Category Archives: Sant’Antonio Abate

Jan 17 2016
Sant'Antonio Abate

The Feast (literally) of Sant’Antonio Abate

AntonioAbate

It is the feast today of St. Anthony the Abbot, Sant’Antonio Abate in Italy, where this day is a very big deal. . . mainly for the food. It is the traditional day for dispatching the family pig, which is not a very good day for the pig, of course, but which brings on a feast of epic proportions revolving around dishes whose main ingredient is pork. It is a day of salting, curing, and smoking, to make sausages and salame and prosciutto and pan con i ciccioli––bread baked with pork cracklings––which is something I loved as a kid but which we rarely eat nowadays in our more health conscious world.

This is not the guy most of us think of when we hear the name “St. Anthony:” that Antonio––the one that is the subject of so many statues outside homes in Italian neighborhoods–– is St. Anthony of Padua. He lived about a thousand years after St. Anthony the Abbot, and his feast day is June 13. But back to the food. The fact that St. Anthony the Abbot’s feast day is associated with so much feasting is a bit of a paradox, for Anthony himself was an ascetic who disposed of all his worldly possessions so he could head out to the desert of Egypt to live his life in simple prayer and contemplation. He lived mostly on bread. The traditions in Italy that have arisen for his day probably have more to do with timing that with anything at all about Sant’Antonio himself, for winter is the traditional time to butcher animals and prepare their meat: better this, thinning their numbers now, than to risk their starvation in the cold hard months of winter yet to come.

On the eve of Sant’Antonio, which was last night, there are many great bonfires throughout Italy, especially at crossroads and in church piazze, to warm the cold winter’s night. And while St. Anthony’s Day may not be a very good day to be a pig in Italy, still, St. Anthony the Abbot is a patron saint of domestic animals, and as their protector, he is always depicted with a pig at his side. He also happens to be a patron saint of bakers (perhaps the same bakers who came up with pan con i ciccioli). This, no doubt, because he ate so much bread.

 

Image: Today’s Convivio Book of Days image comes with a built in little game: Find the pig. Click on the image to make it larger, then look for the disjunction here in “Virgin and Child with St. Anthony the Abbot and a Donor” by Hans Memling. Oil on panel, 1472. National Gallery of Canada, [Public domain] via Wikimedia Commons.

 

Feb 15 2014
Carnevale, Lent, New Year, Sant'Antonio Abate

Carne Levamen

One Perfect Valencia

Carnival, or Carnevale in Italian, has its official beginning today in Venice. Carnevale is the last great indulgence before Lent enters the scene, enrobed as it is in purple and somberness. There are no set dates for the beginning of the Carnevale season. There are places in Italy where it begins as soon as Epiphany is done, and others where it begins with the sausages and salame of January’s Feast of Sant’Antonio Abate. Carnevale is, after all, the annual using up of the provisions of winter. Traditionally, the supply of meat would be finished during Carnevale until spring, and this is the origin of the festival’s name, for Carnevale means “good-bye to the flesh” (carne levamen in Latin). Nowadays most observers pass on meat on Fridays, but Lent once was a time when no meat at all was eaten, for the full forty days, and so it truly was a good-bye to the flesh.

Carnevale has its connections to celebrations of the new year, which, for the early Romans, was the First of March. The Romans were the ones who eventually moved the start of the year to January 1, but old habits die hard, and many new year traditions, including the wearing of masks, carried over across the ages. The old year was dying, the new one being born. Masks provided anonymity in a festival of excess, and masks are still a big part of Carnevale celebrations, especially in Venice.

There is also a great tradition of mock battles throughout Italy for Carnevale, with the most famous in the city of Ivrea, where trainloads of blood oranges from Sicily are brought in each year as weaponry. It is said that of all the tons of oranges the people of Ivrea buy each year for Carnevale, not a single one is eaten or squeezed for juice. Instead, they are used as missiles in battles across the city over the course of three days of Carnevale. It is a battle based on historical events––a 12th century revolt against two tyrannical rulers who had imposed taxes on marriage and on the milling of grain. The revolt began on the wedding night of a local miller’s daughter, Violetta, by Violetta herself, and it carried on for three days before freedom was won.

