PhD Program in Historical studies
The Holy Week of Trapani
The celebration of the Misteri of Trapani, which takes place on Friday, focuses on the procession of groups of statues in wood carried on shoulders which represent the passion and death of Jesus Christ. Organized by the Jesuits at the beginning of the seventeenth century on the model of the Genoese Casazze, it is a typical manifestation of the spirit of the Counter-Reformation. It served to explain the message of the gospel to people, just as the stations of the cross did. The affirmation of this procession, certainly among the highest manifestations of Baroque spectacular pedagogical taste however, was slow and difficult.
At Trapani nowadays the ceremony of the Misteri is characterized by 18 statuary groups, each assigned to a guild and each followed by its own band. The music of these bands, which mark the movement of the shoulder carrying the wooden groups, contributes with a haunting melody that follows the rhythm of the solemn funeral marches to outline a suggestive setting, accompanied by hundreds of torches, carried by members of religious brotherhoods, often hooded. The last two groups, which follow the 18 that recount the salient moments of the passion and death of Jesus Christ, those of the Urna del Cristo morto (the Urn of the Dead Christ) and of the Madonna Addolorata (Our Lady of Sorrows), are of particular significance: they serve to reunite the city which is divided into separate parts, in the faith. In particular, the statue of Our Lady of Sorrows, originally carried in procession by the highest authorities of the city, began to represent, at the end of the last century, the associations of the most humble and common people. Today it is still behind the statue of Our Lady of Sorrows that the poor people gather, often pious widows dressed in black, who are traditionally barefoot. Thus the common people, whom in origin, were not organized in guilds, find their “place” in the procession that ideally represents the image that the city has of itself.