Abruzzo Day 3 – 18th April
You may remember that 18th April of this year was Good Friday and our last stop of the day was in Chieti, an important city in Abruzzo, to watch the Good Friday procession, which is said to be the oldest in Italy. We lined up very early to watch the event but I still got some people in front of me. I had to poke my camera lens between the heads of those in front of me to take the loads of pictures that I took.
The procession started from the Chieti Cathedral, went round the square in front of the cathedral and proceeded along the main road of the city. We positioned ourselves right in front of the cathedral door a good 80 metres from it. No time is ever set for the commencement of the procession - the starting time is when the sun goes down. Two interesting facts about the Chieti Good Friday procession are:
• Only males take part
• All participants have hoods covering their faces.
I will show two collages with some of the many shots I took to give you an idea of what it was like. In this collage:
• Right and middle photos are men from 3 different confraternities, the middle shot shows the cathedral door in the background
• Top Right: the beginning of the story of the passion of Jesus with the angel who brought some solace to Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane
• Middle: the crown – could be the crown of thorns or the crown of Christ’s victory over death (more probable the first suggestion)
• Bottom: the dead body of Christ covered in a shroud and carried by members of the Arch-Confraternity of the Sacred Mount of the Dead (some info on these tomorrow).
Many thanks for looking and for your lovely comments on yesterday’s picture.
Very interesting info for this parade! I've never seen these rather horrifying masks as they remind me of the ku Klux Klan! It must have been very exciting to be this close!
This is so interesting to see. I agree with @maggiemae about how much it looks like the KKK, which is quite scary. Your information was fascinating to read.
What an extraordinary but fascinating ceremony - you have caught the procession beautifully with your collage and also the air of tension. Thank you for the info - I wasn't sure what I was looking at to start with. Very well done!
The collage really gives us a good feel of what it was like to see this. Yes, American history has a very different take on masks such as these- so it jolts us a bit to see them. I'm sure the significance is much different in Abruzzo and they have no relation to what we think of them here. Thank you for the history too- you always do a great job in explaining all the components of your collages and the pageants!
