This above is the link to Hub Pages for this same article.
The Madonna story of Genzano
Madonna story of Genzano
This is the church of the Madonna in Genzano di Lucania.
The Madonna story of Genzano
Welcome to my hub, the Madonna story of Genzano
di Lucania,
To start with, here we are talking about
Genzano di Lucania and its history, here under are two or three links that are
a must see for those that come from Genzano town and also everyone else: I hope
they work, as they also brink up more interesting other links to see.
Now, in our last article called, The
heritage chapter, we have explained and accepted that indeed in Genzano di
Lucania a long time ago there were living some Greek people in one of the
chasms, since even today it is called the Greek chasm; anyhow, I would like to
go back to talk about the Greek people; because, there are reasons to believe
that they not only lived there for a long time, but before those Greek people left
the chasm for the last time; well, here we have to assume all this story because
of the evidence that follows, you see, it seems that the Greek people were
forced to move away from their living place, and when they did they hid their
Madonna effigy at the lower end of the chasm; so this is another very important
story to tell about the Greek Christian community that lived in Genzano
territory a very long time ago, at the beginning of the Christian Era we
believe. Here we have to admit that there is no real evidence left and what we
are telling here is mostly folklore stories and some logic human explanations
when we try to put all what is known today together.
We have also to admit that what follows
here is mostly guess work, because nobody knows for sure what happened to the
Greek people, it is known that they were there in the chasm and then they were
not there anymore, but the facts are not really known and perhaps today it is
not important to know exactly what happened to them, because in this article we
want only to tell you the story of the Madonna that is going to follow
here-under. But for sure there must have been an upheaval of some sort early in
the Christian era because; they (the Greek people) seem to have been persecuted
and had to run away, and when they left they had to hide away their most
precious religious things. So they left behind buried in a secret spot in a
little known cave, an effigy of a Madonna, which was to be found much later by
the people of Genzano di Lucania.
How they came about to find this Madonna
icon later on just about everybody in Genzano seems to know some of this story,
because it is a story that has been told from generation to generation, since
they found this Madonna, so just about everybody in Genzano could tell you
their own version easily. Therefore, I had only to find a few names and a few
dates to write my own version down, which I would like to tell you here and
now.
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The
Madonna story
The Madonna story
One day in the year of our Lord 1619 there was this fourteen years old
youth, whose parents were of a good and honourable family, his name was; Pietro
di Giovan Filippo, and he happened to mind some oxen in the fields at that
time, he was in the zone that we call Strippara nearby Genzano town where this
event took place, in fact it seems to me that he was at the very beginning of
the chasm called ‘Del Monte’. So, while he was browsing his oxen there; a Lady
all dressed in white appeared to him; and she told him that he should go and
tell the people of Genzano that, they should go into the chasm near the
fountain of Capo d’aqua, and dig in the cave that was once known to have been
in the vineyard of ‘Don Fabio’ and they would find her image there.
The youth went to town and told the people and the priest of the
apparition of this great Lady, but they were not sure whether to believe him or
not; so nothing was done about it at that point of time. But after a few days
or a week or two, the Lady in white appeared to the youth again; but this time
she asked the youth to open his hand, and she wrote in his hand a message to
the priest, she closed the youth hand and told him to go to the priest and show
him that writing. The youth now with his closed fist that he could not or would
not open for fear ran into the town and found the priest, and told him about
the second apparition of the Lady in white, and that the Lady had written on
his hand in his closed fist something; the priest took his hand to see and
there in front of the priest he could open his hand again; and in his hand the
priest could see the message which read (I am Maria Santissima Delle Grazie,
and come to find me).
So, now the priest had no doubt in his mind from where that message was
coming from, and he assembled the people of Genzano and told them the facts. A
search was organized, and they dug in and around the said cave for a very long
time, and not knowing exactly where else to dig, they also dug farther up the
mountain, where they found some human remains and other object as evidence that
there once lived eremites.
The search went on for about two long years and therefore they became
tired of it. And it seemed to them at that time, that there was not a real
Madonna image to be found, because the only image of a Madonna that they had
found there, it was a Madonna traced over the sand which was slowly
disappearing. And thinking that this would be all that they could find, they
decided to give up the search, but at the same time they would build a small
chapel in honour of this Madonna. But while they were digging the foundation
for this chapel, a whole heap of very hard rock fell from the chasm’s wall
above, which showed them that there was a smaller cave near the old cave higher
up in the chasm’s wall, and in this small cave they found a few religious
items, including a small image of St. Peter on a brick, but there was no
Madonna image or icon to be found.
