The archangel comes to Vitorchiano
This Italian village, largely unchanged since medieval times, annually hails and fetes a major saint with traditions that wear the patina of centuries.
By LINDA LAPPIN
Published June 5, 2005
VITORCHIANO, Italy - The workday begins at dawn here with the sound of sweeping, as women in floral-print aprons sweep the stairs leading from their balconies to the narrow, cobbled street below. From across the canyon on which the village perches comes the tinkling of sheep bells, as a shepherd takes his flock out to pasture.
This medieval village is in Tuscia, a wooded area between Rome and Tuscany. It is in the heart of Etruscan country - the walls of the gorge below are scored with Etruscan tombs. But now they are used as sheep folds, tool sheds and wine cellars.
A loud gush of water comes from the village fountain, as a woman begins to pound her laundry in the old stone trough. It is a tradition generations old. As she wrings and scrubs, she sings an old, old song.
Curious, I peer down from my window to watch this anachronistic scene. What does she use to whiten those sheets? Ashes, lye, soda? No: she is using the latest version of Dash. So there have been some changes in the old ways. But when she has finished, she spreads her sheets to dry over the hazelnut bushes along the rim of the gorge.
This area is little known to tourists, offering an authentic view of peasant life as it creeps toward modernity. Here the local people still live by ancient trades: cutting wood, tending sheep, producing wine and olive oil, quarrying peperino, the volcanic stone that has provided the village livelihood for centuries.
Yet the villagers haven't missed out on satellite TV or mobile phones, as the constant trilling in nearby houses informs me.
Today the village is preparing for one of the year's most important feast days: the appearance of Archangel Michael, on May 8.
Archangel Michael is a major saint in the Italian canon. Destroyer of Evil, he is usually depicted spearing a writhing demon with his sword. He is the patron saint of police and ecologists, and his cult is still much alive today in areas where pre-Christian traditions were deep-rooted and geological abnormalities made people fear that the underworld lurked too close for comfort.
Vitorchiano is such a place: The entire area is riddled with Etruscan tombs, crisscrossed by boiling sulfur springs, and strewn with strange-shaped boulders which cast eerie shadows in moonlight.
Every home in the village has an icon of St. Michael above the mantelpiece and every villager devoutly contributes to his yearly celebration, which consists of a special Mass and a pilgrimage to a chapel on the other side of the gorge.
The steep path down through the canyon is viper-infested and overgrown with briars that must be cut back before the pilgrims can set out.
So the morning before the festival, an army of men with machetes and weed killer set to work clearing the trail.
Meanwhile, in the piazza, the baker prepares the anise-flavored cakes that are the traditional treat honoring St. Michael. As the cakes are baking in the local wood oven, the sweet smell of anise floats above the tiled rooftops. Laundry strung under the windows billows in the breeze.
By mid morning the housewives have completed their chores and it's time for the shopping, their main form of recreation.
In the tiny grocery store, hams and sausages dangle from the ceiling beams amid garlands of dried hot peppers. Wheels of pecorino cheese and vats of creamy ricotta are displayed on beds of chestnut leaves, alongside sacks of dried porcini mushrooms gathered last autumn from the surrounding hills, and baskets of plump red cherries just picked that morning.
Who can blame these women for not wanting to rush home again immediately? The shopping can take over an hour because local gossip is exchanged and everyone in the shop has their say about the day's topic of conversation: tomorrow's celebration, and whether this year's cakes will be as good as last year's.
By the stroke of noon from the village clock tower, the streets empty as everyone disappears inside for lunch. Then, after four hours of total silence, undisturbed by cars or motorscooters, the streets fill up again with children on bicycles. The women set chairs out and resume their afternoon labors. One crochets a lace curtain, another is shelling peas, a third is sorting a basket of wild chicory.
This is the hour of segregation:
The women are at home, sitting on the steps. The men have congregated outside the old walls at a cafe in the newer part of the village, where they play cards, discuss politics and crops, and keep out of their wives' hair. Here they will remain indolent until dinner time, when they will shuffle home, stopping off at their cantina to sneak an extra glass of wine or two, and to fetch a flask for dinner.
It's warm enough now at night to sit outside till late. The men at last join the women to banter away the evening. Village small talk generally focuses on grandchildren, health and recipes, but tonight there is a new note of strident dissent. I prick up my ears: They are arguing about who will be the winner of Italy's equivalent of Survivor.
St. Michael, staring down from his icon above the street, is unperturbed by this intrusion of modern life. He knows that tomorrow will go as planned, the way it has for the past 800 years.
The day will begin with the beating of drums, simulating his battle with evil, calling the folk to Mass. His statue, bedecked with lilies, will take the prominent place in church. The faithful, young and old, vigorous and infirm, will follow him down the gorge and up the promontory to the chapel where his effigy stands in the shadows with his sword unsheathed. Then the knapsacks will be opened and the anise seed cakes passed around. Prayers will be offered and stories will be told, legends of the underworld that Michael holds in check, the vanished Etruscans and their mysteries, still palpable in Tuscia.
- Linda Lappin is a 1975 graduate of Eckerd College now living in Italy. She is the author of The Etruscan, a novel set in Vitorchiano and the surrounding Etruscan area, in 1922. The novel was published last year by Wynkin deWorde, Galway, Ireland and is available online at www.kennys.ie and www.amazon.co.uk and at the Eckerd College Bookstore.