It’s a long time since I was in Italy. Once, I lived in Rome in what seems like another lifetime. I worked for an eccentric travel agent in Pariole, who was having an affair with a journalist, and whose husband would call her daily from the Banco di Roma, announced by her secretary, Carla: “Laura, it’s your husband…” Laura and Paulo would pull down their jacket tails, stub out their cigarettes and pretend to be serious as Laura took the phone and Paulo walked outside the office. The poor old husband, in his drab raincoat and with his shuffle, could never compete with tall, strapping Paulo who knew he had Laura in the bag. He wore a smart, light tweed jacket and had tortoishell glasses. He was reporting on the first Gulf War. I sat at the typewriter typing up travel features for their travel magazine, ‘Globus’. I was paid about as much as I’d be paid for waiting tables. In those days, I spoke Italian but it’s gone very rusty as strange Polish words rush out of my mouth and leave Sicilians looking confused, like in Ortigia, where I asked the waiter in a market restaurant for two łyzka [wyshka] for the gelato, because the word for spoon was forever in Polish. He thought I asked for ‘two whiskies’ and had a great beaming smile across his face.
“Whiskey, of course!” And then I realised that I am not really very good a speaking Italian anymore. But I can remember going to parties with Sardegnans in Rome, and hanging out with dodgy gangs in Trastevere and speaking Italian pretty fluently. I suppose I was only nineteen or so. Anyway, now we are in Sicily, and I want to go far more back in time than that.
When a raging tempest hit Sicily in the 8th Century, a Black Madonna statue was washed up in a casket from a ship that landed at Tindari, in the Messina Province of North Eastern Sicily In tact, she was entrusted to ‘ humble friars’ who knew the goddess who’d been fished out of the sea had healing powers. Some say this Black Madonna of Tindari was found by shepherds in a beach front cave. Some say she came with a note (though had that survived is questionable) quoting the same verse from the Song of Songs (1:5) that apparantly accompanies so many Dark Madonnas: "I am black but beautiful, O you daughters of Jerusalem."
The Madonna was housed in a temple of Cybele, since Greek (early marauders in Sicily) times in the hills above Tindaris. ‘Humble monks’ it is said, built a church around her in this deserted town ‘where oblivion reigned supreme… collecting the rubble of the once superb Cybele temple on the splendid Acropolis of Tynaris the first church of Tindari. On its altar, the miraculous statue of a ‘Black Madonna’ was placed.’ And so, once again, a Christian chapel was built on a classical pagan site.
Now, the only Black Madonna I know much about is that in Częstochowa, Poland, the Protectress of Poland, who miraculously saved the monastery of Jasna Góra (Bright Mount) from a Swedish invasion in the winter of 1655 during the Second Northern War. She was hidden from them while 70 monks, 180 locals held off 4,000 Swedes for 40 days. It was said that the Swedish army attested to a force pushing them back at Częstochowa. If that wasn’t a miracle, then what was?
Anyway, in Sicily, apart from the devastating storms that the sea inflicts, good things like Black Madonnas and newly erected churches come out of them. Depending on how you see these things, of course.
There’s another Madonna in a chapel at the very summit of Taormina, the hilltop town also in the district of Messina, but further down the east coast. Very hilly. You’d walk the legs off yourself here. The church of Madonna della Rocca, so called because built on and under the rock, was founded by Abbot Francesco Raineri with the help of the Archbishop of Messina Geronimo Venero, around 1640. It’s right under the Saracen fort, (which seems to be eternally closed, not a good deterrant for marauders) , that later became a Norman fort under Roger II of Sicily. This is a hermetic little church, a low building with a single compartment, built into the rocks. The view from its balustrades would knock you out, unless you didn’t have vertigo.
The birth of this little church also came out of a storm when a shepherd boy from the village of Mola was feeding his flocks. The storm forced him to shelter with his sheep in a cave. While shivering with terror from the lightening that struck all around him, a beautiful lady in blue came to his cave and reassured him the sun would soon appear. Which it did, as the storm subsided in her gentle disappearance into the clouds. Meanwhile the shepherd’s frantic parents searched for him and when they found him happy as his own sheep, together with him by the rocks, they were over the moon. When he told them of what he’d seen, the bishop rushed over to see the prodigy himself, but nobody knows if he saw the lady in Blue.
