STAMPA. - (2018), pp. 8-18. - CABI RELIGIOUS TOURISM AND PILGRIMAGE SERIES.
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Utilizza questo identificativo per citare o creare un link a questo documento: https://hdl.handle.net/11573/1131138
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