future assets. Meanwhile they acted as waitresses and chambermaids and ran the bar, all of which was enough to be getting on with, while the Signora’s elderly mother did the cooking for the ristorante with some outside help in the season, which had not yet begun. Both subsequently married.
After we had signed in and had been consigned to one of the cavernous bedrooms which by now, with the awful weather prevailing outside, was almost totally dark, the two girls invited us to take part in the Processione del Venerdì Santo .
This procession, which had to end in the afternoon, at the hour of Christ’s death, was due to start in a couple of minutes from the Oratorio dei Bianchi, an old church in the middle of the town. In the course of this procession the participants would make an almost complete tour of it. They themselves were going to take part. Would we like to go with them? We said yes.
Swathed in the warmest clothes we had at our disposal, but still inadequately clad – the wind was coming straight off the Apuan Alps, which were newly snow-covered – we set off with the girls for the piazza in which the Oratorio was situated and in which the procession would be assembling.
The piazza was about the size of a squash court and one side of it was entirely taken up by one façade of the Oratorio, an austere and beautiful construction of what appeared to be almost translucent marble. It had been built in 1600 by PasqualeMalaspina and a great marble escutcheon over the entrance displayed the coat of arms of the Malaspina, a flowering hawthorn. Below it there was an Annunciation carved in the same material. Inside the building, hidden behind the high altar, was a wooden statue of the Madonna, carved in 1300 and lodged here when the church was built, after the original one was destroyed by fire.
Normally the doors of the Oratorio were kept closed but this afternoon they were wide open to allow an effigy of the Crucified Christ to be taken out from it into the piazza on a wooden float carried by a band of porters, who supported the weight on their shoulders. Two other men also emerged from it bearing a funereal-looking black and silver banner which was now giving trouble in the wind that was swirling around the piazza.
At the head of the procession was the rather elderly priest of Fosdinovo and Caniparola, dressed in black vestments. He was accompanied by a couple of acolytes, who were without their censers, because they were not used in such processions, and a good thing too, in the wind that was blowing, they might easily have set themselves on fire, or some other participant.
They were followed by the main body of the faithful, among whom we found ourselves. Altogether there were not many more than fifty people and most of them were women. There were also a few children; but it was not surprising that there was a poor turn-out. It was terrible weather for a procession. Already at around two in the afternoon it was growing dark.
Conspicuous among the few men present in the piazza, apart from those who would be carrying the images, looking benevolently at all and sundry, was Attilio who, we later learned, was not only molto religioso but also a grande appassionato of religious feasts and processions. He had walked up from I Castagni in the appalling weather in order to attend this one and, in spite of the buffeting he must have received on the way, was very smart in a long, darknavy-blue, fur-collared overcoat of antique cut which almost reached to his ankles, and an article of clothing without which neither of us saw him, except when, later on, he had to go to hospital, his cap.
As soon as he saw us he came shooting across the piazza as if it was ice – in fact it was wet marble and equally slippery. Then, after paying his respects to the girls in a formal manner, he took our hands in his, first Wanda’s, then mine, and pumped them up and down as if he expected water to come gushing out of our mouths, at the same
After we had signed in and had been consigned to one of the cavernous bedrooms which by now, with the awful weather prevailing outside, was almost totally dark, the two girls invited us to take part in the Processione del Venerdì Santo .
This procession, which had to end in the afternoon, at the hour of Christ’s death, was due to start in a couple of minutes from the Oratorio dei Bianchi, an old church in the middle of the town. In the course of this procession the participants would make an almost complete tour of it. They themselves were going to take part. Would we like to go with them? We said yes.
Swathed in the warmest clothes we had at our disposal, but still inadequately clad – the wind was coming straight off the Apuan Alps, which were newly snow-covered – we set off with the girls for the piazza in which the Oratorio was situated and in which the procession would be assembling.
The piazza was about the size of a squash court and one side of it was entirely taken up by one façade of the Oratorio, an austere and beautiful construction of what appeared to be almost translucent marble. It had been built in 1600 by PasqualeMalaspina and a great marble escutcheon over the entrance displayed the coat of arms of the Malaspina, a flowering hawthorn. Below it there was an Annunciation carved in the same material. Inside the building, hidden behind the high altar, was a wooden statue of the Madonna, carved in 1300 and lodged here when the church was built, after the original one was destroyed by fire.
Normally the doors of the Oratorio were kept closed but this afternoon they were wide open to allow an effigy of the Crucified Christ to be taken out from it into the piazza on a wooden float carried by a band of porters, who supported the weight on their shoulders. Two other men also emerged from it bearing a funereal-looking black and silver banner which was now giving trouble in the wind that was swirling around the piazza.
At the head of the procession was the rather elderly priest of Fosdinovo and Caniparola, dressed in black vestments. He was accompanied by a couple of acolytes, who were without their censers, because they were not used in such processions, and a good thing too, in the wind that was blowing, they might easily have set themselves on fire, or some other participant.
They were followed by the main body of the faithful, among whom we found ourselves. Altogether there were not many more than fifty people and most of them were women. There were also a few children; but it was not surprising that there was a poor turn-out. It was terrible weather for a procession. Already at around two in the afternoon it was growing dark.
Conspicuous among the few men present in the piazza, apart from those who would be carrying the images, looking benevolently at all and sundry, was Attilio who, we later learned, was not only molto religioso but also a grande appassionato of religious feasts and processions. He had walked up from I Castagni in the appalling weather in order to attend this one and, in spite of the buffeting he must have received on the way, was very smart in a long, darknavy-blue, fur-collared overcoat of antique cut which almost reached to his ankles, and an article of clothing without which neither of us saw him, except when, later on, he had to go to hospital, his cap.
As soon as he saw us he came shooting across the piazza as if it was ice – in fact it was wet marble and equally slippery. Then, after paying his respects to the girls in a formal manner, he took our hands in his, first Wanda’s, then mine, and pumped them up and down as if he expected water to come gushing out of our mouths, at the same
Similar Books
