They were men; they could fight;
and in those troublous times that is exactly what saints were made for.
With the softening of manners a new element appears. Male saints lost
their chief raison d'etre, and these virile creatures were superseded
by pacific women. So, to give only one instance, Saint Rosalia in
Palermo displaced the former protector Saint Mark. Her sacred bones were
miraculously discovered in a cave; and have since been identified as
those of a goat. But it was not till the twelfth century that the cult
of female saints began to assume imposing dimensions.
Of the Madonna no mention occurs in the songs of Bishop Paulinus (fourth
century); no monument exists in the Neapolitan catacombs. Thereafter her
cult begins to dominate.
She supplied the natives with what orthodox Christianity did not give
them, but what they had possessed from early times - a female element in
religion. Those Greek settlers had their nymphs, their Venus, and so
forth; the Mother of God absorbed and continued their functions. There
is indeed only one of these female pagan divinities whose role she has
not endeavoured to usurp - Athene. Herein she reflects the minds of her
creators, the priests and common people, whose ideal woman contents
herself with the duties of motherhood. I doubt whether an
Athene-Madonna, an intellectual goddess, could ever have been evolved;
their attitude towards gods in general is too childlike and positive.
South Italians, famous for abstractions in philosophy, cannot endure
them in religion. Unlike ourselves, they do not desire to learn anything
from their deities or to argue about them. They only wish to love and be
loved in return, reserving to themselves the right to punish them, when
they deserve it. Countless cases are on record where (pictures or
statues of) Madonnas and saints have been thrown into a ditch for not
doing what they were told, or for not keeping their share of a bargain.
During the Vesuvius eruption of 1906 a good number were subjected to
this "punishment," because they neglected to protect their worshippers
from the calamity according to contract (so many candles and festivals =
so much protection).
For the same reason the adult Jesus - the teacher, the God - is
practically unknown. He is too remote from themselves and the ordinary
activities of their daily lives; he is not married, like his mother; he
has no trade, like his father (Mark calls him a carpenter); moreover,
the maxims of the Sermon on the Mount are so repugnant to the South
Italian as to be almost incomprehensible. In effigy, this period of
Christ's life is portrayed most frequently in the primitive monuments of
the catacombs, erected when tradition was purer.
Three tangibly-human aspects of Christ's life figure here: the
bambino-cult, which not only appeals to the people's love of babyhood
but also carries on the old traditions of the Lar Familiaris and of
Horus; next, the youthful Jesus, beloved of local female mystics; and
lastly the Crucified - that grim and gloomy image of suffering which was
imported, or at least furiously fostered, by the Spaniards.