A church was built there within the cave, so the roof is literally a hanging rock. It all sits squatly just below below the fort of the Saracen and Norman Marauders. (Which is eternally closed, but there is a little stall that sells booze, and cakes. The fig cake was really good). It is a charming little chapel filled with offerings of wild flowers and real candles and a gleaming polychrome Madonna with a halo of lighbulbs around her head. There are a few silver plaited hearts that could be relics, and a beautiful wooden altar.
This is the Chiesa della Madonna della Rocca, with its dizzying views of the Greek amphitheatre among outcrops of enormous cacti, and the stunning view of the Isola Bella ( The Beautiful Island, bought in 1890 bought from Taormina by a Lady Trevelyan, who built a small house facing the sea and imported exotic Meditteranean plants. The Bella Isola, like the Saracen Fort, is also eternally closed, like a paradisical prison island).
On a good day from the Chiesa you will see Mount Etna grumbling in the distance. Ours was mercifully cloudy, as the steps to the Chiesa upward go on for miles and miles. Don’t let that put you off. Well, do. It should be kept a secret as it is the jewel of Taormina, far more beautiful in its rustic beauty than the basilicas, romanesque and baroque, of the town below. I’ve never liked gawdy stuccco work and insanely airbrushed looking frescoes of flying saints and God and his hosts of angels. This Chiesa has a rustic beauty and it has me believe that it is built on the sit of another pre christian goddess.
Behind the church there is a small hermitage, abandoned and disused, while on the southeast side there is an open space that was the kitchen garden of the hermits, and is located on the edge of the cliff on which stands the church.
..
The sea and its storms are the flavour of Sicilican legends and of nearby islands like Lampedusa, the largest of the Pelagie Islands, 200 km away from Sicily which has its own Madonna di Porto Salvo, or the Madonna of Lampedusa. The comune of Lampedusa is part of the Sicilian Province of Agrigento, and it forms the southernmost part of Italy and Italy's southernmost island. Tunisia, 113 kilometres (61 nautical miles) away, is the closest land to the islands. My grandmother had a copy of Il Gattopardo, ‘The Leapord’ by Giusseppe della Lampedusa, the Duke and Prince of Lampedusa, set in Sicily. a novel that chronicles the changes in Sicilian life and society during the Risorgimento, replete with political incorrectness, apparently the greatest sin of our age. The novel is the story of Don Fabrizio Corbera, Prince of Salina, a 19th-century Sicilian nobleman (clearly autobiographical) caught in the midst of civil war and revolution.
The Madonna of Lampedusa is, of course, the patroness of Fishermen. There is a shrine to her in a grotto, a hand-coloured woodcut showing the seated Virgin with the infant Jesus on her lap blessing two fishing boats. Two men kneel on clouds by her side. Crows fly over the boats. The shrine-grotto has a yearly procession to it in which a statue of the Madonna is carried on fishermen's shoulders from the grotto to the town's main church.
This is also one of the most famous diving spots in the Pelagie Archipelago. Just outside the bay of the island, under the water is, in front of an arch encrusted with coroals and fish, a state of the Madonna and child, constructed by journalist and diver Roberto Merlo after narrowly escaping death in a diving accident. He wanted to honour the Madonna of Lampedusa, who, he considered, saved his life.
Now, the thing is that the symbol of Sicily is the Triskelion, which is Sicily's trinacria national emblem. Obviously the orgin myth of Sicily has nothing at all to do with any Madonna of any rocks or ships or storms. The Triskelion consists of three nymphs (from Greek myth) that rose up to form the island. It is an ancient symbol and etymologically comes from the Greek word Triskeles, meaning three legs. Triskele, which is essentially a Triple Spiral, may be the oldest symbol of spirituality. The name comes from the Greek words "Tri" and "Skelos," which, when translated to English, mean "three legs." The Triple Spiral is also a ‘cornerstone’ of ancient Irish spirituality.
Nymphs, in Greek mythology, are a class of ‘inferior’ female divinities usually associated with fertile, growing things, such as trees, or with water. They were not immortal but were extremely long-lived and were on the whole fairly friendly with men, unlike the Medusa, who had a petrifying effect on them.
