Tuesday, February 5, 2013 - Litany Lane Blog:
Consecrate, Hebrews 12:1-4, Psalms 22:26-32, Mark 5:21-43, Saint Agatha, Sant'Agata dei Goti, Sicily, Catholic Catechism Part One Section 2 The Creeds Chapter 1:1:4 The Creator
Good Day Bloggers! Happy Mardi Gras!
Wishing everyone a Blessed Week!
Year of Faith - October 11, 2012 - November 24, 2013
P.U.S.H. (Pray Until Serenity Happens). It has a remarkable way of producing solace, peace, patience and tranquility and of course resolution...God's always available 24/7.
The world begins and ends everyday for someone. We are all human. We all experience birth, life and death. We all have
flaws but we also all have the gift of knowledge and free will,
make the most of these gifts. Life on earth is a stepping stone to our eternal home in
Heaven. Its your choice whether to rise towards eternal light or lost to
eternal darkness. Material items, though needed for sustenance and
survival on earth are of earthly value only. The only thing that passes
from this earth to Purgatory and/or Heaven is our Soul, our Spirit...it's God's perpetual
gift to us...Embrace it, treasure it, nurture it, protect it...
"Raise not a hand to another unless it is to offer in peace and goodwill." ~ Zarya Parx 2012
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February 2, 2013 Message From Our Lady of Medjugorje to World:
"Dear children, love is bringing me to you - the love which I desire to
teach you also - real love; the love which my Son showed you when He
died on the Cross out of love for you; the love which is always ready to
forgive and to ask for forgiveness. How great is your love? My motherly
heart is sorrowful as it searches for love in
your hearts. You are not ready to submit your will to God's will out of
love. You cannot help me to have those who have not come to know God's
love to come to know it, because you do not have real love. Consecrate
your hearts to me and I will lead you. I will teach you to forgive, to
love your enemies and to live according to my Son. Do not be afraid for
yourselves. In afflictions my Son does not forget those who love. I will
be beside you. I will implore the Heavenly Father for the light of
eternal truth and love to illuminate you. Pray for your shepherds so
that through your fasting and prayer they can lead you in love. Thank
you."
January 25, 2013 Message From Our Lady of Medjugorje to World:
"Dear children! Also today I call you to prayer. May your prayer be as strong as a living stone, until with your lives you become witnesses. Witness the beauty of your faith. I am with you and intercede before my Son for each of you. Thank you for having responded to my call."
"Dear children! Also today I call you to prayer. May your prayer be as strong as a living stone, until with your lives you become witnesses. Witness the beauty of your faith. I am with you and intercede before my Son for each of you. Thank you for having responded to my call."
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Today's Word: consecrate con·se·crate [kon-si-kreyt]
Origin: 1325–75; Middle English consecraten < Latin consecrātus (past participle of consecrāre ), equivalent to con- con- + -secr- (variant, in non-initial syllables, of sacer ) sacred, holy + -ātus -ate1
verb (used with object)
1. to make or declare sacred; set apart or dedicate to the service of a deity: to consecrate a new church building.
2. to make (something) an object of honor or veneration; hallow: a custom consecrated by time.
3. to devote or dedicate to some purpose: a life consecrated to science.
4. to admit or ordain to a sacred office, especially to the episcopate.
5. to change (bread and wine) into the Eucharist.
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Today's Old Testament Reading - Psalms 22:26-32
26 The poor will eat and be filled, those who seek Yahweh will praise him, 'May your heart live for ever.'
27 The whole wide world will remember and return to Yahweh, all the families of nations bow down before him.
28 For to Yahweh, ruler of the nations, belongs kingly power!
30 their descendants will serve him, will proclaim his name to generations
31 still to come; and these will tell of his saving justice to a people yet unborn: he has fulfilled it.
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Today's Epistle - Hebrews 12:1-4
1 With so many witnesses in a great cloud all around us, we too, then, should throw off everything that weighs us down and the sin that clings so closely, and with perseverance keep running in the race which lies ahead of us.
2 Let us keep our eyes fixed on Jesus, who leads us in our faith
and brings it to perfection: for the sake of the joy which lay ahead of
him, he endured the cross, disregarding the shame of it, and has taken
his seat at the right of God's throne.
3 Think of the way he persevered against such opposition from sinners and then you will not lose heart and come to grief.
4 In the fight against sin, you have not yet had to keep fighting to the point of bloodshed.
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Today's Gospel Reading - Mark 5:21-43
When Jesus had crossed
again in the boat to the other side, a large crowd gathered round him
and he stayed by the lake. Then the president of the synagogue came up,
named Jairus, and seeing him, fell at his feet and begged him earnestly,
saying, 'My little daughter is desperately sick. Do come and lay your
hands on her that she may be saved and may live.' Jesus went with him
and a large crowd followed him; they were pressing all round him. Now
there was a woman who had suffered from a haemorrhage for twelve years;
after long and painful treatment under various doctors, she had spent
all she had without being any the better for it; in fact, she was
getting worse. She had heard about Jesus, and she came up through the
crowd and touched his cloak from behind, thinking, 'If I can just touch
his clothes, I shall be saved.'
And at once the source of the bleeding dried up, and she felt in herself that she was cured of her complaint. And at once aware of the power that had gone out from him, Jesus turned round in the crowd and said, 'Who touched my clothes?' His disciples said to him, 'You see how the crowd is pressing round you; how can you ask, "Who touched me?"' But he continued to look all round to see who had done it. Then the woman came forward, frightened and trembling because she knew what had happened to her, and she fell at his feet and told him the whole truth. 'My daughter,' he said, 'your faith has restored you to health; go in peace and be free of your complaint.'
While he was still speaking some people arrived from the house of the president of the synagogue to say, 'Your daughter is dead; why put the Master to any further trouble?' But Jesus overheard what they said and he said to the president of the synagogue, 'Do not be afraid; only have faith.' And he allowed no one to go with him except Peter and James and John the brother of James. So they came to the house of the president of the synagogue, and Jesus noticed all the commotion, with people weeping and wailing unrestrainedly. He went in and said to them, 'Why all this commotion and crying? The child is not dead, but asleep.' But they ridiculed him. So he turned them all out and, taking with him the child's father and mother and his own companions, he went into the place where the child lay. And taking the child by the hand he said to her, 'Talitha kum!' which means, 'Little girl, I tell you to get up.' The little girl got up at once and began to walk about, for she was twelve years old. At once they were overcome with astonishment, and he gave them strict orders not to let anyone know about it, and told them to give her something to eat.
Reflection
• In today’s Gospel, we
meditate on two miracles which Jesus worked in favour of two women. The
first one for a woman who was considered impure because of the
haemorrhage which she was suffering from for the past 12 years. The
other one, for a girl, twelve years old, who had expired a short time
before. According to the mentality of the time, anybody who would touch
the blood or a corpse was considered impure. Blood and death were
factors of exclusion! Because of this, those two women were marginalized
persons, excluded from the participation in the community.
• The starting point. Jesus arrives in the boat. The people join him. Jairus, the head of the Synagogue, asks help for his daughter who is dying. Jesus goes with him and the people accompany him, pushing on all sides. This is the starting point of the two cases of healing which follow: the cure of the woman and the resurrection of the 12 year old girl.
• The situation of the woman. Twelve years suffering from haemorrhage! For this reason she lived excluded, because at that time, blood rendered persons impure, and the one who touched them became impure also. Mark says that the woman had spent all she had with doctors. And instead of becoming better, she got worse. A situation without a solution!
• The attitude of the woman. She heard people speak about Jesus. Hope sprang in her. She told herself: “If I can just touch his clothes, I will be saved”. The catechism of the time said: “If I touch his cloak, he will become impure”. The woman thinks exactly the contrary! This is a sign that women did not agree with all this that religious authority taught. The woman gets in through the crowd, in the midst of the people, and without being noticed, she touches Jesus, because everybody touched him and pushed him. At that same moment she noticed in her body that she had been cured.
• The reaction of Jesus and that of the disciples. Jesus also aware of the power that had gone out from him asked: “Who touched my clothes?”. The disciples said to him: “You see how the crowd is pressing round you; how can you ask, who touched me?” So here appears the clash between Jesus and the disciples. Jesus had a sensibility which the disciples did not perceive. The disciples reacted like everybody else and they did not understand the different reaction of Jesus. But Jesus did not pay attention and continued to investigate, to inquire.
• Healing through faith. The woman became aware that she had been discovered. It was a difficult and dangerous moment for her. Because according to the belief of the time, an impure person, who like herself got in among the people, contaminated everyone who touched her. And all would become impure before God (Lv) (Lk 15, 19-30). For this reason the punishment was the possible stoning. But the woman had the courage to assume the consequences of what she had done. But the woman “frightened and trembling” fell at Jesus’ feet and told him the whole truth. Jesus says the last word: “My daughter, your faith has restored you to health, go in peace and be free of your complaint”.
(a) “Daughter”, with this word Jesus accepts the woman into the new family, into the community, which was gathering together around him. (b) What she thought became a reality. (c) Jesus acknowledges that without the faith of that woman, he would not have been able to work the miracle.
• The news of the death of the little girl. At that moment some people arrived from the house of Jairus to inform him that his daughter had died. It was no longer necessary to disturb Jesus. For them, death was the great barrier. Jesus will not be able to overcome death! Jesus listens, looks at Jairus, and applies what he had just seen, that is, that faith is capable to realize what the person believes. And he says: “Do not be afraid, only have faith!”
• In Jairus’ house. Jesus allows only three of his disciples to go with him. Seeing the commotion of the people weeping and wailing because of the death of the child, he said: “The child is not dead, she sleeps!” People around laughed . People know how to distinguish when a person is sleeping and when the person is dead. It is the same laughter of Abraham and of Sarah, that is of those who are unable to believe that nothing is impossible for God (Gn 17, 17; 18, 12-14; Lk 1, 37). For them also, death was a barrier which nobody could overcome, go beyond! The words of Jesus had a very profound meaning. The situation of the persecuted communities at the time of Mark seemed to be a situation of death. They had to hear: “She is not dead! You are sleeping! Wake up!” Jesus does not pay attention to the laughter and enters into the room where the child is, alone, with the three disciples and the parents of the child.
• The resurrection of the child. Jesus takes the child by the hand and says: “Talita kum!” She rises. Great commotion! Jesus keeps calm and asks that they give her something to eat. Two women are cured! One is twelve years old, of life, the other one twelve years of hemorrhage, twelve years of exclusion! The exclusion of the child begins at twelve years of age, because her menstruation begins, she begins to die! Jesus has the greatest power and resurrects: “Get up!”
Personal questions
• Which is the point in this text which pleased you or struck you the most? Why?
• One of the women was cured and once again integrated so that she could live in the community. A child was raised from her death bed. What does this action of Jesus teach us for our life in the family and for our community today.
• One of the women was cured and once again integrated so that she could live in the community. A child was raised from her death bed. What does this action of Jesus teach us for our life in the family and for our community today.
Reference: Courtesy of Order of Carmelites, www.ocarm.org.
