In August, 1901, I was on the mountain and saw a procession representing
Noah's Ark and the Universal Deluge--one of those strange and picturesque
cavalcades that were formerly more common than they are now.
Usually, in other parts of Italy, the same story is repeated at the same
season: in one place, always the Passion at Easter; in another, always
the Nativity at Christmas, and so forth. On the mountain they have the
procession at irregular intervals, after perhaps three or four years, and
the story, though now, as a rule, scriptural, is never the same again.
When it does occur, it is as an extra embellishment of the annual harvest
thanksgiving; it takes place by night and always introduces the Madonna
di Custonaci. And now it is time to say a few words about this famous
Madonna, whose influence is felt throughout the whole comune at all
times, but nowhere more than on the Mountain, and at no time more than
during the harvest thanksgiving.
Mount Eryx, as every one knows, was in classical times famous for the
worship of Venus: here stood perhaps the most celebrated of all her
temples--the one with which her name is most familiarly associated--and
here, long before Horace wrote of "Erycina ridens," she was worshipped as
Aphrodite by the Greeks, and as Astarte or Ashtaroth by the Phoenicians.
Hardly any vestige of a temple can now be made out, but the remains of
the Pelasgic walls that protected the city in prehistoric ages are still
to be seen near the Trapani gate. The late Samuel Butler (author of
_Erewhon_) wrote _The Authoress of the Odyssey_ (Longmans, 1897) in
support of his view that the _Odyssey_ was written by a woman who lived
at Trapani and upon the mountain, and who in the poem described her own
country. In Chapter XII. he quotes Thucydides (vi. 2), to show that the
Sicans had inhabited this corner of the island from a very remote period,
having come probably from Spain. After the fall of Troy, some of the
Trojans, who had escaped the Greeks, migrated to Sicily, settled in the
neighbourhood of the Sicans and were all together called Elymi, their
cities being Eryx and Segesta. The city walls were originally built by
the Sicans, and restored by the Phoenicians when they came to the
mountain; on many of the stones the quarrymen's marks in Phoenician
characters are still visible.
It was believed that at certain seasons of the year the goddess left her
shrine on the mountain and went over into Africa accompanied by all the
pigeons of the neighbourhood, and this was the occasion for a festival of
Anagogia. {151} A little later, when the pigeons returned, the goddess
was believed to come back with them, and then there was another festival
of Catagogia. {151} Seeing that she would have had to go little more
than 120 miles in order to reach what is now Cape Bon, and then only to
cross the gulf of Tunis to arrive at the Phoenician colony of Carthage,
one may suppose it probable that these flittings began when Astarte was
in power.
In our own time the Madonna di Custonaci reigns upon the Mountain, and is
Protectress of the whole comune. Her sacred picture is normally in her
sanctuary down at Custonaci, about 15 kilometres distant, but when any
general calamity afflicts the district, it is brought up to the Matrice
or Mother Church of the comune on Mount Eryx. On these occasions three
days of humiliation are proclaimed, priests and men, their heads crowned
with thorns, their necks encircled with cords, go about the town
flagellating themselves; in the evening fires are lighted in the balio,
and all the villages below answer by lighting fires too, to show that
they are taking part in the general tribulation. A document is signed by
the sindaco, and then the picture is brought from Custonaci and set over
the great altar in the church of the Matrice. When it has become quite
clear that the anger of Heaven has been appeased, the picture is taken
back to Custonaci.
The calamity that most commonly befalls the comune is a drought, or the
fear of a drought. Rain is not wanted while the salt is being made, but
as soon as that is all under cover in the autumn it is time for the rain
to begin, otherwise the crops will fail. In 1893 the rain was delayed
until matters began to look so serious that it was determined to bring
the picture up to the mountain. The proper formalities having been
observed, the people all went out in crowds to welcome it and, as it was
borne along, cried--
"Acqua, Maria, acqua!" ("Rain, Maria, rain!")
Meanwhile the clouds were gathering and presently a tremendous
thunderstorm came on which drenched them all, and they returned to the
mountain, shouting--
"Basta, Maria, basta!" ("Leave off, Maria, leave off!")
The lightning struck the church and injured four persons who were
standing near the altar, but the Madonna was already in her place, and
owing to her presence they recovered.
The picture, like many of the thaumaturgic representations of the
Madonna, is the work of St. Luke the Evangelist--all except the head
which was done by an angel who descended from heaven expressly for the
purpose. This being so, one would expect to find its home on the top of
the very Mountain itself, in the chief place of the comune, and not down
at an insignificant little village like Custonaci. Some have thought
that to allow the Sanctuary of a Madonna Ericina to take the place of the
Temple of Venus Erycina would have been to insist on a parallelism about
which it was desirable to say as little as possible. Others believe the
real reason why we have a Madonna di Custonaci to be preserved in the
following legend. {154}
A French vessel, laden with precious merchandise and also with this still
more precious picture, was returning to Marseilles from Alexandria in
Egypt, and, while sailing the Sicilian seas, encountered a furious
tempest. The more the unhappy mariners laboured to govern their craft,
the less they succeeded, and at last, despairing of earthly help, they
turned their thoughts to the Madonna. With streaming eyes they knelt
before the painting and prayed without ceasing to the Queen of Heaven
that she would be graciously pleased to conduct them safely home. For a
long time they met with no response, but when they were nearing Cofano,
every sailor heard a voice, as though coming from the picture and
declaring that the Madonna desired to be landed on the neighbouring
coast. Whereupon they bound themselves by a vow that if they reached
land in safety they would build a sanctuary then and there in memory of
their miraculous preservation. No sooner was the vow uttered than the
wind fell, the storm ceased and the surface of the waters became as
smooth as polished glass, over which the fortunate bark glided without
guidance into harbour--and this to the great astonishment of the crew who
observed that her course lay among dangerous shoals and sunken rocks.
