The Medieval Salento: Art and Identity in Southern Italy

Chapter 7. Rituals and Practices at Home and in the Community

CHAPTER 7 Rituals and Practices at Home and in the Community Beyond the rituals associated with the life cycle and places of worship, people in the medieval Salento regularly performed other activities in their communities and homes. Taking as a point of entry words, images, and artifacts included or alluded to in the Database of texts and images, I consider in this chapter rituals and practices that were specific to the Salento. I begin with those repeated public activities that are connected to the seasons of the year and the calendar, in which many agricultural activities, processions, and fairs were linked to specific saints’ days. Many of these began or culminated in churches, because the worship space was a (and often the) center of medieval communal life, social as well as religious . Exorcisms and blessings performed outside the church or synagogue form a bridge between public and private, as some of these had large, public audiences while others were for individual ailments and took place in the home. Within the domestic sphere, a concern for physical health can be extrapolated from some of the material and visual evidence, and food, bathing, and personal protection through material and oral means are examined through this lens and others. The chapter ends with a consideration of the region’s aural environment insofar as that can be known from local texts. Local traditions created a visual and environmental framework for images and inscriptions and helped reinforce a moral framework as well. A significant methodological difficulty in this chapter is that while many rituals are considered “ancient” by their practitioners and viewers, they actually date only to the early modern era or even later. This is the case for some of the bestknown and most colorful local festivals, such as that of the Perdoni at Taranto, who parade between selected churches, hooded and barefoot, on Holy Thursday.1 I discuss here only those civic and domestic rituals and practices that have a good chance of antedating the important changes introduced during the period of Aragonese rule (fifteenth century) and especially the even more sweeping changes that followed the Council of Trent, including the establishment of numerous Marian sanctuaries. Civic Rituals and Cosmic Concerns Many of the practices discussed in this section are connected with what we might call communal health, rather than individual physical health addressed later. Communal well-being depended largely on good weather—on an absence of environmental calamities and presence of good harvests—and on such ritualized behaviors as processions, bonfires on certain saints’ days, public exorcisms, and the proper foundation of places of worship and charitable institutions. The seasons and the calendar provided regular occasions for public gathering, often in the form of fairs and processions. These always involved some kinds of ritualized actions, such as regular starting and ending points, prescribed paths or props, and repeated behaviors. Such occasions brought individuals together into a temporary community and often buttressed episcopal or clerical control. All of these attempts to regulate time and space served to manufacture community identity and maintain both public and cosmic order. The medieval universe was an interconnected whole, animated not only by God, angels, and saints but also by demons and spirits . All parties had to be placated. The Seasons The medieval seasons are evoked in the mosaic pavement of the Norman cathedral at Otranto [86.A] under the familiar, Europe-wide schema of the labors of the months. At Fasano, north of the Salento, these labors were painted, with Latin labels, in the narthex of the San Giovanni crypt church.2 They were a visual means of enshrining the cyclic, divinely ordained passage of time and are a good illustration of how even medieval urban time was bound up with—indeed, dependent upon—agrarian activities. At the same time, the changing months and seasons were intimately linked with relevant feasts or saints’ days (or, for the Jews, Torah readings and festival-specific activities). Proverbs that date back at least to the early modern era enliven this passing of time.3 The experience of time according to the rhythms of nature is not identical to the manmade calendar, but there are significant overlaps. Winter began with All Saints’ Day (November 1): “de Ognissanti, cappottu e guanti” (from that day, coats and gloves are needed). You must “simenta alli campi,” plant every field, because by Saint Martin (November 11), “lu jernu è vicinu,” winter is near, and on Saint Rituals and Practices at Home and in Community 177 [3...