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Festival of the Black Madonna of Tindari
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When:
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Sep 2009 (annual)
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Where:
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Tindari
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| Opening Hours: |
Procession at 6.30pm
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Goethe once said that Sicily was 'a marvellous place...where many rays of Universal History converge'. The Festival of the Black Madonna of Tindari is one of the many historical mysteries of this beautiful island.
Legacy of ancient pagan fertility cults, evidence of unsuspected racial migrations, witness to the dark, mysterious aspects of the femininity of the Madonna: there are many theories concerning the Black Madonnas, but all agree that they are striking and mysterious representations, the origins of which we do not fully understand.
Tindari is mostly known for being the home of one of the most famous 'Black Madonnas' of Europe, the Madonna di Tindari. Although pilgrims attend the shrine where it is housed throughout the year, the annual festival takes place on the seventh of September, when masses are held every hour from early morning to midnight, and the Madonna herself is taken out for a procession in the evening. At midnight the festivities end with a display of fireworks.
The cult of the Black Madonna throughout Europe has been the source of much speculation. Historians of religion have used the various figures, especially common in France, Spain and Italy, to argue the case for a pre-Christian fertility cult centred on a 'Black Mother'. Feminists have explored and employed the image in various ways to argue for a countercultural Christian image of aggressive, 'dark' femininity, and Jungian psychoanalysts have used the images to represent the dark side of the female 'anima', an element of the human psyche.
This particular Madonna is said to have originated in Byzantium, and legend tells that a group of fishermen found it after it fell off a ship bound from the Orient, and handed it over to the local monks. These monks built a sanctuary for it, and it was later moved to the more recent, larger sanctuary where it currently resides. The older building behind the new sanctuary can still be visited by tourists during the day.
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