Calabria #3 - Saturday afternoon

After seeing Terina and stopping at the 11th century abbey Benedettina di Sant'Euphemia (much better kept up than Terina, but largely destroyed by earthquakes) we headed to a small town called Nocera in the mountains north of Lamezia. Once a year in this town, on the Saturday before Easter (Il Sabato Santo), there is a radical religious sect that celebrates with a procession of Vattienti (from the archaic Italian verb vattere - to beat, now it is battere) which translates to "the beaters" who follow the Madonna Addolorata (Grieving Madonna) throughout the town while inflicting self-flagellation upon themselves (think the Opus Dei character in Angels and Demons).

We parked on the hillside opposite the town behind a long string of cars parked along the road, the town center was closed off to all traffic. We walked into town and before we even saw anything the stench of drying blood and wine hit our noes. The first street we walked down was covered in bloody footprints and the occasional large pool in front of a religious monument. To go along with the blood there was also a large amount of wine on the ground, the Vattienti are followed by someone who routinely cleanses their legs in wine to act as a disinfectant. We walked farther into the town and began to wind our way up the hill toward the town center at the very top, not see any of the Vattienti but seeing more and more blood on the streets as we got closer to the main piazza. This photo shows the entrance to the main church where all the Vattienti had stopped and splattered blood the entrance and all over the steps, so much so that it began to stream down the slow grade away from the church steps.

We passed the church and continued up and up and up, and finally rounded a corner and saw a large crowd following the Madonna. The Madonna was taken all the way to the top of the town and placed in a small piazza next to the ruined 10th century church that sits atop the town. When we made our way through the crowd and got the full explanation for all the blood.

One at a time the Vattienti would stand in front of the Madonna and with a round disk of cork coated in wax that has tiny pieces of glass embedded in it they repeatedly beat their legs in various places to draw as much blood as possible. Between each hit they disk was rinsed off with wine. After their legs were sufficiently bloody they knelt down in front of the Madonna for a few moments and then got up and went to pray in front of each of the churches and religious monuments in the small town. The pictures below show one of the Vattienti beating himself and then walking through the town followed by a young boy carrying a red cross and a man carrying the wine to splash on his legs as needed.

After the beatings slowed down the ruined church became the main event where the town organizers had brought homemade wine, bottled in old Peroni bottles, and paninis to go around stuffed with delicious local prosciutto. Quite conveniently, Luigi knew one of the men working there, a Carabinieri captain who works in the court where Luigi appears, so we were invited to sit down and eat and drink our fill. Although, as Domenico explained to me on the walk down through town, even if we hadn't known anyone there they would have been more than happy to give us as much food and wine as we wanted, this was one of the examples of the amazing Calabrian hospitality that shone through regularly during the weekend, but more on that later. The picture below has Luigi on the right, who I thought looked like Daniel in the Karate Kid and as soon as I said that everyone agreed and started calling him Daniel-son, in the middle is the Carabinieri officer with the homemade wine in the crate in the middle.