Yesterday, the 1st May, I finally had the possibility to go to "Feast of serpents" in Cocullo, a little town in province of L'Aquila.
The feast is also made to celebrate Saint Dominic, and rituals are full of symbolism. From this year and for future, this celebration, usually placed the first Thursday of May, stands on the 1st of this month.
Inside church,
while the altar is the place of ecclesiastical liturgies tied to the devotion
to St. Dominic, in other places are held rituals by the highly symbolic content: pulling
with teeth the rope of a bell in order
to preserve toothache, taking the earth,
a time bin of the church, placed in a small cave behind the niche the saint,
for apotropaic uses: It’s believed that
spread on the fields or around home, it takes away the all kind of dangers ,
meanwhile dissolved in water and drunk, fights fever.
The main square is the place where stay the serpents who, awaiting the procession,
proudly exhibit various types of snakes that have been able to capture. And this is a moment where ancient fears, dark hatreds and unjustified fears about reptiles, slowly melt
to the point and, though with some residual reluctance, we are persuaded to
touch a snake, almost to meet the need for a deeper relationship with supernatural
world that these animals represent.
At midday the procession begins. The Holy One, led by
the arms of four persons, get out the church and there, on the churchyard,
quivering anxiously awaited by serpents, once again reminds everyone that he
was the real ruler of snakes.
At the sides of the statue two girls in traditional
costumes, carry on their heads baskets containing five sacred bread, known as
"chamberlains", which, in remembrance of a miracle performed by
Saint, will be offered to former law, the holders of the simulacrum and the
banner.
The procession passes through the old houses are here
, as it takes place, the ritual repeats archaic models constituting the remnant
of an ancient world such as pan-European
Stories and metaphors in ambiguity of signs
attributed to snakes, now custodians of fertility, now enemies.
Isn't it impressioning? XD
