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S. ALFIO's FEAST(1938)

The feast goes up to very ancient times. We find the first trace in the news of the sacred representation of the Martyrdom of the Saints until from the year 1593, date that corresponds to the building of the church.

Then the" Venerable Company of the Glorious Saints Alfio Filadelfo and Cirino’s Martyrs", took care particularly the development, as in 1699 (see file from Sanctuary), it was already celebrated with a certain luxury, they got remarkable sums for it, as it brings out from the accounts of those years, deriving to a large extent from the donations of the believers and from the sale of the things given to the Saints.

Mainly flax and" funicello" was picked up; and two" consoli" accompanied by a "ciaramellaro" and a" piciotto" paid per year were destined for this harvest.

In the above-mentioned year the feast cost onze 23 and tarì 20, it was proclaimed by the town criers provided of drums, and the number of attractions was constituted " dalli piffirarari of Jaci.” The Church and the country were illuminated with "triangles of ivy" and with some showy " palii", they were bought for the runs of the barberi (barbers).

For the increased costs either for the buildings of the church, or for the feast, in 1712 another" consolo " was created for the harvest of the must.

In 1713 as a novelty the "performers of trumpet of Jaci" instead of the pipes were recruited and the fireworks started to have an extraordinary importance both for the quality and for the quantity.

The first April 1739, Mons Deodato granted the faculty to celebrate the Mass and the Office of the SS. Martyrdoms on May 10^th, with commemoration during the octave.

In 1825 the Bishop Orlando particularly devoted to the Saints, in fact every year on May 10^th he celebrated the solemn pontifical in the Church of S. Alfio, wanted to increase the decorum of the feast forcing the Canons of the Collegiate in Trecastagni to officiate in the Church of S.Alfio for all the octave with the Conventual Mass and sung Evening, wearing the Capitular insignia.

Through the centuries the feast didn’t change a lot, it was simply adapted to the times, but it has always preserved a big ethnographic importance. The famous Prof Pitrè, who was the big founder of the folklore in Italy, in his ethnographic collection and precisely in the treatise "Popular Festivals" he gives a separate place, beside the traditional Piedigrotta, to S. Alfio’s Feast. In fact in it the show of the character abounds and people manifest under all the appearances revealing us the uses and the customs.

It would be really difficult to try to put into a chapter all the demonstrations of this human vitality in which the art pairs off to the noise and to the din.

Here is the fair, that although not marked in any calendar, it also attracts an exceptional number of competitors and buyers from each part. There it is a flood of people that goes to the" acchianata of sapunara" to enjoy a forced competition of animals. They are horses that drag carts and carriages, adorned with flowers and harness bells, driven by fierce and festive charioteers in a frantic run for the arduous slant to the outlet of our town.

And the cries, the cackles deafen; thousand bets follow one another; thousand and thousand voices cross and incite the runners.

For the folklorist this show rouses the haughty scenes of the horse competitions in Pizia and in Olimpia and of tournaments in the Middle Age again.

And these coaches go and run to the St. Martyrs‘ Church in two endless lines, that don't allow crossing the road, and they offer the occasion to study one of the most beautiful ethnographic shows. They are the characteristic Sicilian carts, which have aroused a so much admiration in all the international exhibitions, decorated with historical scenes, beautiful with their thousand colours, with their friezes and relief that have worn out the brain of refined craftsmen. And we admire them thinking they are the expression of an active, rough and uncultivated strength, that sometimes gives us true masterpieces.

We admire the thought that has inspired and animated him and we have the impression to relive the life of the people with his legends and his ideals in those figures.

We see again the deeds of Guerin Meschino, the scenes of the French Royal Family, sacred effigies and ungrammatical explanations in them.

The artistic decorations in the beasts are also very interesting.

The haughty plumes, the big peacock feathers, the strident and tinkling harness bells, the innumerable vanes, and then the ornaments remind us the masterpieces of mosaic, of inlay and the splendid miniatures of the Middle Age. And these coaches full of people pass, showing off their beauty and their clothes.

They are girls whose eyes smile all the poetry of May; they are lively and haughty young fellows, with vivacious witticisms provoking looks and smiles. And so they follow one another to the destination, between a cram of people and between two lines of itinerant sellers, who shout on all the tones their goods. S. Alfio’ s plain offers us an imposing show. It is a deafening shouts, an indistinct noise mounting to the head and causing the dizziness.

