Messina is preparing to relive, this afternoon, the centuries -old procession of the barettes that will start from the new church of the Peace of peace in via XXIV Maggio at 6 pm to reach Piazza Duomo after having traveled via S. Agostino, Corso Cavour and the Vie Cannizzaro and Garibaldi; After the blessing of the Archbishop, the 11 statue groups will return through the suggestive ‘Nchianata of via Oratory S. Francesco. Along the way the prelate, at the end of the function of the 17 in the cathedral, will join the procession together with the priests. Also this year, RTP will follow the event live with connections from 18 of the departure phases with the commentary of Salvatore De Maria and Rachele Gerace. Connections also foreseen in the evening edition of the TG and during the Scirocco broadcast. Finally, from about 10 pm, the final phases with the suggestive “nchianata” until returning to church.
History
The Last Supper. Jesus in the garden of olive trees. The column (flagellation). The exception Homo. The Veronica. The fall. The Cyrenaeus. Crucifixion. The grieved. The deposition. The dead Christ. These are the eleven statue groups that make up the mobile stations of one of the most suggestive Crucis of Italy.
Each of those statue groups, which corresponds to a confraternity, is a small masterpiece of figurative art. The expressions of Jesus, of Mary, of Veronica are simply wonderful. And assisting from above to the long procession is a unique show, but never how much to be protagonists among the carriers and the crowd of faithful behind each baretta, along the entire path, especially in that magical-mind final stretch, to which we Messina, for centuries, have given a name: the n’Chianata … and a advice should be suggested to those who approach for the first time to the procession, which is from Messina and one who comes from other cities and regions for the occasion. Go a few hours earlier, today or tomorrow morning, in the small precious church “New Oratory of Peace” entrusted to the care of the historic confraternity of the “Ss. Crocifisso found”, founded in 1751. There, since 1950, the barettes have been kept all year round, There you can admire them closely, all together, and draw the historical newsrealizing how behind this religious and popular tradition intertwine, with the history of the city, its glorious or tragic vicissitudes, the centuries-old events of many Messina families who, of a father-son of son-child are handed down the “witness” of devotion and love for their roots.
As the name itself says, the barettes were “small coffins” (caskets containing the “painful mysteries”), which were brought to the shoulder. Some groups of statues date back to the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, such as Homo and flagellation. The fall is of the late nineteenth century. The last dinner was made in the early decades of the twentieth centuryin replacement of that destroyed by the 1908 earthquake. At the twentieth century the other statues belong, in particular the beautiful Jesus in the garden of the olive trees, dragged by thirty bearers is from 1956, as well as Veronica, while Cireneo is from 1958.
To trace the origins, we must return to the beginning of the 16th century, when a representation of the passion of Jesus was built in Messina (it was 1508) on the square of the Carmelite monastery of San Cataldo, during the visit of the Viceroy Raimondo di Cardona. But the date that historians indicate that the beginning of the centuries -old history of the barettes is that of 1610, when the Archconfraternity of the “Ss. Rosary of the Bianchi and of Peace”, together with that of the “Holy Apostles Simone and Judah”, established the procession.
A procession, that of Good Friday in Messina, which has become an unmissable event – And we have recently made it into account, when, unfortunately, in the years of the pandemic emergency, Covid prevented the regular development – which recalls thousands of faithful every year from many provinces of Sicily, Calabria and also from other regions. The invitation is to live it this year as enthusiasts, in the true sense of the adjective. The enthusiast, in fact, is the one who expresses a loving, burning, fiery passion. Everything changes appearance if the experimenter, the object of the experimentation and the act of experimenting become one. Eyes, mind, heart.