The Vara of the Assumption of Messina

The Feast of the Assumption of Messina is celebrated in mid-August and culminates with the procession of the VaraThe Italian equivalent (fercolo) of the word vara is derived from the Latin and indicates the act of bringing a statue of Christ, the Virgin Mary or a saint for worship. The term is translated as the word bara, “coffin”, although by extension it means the whole processional machine designed to carry the sacred bodies or, in the case of Holy Week, the statuary groups of the Passion in procession., the Baroque machine symbolizing the Assumption of Mary into heaven. It is believed that originally the Madonna di Messina was depicted as an equestrian statue on horseback escorted by members of the Senate during the national festival of mid-August. It is during the sixteenth century that the pageant of the Assumption became a devotional “machine”, apparently derived from the adaptation of a triumphal chariot prepared to accommodate the triumphal entry into the city of Charles V (1535). The oldest depiction of the Vara is contained in the Iconology of the Glorious Virgin by Placido Samperi (published in Messina in 1644), which portrays her along with an enigmatic camel. The Vara of Messina is one of the most famous and ancient devotional wagons in Europe. It is an eight ton apparatus that grows in height (for almost fourteen metres) a great animated tale of the death and ascent to heaven of the Virgin: an interweaving of movements and ornaments, Baroque theatricality and evangelical teaching. An ancient and equally impressive imitation is still carried in procession in the Calabrian town of Palmi.

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