The joyful mariners returned thanks to their Blessed Protectress and
immediately began to perform their vow; but while disembarking, they
found themselves surrounded by a crowd of armed peasants who, taking them
for Turkish pirates, ran to the spot with the intention of frustrating
their supposed nefarious designs. Mutual explanations averted bloodshed,
and the peasants then began to dissuade the sailors from performing their
vow in so literal a manner, pointing out that they would be abandoning
their precious charge to the risk, if not the certainty, of sacrilegious
theft at the hands of the corsairs who frequented that harbour. In the
end the simple mariners yielded to the arguments of the peasants, and
with many tears consigned the picture to their care. The peasants put it
into a cart harnessed with two oxen who started to draw it inland, but
would only go in a direction chosen by themselves and, after proceeding
two or three kilometres, lay down and by no means could be persuaded to
go a step further. This was accepted as an indication of the Madonna's
approval of what had been done and of her desire that her church should
be erected there, and on that spot now stands the Sanctuary of Custonaci.
The poor sailors, grieving bitterly for the loss of their treasure,
returned to the ship and continued their interrupted voyage till they
reached Marseilles in safety.
Owing to the culpable negligence of those who ought to have considered it
a privilege to be permitted to chronicle the many important miracles
which the Madonna performed in honour of the arrival of her picture, we
have particulars of only two cures wrought in those times, one on a
cripple and the other on a mute. Any one, however, who is disposed to
doubt that there were many more has only to visit the sanctuary and take
note of the large number of votive pictures there exhibited. Besides,
how else could the fame of this wonder-working image have travelled
abroad so extensively unless the wonders had been not less numerous than
undoubted?
There is uncertainty as to the exact date of the arrival of the picture
at the Sanctuary: some give the year 1570; others consider this too late,
if only because wills exist dated as far back as 1422 bequeathing gifts
to Santa Maria di Custonaci; others say that this need not have anything
to do with our Madonna, because there has been a church or chapel at
Custonaci dedicated to the Virgin from very early times, and there is
nothing to show that these wills do not refer to the earlier Madonna;
others believe 1370, not 1570, to be the true date. We should have
something to guide us if we could ascertain how often the picture has
been transported to the mountain in times of calamity, but here again the
culpable negligence of the chroniclers has left us with records of only
fifty-one such occasions from the beginning of the 16th century to 1794,
viz. five when the pestilence walked by midday, four when the mountains
trembled and the earth opened, two when the locusts came without number
and devoured the fruits of the ground, four when war clouds gathered in
the sky and thirty-six when the autumn rains were delayed.
The disputes extend also to the date of the painting, some even denying
that it was painted by St. Luke. But to do this they are obliged to
ignore all the considerations which support the orthodox view, viz. the
place from which the sailors brought it, the many wonders performed by
it, the miraculous preservation of the colouring during all the years
that have elapsed since St. Luke's time, the widespread belief in the
efficacy of its powers and lastly the fact that, though many have made
the attempt, no artist has yet succeeded in producing a perfect copy of
the original.
I asked several people what St. Luke had to do with Alexandria, and was
always told that St. Mark's body was brought from there to Venice in 828,
why then should not another of the Evangelists have been there also? Why
not indeed? But this reply was as little satisfying as those with which
pre-occupied age endeavours to silence inquisitive childhood, and
produced much the same sort of result, spurring me on to further
investigations.
A musician who desires to compose a tune that shall become popular must
contrive something apparently original and yet not so original as to
demand study; it must also contain echoes of other tunes previously
popular, and yet they must be so indefinite that no one can tell for
certain where they come from, which is what we mean when we say it is a
wise tune that knows its own father. Similarly, the framers of the
foregoing legend had to compose an entirely Christian story, as original
as was compatible with the use of the forms of Christian legend, and yet
they could not neglect all the pagan traditions with which their public
had been impregnated for generations. In the first place the picture
must come over the sea--everything that arrives in an island does so; one
of the most effective of the common forms in legend is the arrival of a
boat with a precious cargo from a distant land, often bringing corn to
stay a famine, and every one is now familiar with the opening of
Lohengrin. Tunis would not do for the point of departure, not only
because it is where pagan Astarte came from when she arrived in Sicily,
but also because it had been Moslem since the seventh century and could
not have been accepted by the people as a Christian seaport. It is quite
likely that the popularity of the St. Mark legend determined the
selection of Alexandria, which had the advantage also of being on the
coast of the same continent as Tunis. The storm, the vow and the oxen
are as much common form in legend as the ship; and the next thing that
strikes one is the curious similarity between the alternate domiciles of
the Madonna on the mountain and at Custonaci, and the flittings of Venus
Erycina to and fro between the mountain and Carthage. If we look upon
the arrival of the picture at Custonaci as involving the transplanting of
a piece of Africa into Sicily, much as an ambassador's house is regarded
as being part of his own country transplanted into a foreign land, we may
then consider that the Madonna, to all intents and purposes, still
travels between the Mountain and Africa, only she now has an easier
journey and avoids actually dwelling among heretics. In this view the
transporting of her picture backwards and forwards should be looked upon
as the modern version of the feasts of Anagogia and Catagogia.
