The Mad Mass

In Italy the rites of Holy Week and Passion have always been some of the most significant and well represented traditions of villages and towns. In Vico del Gargano, the most important religious ceremony is held on Good Friday.
Early in the morning the women go to the Mother Church, where they visit the Addolorata (Madonna) wrapped in a precious fabric from Spain and worked by the nimble hands of the place. Singing ‘At your feet, o beautiful Mother’ accompany her in procession, making her carry on the shoulder on a wooden canopy by some men.
At the same time men of all ages, belonging to the five ancient confraternities of the country, wearing their white linen shirts, blessed and unblemished, adorned with precious lace, with a cross-shaped cord tied at the head with a white handkerchief with a crown of thorns on the brambles reaching the church of their own confraternity. From the five churches, another five processions begin which, along the historic center, visit the “Sepolcri” of the eleven churches in the town. The eleven churches are open from the previous day illuminated with the light of a candelabrum, here called herice, composed of fifteen candles that will be extinguished one after another until it gets dark.
Each procession has its “Madonna”, each has its own Christ and each sings “the Miserere mei Deus”. A confraternity will also bring with it the mysteries of the passion, and unlike the others it will have a brown coat, a white girdle, a light mozzetta.
After the tour, at about three in the afternoon, they gather in the church of Purgatory, Word will be made in the Three Hours of Agony, with the liturgical commentary on the seven words of Jesus on the Cross. But before the Word the “presantificati” mass is held, also called “mad”, since it is celebrated with the hosts consecrated the day before because it is a day in which there is no more order even in the ordinary liturgical rite. Towards evening there is another procession for Calvary, in the Carmine district, a space where five crosses are arranged, like the five wounds of Jesus Christ. For the Calvary the procession is unique, the confraternities unite always singing Miserere in a single procession, separated only by a wooden cross with the scourges, the pincer, the spear, the crown of thorns, the hammer, the sheet. The confraternity of San Pietro opens, followed by the Confraternity of the Discalced Carmelites, the Arciconfraternita del Santissimo Sacramento, the Confraternity of Prayer and Death and closes the Confraternity of the Cinturiati of Sant’Agostino and Santa Monica.
At Calvary, the archpriest in front of each cross recites the prayers and an ancient verse (“I adore you or Holy Cross, hard wood of my Lord; I adore you with the voice, I adore you, Holy Cross”). Thus symbolically Our Lady of Sorrows is reunited with her Son. The people, first in a state of devoted prostration, explode with joy and sing: “Long live the Cross, source of glory”.
Subsequently the procession of the return begins: first a single procession, below the Castle, splits: one with the Addolorata for the Mother Church, the other with the Dead Christ for the church of San Giuseppe. The Miserere is always intoned.