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Featured Item of the Day from Litany Lane
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Saint of the Day: St Agatha
Feast Day: February 5
Patron Saint: Sicily; bellfounders; breast cancer; bakers; against fire; earthquakes; eruptions of Mount Etna; fire; jewelers; martyrs; natural disasters; nurses; rape victims; single laywomen; sterility; torture victims; volcanic eruptions; nurses; wet nurses; Zamarramala, Spain
Attributes: shears, tongs, breasts on a plate
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| St Agatha, Patron Saint of Breast Cancer |
Saint Agatha of Sicily (died ca. 251) is a Christian saint. Her memorial is on 5 February. Agatha[4] was born at Catania, Sicily, and she was martyred in approximately 251. She is one of seven women, excluding the Blessed Virgin Mary, commemorated by name in the Canon of the Mass.[5]
She is the patron saint of Catania, Molise, Malta, San Marino and Zamarramala, a municipality of the Province of Segovia in Spain. She is also the patron saint of breast cancer patients, martyrs, wet nurses, fire, earthquakes, and eruptions of Mount Etna.
Agatha is buried at the Badia di Sant'Agata, Catania.[6] Witnesses to her, aside from her mention in the Mass, are her inclusion[7] in the late 6th-century Martyrologium Hieronymianum associated with the name of Jerome; the Synaxarion, the calendar of the church of Carthage, ca. 530;[8] and in one of the carmina of Venantius Fortunatus.[9] Two early churches were dedicated to her in Rome,[10] notably the Church of Sant'Agata dei Goti in via Mazzarino, a titular church with apse mosaics of ca. 460 and traces of a fresco cycle,[11] overpainted by Gismondo Cerrini in 1630. In the 6th century the church was adapted to Arian Christianity, hence its name "Saint Agatha of the Goths", and later reconsecrated by Gregory the Great,
who confirmed her traditional sainthood. Agatha is also depicted in the
mosaics of Sant' Apollinare Nuovo, Ravenna, where she appears, richly
dressed, in the procession of female martyrs along the north wall. Her
image forms an initial I in the Sacramentary of Gellone, from the end of the 8th century.
Her written legend[12] comprises "straightforward accounts of interrogation, torture, resistance, and triumph which constitute some of the earliest hagiographic literature",[13] and are reflected in later recensions, the earliest surviving one being an illustrated late 10th-century passio bound into a composite volume[14] in the Bibliothèque National, originating probably in Autun, Burgundy; in its margin illustrations Magdalena Carrasco detected Carolingian or Late Antique iconographic traditions.[15] According to Jacobus de Voragine, Legenda Aurea of ca. 1288,[16] having dedicated her virginity to God,[17] Agatha, rich and noble, rejected the amorous advances of the low-born Roman prefect Quintianus;[18]
she was persecuted by him for her Christian faith. She was given to
Aphrodisia, the keeper of a brothel, and her nine daughters, but in
response to their threats and entreaties to sacrifice to the idols and submit to Quintianus, she responded:
"My courage and my thought be so firmly founded upon the firm stone of Jesus Christ, that for no pain it may not be changed; your words be but wind, your promises be but rain, and your menaces be as rivers that pass, and how well that all these things hurtle at the fundament of my courage, yet for that it shall not move."
She attacked the Roman cult images as idols with philosophical arguments that paralleled Arnobius:
And S. Agatha answered that they were no gods, but were devils that were in the idols made of marble and of wood, and overgilt. Quintianus said: Choose one of two; or do sacrifice to our gods, or thou shalt suffer pain and torments. S. Agatha said: Thou sayst that they be gods because thy wife was such a one as was Venus, thy goddess, and thou thyself as Jupiter, which was a homicide and evil. Quintianus said: It appeareth well that thou wilt suffer torments, in that thou sayst to me villainy. S. Agatha said: I marvel much that so wise a man is become such a fool, that thou sayest of them to be thy gods, whose life thou ne thy wife will follow. If they be good I would that thy life were like unto theirs; and if thou refusest their life, then art thou of one accord with me. Say then that they be evil and so foul, and forsake their living, and be not of such life as thy gods were.
Saint Peter Healing Agatha, by the Caravaggio-follower Giovanni Lanfranco, ca 1614
Among the tortures she underwent was the cutting off of her breasts. An apparition of Saint Peter cured her.
After further dramatic confrontations with Quintianus, represented in a sequence of dialogues in her passio
that document her fortitude and steadfast devotion, her scorned admirer
eventually sentenced her to death by being rolled naked on a bed of
live coals, "and anon the ground where the holy virgin was rolled on,
began to tremble like an earthquake, and a part of the wall fell down
upon Silvain, counsellor of Quintianus, and upon Fastion his friend, by
whose counsel she had been so tormented."[20]
Saint Agatha died in prison, according to the Legenda Aurea in "the year of our Lord two hundred and fifty-three in the time of Decius, the emperor of Rome."
Osbern Bokenham, A Legend of Holy Women, written in the 1440s, offers some further detail.[21]
Saint Agatha is often depicted iconographically carrying her excised breasts on a platter, as by Bernardino Luini's Saint Agatha (1510–15) in the Galleria Borghese, Rome, in which Agatha sweetly contemplates the breasts on a standing salver
held in her hand. The shape of her amputated breasts, especially as
depicted in artistic renderings, gave rise to her attribution as the patron saint of bell-founders and of bakers, whose loaves were blessed at her feast day. More recently, she has been venerated as patron saint of breast cancer patients.
Patronage
She is the patron saint of Catania, Sorihuela del Guadalimar (Spain), Molise, San Marino and Malta.
In Malta tradition has it that she took refuge from persecution in
Sicily by fleeing to Malta where no persecutions were ever held. She
lived in the underground cave which is the first chamber of the St
Agatha Catacombs in Rabat and in 1551 her intercession through an apparition to a Benedictine nun is reported to have saved Malta from Turkish invasion.
Legacy
Festivals
Burial of St Agatha, Campi, 1537
Basques have a tradition of gathering on Saint Agatha's eve (Santa Ageda bezpera in Basque)
and going round the village. Homeowners can choose to hear a song about
her life, accompanied by the beats of their walking sticks on the floor
or a prayer for those deceased in the house. After that, the homeowner
donates food to the chorus.[22]
This song has varying lyrics according to the local tradition and the Basque language. An exceptional case was that of 1937, during the Spanish Civil War, when a version appeared that in the Spanish language praised the Soviet ship Komsomol, which had sunk while carrying Soviet weapons to the Second Spanish Republic.
An annual festival to commemorate the life of Saint Agatha takes place in Catania, Sicily,
from February 3 to 5. The festival culminates in a great all-night
procession through the city for which hundreds of thousands of the
city's residents turn out.
References
- ^ Date offered by Santo D'Arrigo, Il Martirio di Santa Agata (Catania) 1985, working back from her death in the Decian persecutions.
- ^ "St. Agatha is the patron saint against fire. Take this day to establish a fire escape plan for the family and to practice a family fire drill" Catholic Culture: living the Catholic Life"
- ^ http://saints.sqpn.com/saint-agatha-of-sicily/
- ^ Latinized form of Greek Αγαθη (Agathe), derived from Greek αγαθος, agathos, "good" (Behind the Name: the etymology and history of first names); Jacobus de Voragine, taking etymology in the Classical tradition, as a text for a creative excursus, made of Agatha one symbolic origin in agios, "sacred" + Theos, "God", and another in a-geos", "without Earth", virginally untainted by earthly desires ("Agatha", III.15).
- ^ Attwater, Donald; John, Catherine Rachel (1993). The Penguin Dictionary of Saints (3rd edition ed.). New York: Penguin Books. ISBN 0-14-051312-4.
- ^ D'Arrigo 1985, p. 15; the present rebuilding of the ancient foundation is by Giovanni Battista Vaccarini (1767).
- ^ as martyred at Catania, 5 February 251.
- ^ W.H. Frere, Studies in Roman Liturgy: 1. The Kalendar (London, 1930), p 94f.
- ^ Carmen VIII, 4, De Virginitate, noted by Liana De Girolami Cheney, "The Cult of Saint Agatha" Woman's Art Journal 17.1 (Spring - Summer 1996:3-9) p. 3.
- ^ Sant'Agata in via della Lugaretta, Trastevere, and Sant'Agata dei Goti, (Touring Club Italiano, Roma e dintorni [Milan, 1965], pp 444, 315).
- ^ (date in TCI, Roma e dintorni; a letter from Pope Hadrian I (died 795) to Charlemagne remarks that Gregory (died 604) ordered the church adorned with mosaics and frescos (Cheney 1996 note 5).
- ^ The texts relating to Saint Agatha are printed in Acta Sanctorum IV, February vol. I (new ed. Paris, 1863) pp 599-662
- ^ Magdalena Elizabeth Carrasco, "The early illustrated manuscript of the Passion of Saint Agatha (Paris, Bibl. Nat., MS lat. 5594)", Gesta 24 (1985), p. 20.
- ^ The volume comprising texts of various places and dates was probably compiled when it was in the collection of Jean-Baptiste Colbert from which it entered the French royal collection.
- ^ Carrasco 1985, pp 19-32.
- ^ "Agatha", III.15.
- ^ Tertullian, De virginibus velandis ("On the veiling of young women") makes the distinction between virgins of men and virgins of God, consecrated to Christ.
- ^ His name appears in the earliest tradition, represented by B.N. MS lat. 5594
- ^ Commissioned by Ercole Ragone to celebrate his elevation to the cardinalate; his titular church was Sant'Agata dei Goti.
- ^ The two councillors have not previously been mentioned; their appearance seems to be a remainder of Jacobus' more extensive sources.
- ^ Osbern Bokenham, (Sheila Delany, tr.) A Legend of Holy Women (University of Notre Dame) 1992, pp 157-67.
- ^ J. Etxegoien, Orhipean, Gure Herria ezagutzen (Xamar) 1996 [in Basque].
- ^ "Agatha". Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art: The Dinner Party: Heritage Floor: Agatha. Brooklyn Museum. 2007. http://www.brooklynmuseum.org/eascfa/dinner_party/heritage_floor/agatha.php. Retrieved 17 December 2011.
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Today's Snippet I: Sant'Agata dei Goti
Sant'Agata dei Goti is a church in Rome, Italy, dedicated to the martyr Saint Agatha. It is the titular church assigned to Cardinal Raymond Leo Burke, Prefect of the Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura.
The church was built by Ricimer for the Goths c. 460. The Goths were
Arians,
so when Arianism was suppressed in Rome, the building was taken over by
the Catholic Church, in 592 or 593, and reconsecrated by Pope Gregory
the Great. It was restored in the 16th and 17th century. It is the only
Arian church that has been preserved in Rome. It was restored in the 9th century, and a Benedictine monastery was founded next to it. The apse
of the church collapsed in 1589, and it was partially rebuilt in 1633,
without major changes to the building itself apart from the new apse.
The small courtyard outside the church was laid out at this time. The
church has been served by the Stigmatines since 1926. Their generalate is adjacent to it.