Here it is the target practice, the juggler of the balls and of the cards, the enthusiastic and inspired storytellers

There the sellers of drums and tambourines, with the most garish colours that pick so much the little boys and the mothers, and they deafen with their rhythmic rollings; further on there is the characteristic " caruseddu," “ a naca cchi varchi ", the switchback

and the equestrian itinerant Circus. In short in that plain there is a true emporium of all that could characterize the uses and the customs of the Sicilian people.

In the church there is a compact, devoted crowd, but stunned from the vigil and from the tiredness, that crowds and increases more and more and it makes difficult the circulation.

To the left side of the main door the votive paintings are hung, they remind the"tabulae pietae" the Romans hung to the trees or beside the temples during Bacchus or Venus solemnities. They are rough paintings without any aesthetics, in which the harmony of the parts is often absent; however sometimes fine and expressive.

Certainly they represent an important ethnographic collection also in their roughness.

And people love them and they are never satisfied to contemplate them and to do their notes on the case that it is represented there.

But while the look is attracted by the variety of the votive tables, an ardent and penetrating cry echoes in the temple.

They are the" nudi "! The nudi (1) are devotees they have received some Grace or favour from our Saints and they have promised to come in devoted pilgrimage until to the church. They dress in adamitic way and they believe to save the decency with a small coloured band; others wear underpants and shirt. They run along the road with a tall wax and a bunch of flowers in hand and they continually launch their cry of faith: Hurray S.Alfio!

Some want to see in this traditional vote a remnant of the Ascalie festivals of the pagan epoch; or a recall to the uses of the Middle Age with his flagellators the “nudi” crossed the streets beating themselves up.

Up to few years, other scene more agonizing attracted the attention.

They were women and men they completed down on their knees the vote trailing the tongue from the main door until to the Altar. Also this vote reminds us the rigorous penitences of the first centuries of the Church.

However among so much uses and customs they perpetuate during S. Alfio’s feast a truth raises spontaneous; people always aspire toward the religion and the faith; people are really religious!

S. Alfio feast is a bright proof. Somebody has tried to discredit this feast defining it barbaric and revelry. If such denigrators were present to the carrying out of it and especially they were in Trecastagni on 10^th of May, where could they find a great impulse of faith and of pity? And it is for this reason that people come from the most distant towns stay there pressed in the church all night long to be present to that grandiose show, that it renews for the whole day and that it has its sublime epilogue when they discover the images of the Saints. Then it is a delirium, a frenzy, a competition, a struggle in which the cry of Hurray assumes all the gradations of joy, of invocation, of affection, of tenderness and also of violence that it is more evident in the truncated voice or in the inarticulate sound of the deaf-mutes, waiting for the miracle. And the miracle sometimes comes true, there on the public square, at the Sanctuary, where the fercolo stops (2) before undertaking the triumphal turn. The wide square offers the show of a sea of floating heads in that instant. A various and mixed people, of one hundred and one hundred towns and cities, stay there pressed, compact, vaguely interrupted from thousand vehicles, adorned and full of other joyful and touched people.

The images pass between those devoted crowd, invoked with the most beautiful names, greeted by a continuous, spontaneous ovation, that on the lip of those devotees it changes in a pathetic goodbye, containing all the poetry of a sublime nostalgia of pity and of love.

(1) The custom of the nudi have to seek in the cult of St. Nicola from Bari, for the ancient devotion the sailors had for this Saint, whose temples were always erected in the elevated places and in front of the sea.

These nudi would not be anything else other than the survivors of the shipwreck, who, receiving the grace not to die, as soon as they landed, naked as they were, they went running with a candle to reach the nearest Temple and to thank the intercessor Saint.

Nothing easier than the homage dedicated at first to S.Nicola, whose cult is very ancient in Trecastagni, and then gone on to S.Alfio and Brothers. go back

(2) Built in wood dressed again of copper in 1880 from the brothers, Antonino and Concetto Toscano very clever craftsmen fellow citizens and renewed in the drawing in 1938 from the brothers Sebastiano and Rosario Toscano, children and nephews of the first builders.

The canopy in silk embroidered in gold was made in 1872 for the old Fercolo and then adjusted to this. The handrail in beaten iron with the A.F.C. figures weaves in monogram that today is on the bell tower, in front of the clock bells, it is that of the demolished fercolo go back