-------------------------------------------
The
Madonna is found
So they decided to remove the fallen rocks and sort them out, so that
they could use those rocks to build part of the chapel anyhow. And then it
happened; it happened the 25th day of March 1621
late in the afternoon, it was about the time when in the church they say this
afternoon prayer called Vespers, at this time of the day most people that are
in the country would pack up to go home. But there was a worker working at the
fallen stone heap, and although he was tired he felt that he wanted to do just
a little bit more before he would turn in, so he kept working just a little bit
extra: His name was ‘Giovanni Malatesta’ and he was digging with a pick to get
the stones loose from the fallen heap of rocks, when he hit a very hard rock,
and a beautiful aroma filled the air: he had struck with his pick the sculpture
of the ‘Madonna with Child’. What a shock to this man must have been, when he
realised that he struck with his pick the icon of the Madonna over the eye.
They say that he never was the same man again from the shock, and it is said
that he died early in his life not long after this event took place.
As soon as they realised that they had found the Madonna, somebody ran
up the road to town, to let the people of Genzano know that they had finely
found the Madonna icon, and the good news spread so fast, and most of the
town’s folks went to see for themselves, even though it was already evening and
it soon would be dark.
The whole town was in feast for a very long time afterward.
All the religious authorities were in due time advised about the finding
of the Madonna icon, and they took part in the prescribed religious events that
followed. A Chapel was built on the spot where they had found the Madonna, with
the intention that one day they would build a church there. After they found
the icon of the Madonna with Child many people came to adore this Madonna, they
came from the surrounding towns and also from far away towns and they received
so many miracles from this Madonna that would be even hard just to count their
number. Of course today’s people don’t believe in miracles and therefore they
would not believe in them, but this is our folklore story that goes around town
even these days.
Taking
the Madonna to town
But there is still an extra folklore story
to tell about this Madonna, this story might be a bit out of the ordinary ways
that normal things happen, and therefore today many people might not believe it
at all, but then we have to think that here we are talking about Madonnas and
therefore also miracles, we also have to keep in mind that the old people
believed that it really happened, so let us tell you the story just the way it
has been told and retold many times from the elders of the town.
The folklore story of this Madonna goes on
to tell us, that while they were taking the Madonna effigy they had found at
Capodaqua to the town church, of Maria SS Della Platea, which was the main
church of the town of Genzano then, when they reached the entrance of the town,
as you know in those times every town had their entrance doors that were shut
at night to guard against thieves and assaults from outside, anyhow when they
reached the entrance of the town the Madonna effigy became very heavy, it was
so heavy that the bears had to stop and set the devise they were carrying the
Madonna with on the ground.
Then when they tried to lift her off the
ground again they could not lift her; so the priest and the town authorities
started to think, why this was happening and what they could do to fix this
unseen problem, some wise man started saying that perhaps the Madonna wanted to
be recognized that she was a very powerful being, and to recognize her the best
thing to do was to give her the keys of the town and hope that this was what
the Madonna wanted, so somebody went to fetch the keys and placed the keys
beside her effigy, and soon the effigy became light again and they were able to
take her through the entrance of the town and then into the church. This is one
of the folklore stories of this Madonna.
Now let me add this last bit to the story,
I remember when I was young that at this same entrance the Madonna came into
Genzano town the first time; sometimes would come some peregrines to adore this
Madonna with child, and they were bringing with them a little statue of a
child, I don’t know exactly what all this meant, but there is a phrase in the
Genzanese dialect “U bambnid d Frenz” meaning the little baby Jesus of Forenza;
Forenza is a town that would take several hours to walk to reach Genzano, and
they did all this walking to come and adore this Madonna, there were really
believers in those old days.
Because this Madonna is very important even
today; the people of Genzano celebrate the feast of this Madonna every year and
here is a link of the procession in the very old part of Genzano, I hope it
works for you; and then we will talk about the Madonna church.