It is admitted that the picture has, more than once, been placed in the
hands of skilful modern painters whose services have been called in
merely to repair any damage it may have sustained in its
journeyings--they have had nothing to do therefore with the miraculous
preservation of the colouring. What these experts thought about the date
of the original painting is known only to themselves. We need not
suppose that they agreed--that would have been indeed a miracle and quite
a fresh departure for a picture with a reputation earned in a different
branch of thaumaturgy. It does not much matter, however, what they
thought, for experts in matters of art are the victims of such cast-iron
prejudices that if once they fancy they see the influence of Leonardo da
Vinci in a picture and take it into their heads that it comes from
Piedmont, it will be found the most difficult thing in the world to
persuade them that it really was painted in Egypt more than 1000 years
before Giotto.
We shall probably not be far wrong if we assume that something like the
processions of the Personaggi, involving the display of the most
beautiful men and women that could be found, took place on the mountain
in heathen times as part of the cult of the goddess and that, as a
compromise, they were not abolished but accommodated to Christian usages.
Giuseppe Pitre, in his _Feste Patronali in Sicilia_, gives an account of
the procession on the mountain held in 1752. We are to suppose that the
wickedness of the good people of Eryx had attained to such monstrous
proportions that the whole universe, incited thereto by observing the
anger of God against them, took up arms in the cause of justice. The
Madonna di Custonaci, however, intervened and saved her chosen people.
It began with the Wrath of God, personified by a warrior armed with
thunderbolts and lightning and setting forth to destroy the mountain.
Then came the Angry Heavens, the Benignant Moon, Mars and Mercury ready
to avenge the outrages done to God; Jove grasping a thunderbolt and about
to hurl it against the comune, Venus anxious to overthrow the city, and
Saturn whetting his golden scythe. The Sun is obscured, the Four Winds
blow terribly, the Four Elements assist in the work of desolation, the
Four Seasons threaten misery and affliction. Mount Eryx being convinced
by this display that it is in a great danger, the Genius of the city
appears next, bearing in his hand a figure of the Madonna di Custonaci.
He calls to his assistance Divine Counsel, Devotion, Beneficence and
Piety, and the procession closes with the Guardian Angel.
It must have been a magnificent spectacle. Many clouds have rested on
Mount Eryx since 1752 and we do not now expose our bedrock of paganism
quite so openly. This, indeed, but for the slight veneer of
Christianity, might have passed for a downright pagan procession.
In 1894, _L'Aurora Consurgens della Cantica_ was the subject. There were
twelve figures showing the growth of idolatry and culminating with the
Emperor Julius Caesar who, it will be remembered, accepted worship as a
god; moreover, his death having occurred not half a century before the
birth of Christ, he was naturally followed by the Aurora, symbolizing the
Madonna di Custonaci, and the explanatory pamphlet contained a reference
to the _Song of Solomon_ vi. 10: "Who is she that looketh forth as the
morning, fair as the moon, clear as the sun, and terrible as an army with
banners?" After the Aurora came the Rising Sun, Faith, Christian
Civilization, Mount Eryx, Charity and Youth--meaning, probably, that
Christianity will never grow old. In conclusion came a car with a copy
of the sacred picture and a chorus of youths.
It would seem that the personages formerly appeared on foot, for the
earliest record states that in 1750 they appeared for the first time on
horseback. In 1897 the subject was _Jael_, and the cavalcade consisted
of eight figures, of whom Deborah, seated in the shade of a palm tree
surrounded with a chorus of damsels, Jael in the tent with Sisera nailed
to the ground, and Triumph, appeared on cars, each of the others being on
horseback and the horses being led by grooms suitably attired. A
nocturnal procession, whether the figures go on foot, on horseback, or on
cars, does not strike one as being a particularly favourable medium for
the telling of a story. Nevertheless, by choosing a subject with which
the people are more or less familiar, by emphasizing the climax and by
providing an explanatory pamphlet for 2d., a more satisfactory result is
produced than one would have supposed probable, as I realized when I saw
the procession in August, 1901. The sacred picture had been on the
mountain since 1893, an unusually long time, and was now to be taken back
to the sanctuary at Custonaci, which, during its absence, had been
beautified "in the Gothic style." The two events of the Procession and
the Return synchronizing, there was a double festa, lasting four days on
the mountain and four days more at Custonaci.