PhD Program in Historical studies
The Holy Week of Bitonto (Bari)
The important procession of the Misteri takes place in Bitonto. One of the features of this religious event, which unites all the other Easter processions in Apulia, is the absolute composure with which the confraternities carry out the ritual of the Passion, accompanied by the mournful sound of funeral marches. It is the Confraternity of the Santissimo Rosario (Most Holy Rosary) that organizes the procession of the Misteri of Bitonto, which takes place in the night between Thursday and Friday. This is a procession that dates from the early eighteenth century (1714), when the master Gaetano Frisardi made ??five groups of statues in which he sculpted the main phases of the Passion of Christ: Jesus in Gethsemane, Jesus at the Pillar, Jesus with a cane scepter, Jesus with the Cross, Jesus Crucified. Since then, these works are held at the Chapel of the Misteri in the Church of San Domenico (Saint Dominic). A few years later the wooden depictions of the Dead Christ (lying on a gold coated pageant) and Our Lady of Sorrows were added. Only recently, however, the Mystery of the Pietà , which depicts the meeting on Calvary between the Son and the Mother has also been added and includes the statue of Saint John.
On Friday, after the long night of the Misteri the procession of the Archconfraternity of Santa Maria del Suffragio (Saint Mary of Suffrage) is held. It comprises the statues of the Virgin of Sorrows and the Dead Christ, the Holy Wood (a cross of silver and crystal, in which, tradition has it, there are two fragments of the True Cross of Christ) and a seventeenth-century copy of the Holy Shroud. The ‘cradle’ of the Dead Christ also takes part in the procession, a precious pageant from the late nineteenth century decorated in gold leaf reminiscent of the Naca of Catanzaro.