-------------------------------------------
The Madonna church
The Madonna church
Some years had passed by from the day that they found the Madonna icon,
back in 1621 or there about, when somebody dreamed that the Madonna wanted a
church of her own built on a hill called ‘Montefreddo’, as it happened the
night that the dreamer dreamed this dream it was snowing, but in the morning
the snow had melted away everywhere except where the dreamer had dreamed that
the Madonna wanted her church built. The dreamer told her dream to the people
of Genzano, which then they understood and took notice of the strange event of
the snow. Therefore it was then decided that the new church would have to be
built where that large patch of snow was left. And this is the reason why the
church of this Madonna was built on this hill called, Montefreddo.
With the building of the Madonna church many more devotees came to adore
this Madonna, and they prayed to her for graces or miracles; and many graces
they received in return, so this Madonna sanctuary grew and became well known
all around the country for a few centuries, but then one day a fire broke out
in the crowded church, because they had too many things going on at the same
time and some people perished. After that it was closed for a while and then
they fixed it and opened it again, but after that it was not as popular as
before.
Nowadays, although this Madonna church has been damaged badly twice by
earthquake and once by fire, as we have said above, it has been rebuilt and
restored and it is still very popular, but not quite as much as it used to be,
I suppose it is the sign of the times, because people nowadays don’t believe in
religion as much as they used to do in the old times.
Anyhow, in the town of Genzano of nowadays, we still celebrate a great
feast for this Madonna, the yearly festivity for this Madonna are held for
three days the first week end in August. We will have to come back to tell you
about these festivities later on; because now I would like to tell you what
else the people of Genzano did after they found the Madonna at Capo D’aqua.
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Madonna
chapel and fountain
The Madonna chapel and Capo D'aqua fountain
Let us go back at the site where they found the Madonna and what the
people of Genzano did soon after they found this Madonna; we have already
mentioned above that they were going to built a chapel, and so they built the
chapel; but at the same time they built a larger fountain, because when the
people of Genzano were digging to find the Madonna icon, they also found
another large spring of water, so they channelled this water to make a larger
fountain nearby that to these days is called Capo d’aqua, because on the
abundance of this spring waters.
Since then this fountain has been rebuilt and enlarged about year 1800,
in order to serve the people of Genzano as the population was growing larger.
The fountain has inscribed in a corner the name of a certain ‘Lepore’, perhaps
he was the mayor of the town at the time when they built or rebuilt the
fountain. It is a large and abundant spring fountain situated just downstream
from where they had found the Madonna, and just about where the Del’monte chasm
and the Greek chasm meet, but well before they merge with St. St Antun or St Michael
chasm downstream. The fountain was built as a simple country fountain, and it
had five or six large troughs of about three metre long and one metre wide, all
built of solid and simple masonry. There are reasons to believe that the people
of Genzano have used a lot this outside town fountain, because there was no
reticulated water in town in those old times.
So, this fountain was used in various ways, as there are two troughs
which have three and four water sprouts each, which are fed from the spring and
are constantly pouring water into the troughs. The two troughs with the sprouts
are reserved for the animals to drink, and for those people that want to fill
some sorts of vessels straight from the sprouts. From these two troughs then
the water runs out into the rest of the troughs, and these secondary troughs were
used to do the town’s washing, since there was no reticulated water in town in
those times.
Capo d’aqua fountain was very popular in the old times, there was even a
song that a young girl used to sing happily, she would sing about the time when
she would go to Capo d’aqua fountain to do the washing. I can still remember a
few of the dialect verses, and they go like this:
My Italian dialect verses.
Me chiam Rosa e teng vent’ann
E a Capodaqua ije lav li pann
Kess eij la dota ca me dai mam
na strecatora e na cest pei pann.
--------------------------------
English version
My name is Rose and I am twenty
And a Capo d’aqua I wash the clothes
This is the dowry that my mother gives me,
A scrubbing board and a basket for clothes.
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There is a longer version of the washing lady written from the writer
'Angelo Valente' which must be a lot closer to the original; I am going to post
it in my blog, http://genzanoit.blogspot.com/,
once you open this link on the left side find a list of pages and click on, Poem
the washing lady.
I believe that by now I have said enough about the Madonna story and the
fountain of Capo D’aqua, situated in the town that I have come from. I hope
that you my readers by now have got a pretty good idea what it was like then,
and also what was like over there when I was young. So, now I would like to
talk about my own life and personal experience for a couple more articles,
before I migrated for Australia, and after that I will be telling you my life
story when I was here in Australia.
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