Statue, penitenti e corpi immobili nei riti settennali di Guardia Sanframondi

Abstract

At Guardia Sanframondi(BN), every seven years, the Madonna Assunta is celebrated with a very complex religious ritual that “stages” the corporal mortification of penitents; the immobile bodies of the figures engaged in representing episodes taken from the Bible and from the biographies of the saints; religious songs, composed for the occasion, performed by the choirs of the four districts of the town. The entire traditional ritual, investigated and interpreted ethnographically, seems to constitute a sort of “social drama” (à lamanière deVictor Turner), a critical-reflective performance that stages the conflicting modalities of the construction, representation and transmission of the local cultural identity but also the attempt of their symbolic resolution.