The Good Friday of Romagnano Sesia
For nearly three hundred years in a village nestled between the hills and mountains of Novara plain Valsesia you recall the events of Holy Week. We Romagnano Sesia, where the first fraternity was born on Easter Sunday, 1729, the Blessed intitolandosi Enterro (from entierro, burial, because this area was part of the Duchy of Milan, then under Spanish rule).
At that time the recall was limited to the evening of Good Friday, and consisted of the simple procession with the statue of the dead Christ and the Virgin of Sorrows. It took centuries for the sacred representation of Romagnano become spectacular accurate as it is now.
Before enriched with the staging of the “game of dress” by the thugs at the foot of the cross, then grew up with dramatic processions nineteenth century, which included the participation of legionaries and Jews finally survived two world wars, his own grandeur forced her to every two years.
Now involves more than 300 actors and extras, a body of legionnaires on horseback and on foot Veliti – all dressed in costumes inspired by the Palestine of the Gospels-that enact 14 paintings. The 257esima edition takes place from the evening of Thursday, March 28 until the 30, with a further representation on the evening of Easter. (Information and details: www.venerdisanto.org)
It is an opportunity to discover a wealth of little-known country, the so-called cellar Saints. It is a place that belonged to the Benedictine abbey of St. Silouan lost, an important religious and economic center of Novara, which tradition says was founded at the beginning of the millennium, and which had among its abbots also the future Pope Pius IV and his nephew Charles Borromeo.
In Badia district, an area once inhabited by peasants who worked for the monks, the double portico medieval and eighteenth century is now completely surrounded by modern homes. Remains the charm of the interior, with vaulted brick walls and river pebbles, and the remains of the frescoes surviving secular use as a cellar.
These are not stories of saints, in fact, as the popular name suggests, but a single cycle late Gothic dedicated to David, who emerges as a courageous hero of chivalry.
If you want to learn more about the rural culture, take a ride all’ottocentesca Villa Hunting, designed by Antonelli, which houses the Historical Museum of Ethnography. Between objects, tools and agricultural machinery, stands an imposing press of 13 meters in length. Striking the cellar of the villa, which houses a room dedicated to wine, great wealth of these lands, and the section dedicated to crafts, with the reconstruction of environments homes, schools, taverns.
Nearby, on the occasion of Holy Week are guided tours, for example to the church of St. Anthony of Borgosesia, where the fabric is exposed Lent, a seventeenth-century cloth of seven feet by nine inspired by the Passion.
If you are looking for other sacred representations of Piedmont, in the absence of one of Sordevolo (Biella), held every five years, go to Vercelli, where on the evening of Good Friday Procession takes place machines: ie transport through the streets of the city groups sculptures depicting scenes from the Passion.