Exterior
The façade was rebuilt by Francesco Ferrari in 1729. The relief above the door shows St. Agatha holding her severed breast on a plate; her torturers severed her breasts when she refused to renounce her faith in Christ. The entrance from Via Mazzarino opens on a 17th-century courtyard. From 1836 to 1926, it belonged to the Irish College. Cardinal Paul Cullen, a former Rector of the Irish College, modelled the church of the Holy Cross College in Clonliffe in Dublin on the plans of St Agatha's. The Romanesque campanile was built in the 12th century.Interior
Although it was redecorated in the Baroque style and has some 19th-century additions, it is still possible to see traces of the 5th-century plan, which was a basilica with three naves. The granite columns separating the naves are ancient. The fresco in the apse shows the Glory of St Agatha, made by Paolo Gismondi in the 17th century. There is a 12th- or 13th-century canopy above the altar, reassembled and erected here in 1933. It has four columns of pavonazzetto marble, all decorated with Cosmatesque mosaic, and a temple roof. The former canopy was destroyed in 1589; fragments can be seen in the ceiling of the main chapel on the left-hand side. The 15th-century Cosmatesque pavement in the middle of the nave has an unusual, but very nice, design. It is a very late example of the style. The rectangular windows were installed in the 17th century at the request of the Cardinals Francesco and Antonio Barberini. By the altar of St Agatha is a large statue of the saint. Ricimer, who was buried in the church, had a mosaic installed. This was unfortunately destroyed in 1589, when the apse collapsed. The Greek humanist John Lascaris (died 1535) is interred in the church and in all likelihood the heart of Daniel O'Connell, the 'Liberator' (died Genoa 1847), is buried in the vault.Liturgy
The feast of the Greek martyrs whose relics are preserved here is on 2 December. It is usually celebrated with an evening Mass with the liturgy of the Byzantine Catholic rite. Other important feasts are that of St Agatha on 5 February and St Gaspar Bertoni, founder of the Stigmatines, on 12 JuneReferences
- St. Agatha". Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company. 1913.
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Today's Snippet II: Sicily
Sicily (Italian: Sicilia [siˈtʃiːlja]; Sicilian: Sicilia Palermitano: [sɪˈʃʲɪːljʌ];) is the largest island in the Mediterranean Sea; along with surrounding minor islands, it constitutes an autonomous region of Italy, the Regione Siciliana (Sicilian Region).
Sicily is located in the central Mediterranean. It extends from the tip of the Apennine peninsula from which it is separated only by the narrow Strait of Messina, towards the North African coast. Its most prominent landmark is Mount Etna, which is at 3,320 m (10,890 ft) the tallest active volcano in Europe and one of the most active in the world. The island has a typical Mediterranean climate.
The earliest archeological evidence of human dwelling on the island
dates from as early as 8000 BC. At around 750 BC, Sicily became a Greek colony and for the next 600 years it was the site of the Greek-Punic and Roman-Punic wars, which ended with the Roman destruction of Carthage. After the fall of the Roman Empire in the 5th century AD, Sicily often changed hands, and during the early Middle Ages it was ruled in turn by the Vandals, Ostrogoths, Byzantines, Arabs and Normans. Later on, the Kingdom of Sicily lasted between 1130 and 1816, first subordinated to the crowns of Aragon, Spain, the Holy Roman Empire, and finally unified under the Bourbons with Naples, as the indipendent Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. With the Expedition of the Thousand, a Giuseppe Garibaldi-led revolt during the Italian Unification process, it became part of Italy in 1860 as a result of a plebiscite. After the birth of the Italian Republic in 1946, Sicily was given special status as an autonomous region.
Sicily has a rich and unique culture, especially with regard to the arts, music, literature, cuisine, architecture and language. Sicily also holds importance for archeological and ancient sites such as the Necropolis of Pantalica, the Valley of the Temples and Selinunte.
Geography
Sicily has roughly triangular shape, which earned it the name Trinacria. It is separated to the east from the Italian region of Calabria through the Strait of Messina.
The distance between the island and mainland Italy by the Strait of
Messina is about 3 km (1.9 mi) wide in the north, and about 16 km
(9.9 mi) in the south of the Strait.
The terrain of inland Sicily is mostly hilly, and intensively
cultivated wherever it was possible. Along the northern coast, mountain
ranges of Madonie, 2,000 m (6,600 ft), Nebrodi, 1,800 m (5,900 ft), and Peloritani, 1,300 m (4,300 ft), represent an extension of mainland Appennines. The cone of Mount Etna dominates over the eastern coast. In the south-east lie lower Hyblaean Mountains, 1,000 m (3,300 ft). The mines of the Enna and Caltanissetta district were a leading sulfur-producing area throughout the 19th century, but have declined since the 1950s.
Sicily and its small surrounding islands have some highly active volcanoes. Mount Etna,
located in the east of mainland Sicily with a height of 3,320 m
(10,890 ft), is the tallest active volcano in Europe and one of the most
active in the world. The Aeolian Islands in the Tyrrhenian Sea, to the northeast of mainland Sicily, exhibit a volcanic complex including Stromboli. Currently active also are the three volcanoes of Vulcano, Vulcanello and Lipari, usually dormant. Off the southern coast of Sicily, the underwater volcano of Ferdinandea, which is part of the larger Empedocles, last erupted in 1831. It is located between the coast of Agrigento and the island of Pantelleria (which itself is a dormant volcano), on the underwater Phlegraean Fields of the Strait of Sicily.
The autonomous region also includes several neighboring islands: the Aegadian Islands, the Aeolian Islands, Pantelleria and Lampedusa.
Rivers
The island is drained by several rivers, most of which flow through the central area and enter the sea at the south of the island. The Salso flows through parts of Enna and Caltanissetta before entering the Mediterranean Sea at the port of Licata. To the east, there is the Alcantara in the province of Messina, which exits at Giardini Naxos; and the Simeto which exits into the Ionian Sea south of Catania. Other important rivers on the island are to the southwest with Belice and Platani.
Climate
Sicily has a typical Mediterranean climate
with mild and wet winters and hot, dry summers. According to the
Regional Agency for Waste and Water, on 10 August 1999 the weather
station of Catenanuova (EN) recorded a maximum temperature of 48.5 °C (119 °F),
which is the highest temperature ever recorded in Europe by the use of
reliable instruments. The official European record – measured by
minimum/maximum thermometers – is recognized to Athens, Greece, as
communications reported a maximum of 48.0 °C (118 °F) in 1977.
Flora and fauna
Sicily is an often-quoted example of man-made deforestation, which was practiced since Roman times, when the island was made an agricultural region.
This gradually dampened the climate, leading to decline of rainfall and
drying of rivers. This is the reason why the central and southwest
provinces are practically without any forests. In Northern Sicily there are three important forests, near Mount Etna, in the Nebrodi Mountains and in the Bosco della Ficuzza's Natural Reserve near Palermo. The Nebrodi Mountains Regional Park, established 4 August 1993, with its 86,000 hectares (210,000 acres)
is the largest protected natural area of Sicily, here is the largest
forest of Sicily, called forest Caronia, that is also the second name of
Nebrodi Mountains. The Hundred Horse Chestnut (Castagno dei Cento Cavalli), located on Linguaglossa road in Sant'Alfio, on the eastern slope of Mount Etna is the largest and oldest known chestnut tree in the world, dated between 2000 and 4000 years.
Sicily has a good level of faunal biodiversity. Some of the species are Cirneco dell'Etna, Fox, Least Weasel, Pine Marten, Roe Deer, Wild Boar, Crested Porcupine, Hedgehog, Common Toad, Vipera aspis, Golden Eagle, Peregrine Falcon, Hoopoe and Black-winged Stilt. In some cases Sicily is a delimited point of a species range. For example, the subspecies of Hooded Crow (Corvus cornix) occurs in Sicily, Sardinia and Corsica, but no further south.
The Zingaro Natural Reserve is one of the best example of unspoilt coastal wilderness in Sicily.
History
Ancient tribes
The original inhabitants of Sicily were three defined groups of the Ancient peoples of Italy. The most prominent and by far the earliest of these was the Sicani, who were claimed by Thucydides to have arrived from the Iberian Peninsula (perhaps Catalonia). Important historical evidence has been discovered in the form of cave drawings by the Sicani, dated from the end of the Pleistocene epoch, around 8000 BC. The arrival of the first humans is correlated with extinction of dwarf hippos and dwarf elephants. The Elymians, thought to be from the Aegean Sea, were the next tribe to migrate to join the Sicanians on Sicily.
Although there is no evidence of any wars between the tribes, when
the Elymians settled in the north-west corner of the island, the
Sicanians moved across eastwards. From mainland Italy, thought to originally have been Ligures from Liguria, came the Sicels in 1200 BC; forcing the Sicanians to move back across Sicily settling in the middle of the island. Other minor Italic groups who settled in Sicily were the Ausones (Aeolian Islands, Milazzo) and the Morgetes (Morgantina). There are many studies of genetic records which show inhabitants of various parts of the Mediterranean Basin mixed with the oldest inhabitants of Sicily. Among these were Egyptian, Phoenician, and Iberian. The Phoenicians also were early settlers before the Greeks.
Greek and Roman period
About 750 BC, the Greeks began to live in Sicily (Σικελία – Sikelia), establishing many important settlements. The most important colony was Syracuse; other significant ones were Akragas, Selinunte, Gela, Himera, and Zancle. The native Sicani and Sicel peoples were absorbed by the Hellenic culture with relative ease, and the area was part of Magna Graecia along with the rest of southern Italy, which the Greeks had also colonised. Sicily was very fertile, and the introduction of olives and grape vines flourished, creating a great deal of profitable trading; a significant part of Greek culture on the island was that of Greek religion and many temples were built across Sicily, such as the Valley of the Temples at Agrigento.
Politics on the island was intertwined with that of Greece; Syracuse became desired by the Athenians, who during the Peloponnesian War set out on the Sicilian Expedition. Syracuse gained Sparta and Corinth
as allies, and as a result the Athenian expedition was defeated. The
Athenian army and ships were destroyed, with most of the survivors being
sold into slavery.
While Greek Syracuse controlled much of Sicily, there were a few Carthaginian colonies in the far west of the island. When the two cultures began to clash, the Greek-Punic wars erupted, the longest wars of antiquity. Greece began to make peace with the Roman Republic in 262 BC and the Romans sought to annex Sicily as their republic's first province. Rome intervened in the First Punic War, crushing Carthage so that by 242 BC Sicily had become the first Roman province outside of the Italian Peninsula.
The Second Punic War, in which Archimedes
was murdered, saw Carthage trying to take Sicily from the Roman
Republic. They failed and this time Rome was even more unrelenting in
the annihilation of the invaders; during 210 BC the Roman consul M. Valerian, told the Roman Senate that "no Carthaginian remains in Sicily".
Sicily served a level of high importance for the Romans as it acted as the empire's granary. It was divided into two quaestorships, in the form of Syracuse to the east and Lilybaeum to the west. Although under Augustus some attempt was made to introduce the Latin language to the island, Sicily was allowed to remain largely Greek in a cultural sense, rather than a complete cultural Romanisation. When Verres became governor of Sicily, the once prosperous and contented people were put into sharp decline. In 70 BC, noted figure Cicero condemned the misgovernment of Verres in his oration In Verrem.
The island was used as a base of power numerous times, being occupied by slave insurgents during the First and Second Servile Wars, and by Sextus Pompey during the Sicilian revolt. Christianity first appeared in Sicily during the years following AD 200; between this time and AD 313 when Constantine the Great finally lifted the prohibition on Christianity, a significant number of Sicilians became martyrs such as Agatha, Christina, Lucy, Euplius and many more.
Christianity grew rapidly in Sicily during the next two centuries. The
period of history during which Sicily was a Roman province lasted for
around 700 years in total.
Early Middle Ages
Germanic
As the Western Roman Empire was falling apart, a Germanic tribe known as the Vandals took Sicily in AD 440 under the rule of their king Geiseric. The Vandals had already invaded parts of Roman France and Spain, asserting themselves as an important power in western Europe. However, they soon lost these newly acquired possessions to another East Germanic tribe in the form of the Goths. The Ostrogothic conquest of Sicily (and Italy as a whole) under Theodoric the Great
began in 488; although the Goths were Germanic, Theodoric sought to
revive Roman culture and government and allowed freedom of religion.