During these three days of Carnevale, the windows of the entire city of Ivrea are boarded up to protect against the onslaught of oranges. The battles are fierce, oranges flying through the air, aimed at anyone who is not wearing a special red cap of neutrality. People emerge with bruises and black eyes, but the fun is undeniable. The city is said to smell wonderful, as the perfume of countless oranges wafts through the air.

If it seems excessive, well… it is. But this is the point of Carnevale. It is no time to be frugal, not with meat, nor oranges, nor celebration, nor emotion.

 

Photograph, “One Perfect Valencia,” is provided courtesy of Convivio friend Paula Marie Gourley. She photographed the orange in a California orange grove. There is an ages-old battle amongst orange lovers, too: California oranges tend to be bigger and thicker skinned than those of their Florida brethren, but Florida oranges, subject to our rainier climate while they grow, are definitely juicier. I imagine the oranges of Sicily are similar to California ones, since it too is a drier climate. But I imagine the people of Ivrea would be REALLY impressed by the amazing splatter properties of a Florida orange.

 

Jan 17 2014
Sant'Antonio Abate, St. Agnes Eve, St. Sebastian

Three Saints’ Days

SantAntonio

We celebrate three notable saints’ days in mid-January, beginning today with the feast of St. Anthony the Abbot, Sant’Antonio Abate in Italy, where this day is a very big deal… mainly for the food. It is the traditional day for dispatching the family pig, which is not a very good day for the pig, of course, but which brings on a feast of epic proportions revolving around dishes whose main ingredient is pork. It is a day of salting, curing, and smoking, to make sausages and salame and prosciutto and pan con i ciccioli––bread baked with pork cracklings––which I loved as a kid but which we rarely eat nowadays in our more health conscious world.

On the eve of Sant’Antonio, which was last night, there are many great bonfires throughout Italy, especially at crossroads and in church piazze, to warm the cold winter’s night. And while St. Anthony’s Day may not be a very good day to be a pig in Italy, still, St. Anthony the Abbot is a patron saint of domestic animals, and as their protector, he is always depicted with a pig at his side. He also happens to be a patron saint of bakers (perhaps the bakers who came up with pan con i ciccioli).

Three days following, on January 20, brings the feast of St. Sebastian, and while there are no particular traditions that I know of associated with St. Sebastian, it is worth noting that he is one of the saints most often depicted in art, usually as a very handsome youth, practically naked and bound to a tree, shot through with arrows. He was a favorite subject of Renaissance painters, and  artists have been fascinated with St. Sebastian ever since.

The following evening, January 21, is the Eve of St. Agnes. There is an old tradition related to St. Agnes Eve in which young girls go to bed without supper, not as a punishment but rather so as to dream of their future husbands. The poet John Keats wrote about this legend in his poem, “The Eve of St. Agnes”:

. . . how, upon St. Agnes’ Eve,
Young virgins might have visions of delight,
And soft adorings from their loves receive
Upon the honey’d middle of the night.

I love that last line. Helen Barolini, in her book Festa, which I was lucky enough to stumble upon at a library book sale and which has become one of my favorite books, also writes about the Eve of St. Agnes. Helen’s husband was the writer Antonio Barolini, and for her, the night and its customs are more personal. What she wrote in her book about this night always moves me, and I hope she wouldn’t mind my closing today with her words, describing her fascination with St. Agnes Eve when she was a young girl:

And though I fasted and hoped to see my intended as I slept on that eve, I never did picture Antonio Barolini in my imagination or in my dreams. But now I think how strange it is that his death came on January 21, Saint Agnes Eve.

 

Image: Sant’Antonio Abate with his pig.