The scenic apparatuses on the anniversary of the martyrdom

In the Early Modern period, the celebrations of 19 September developed around the obelisk (decorated and illuminated for the occasion) and provided for a grand staging of the event through the use of complex scenic apparatuses (arches, columns, fountains, pyramids, towers). Fireworks were used along with tricks of the light, shadows and sounds (obtained thanks to the so-called macchine delle luminarie,  festive colour-illuminated architecture). A central role was also played by theater that reproduced the most important hagiographical episodes. The “machinery” of San Gennaro and all the other ephemeral apparatuses constituted an enormous scenic structure which was erected every year to accommodate the extra-liturgical event. The intention was not only to represent the Christian virtues in an impressionistic way, along with the places, incidents and symbols of the life and martyrdom of the saint, but also to enable the faithful to take part as protagonists, in the roles that corresponded to them. Some devices, especially those dedicated to the miracles performed by the saint in the sight of his executioners and the scene of his martyrdom, were called Misteri (Mysteries). The same designation is used elsewhere in southern Italy and Spain, to indicate the representations of the Passion of Christ with living characters, groups of statues and symbolic apparatuses. Ancient sources describe the mystery of the decollazione (the beheading of San Gennaro at the hands of Roman soldiers), in detail along with those of the fornace, the furnace (1701) and the leoni, the lions (1734). The first portrayed Gennaro in the act of escaping unscathed from the fire, in the second, however, the episode of felines kneeling in front of the saint is recalled. Not all the “machines”, however, were devoted to the earthly life of Gennaro. Some of them, in fact, evoke the miraculous events that occurred in the seventeenth century, when, thanks to the intercession of the saint, the city would be saved from the destructive fury of Vesuvius (1631) and by the plague (1656).