Byzantine
In the 6th century, the Gothic War took place between the Ostrogoths and the Eastern Roman Empire, also known as the Byzantine Empire. Sicily was the first part of Italy to be taken under general Belisarius who was commissioned by Eastern Emperor Justinian I,
this campaign being part of an ambitious project of restoring the whole
Roman Empire, uniting the Eastern and the Western halves. Sicily was used as a base for the Byzantines to conquer the rest of Italy, with Naples, Rome, Milan and the Ostrogoth capital Ravenna falling within five years. However, a new Ostrogoth king Totila, drove down the Italian peninsula, plundering and conquering Sicily in 550. Totila, in turn, was defeated and killed in the Battle of Taginae by the Byzantine general Narses in 552.
In 535, Emperor Justinian I made Sicily a Byzantine province, and for
the second time in Sicilian history, the Greek language became a
familiar sound across the island. As the power of the Byzantine Empire
waned, Sicily was invaded by the Arab forces of Caliph Uthman in 652. The Arabs failed to make any permanent gains, and returned to Syria after gathering some booty.
Byzantine Emperor Constans II decided to move from the capital Constantinople to Syracuse in Sicily during 660. The following year he launched an assault from Sicily against the Lombard Duchy of Benevento, which then occupied most of southern Italy.
The rumors that the capital of the empire was to be moved to Syracuse,
probably cost Constans his life as he was assassinated in 668. His son Constantine IV succeeded him, a brief usurpation in Sicily by Mezezius
being quickly suppressed by the new emperor. Contemporary accounts
report that the Greek language was widely spoken on the island during
this period.
By 826, Euphemius the commander of the Byzantines killed his wife in Sicily and forced a nun to marry him. Emperor Michael II
caught wind of the matter and ordered that general Constantine end the
marriage and cut off Euphemius' head. Euphemius rose up, killed
Constantine and then occupied Syracuse; he in turn was defeated and
driven out to North Africa.
He offered rule of Sicily over to Ziyadat Allah the Aghlabid Emir of Tunisia in return for a place as a general and safety; a Muslim army of Arabs, Berbers, Spaniards of Al-Andalus (which was then an Islamic region), Cretans and Persians was sent. The conquest was a see-saw
affair and met with much resistance. It took over a century for
Byzantine Sicily to be conquered. Syracuse held out for a long time, Taormina fell in 902, and all of Sicily was eventually conquered by Berbers and Arabs in 965.
Arab Sicily (965–1072)
The Arabs initiated land reforms which in turn, increased productivity and encouraged the growth of smallholdings, a dent to the dominance of the landed estates. The Arabs further improved irrigation systems. A description of Palermo was given by Ibn Hawqal, an Arab merchant
who visited Sicily in 950. A walled suburb called the Al-Kasr (the
palace) is the center of Palermo to this day, with the great Friday
mosque on the site of the later Roman cathedral. The suburb of Al-Khalisa (Kalsa) contained the Sultan's palace, baths, a mosque, government offices, and a private prison. Ibn Hawqal reckoned 7,000 individual butchers trading in 150 shops.
Throughout this reign, revolts by Byzantine Sicilians continuously
occurred, especially in the east, and parts of the island were
re-occupied before being quashed. Agricultural items such as oranges,
lemons, pistachio and sugar cane were brought to Sicily.
Under the Arab rule the island was aligned in three administrative
regions, or "vals", roughly corresponding to the three "points" of
Sicily: Val di Mazara in the west; Val Demone in the northeast; and Val di Noto in the southeast.
As dhimmis, the native Christians (Eastern Orthodox) were allowed freedom of religion, but had to pay a tax, Jizya, and had limitations placed on their occupations, dress and ability to participate in public affairs. The Emirate of Sicily began to fragment as intra-dynastic quarreling fractured the Muslim regime. During this time there was also a minor Jewish presence.
Norman Sicily (1068–1194)
By the 11th century, mainland southern Italian powers hired Norman mercenaries, who conquered Sicily from the Arabs under Roger I. After taking Apulia and Calabria, he occupied Messina with an army of 700 knights. In 1068, Roger was victorious at Misilmeri, but the most crucial battle was the siege of Palermo, which in 1072 led to Sicily coming under Norman control.
Roger died in 1101. He was succeeded by his son, Roger II, who was the first King of Sicily. The elder Roger was married to Adelaide, who ruled until her son came of age in 1112.
The Normans, the Hautevilles, who were descended from the Vikings,
came to appreciate and admire the rich and layered culture in which
they now found themselves. Many Normans in Sicily adopted some of the
attributes of Muslim rulers in dress, language, literature, and even in
the presence of palace Eunuchs and according to some accounts, a harem. Like the multi-ethnic Caliphate of Córdoba,
then only just eclipsed, the court of Roger II became the most luminous
center of culture in the Mediterranean, both from Europe and the Middle
East. This attracted scholars, scientists, poets, artists and artisans
of all kinds. In Norman Sicily, still with heavy Arab influence,
laws were issued in the language of the community to whom they were
addressed: the governance was by the rule of law so there was justice.
Muslims, Jews, Byzantine Greeks, Lombards and Normans worked together to
form a society that historians have said has created some of the most
extraordinary buildings the world has ever seen.
Kingdom of Sicily
Palermo continued on as the capital under the Normans. Roger's son, Roger II of Sicily, having succeeded his brother Simon of Sicily
as Count of Sicily, was ultimately able to raise the status of the
island to a kingdom in 1130, along with his other holdings which
included the Duchy of Apulia and Calabria and the Maltese Islands.
During this period the Kingdom of Sicily was prosperous and politically
powerful, becoming one of the wealthiest states in all of Europe; even
wealthier than the Kingdom of England. Significantly, immigrants from Northern Italy and Campania arrived during this period. Linguistically, the island became Latinised.
In terms of church, it would become completely Roman Catholic;
previously, under the Byzantines, it had been more Eastern Christian.
Germanic Holy Roman Emperor
After a century the Norman Hauteville dynasty died out; the last direct descendant and heir of Roger, Constance, married Emperor Henry VI. This eventually led to the crown of Sicily being passed on to the Hohenstaufen Dynasty, who were Germans from Swabia. The last of the Hohenstaufens was one of the greatest and most cultured men of the Middle Ages, Frederick II, the only son of Constance. His mother's will had asked Pope Innocent III
to undertake the guardianship of her son. The pope gladly accepted the
role, as it allowed him to detach Sicily from the rest of The Holy Roman Empire, thus ending the specter of the Papal States being surrounded. Frederick was four when, at Palermo he was crowned King of Sicily in 1198. Frederick received no systematic education and was allowed to run free in the streets of Palermo.
There he picked up the many languages he heard spoken there, such as
Arabic and Greek, and learned some of the lore of the Jewish community.
He grew familiar with different peoples, garb, customs and faiths, so
that he became unusually tolerant for that period. At age twelve, he
dismissed Innocent's deputy regent and took over the government; at
fifteen he married Constance of Aragon, and began his reclamation of the imperial crown.
Conflict between the Hohenstaufen house and the Papacy led in 1266 to Pope Innocent IV crowning the French prince Charles, count of Anjou and Provence, as the king of both Sicily and Naples.
Sicilian Vespers and Aragonese Sicily
Strong opposition to French officialdom due to mistreatment and
taxation saw the local peoples of Sicily rise up, leading in 1282 to an insurrection known as the War of the Sicilian Vespers, which eventually saw almost the entire French population on the island killed. During the war the Sicilians turned to Peter III of Aragon,
son-in-law of the last Hohenstaufen king, for support after being
rejected by the Pope. Peter gained control of Sicily from the French
though the French retained control of the Kingdom of Naples. A crusade was launched in August 1283 against Peter III and the Aragon Kingdom by Pope Martin IV (a pope from Île-de-France), but it failed. The wars continued until the peace of Caltabellotta in 1302, which saw Peter's son Frederick III recognised as king of the Isle of Sicily, while Charles II was recognised as the king of Naples by Pope Boniface VIII. Sicily was ruled as an independent kingdom by relatives of the kings of Aragon until 1409 and then as part of the Crown of Aragon. In October 1347, in Messina, Sicily, the Black Death first arrived in Europe.
The onset of the Spanish Inquisition in 1492 led to Ferdinand II decreeing the expulsion of all Jews from Sicily.
The island was hit by two very serious earthquakes in the east in 1542
and 1693, just a few years before the latter earthquake the island was
struck by a ferocious plague. The earthquake in 1693 took an estimated 60,000 lives.
There were revolts during the 17th century, but these were quelled with
significant force especially the revolts of Palermo and Messina. Pirate raids discouraged settlement along the coast until the 19th century. The Treaty of Utrecht in 1713 saw Sicily assigned to the House of Savoy, however this period of rule lasted only seven years as it was exchanged for the island of Sardinia with Emperor Charles VI of the Austrian Habsburg Dynasty.
While the Austrians were concerned with the War of the Polish Succession, a Bourbon prince, Charles from Spain was able to conquer Sicily and Naples. At first Sicily was able to remain as an independent kingdom under personal union, while the Bourbons ruled over both from Naples. However, the advent of Napoleon's First French Empire saw Naples taken at the Battle of Campo Tenese and Bonapartist Kings of Naples were instated. Ferdinand III the Bourbon was forced to retreat to Sicily which he was still in complete control of with the help of British naval protection.
Following this Sicily joined the Napoleonic Wars, after the wars were won Sicily and Naples formally merged as the Two Sicilies under the Bourbons. Major revolutionary movements occurred in 1820 and 1848 against the Bourbon government with Sicily seeking independence; the second of which, the 1848 revolution
resulted in a short period of independence for Sicily. Howsoever, in
1849 the Bourbons retook the control of the island and dominated it
until the 1860.
Italian Unification
In 1860, as part of the Risorgimento, the Expedition of the Thousand led by Giuseppe Garibaldi captured Sicily. The conquest started at Marsala,
and native Sicilians joined him in the capture of the southern Italian
peninsula. Garibaldi's march was finally completed with the Siege of Gaeta, where the final Bourbons were expelled and Garibaldi announced his dictatorship in the name of Victor Emmanuel II of Kingdom of Sardinia. Sicily became part of the Kingdom of Sardinia
after a referendum where more than 75% of Sicily voted in favor of the
annexation on October 21, 1860 (but not everyone was allowed to vote).
As a result of the Kingdom of Italy proclamation, Sicily became part of it on March 17, 1861.
After the Italian Unification, although the strong investments made by the Kingdom of Italy in terms of modern infrastructures, the Sicilian (and the wider mezzogiorno) economy remained relatively underdeveloped and this caused an unprecedented wave of emigration. In 1894, organizations of workers and peasants known as the Fasci Siciliani, protested against the bad social and economic conditions of the island but they were suppressed in few days. The Messina earthquake of 28 December 1908 killed over 80,000 people. This period was also characterised by the first contact between the Mafia,
the Sicilian crime syndicate (also known as Cosa Nostra), and the
Italian government. The Mafia's origins are still uncertain but it is
generally accepted that it emerged in the 18th century initially in the
role of private enforcers hired to protect the property of landowners
and merchants from the groups of bandits (briganti) who frequently pillaged the countryside and towns. The battle against the Mafia made by the Kingdom of Italy was controversial and ambiguous; although the Carabinieri (the military police of Italy) and sometimes the Italian army were often involved in terrible fights against the mafia members, their efforts were frequently useless because of the secret cooperation between mafia and local government and also because of the weakness of Italian judicial system.