The three legs are the ‘three capes’ of Sicily. Pachino, Peloro and Lilibeo. Three beautiful nymphs roamed the world taking, along their way, the best of all things like the bright clear sky and a sea intensely blue. The three danced together, celebrating the unsurpassed beauty that was to come, hurling themselves into the sea where their happiness formed into three lovely capes which beamed out a rainbow out of which the land of Sicily formed. Sicily, island of the Three Capes. Sicilians get terribly depressed by clouds and any kind of overcast clouds. Our host, Rosario, told us that Sicilians do not like to go outside in cloud cover. It must be perfect blue skies. And currently, plenty of clouds are wandering over Sicily, possibly because Mount Etna is grumbling. Rosario told us, with horror, that there were hailstones falling at Mount Etna. God love any Sicilian that has the miserable fate of living in Ireland.
The central head on the Triskelion has the head of a Medusa. She was the only one among the three Gorgon (Three sisters, Stheno, Euryale, and Medusa, had snakes for hair and the power to turn anyone who looked at them to stone) who wasn’t immortal. Perseus knew this, and cut off her head. Her beauty fascinated all men but she was a perilous Gorgon, as we know, who turned men to stone if they looked at her. In the usual misogynistic fashion, a Triskelion was always placed behind the door of a Sicilian house to protect it from her charms.
There is very little in Sicilian mythology that does not come from Greek mythology. Many of the ancient Greek myths take place in Sicily, which was a Greek colony from the 8th century BC. To settlers from the Greek mainland, Sicily was a new world of wealth and opportunity where they founded colonies along the shores of the island they called Sikelia. The Ionians were the first Greeks to establish a permanent presence in Sicily. The Sicels were the natives, hence the Greeks' name for the island, Sikelia. A group arrived to found Naxos (near Taormina, where you can get a decently priced meal, as opposed to Taormina) around 735 BC. This is believed to be the first permanent Greek settlement in Sicily. Greek ‘immigrants’ to Sicily, or ‘marauders’, however you may choose to see their plantations in Greece, regarded themselves as Sikeliotes—Sicilian Greeks.
The Greeks were enamoured with the natural wonders of this island, and this beauty inspired their beautiful legends. As a major part of Magna Grecia, many legends surrounding capricious gods and goddesses took place on the island. Nymphs emerged in the freshwater springs at Syracuse, (Artemis transformed her handmaiden Aretusa into a beautiful spring in Ortigia, by Syracuse, to protect her from a predatory river god). This ancient spring still has fresh water as it has since ancient times when it swas the main water supply for Syracuse. It is called the Fontana Aretusa.
The Medusa is usually represented as a winged female creature having a head of a head of hair consisting of snakes. When Perseus cut off her head, Chrysaor and Pegasus her two sons by Poseidon, the Greek god of the sea, came out of her neck.
The severed head, which had the power to petrify those who looked upon it, was given to Athena, the warrior daughter of Zeus, who placed it in her shield. Perseus buried it in the marketplace of Argos. Heracles (Hercules) took a lock of Medusa’s hair (which possessed the same powers as the head) from Athena and given it to Sterope, the daughter of Cepheus, as a protection for the town of Tegea. When exposed, the lock was supposed to bring on a storm, which sorted out marauders.
LEUKOTHEA (Leucothea, the White Goddess) was a sea goddess who came to the aid of sailors in distress. Once a mortal princess named Ino, daughter of King Kadmos (Cadmus) of Thebes, she incurred the wrath of Hera (the Greek goddess of marriage, women and family, protector of women during childbirth. ) When she fostered the infant god Dyonisius, she was punished by Hera, who drove her husband Athamas into a murderous rage so that he slew his eldest child, then grabbed the other and flung himself and the child off a cliff, into the sea. The pair were welcomed into the company of the sea-gods and renamed Leukothea and Palaimon (Palaemon).
In Messina, the northwestern tip of Sicily which once joined by a strait with the mainland ‘boot’ of Italy, there is another legend that involves somebody throwing themselves in the sea. There was a young boy called Nicola who was known in messina as Cola. Cola was the son of a fisherman and he loved swimming so much that he spent whole days in the Sicilian sea and was fascinated by fish and by the sea. One day his mother, who had become tired of his obsession with the sea, cursed him and said "Cola, one day you might become a fish!" Cola became half boy, half fish (a mer-boy?) and from then on he was known as Colapesce, pesce meaning fish in Italian.
