Religious Festivities in Calabria

The pilgrimages to the mountain sanctuaries, the choral participation at the patron and devout feasts that culminate in processions, frequently lasting for hours, uniting town and country...all of these realize the dense plot of the sacred itineraries, constant coordinates of Calabrese geography and the south of Italy. The precarious ness of existence, the uncertainty as to the future, the weight of uncontrollable natural and social forces, the asperity of weariness; and the distrust in the rational mediums to deal with critical moments, materialize today as the did before, the immense potency of daily negativity that, as De Martino writes, influences the individual from birth until death. Magic and religion, often fused in an intricate union, have historically guaranteed, and still do, the coming together of perennially agitated seas.
During the Eater week rites, at the Good Friday procession in particular, the most profound nucleus of popular religiosity is demonstrated, since whoever is for justice and reason is also for Christ, in whom the people identify, since he too having been betrayed, insulted, crucified, comes out triumphant and emerges above the perpetual enemies.
In Aldo Bressi’s photographs, who from 1980 to 1986 gathered a precious patrimony of images, parades an aching, sorrowful, needy humanity that exceptionally breaks in the dancing and partying the dramatic circle of existence. The sublimation of suffering through the practice of cult, the trust in providence as a supplement of human strength, don’t nullify but rather exalt faith in resurrection as a concentration of energies for the advent of radically different and superior levels of life and freedom.

Ottavio Cavalcanti - University of Calabria - Department of Anthropology