In 1920, the Fascist regime began a stronger military action against the Mafia led by the prefect Cesare Mori,
known as the "Iron Prefect" because of his iron-fisted campaigns. This
was the first time in which an operation against the Sicilian mafia
ended with considerable success. There was an allied invasion of Sicily
during World War II starting on 10 July 1943. In preparation of the
invasion of Sicily, the Allies revitalised the Mafia to aid them. The
invasion of Sicily contributed to the 25 July crisis; in general the Allied victors were warmly embraced by Sicily.
Italy became a Republic in 1946 and as part of the Constitution of Italy, Sicily was one of the five regions given special status as an autonomous region. Both the partial Italian land reform and special funding from the Italian government's Cassa per il Mezzogiorno (Fund for the South) from 1950 to 1984, helped the Sicilian economy.
During this period the economic and social condition of the island was
generally improved thanks to important investments on infrastructures
like motorways and airports and thanks to the creation of important industrial and commercial areas. In the 1980s the Mafia was deeply weakened by a second important campaign led by the magistrates Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino. Between 1990 and 2005 the unemployment rate fell from about 23% to 11%.
Demographics
Sicily received a variety of different cultures, including the original Italic people, the Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, Saracens, Spaniards, French, and Normans, each contributing to the island's culture, particularly in the areas of cuisine and architecture. Sicilian people tend to most closely associate themselves with other southern Italians,
with whom they share a common history. The island of Sicily has a
population of approximately five million, and there are an additional
ten million people of Sicilian descent around the world, mostly in North America, Argentina, Uruguay, Australia,
and other European and Latin American countries. Like the rest of
southern Italy, immigration to the island is very low compared to other
regions of Italy because workers tend to head to Northern Italy instead, due to better employment and industrial opportunities. The most recent ISTAT figures show around 100 thousand immigrants out of the total five million population (nearly 2 percent of the population); Romanians with more than 17 thousand make up the most immigrants, followed by Tunisians, Moroccans, Sri Lankans, Albanians, and others mostly from Eastern Europe.
Major settlements
In Sicily there are only two metropolitan areas, Palermo that has a Larger Urban Zone of 1,044,169 people and Catania whose LUZ is of 801,280 people. Overall on the island there are fifteen cities and towns which have a population above 50,000 people, these are: Palermo (655,343), Catania (292,855), Messina (242,121), Syracuse (123,248), Marsala (82,812), Gela (77,295), Ragusa (73,756), Trapani (70,642), Vittoria (63,393), Caltanissetta (60,221), Agrigento (59,190), Bagheria (56,421), Modica (55,294), Acireale (53,205) and Mazara del Vallo (51,413).
Tourism
Sicily's sunny, dry climate, scenery, cuisine, history, and
architecture attract many tourists from mainland Italy and abroad. The
tourist season peaks in the summer months, although people visit the
island all year round. Mount Etna, the beaches, the archeological sites, and major cities such as Palermo, Catania, Syracuse and Ragusa are the favourite tourist destinations, but the old town of Taormina and the neighbouring seaside resort of Giardini Naxos draw visitors from all over the world, as do the Aeolian Islands, Erice, Cefalù, Agrigento, the Pelagie Islands and Capo d'Orlando.
The latter features some of the best-preserved temples of the ancient
Greek period. Many Mediterranean cruise ships stop in Sicily, and many
wine tourists also visit the island. Some scenes of famous Hollywood and Cinecittà films were shot in Sicily. This increased the attraction of Sicily as a tourist destination.
UNESCO World Heritage Tentative Sites
- Arab-Norman Palermo and the cathedral churches of Cefalù and Monreale;
- Mount Etna;
- Taormina and Isola Bella;
- Motya and Libeo Island: The Phoenician-Punic Civilization in Italy;
- Scala dei Turchi.
Archeological sites
Because many different cultures settled, dominated or invaded the island, Sicily has a huge variety of archeological sites. Also, some of the most notable and best preserved temples and other structures of the Greek world are located in Sicily. Here is a short list of the major archeological sites:
- Sicels/Sicans/Elymians: Segesta, Eryx, Cava Ispica, Thapsos, Pantalica.
- Greeks: Syracuse, Agrigento, Selinunte, Gela, Kamarina, Himera, Megara Hyblaea, Naxos, Heraclea Minoa,
- Phoenicians: Motya, Soluntum, Marsala.
- Romans: Piazza Armerina, Centuripe, Taormina.
- Arabs: Palermo, Mazara del Vallo.
The excavation and restoration of one of Sicily's best known archeological sites, the Valley of the Temples in Agrigento, was at the direction of the archaeologist Domenico Antonio Lo Faso Pietrasanta, Fifth Duke of Serradifalco, known in archeological circles simply as "Serradifalco". He also oversaw the restoration of ancient sites at Segesta, Selinunte, Siracusa, and Taormina.
Culture
Sicily has long been associated with the arts; many poets, writers, philosophers, intellectuals,
architects and painters have roots on the island. The history of
prestige in this field can be traced back to Greek philosopher Archimedes, a Syracuse native who has gone on to become renowned as one of the greatest mathematicians of all time. Gorgias and Empedocles are two other highly noted early Sicilian-Greek philosophers, while the Syracusan Epicharmus is held to be the inventor of comedy.
Art and Architecture
Terracotta ceramics from the island are well known, the art of ceramics on Sicily goes back to the original ancient peoples named the Sicanians, it was then perfected during the period of Greek colonisation and is still prominent and distinct to this day. Nowadays, Caltagirone
is one of the most important centres in Sicily for the artistic
production of ceramics and terra-cotta sculptures. Famous painters
include Renaissance artist Antonello da Messina, Renato Guttuso and Greek born Giorgio de Chirico who is commonly dubbed the "father of Surrealist art" and founder of the metaphysical art movement. The most noted architects are Filippo Juvarra, one of the most important figures of the Italian Baroque and Ernesto Basile.
Sicilian Baroque
The Sicilian Baroque has a unique architectural identity. Noto, Caltagirone, Catania, Ragusa, Modica, Scicli and particularly Acireale contain some of Italy's best examples of Baroque architecture, carved in the local red sandstone. Noto provides one of the best examples of the Baroque architecture brought to Sicily.
The Baroque style in Sicily was largely confined to buildings erected by the church, and palazzi built as private residences for the Sicilian aristocracy.
The earliest examples of this style in Sicily lacked individuality and
were typically heavy-handed pastiches of buildings seen by Sicilian
visitors to Rome, Florence, and Naples.
However, even at this early stage, provincial architects had begun to
incorporate certain vernacular features of Sicily's older architecture.
By the middle of the 18th century, when Sicily's Baroque architecture
was noticeably different from that of the mainland, it typically
included at least two or three of the following features, coupled with a
unique freedom of design that is more difficult to characterise in
words.
Music and film
Palermo hosts the Teatro Massimo which is the largest opera house in Italy and the third largest in all of Europe. In Catania there is another important opera house, the Teatro Massimo Bellini with 1,200 seats, which is considered one of the best European opera houses for its acoustics. Sicily's composers vary from Vincenzo Bellini, Sigismondo d'India, Giovanni Pacini and Alessandro Scarlatti, to contemporary composers such as Salvatore Sciarrino and Silvio Amato.
Many award winning and acclaimed films of Italian cinema have been filmed in Sicily, amongst the most noted of which are: Visconti's "La Terra Trema" and "Il Gattopardo", Pietro Germi's "Divorzio all'Italiana" and "Sedotta e Abbandonata".
Literature
The golden age of Sicilian poetry began in the early 13th century with the Sicilian School of Giacomo da Lentini, which was highly influential on Italian literature.
Some of the most noted figures among writers and poets are Luigi Pirandello (Nobel laureate, 1934), Salvatore Quasimodo (Nobel laureate, 1959), Giovanni Verga (the father of the Italian Verismo), Luigi Capuana, Federico de Roberto, Leonardo Sciascia, Vitaliano Brancati, Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, Elio Vittorini and Andrea Camilleri. On the political side notable philosophers include: Giovanni Gentile who wrote The Doctrine of Fascism and Julius Evola.
To have seen Italy without having seen Sicily is to not have seen Italy at all, for Sicily is the clue to everything.—Goethe
Language
Today, in Sicily most of people speak only Italian but there are still inhabitants which are bilingual and they speak also Sicilian, a distinct Romance language which has a sizeable vocabulary, with at least 250,000 words.Some of the words are loan words from Greek, Catalan, French, Arabic, Spanish, and other languages. The Sicilian language is also spoken to some extent in Calabria and Apulia; it had a significant influence on the Maltese language. Nevertheless the use of Sicilian is limited to informal contexts and in some cases it is replaced by the so-called "Regional Italian of Sicily", an Italian dialect that is a kind of mix between Italian and Sicilian.
The Sicilian language was an early influence in the development of
the first Italian standard, although its use remained confined to an
intellectual elite. This was a literary language in Sicily created under
the auspices of Frederick II and his court of notaries, or Magna Curia, which, headed by Giacomo da Lentini, also gave birth to the Sicilian School, widely inspired by troubadour literature. Its linguistic and poetic heritage was later assimilated into the Florentine by Dante Alighieri, the father of modern Italian who, in his De Vulgari Eloquentia,
claims that "In effect this vernacular seems to deserve a higher praise
than the others, since all the poetry written by Italians can be called
Sicilian". It is in this language that appeared the first sonnet, whose invention is attributed to Giacomo da Lentini himself.
Science
Catania has one of the four laboratories of the Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare (National Institute for Nuclear Physics) in which there is a cyclotron that uses protons both for nuclear physics experiments and for particle therapy to treat cancer (proton therapy). Noto has one of the largest radio telescopes in Italy that performs geodetic and astronomical observations. There are observatories in Palermo and Catania, managed by the Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica (National Institute for Astrophysics); in particular Catania has two observatories, one of which is situated on Mount Etna at 1800 m.
Syracuse is also an exeperimental centre for the solar technologies through the creation of the project Archimede solar power plant that is the first concentrated solar power plant to use molten salt for heat transfer and storage which is integrated with a combined-cycle gas facility. All the plant is owned and operated by Enel. The touristic town of Erice is also an important science place thanks to the Ettore Majorana Foundation and Centre for Scientific Culture
which embraces 123 Schools from all over the world, covering all
branches of Science, offering courses, seminars, workshops and annual
meetings. It was founded by the physicist Antonino Zichichi in honour of another scientist of the island, Ettore Majorana known for the Majorana equation and Majorana fermions. Sicily's famous scientists include also Stanislao Cannizzaro (chemist), Giovanni Battista Hodierna and Niccolò Cacciatore (astronomers).
Religion
As in most Italian regions, Christian Roman Catholicism
is the most diffused religious denomination in Sicily, and the church
still plays an important role in most of people. Before the invasion of
the Normans, Sicily was predominantly Eastern Orthodox, which few adherents still remain today. There is also a notable small minority of Eastern-rite Byzantine Catholics which has a mixed congregation of ethnic Albanians; it is operated by the Italo-Albanian Catholic Church.