The news of this tragic event reached Frederick II the King of Sicily, who threw a precious gold cup encrusted with diamonds into the sea and asked Colapesce to dive down to see what held the island of Sicily up. (I’d like to know, myself). Colapesce threw himself into the water, brought the precious cup back up to the surface, and told the king what he had seen: caves, mountains and valleys. And he saw that Sicily was built on a rock which rested on three columns. But one of them had been broken by a magic fire. The king wanted to test Colapesce again and so he threw his crown into the sea promising him that if he resurfaced that he could marry his daughter. Colapesce threw himself into the sea, but this time he did not come back up. In fact, he never appeared again. People say he sacrificed himself to save Sicily. Sometimes he can be seen on a calm day at sea, holding up the third column so that Sicily itself does not fall into the sea. When the earth shakes as it does sometimes in north eastern Sicily, due its fault lines, nobody worries because Colapesce is shifting the weight of Sicily from one shoulder to another.
Cronus, son of Uranus brings us yet another story about somebody falling into the sea. Cronus was the son of Uranus (Heaven) and Gaea (Earth), youngest of the twelve Titans, decided, with his mother’s support, to castrate his father with a harpē (a type of sword or sickle) thus separating Heaven from Earth. Uranus’s testicles fell into the sea (surprise, surprise) which gave birth to a fully formed woman who floated up on a wave that swept a magic mountain to the northwest tip of Sicily. In a temple on top of this cliff, perched between sky and sea, the earliest tribes worshipped the Mediterranean Mother- to the Greeks she was Aphrodite, to the Romans, Venus. This was the town of Erice, which was originally an Elymian city (the Elymians were around before the Greeks ever set foot in Sicily) Erice, or Eryx as it was first called, a town of little renown, said to have attracted the likes Hercules and Aeneas.
Erice is named after the son of Venus. There, in the Venus Castle, beautiful maidens served as her priestesses. Night and day, winter and summer, they lit torches in a high tower that could be seen by ships all across the seas. Landing in the port of Trapani, sailors clamored up its great heights to worship at the shrine— for passion more than piety. In a ritual called “embracing the goddess,” the men lay with Venus’s fetching handmaidens, who granted them protection from the perils of the sea. The sailors left with the children of these handmaidens of Venus, who populated the land.
At Venus’s temple at Erice still has the bath where the priestesses bathed. There is also a dovecote there still standing from those ancient times when, every August, the maidens morphed into doves and flew over to a Venus shrine in Africa for a nine day festival, only to return with red-winged Venus.
Long after the temple’s destruction, the tradition of ‘sacred prostitutes’ still gave solace to sailors. Venus inevitably metapmorphised into the Madonna, and a Christian church rose above the pagan temple. The orginal church was Norman, built in the 1100’s under Roger of Sicily. Devout young women began to travel to Erice to take robes, and cut their hair as renunciative nuns, quite the opposite of what had once been done in the rites of Erice. They had an orphanage there, where the nuns made divine sweets with cheese, nuts, and honey. A large, horizontal wheel carried the sweets from the darkness of the convent darkness to customers, who paid for the treats without even seeing the nuns’ faces.
On Erice’s main street the orphanage that once stood now has the pasticceria of Maria Grammatico, who creates pasta di mandorla (an almond paste similar to marzipan), as taught to her in the original orphanage, where she lived until 1963. She emerged from the workhouse with a genius skill in making sweets. She opened a confetteria, where she still makes sospiri e desideri (sighs and desires), genovesi (known elsewhere as minni di virgini or virgins’ breasts), panzerotti (little bellies). You can sit on the Trapani bay and watch the sea rolling in and out, where the sailors once climbed up to the Venus Temple to pay their obeisances to divine handmaidens.
It seems to me that great layers of history intertwine, creating layers of interpenetrating realities. We can no more dismiss the Madonna than we can Venus or Aphrodite, nor the nymphs themselves. What on earth holds Sicily up? Colapesce and his sturdy, sacrificial third column? The Triskeles? The Godfather of Savoca? Who are the next marauders of the island of Sicily?