Most still attend church weekly or at least for religious festivals,
and many people get married in churches. However, there was a wide
presence of Jews in Sicily. There has been a Jewish presence in the
insular region for at least 1,400 years and possibly for more than 2,000
years. Some scholars believe that the Sicilian Jewry are partial
ancestors of the Ashkenazi Jews. However, much of the Jewish community faded away when they were expelled from the island in 1492. Since there was also a strong Arab presence in Sicily, the Islamic
faith was also significant for many centuries. Today, due to notably
African and Eastern European immigration to the island, there are also
several other religious minorities, such as Jehovah's Witnesses, Islam,
Judaism, and Sikhism. There are also a fair number of Evangelist Church members and practitioners who reside on the island.
Cuisine
The island has a long history of producing a variety of noted
cuisines and wines, to the extent that Sicily is sometimes nicknamed God's Kitchen because of this.
Every part of Sicily has its speciality (for example Cassata is typical
of Palermo, even if available everywhere in Sicily, as is Granita, a
Catania speciality). The ingredients are typically rich in taste while
remaining affordable to the general public The savory dishes of Sicily are viewed to be healthy, using fresh vegetables and fruits, such as tomatoes, artichokes, olives (including olive oil), citrus, apricots, aubergines, onions, beans, raisins commonly coupled with sea food, freshly caught from the surrounding coastlines, including tuna, sea bream, sea bass, cuttlefish, swordfish, sardines, and others.
Perhaps the most well-known part of Sicilian cuisine is the rich sweet dishes including ice creams and pastries. Cannoli (singular: cannolo), a tube-shaped shell of fried pastry dough filled with a sweet filling usually containing ricotta cheese, is in particular strongly associated with Sicily worldwide. Biancomangiare, biscotti ennesi (cookies native to Enna), braccilatte a Sicilian version of doughnuts, buccellato, ciarduna, pignoli, bruccellati, sesame seed cookies, a sweet confection with sesame seeds and almonds (torrone in Italy) is cubbaita, frutta martorana, cassata, pignolata, granita, cuccidati (a variety of fig cookie; also known as buccellati) and cuccìa are amongst some of the most notable sweet dishes.
Like the cuisine of the rest of southern Italy, pasta plays an important part in Sicilian cuisine, as does rice; for example with arancini. As well as using some other cheeses, Sicily has spawned some of its own, using both cow's and sheep's milk, such as pecorino and caciocavallo. Spices used include saffron, nutmeg, clove, pepper, and cinnamon, which were introduced by the Arabs. Parsley is used abundantly in many dishes. Although Sicilian cuisine is commonly associated with sea food, meat dishes, including goose, lamb, goat, rabbit, and turkey, are also found in Sicily. It was the Normans and Swabians who first introduced a fondness for meat dishes to the island. Some varieties of wine are produced from vines that are relatively unique to the island, such as the Nero d'Avola made near the baroque of town of Noto.
Popular culture
Each town and city has its own patron saint, and the feast days are marked by gaudy processions through the streets with marching bands and displays of fireworks.
Sicilian religious festivals also include the presepe vivente (living nativity scene),
which takes place at Christmas time. Deftly combining religion and
folklore, it is a constructed mock 19th century Sicilian village,
complete with a nativity scene, and has people of all ages dressed in
the costumes of the period, some impersonating the Holy Family, and
others working as artisans of their particular assigned trade. It is
normally concluded on Ephiphany, often highlighted by the arrival of the magi on horseback.
Oral tradition plays a large role in Sicilian folklore. Many stories
passed down from generation to generation involve a character named "Giufà". Anecdotes from this character's life preserve Sicilian culture as well as convey moral messages.
Sicilians also enjoy outdoor festivals, held in the local square or piazza where live music and dancing are performed on stage, and food fairs or sagre
are set up in booths lining the square. These offer various local
specialties, as well as typical Sicilian food. Normally these events are
concluded with fireworks. A noted sagra is the Sagra del Carciofo or Artichoke Festival, which is held annually in Ramacca in April. The most important laic event in Sicily is the carnival. Famous carnivals are in Acireale, Misterbianco, Regalbuto, Paternò, Sciacca, Termini Imerese.
UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage
The Opera dei Pupi (Opera of the Puppets; Sicilian: Òpira dî pupi) is a marionette theatrical representation of Frankish romantic poems such as the Song of Roland or Orlando furioso
that is one of the characteristic cultural traditions of Sicily. The
sides of donkey carts are decorated with intricate, painted scenes;
these same tales are enacted in traditional puppet theaters featuring hand-made marionettes of wood. The opera of the puppets and the Sicilian tradition of cantastorî (singers of tales) are rooted in the Provençal troubadour tradition in Sicily during the reign of Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor, in the first half of the 13th century. A great place to see this marionette art is the puppet theatres of Palermo. The Sicilian marionette theater Opera dei pupi was proclaimed in 2001 and inscribed in 2008 in the UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage Lists.
Today, there are only a few troupes that maintain the tradition. They
often perform for tourists. However, there are no longer the great
historical families of marionnettists, such as the Greco of Palermo; the Canino of Cinisi; Crimi, Trombetta and Napoli of Catania, Pennisi and Macri of Acireale, Profeta of Licata, Gargano and Grasso of Agrigento.
One can, however, admire the richest collection of marionettes at the
Museo Internazionale delle Marionette Antonio Pasqualino and at the
Museo Etnografico Siciliano Giuseppe Pitrè in Palermo. Other beautiful marionettes are on display at the Museo Civico Vagliasindi in Randazzo.
Cycle of Classical Plays at the Greek Theatre Syracuse
Since 1914 the "Istituto Nazionale del Dramma Antico" (National
Institute of Ancient Drama) plans and organizes the performance of
Classical Plays at the Greek Theatre Syracuse
and thanks also to a series of publications and academic researches it
promotes many aspects of the Greek-Roman thought in Sicily and in the
rest of Italy.
The Ancient Greek tragedies are performed at sunset, in Italian (thanks to the translations of famous writers such as Salvatore Quasimodo), without loudspeakers' support because of the still perfect amphitheatre's acoustics and using particular sets and costumes of the Ancient Greek.
Each theatre season begins in May and ends in July, attracting
thousands of spectators from all over the world. Some of the most
illustrious performed tragedies are Antigone, Oedipus the King, Electra, Medea and The Bacchae.
Regional symbols
There are several cultural icons and regional symbols in Sicily, including flags, carts, sights and geographical features.
- The Flag of Sicily, regarded as a regional icon, was first adopted in 1282, after the Sicilian Vespers of Palermo. It is characterized by the presence of the triskelion (trinacria) in its middle, the (winged) head of Medusa and three wheat ears. The three bent legs are supposed to represent the three points of the island Sicily itself. The colours, instead, respectively represent the cities of Palermo and Corleone, at those times an agricultural city of renown. Palermo and Corleone were the first two cities to found a confederation against the Angevin rule. It finally became the official public flag of the Regione Siciliana in January 2000, after the passing of an apposite regional law which advocates its use on public buildings, schools and city halls together with the national Italian flag and the European one.
- Familiar as an ancient symbol of the region, the Triskelion is also featured on Greek coins of Syracuse, such as coins of Agathocles (317–289 BCE).The symbol dates back to when Sicily was part of Magna Graecia, the colonial extension of Greece beyond the Aegean. The triskelion was revived, as a neoclassic — and non-Bourbon — emblem for the new Napoleonic Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, by Joachim Murat in 1808. Pliny the Elder attributes the origin of the triskelion of Sicily to the triangular form of the island, the ancient Trinacria, which consists of three large capes equidistant from each other, pointing in their respective directions, the names of which were Pelorus, Pachynus, and Lilybæum. The three legs of the triskelion are also reminiscent of Hephaestus's three-legged tables that ran by themselves, as mentioned in Iliad xviii.
- Mount Etna is the largest active volcano in Europe and still plagues the island with black ash with its ever current eruptions. It currently stands 3,329 metres (10,922 ft) high, though this varies with summit eruptions; the mountain is 21 m (69 ft) lower now than it was in 1981. It is the highest mountain in Italy south of the Alps. Etna covers an area of 1,190 km2 (459 sq mi) with a basal circumference of 140 km (87 mi). This makes it by far the largest of the three active volcanoes in Italy, being about two and a half times the height of the next largest, Mount Vesuvius. In Greek Mythology, the deadly monster Typhon was trapped under this mountain by Zeus, the god of the sky, and Mount Etna is widely regarded as a cultural symbol and icon of Sicily.
- The Sicilian cart (or carretto Siciliano in Italian and carrettu Sicilianu in Sicilian or carretti (plural) is an ornate, colorful style of horse or donkey-drawn cart native to Sicily. Sicilian wood carver George Petralia states that horses were mostly used in the city and flat plains, while donkeys or mules were more often used in rough terrain for hauling heavy loads. The cart has two wheels and is primarily handmade out of wood with iron components.
- The Sicilian Tascu is a traditional kind of flat cap typically worn by men in Sicily. First used by English nobles during the late 18th century, the tascu began being used in Sicily in the early 20th century as a driving cap, usually worn by car drivers. The tascu is usually made in tweed. Today, the tascu is widely regarded, at least in northern Italy (where it is called a coppola), as a definitive symbol of Sicilian heritage.
References
- Bonacini, Elisa (2007) Il territorio calatino nella Sicilia imperiale e tardoromana (British Archeological Reports, International Series: 1694) Archaeopress, Oxford, England, ISBN 978-1-4073-0136-5, in Italian with abstract in English
- Chaney, Edward. (2000), "British and American Travellers in Sicily from the eighth to the twentieth century", The Evolution of the Grand Tour, Routledge.
- Spadi, Fabio. (2001) "The Bridge on the Strait of Messina: 'Lowering' the Right of Innocent Passage?" International and Comparative Law Quarterly 50: 411 ff.
- "From Rome to Sicily: Plane or Train?" Expert Travel Advice, The New York Times, 7 February 2008 The New York Times.
- "Italy makes record mafia seizure". BBC News. 22 December 2008. Retrieved 23 April 2010.
- "Sicily Mafia restoring US links". Mafia News. Retrieved 23 April 2010.
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Catechism of the Catholic Church
Part One: Profession of Faith, Sect 2 The Creeds, Chapter 1:1:4
CHAPTER ONE
I BELIEVE IN GOD THE FATHER
198
Our profession of faith begins with God, for God is the First and the
Last,Cf. Is 44:6 The beginning and the end of everything. the Credo begins with
God the Father, for the Father is the first divine person of the Most Holy
Trinity; our Creed begins with the creation of heaven and earth, for creation
is the beginning and the foundation of all God's works.
Article 1
"I BELIEVE IN GOD THE FATHER ALMIGHTY, CREATOR OF HEAVEN AND EARTH"
"I BELIEVE IN GOD THE FATHER ALMIGHTY, CREATOR OF HEAVEN AND EARTH"
Paragraph 4.
THE CREATOR
279
"In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth."Gen 1:1
Holy Scripture begins with these solemn words. the profession of faith takes them
up when it confesses that God the Father almighty is "Creator of heaven
and earth" (Apostles' Creed), "of all that is, seen and unseen"
(Nicene Creed). We shall speak first of the Creator, then of creation and
finally of the fall into sin from which Jesus Christ, the Son of God, came to
raise us up again.
280
Creation is the foundation of "all God's saving plans," the
"beginning of the history of salvation"GCD 51 that culminates in
Christ. Conversely, the mystery of Christ casts conclusive light on the mystery
of creation and reveals the end for which "in the beginning God created
the heavens and the earth": from the beginning, God envisaged the glory of
the new creation in Christ.Gen 1:1; cf. ⇒ Rom 8:18-23
281
And so
the readings of the Easter Vigil, the celebration of the new creation in
Christ, begin with the creation account; likewise in the Byzantine liturgy, the
account of creation always constitutes the first reading at the vigils of the
great feasts of the Lord. According to ancient witnesses the instruction of
catechumens for Baptism followed the same itinerary. Egeria, Peregrinatio at loca sancta 46: PLS 1, 1047; St.
Augustine,
De catechizantis rudibus 3, 5: PL 40, 256
De catechizantis rudibus 3, 5: PL 40, 256
I.
CATECHESIS ON CREATION
282
Catechesis on creation is of major importance. It concerns the very foundations
of human and Christian life: for it makes explicit the response of the
Christian faith to the basic question that men of all times have asked
themselves:Cf. NA 2 "Where do we come from?" "Where are we
going?" "What is our origin?" "What is our end?"
"Where does everything that exists come from and where is it going?"
the two questions, the first about the origin and the second about the end, are
inseparable. They are decisive for the meaning and orientation of our life and
actions.
283
The
question about the origins of the world and of man has been the object of many
scientific studies which have splendidly enriched our knowledge of the age and
dimensions of the cosmos, the development of life-forms and the appearance of
man. These discoveries invite us to even greater admiration for the greatness
of the Creator, prompting us to give him thanks for all his works and for the
understanding and wisdom he gives to scholars and researchers. With Solomon
they can say: "It is he who gave me unerring knowledge of what exists, to
know the structure of the world and the activity of the elements. . . for
wisdom, the fashioner of all things, taught me."Wis 7: 17-22
284
The
great interest accorded to these studies is strongly stimulated by a question
of another order, which goes beyond the proper domain of the natural sciences.
It is not only a question of knowing when and how the universe arose
physically, or when man appeared, but rather of discovering the meaning of such
an origin: is the universe governed by chance, blind fate, anonymous necessity,
or by a transcendent, intelligent and good Being called "God"? and if
the world does come from God's wisdom and goodness, why is there evil? Where
does it come from? Who is responsible for it? Is there any liberation from it?
285
Since
the beginning the Christian faith has been challenged by responses to the
question of origins that differ from its own. Ancient religions and cultures
produced many myths concerning origins. Some philosophers have said that
everything is God, that the world is God, or that the development of the world
is the development of God (Pantheism). Others have said that the world is a
necessary emanation arising from God and returning to him. Still others have
affirmed the existence of two eternal principles, Good and Evil, Light and
Darkness, locked, in permanent conflict (Dualism, Manichaeism). According to
some of these conceptions, the world (at least the physical world) is evil, the
product of a fall, and is thus to be rejected or left behind (Gnosticism). Some
admit that the world was made by God, but as by a watch-maker who, once he has
made a watch, abandons it to itself (Deism). Finally, others reject any
transcendent origin for the world, but see it as merely the interplay of matter
that has always existed (Materialism). All these attempts bear witness to the
permanence and universality of the question of origins. This inquiry is
distinctively human.
286
Human intelligence is surely already capable of finding a response to the
question of origins. the existence of God the Creator can be known with
certainty through his works, by the light of human reason,Cf.
Vatican Council I, can. 2 # I: DS 3026 even if
this knowledge is often obscured and disfigured by error. This is why faith comes
to confirm and enlighten reason in the correct understanding of this truth:
"By faith we understand that the world was created by the word of God, so
that what is seen was made out of things which do not appear."Heb 11:3
287
The truth about creation is so important for all of human life that God in his
tenderness wanted to reveal to his People everything that is salutary to know
on the subject. Beyond the natural knowledge that every man can have of the
Creator,Acts 17:24-29; ⇒ Rom
1:19-20 God progressively revealed to Israel the mystery of
creation. He who chose the patriarchs, who brought Israel out of Egypt, and who
by choosing Israel created and formed it, this same God reveals himself as the
One to whom belong all the peoples of the earth, and the whole earth itself; he
is the One who alone "made heaven and earth".Is 43:1;
⇒ Pss 115:15;
⇒ 124:8; ⇒ 134:3
288
Thus the revelation of creation is inseparable from the revelation and forging
of the covenant of the one God with his People. Creation is revealed as the
first step towards this covenant, the first and universal witness to God's
all-powerful love.Gen 15:5;
⇒ Jer 33:19-26 and so, the truth of creation is also expressed
with growing vigour in the message of the prophets, the prayer of the psalms
and the liturgy, and in the wisdom sayings of the Chosen People.Is 44:24;
⇒ Ps 104; ⇒ Prov
8:22-31
289
Among all the Scriptural texts about creation, the first three chapters of
Genesis occupy a unique place. From a literary standpoint these texts may have
had diverse sources. the inspired authors have placed them at the beginning of
Scripture to express in their solemn language the truths of creation - its
origin and its end in God, its order and goodness, the vocation of man, and
finally the drama of sin and the hope of salvation. Read in the light of
Christ, within the unity of Sacred Scripture and in the living Tradition of the
Church, these texts remain the principal source for catechesis on the mysteries
of the "beginning": creation, fall, and promise of salvation.
II. CREATION - WORK OF THE HOLY TRINITY
290
"In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth":Gen 1:1
three things are affirmed in these first words of Scripture: the eternal God
gave a beginning to all that exists outside of himself; he alone is Creator
(the verb "create" - Hebrew bara - always has God for its subject).
the totality of what exists (expressed by the formula "the heavens and the
earth") depends on the One who gives it being.
291
"In the beginning was the Word. . . and the Word was God. . . all things
were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was
made."Jn 1:1-3 The New Testament reveals that God created everything by
the eternal Word, his beloved Son. In him "all things were created, in
heaven and on earth.. . all things were created through him and for him. He is
before all things, and in him all things hold together."Col 1:16-17 The
Church's faith likewise confesses the creative action of the Holy Spirit, the
"giver of life", "the Creator Spirit" (Veni, Creator
Spiritus), the "source of every good".Nicene Creed: DS 150; Hymn Veni, Creator Spiritus; Byzantine Troparion of Pentecost Vespers, "O heavenly King,
Consoler"
292
The Old Testament suggests and the New Covenant reveals the creative action of
the Son and the Spirit, Pss 33 6;
⇒ 104:30; ⇒ Gen 1:2-3 inseparably one with that of the Father.
This creative co-operation is clearly affirmed in the Church's rule of faith:
"There exists but one God. . . he is the Father, God, the Creator, the
author, the giver of order. He made all things by himself, that is, by his Word
and by his Wisdom", "by the Son and the Spirit" who, so to
speak, are "his hands".St.
Irenaeus, Adv. haeres. 2, 30, 9; 4, 20, I: PG 7/1, 822, 1032 Creation is the common work of the
Holy Trinity.
III. "THE WORLD WAS CREATED FOR THE GLORY OF GOD"
293
Scripture and Tradition never cease to teach and celebrate this fundamental
truth: "The world was made for the glory of God."Dei Filius, can. # 5: DS 3025 St.
Bonaventure explains that God created all things "not to increase his
glory, but to show it forth and to communicate it",St. Bonaventure, In II Sent. I, 2, 2, 1 for God has
no other reason for creating than his love and goodness: "Creatures came
into existence when the key of love opened his hand."St. Thomas Aquinas, Sent. II, prol
The First
Vatican Council explains:
This one, true God, of his own
goodness and "almighty power", not for increasing his own beatitude,
nor for attaining his perfection, but in order to manifest this perfection
through the benefits which he bestows on creatures, with absolute freedom of
counsel "and from the beginning of time, made out of nothing both orders
of creatures, the spiritual and the corporeal. . ."Dei Filius I: DS 3002; cf Lateran Council IV (1215): DS 800
294
The glory of God consists in the realization of this manifestation and
communication of his goodness, for which the world was created. God made us
"to be his sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will,
to the praise of his glorious grace",Eph 1:5-6 for "the glory of
God is man fully alive; moreover man's life is the vision of God: if God's
revelation through creation has already obtained life for all the beings that
dwell on earth, how much more will the Word's manifestation of the Father
obtain life for those who see God."St. Irenaeus, Adv. haeres. 4, 20, 7: PG 7/1, 1037 The ultimate purpose of
creation is that God "who is the creator of all things may at last become
"all in all", thus simultaneously assuring his own glory and our beatitude."AG 2; cf. I Cor 15:28
IV. THE MYSTERY OF CREATION
God creates
by wisdom and love
295
We believe that God created the world according to his wisdom. Cf. Wis 9:9 It is
not the product of any necessity whatever, nor of blind fate or chance. We believe
that it proceeds from God's free will; he wanted to make his creatures share in
his being, wisdom and goodness: "For you created all things, and by your
will they existed and were created."Rev 4:11 Therefore the Psalmist
exclaims: "O LORD, how manifold are your works! In wisdom you have made
them all"; and "The LORD is good to all, and his compassion is over
all that he has made."Pss 104:24;
⇒ 145:9 God creates "out of nothing"
296
We believe that God needs no pre-existent thing or any help in order to create,
nor is creation any sort of necessary emanation from the divine
substance.Cf. Dei Filius, cann. 2-4: DS 3022-3024
God creates freely "out of nothing":Lateran Council IV (1215): DS 800; cf. DS 3025
If God had drawn the world
from pre-existent matter, what would be so extraordinary in that? A human
artisan makes from a given material whatever he wants, while God shows his
power by starting from nothing to make all he wants.St. Theophilus of Antioch, Ad Autolycum II, 4: PG 6, 1052
297
Scripture bears witness to faith in creation "out of nothing" as a
truth full of promise and hope. Thus the mother of seven sons encourages them
for martyrdom:
I do not know how you came
into being in my womb. It was not I who gave you life and breath, nor I who set
in order the elements within each of you. Therefore the Creator of the world,
who shaped the beginning of man and devised the origin of all things, will in
his mercy give life and breath back to you again, since you now forget
yourselves for the sake of his laws. . . Look at the heaven and the earth and
see everything that is in them, and recognize that God did not make them out of
things that existed. Thus also mankind comes into being.2 Macc 7:22-21,
28
298
Since God could create everything out of nothing, he can also, through the Holy
Spirit, give spiritual life to sinners by creating a pure heart in
them,Ps 51:12 and bodily life to the dead through the Resurrection. God
"gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not
exist."Rom 4:17 and since God was able to make light shine in darkness
by his Word, he can also give the light of faith to those who do not yet know
him.Gen 1:3; ⇒ 2
Cor 4:6
God creates
an ordered and good world
299
Because God creates through wisdom, his creation is ordered: "You have arranged
all things by measure and number and weight."Wis 11:20 The universe,
created in and by the eternal Word, the "image of the invisible God",
is destined for and addressed to man, himself created in the "image of
God" and called to a personal relationship with God.Col 1:15, ⇒ Gen
1:26 Our human
understanding, which shares in the light of the divine intellect, can
understand what God tells us by means of his creation, though not without great
effort and only in a spirit of humility and respect before the Creator and his
work.Ps 19:2-5;
⇒ Job 42:3 Because creation comes forth from God's goodness, it shares in
that goodness - "and God saw that it was good. . . very
good"Gen 1:4, ⇒ 10,
⇒ 12, ⇒ 18,
⇒ 21, ⇒ 31- for God willed creation as a gift addressed to man, an
inheritance destined for and entrusted to him. On many occasions the Church has
had to defend the goodness of creation, including that of the physical
world.Cf. DS 286;
455-463; 800; 1333; 3002
God
transcends creation and is present to it
300
God is infinitely greater than all his works: "You have set your glory
above the heavens."Ps 8:1; cf. ⇒ Sir
43:28 Indeed, God's "greatness is
unsearchable".Ps 145:3 But because he is the free and sovereign
Creator, the first cause of all that exists, God is present to his creatures'
inmost being: "In him we live and move and have our
being."Acts 17:28 In the words of St. Augustine, God is "higher than
my highest and more inward than my innermost self".St. Augustine, Conf: 3, 6, 11: PL 32, 688
God upholds
and sustains creation
301
With creation, God does not abandon his creatures to themselves. He not only
gives them being and existence, but also, and at every moment, upholds and
sustains them in being, enables them to act and brings them to their final end.
Recognizing this utter dependence with respect to the Creator is a source of
wisdom and freedom, of joy and confidence:
For you love all things that
exist, and detest none of the things that you have made; for you would not have
made anything if you had hated it. How would anything have endured, if you had
not willed it? Or how would anything not called forth by you have been
preserved? You spare all things, for they are yours, O Lord, you who love the
living.Wis 11:24-26
V. GOD
CARRIES OUT HIS PLAN: DIVINE PROVIDENCE
302
Creation has its own goodness and proper perfection, but it did not spring
forth complete from the hands of the Creator. the universe was created "in
a state of journeying" (in statu viae) toward an ultimate perfection yet
to be attained, to which God has destined it. We call "divine
providence" the dispositions by which God guides his creation toward this
perfection:
By his providence God protects
and governs all things which he has made, "reaching mightily from one end
of the earth to the other, and ordering all things well". For "all are
open and laid bare to his eyes", even those things which are yet to come
into existence through the free action of creatures.Vatican Council I, Dei Filius I: DS 3003; cf. Wis 8:1;
⇒ Heb 4:13
303
The witness of Scripture is unanimous that the solicitude of divine providence
is concrete and immediate; God cares for all, from the least things to the
great events of the world and its history. the sacred books powerfully affirm
God's absolute sovereignty over the course of events: "Our God is in the
heavens; he does whatever he pleases."Ps 115:3 and so it is with
Christ, "who opens and no one shall shut, who shuts and no one
opens".Rev 3:7 As the book of Proverbs states: "Many are the
plans in the mind of a man, but it is the purpose of the LORD that will be
established."Prov 19:21
304
And so
we see the Holy Spirit, the principal author of Sacred Scripture, often
attributing actions to God without mentioning any secondary causes. This is not
a "primitive mode of speech", but a profound way of recalling God's
primacy and absolute Lordship over history and the world,Is 10:5-15;
⇒ 45:51; Dt 32:39; ⇒ Sir
11:14 and so of
educating his people to trust in him. the prayer of the Psalms is the great
school of this trust. Pss 22;
⇒ 32;
⇒ 35;
⇒ 103;
⇒ 138; et al
305
Jesus asks for childlike abandonment to the providence of our heavenly Father
who takes care of his children's smallest needs: "Therefore do not be
anxious, saying, "What shall we eat?" or "What shall we
drink?". . . Your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. But seek
first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things shall be yours as
well."Mt 6:31-33; cf
⇒ 10:29-31
Providence
and secondary causes
306
God is the sovereign master of his plan. But to carry it out he also makes use
of his creatures' co-operation. This use is not a sign of weakness, but rather
a token of almighty God's greatness and goodness. For God grants his creatures
not only their existence, but also the dignity of acting on their own, of being
causes and principles for each other, and thus of co-operating in the accomplishment
of his plan.
307
To human beings God even gives the power of freely sharing in his providence by
entrusting them with the responsibility of "subduing" the earth and
having dominion over it.Gen 1:26-28 God thus enables men to be intelligent and
free causes in order to complete the work of creation, to perfect its harmony
for their own good and that of their neighbours. Though often unconscious
collaborators with God's will, they can also enter deliberately into the divine
plan by their actions, their prayers and their sufferings.Col 1:24 They then
fully become "God's fellow workers" and co-workers for his
kingdom.I Cor
3:9; I Th 3:2; ⇒ Col 4:11
308
The truth that God is at work in all the actions of his creatures is
inseparable from faith in God the Creator. God is the first cause who operates
in and through secondary causes: "For God is at work in you, both to will
and to work for his good pleasure."Phil 2:13; cf. ⇒ I Cor 12:6 Far from diminishing the
creature's dignity, this truth enhances it. Drawn from nothingness by God's
power, wisdom and goodness, it can do nothing if it is cut off from its origin,
for "without a Creator the creature vanishes."GS 36 # 3 Still less
can a creature attain its ultimate end without the help of God's grace.Mt 19:26; ⇒ Jn
15:5; ⇒ 14:13
Providence
and the scandal of evil
309
If God the Father almighty, the Creator of the ordered and good world, cares
for all his creatures, why does evil exist? To this question, as pressing as it
is unavoidable and as painful as it is mysterious, no quick answer will
suffice. Only Christian faith as a whole constitutes the answer to this
question: the goodness of creation, the drama of sin and the patient love of
God who comes to meet man by his covenants, the redemptive Incarnation of his
Son, his gift of the Spirit, his gathering of the Church, the power of the
sacraments and his call to a blessed life to which free creatures are invited
to consent in advance, but from which, by a terrible mystery, they can also
turn away in advance. There is not a single aspect of the Christian message
that is not in part an answer to the question of evil.
310
But why did God not create a world so perfect that no evil could exist in it?
With infinite power God could always create something better.St. Thomas Aquinas, STh I, 25, 6 But
with infinite wisdom and goodness God freely willed to create a world "in
a state of journeying" towards its ultimate perfection. In God's plan this
process of becoming involves the appearance of certain beings and the disappearance
of others, the existence of the more perfect alongside the less perfect, both
constructive and destructive forces of nature. With physical good there exists
also physical evil as long as creation has not reached perfection.St. Thomas Aquinas, SCG III, 71
311
Angels and men, as intelligent and free creatures, have to journey toward their
ultimate destinies by their free choice and preferential love. They can
therefore go astray. Indeed, they have sinned. Thus has moral evil,
incommensurably more harmful than physical evil, entered the world. God is in
no way, directly or indirectly, the cause of moral evil.St. Augustine, De libero arbitrio I, 1, 2: PL 32, 1221- 1223;
St.
Thomas Aquinas, STh I-II, 79, 1.6
Thomas Aquinas, STh I-II, 79, 1.6
He permits
it, however, because he respects the freedom of his creatures and,
mysteriously, knows how to derive good from it:
For almighty God. . ., because
he is supremely good, would never allow any evil whatsoever to exist in his
works if he were not so all-powerful and good as to cause good to emerge from
evil itself.St. Augustine,
Enchiridion II, 3: PL 40, 236
312
In time we can discover that God in his almighty providence can bring a good
from the consequences of an evil, even a moral evil, caused by his creatures:
"It was not you", said Joseph to his brothers, "who sent me
here, but God. . . You meant evil against me; but God meant it for good, to bring
it about that many people should be kept alive."Gen 45:8;
⇒ 50:20; cf. Tob 2:12 (Vulgate) From the
greatest moral evil ever committed - the rejection and murder of God's only
Son, caused by the sins of all men - God, by his grace that "abounded all
the more",Rom 5:20 brought the greatest of goods: the glorification of
Christ and our redemption. But for all that, evil never becomes a good.
313
"We know that in everything God works for good for those who love
him."Rom 8:28 The constant witness of the saints confirms this truth:
St. Catherine of Siena said to
"those who are scandalized and rebel against what happens to them":
"Everything comes from love, all is ordained for the salvation of man, God
does nothing without this goal in mind."St.
Catherine of Siena, Dialogue IV, 138 "On Divine Providence
St. Thomas More, shortly before his martyrdom, consoled his daughter: "Nothing can come but that that God wills. and I make me very sure that whatsoever that be, seem it never so bad in sight, it shall indeed be the best."182The Correspondence of Sir Thomas More, ed. Elizabeth F. Rogers
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1947), letter 206, lines 661-663
Dame Julian of Norwich: "Here I was taught by the grace of God that I should steadfastly keep me in the faith... and that at the same time I should take my stand on and earnestly believe in what our Lord shewed in this time - that 'all manner (of) thing shall be well.'Julian of Norwich, the Revelations of Divine Love, tr. James Walshe
SJ (London: 1961), ch. 32, 99-100
St. Thomas More, shortly before his martyrdom, consoled his daughter: "Nothing can come but that that God wills. and I make me very sure that whatsoever that be, seem it never so bad in sight, it shall indeed be the best."182The Correspondence of Sir Thomas More, ed. Elizabeth F. Rogers
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1947), letter 206, lines 661-663
Dame Julian of Norwich: "Here I was taught by the grace of God that I should steadfastly keep me in the faith... and that at the same time I should take my stand on and earnestly believe in what our Lord shewed in this time - that 'all manner (of) thing shall be well.'Julian of Norwich, the Revelations of Divine Love, tr. James Walshe
SJ (London: 1961), ch. 32, 99-100
314
We firmly believe that God is master of the world and of its history. But the
ways of his providence are often unknown to us. Only at the end, when our
partial knowledge ceases, when we see God "face to face",Cor 13:12
will we fully know the ways by which - even through the dramas of evil and sin
- God has guided his creation to that definitive sabbath rest Gen
2:2 for
which he created heaven and earth.
IN BRIEF
315 In the creation of the world
and of man, God gave the first and universal witness to his almighty love and
his wisdom, the first proclamation of the "plan of his loving
goodness", which finds its goal in the new creation in Christ.
316 Though the work of creation
is attributed to the Father in particular, it is equally a truth of faith that
the Father, Son and Holy Spirit together are the one, indivisible principle of
creation.
317 God alone created the
universe, freely, directly and without any help.
318 No creature has the
infinite power necessary to "create" in the proper sense of the word,
that is, to produce and give being to that which had in no way possessed it to
call into existence "out of nothing") (cf DS 3624).
319 God created the world to
show forth and communicate his glory. That his creatures should share in his
truth, goodness and beauty - this is the glory for which God created them.
320 God created the universe
and keeps it in existence by his Word, the Son "upholding the universe by
his word of power" (⇒ Heb 1:3), and by his Creator
Spirit, the giver of life.
321 Divine providence
consists of the dispositions by which God guides all his creatures with wisdom
and love to their ultimate end.
322 Christ invites us to
filial trust in the providence of our heavenly Father (cf
⇒ Mt 6:26-34), and St. Peter the apostle
repeats: "Cast all your anxieties on him, for he cares about you"
(⇒ I Pt 5:7; cf. ⇒ Ps
55:23).
323 Divine providence works
also through the actions of creatures. To human beings God grants the ability
to co-operate freely with his plans.
324 The fact that God permits
physical and even moral evil is a mystery that God illuminates by his Son Jesus
Christ who died and rose to vanquish evil. Faith gives us the certainty that
God would not permit an evil if he did not cause a good to come from that very
evil, by ways that we shall fully know only in eternal life.
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