Materialising Heimat in the Mediterranean. The Reliquary of Saint Angelo and Carmelite Belonging between Jerusalem and Sicily
This article seeks to conceptualise Heimat not as a stable place of origin, but as a historically contingent and materially mediated claim to belonging. Through the narratives, rituals, and artefacts that surround the cult of Saint Angelo in Licata, Heimat emerges as something that has historically been articulated by reference to movement and displacement across the Mediterranean. In this sense, Heimat appears less as an inherited locality than as a devotional construct which is continually renewed through practice.
by John Aspinwall, subproject A04
Every year, on 5 May and on the Sunday following the Feast of the Assumption on 15 August, an ornate silver reliquary – purportedly containing the relics of a Carmelite friar, Saint Angelo of Jerusalem – is carried out from the Santuario di Sant'Angelo in Licata, Sicily. It is placed on a bier under a damask canopy covered in small silver bells which is illuminated by irregular clusters of electric lighting. It is then lifted by barefoot sailors and paraded through the city where the saint’s relics are carried into the sea to cries of “Saint Angelo is our protector, calm the wind and bring abundance to the sea” (Santangilu è lu nostru prutitturi, carma lu ventu e abbunanza lu mari).
From here, the procession continues to the church of Santa Maria La Nuova via the so-called “run of the urn” (corsa dell’urna). The sailors, followed by barefoot children in white clothes carrying flaming torches, sprint with the bier to the church where the priest blesses the relics amid drumbeats and cries of “What, are we deaf and mute? Long live Saint Angelo” (E cchi semmu surdi e muti, viva Sant’Angilu). Four candles are then lit around the saint as the faithful chant that “Saint Angelo is in the middle surrounded by candles” (Santangilu n’menzu intorci per i ceri) and the sailors run with the relics to the Carmelite church. Retracing the route, to shouts of “Long live Saint Angelo” (Viva Sant’Angelo) the relic is then returned to its chapel.1
What unfolds in Licata is more than a devotional spectacle: the biannual celebration of Angelo functions as a performative enactment of communal belonging that continually situates the town within a sacred and interconnected Mediterranean geography. This ritual can trace its origins to a highly stylised and historically dubious hagiography, the Vita of Angelo which is attributed to the fictitious “Enoch, patriarch of Jerusalem”.2 The narrative most likely dates to the fifteenth century,3 and may have been composed as part of broader Carmelite efforts to stress their claim to a Heimat in the Kingdom of Jerusalem, notwithstanding their long-standing presence in the Latin West after the fall of Acre in 1291.
The Vita can be summarised as follows. It describes how Angelo and his brother John were born in Jerusalem following the miraculous conversion of his Jewish parents, Jesse and Maria. As divinely chosen figures, they were then raised and educated by the patriarch of Jerusalem, Nicodemus, before entering the Carmelite life. At the Carmelite monastery on Mount Carmel, Angelo emerged as an ascetic miracle-worker, who was granted a vision of Christ. In this encounter, Christ prophesised the collapse of Latin rule in the Eastern Mediterranean to the Muslims, who are cast as a divinely sanctioned punishment for Christian sin. As such, he commissioned Angelo to safeguard eastern relics by carrying them westward to Italy. There, Angelo was instructed to preach against moral corruption—above all in Sicily—fully aware that this mission would culminate in his martyrdom at the hands of an incestuous nobleman.
The narrative’s portrayal of the sea as a space which was capable of facilitating salvation through the fulfilment of divine plans immediately shapes the account of Angelo’s subsequent journey: as soon as Angelo’s ship neared Sicily it was attacked by Muslim pirates. Angelo’s intervention saw fire descend from heaven: a number of the raiders were incinerated, while others struck blind – their sight was then restored when they agreed to be baptised. On his arrival in Rome, Angelo preached at the Lateran before the founders of the Fransicans and the Dominicans, St. Francis and St. Dominic; afterwards he cured lepers at the basilica of Santa Sabina. In Sicily, Angelo achieved a catalogue of miracles: at the baths of Cefalù he restored lepers whose skin, had come to resemble “the flesh of roasted swine,”4 and in Palermo his preaching was credited with astonishing conversions among Jews and Muslims, widespread penitence among Christians, and at Agrigento, further miracles confirmed both his sanctity and the urgency of his reforming message.5 Angelo was finally martyred after he denounced a nobleman, Berengar, who had lived incestuously with his own sister for twelve years.
From this foundational text, a number of popular traditions emerged which linked Angelo to a series of miraculous events. In the medieval period, as his bones were exhumed from his tomb, a spring burst forth from the ground upon which an oil floated which had miraculous healing properties. According to “a most ancient and very well-known report... from ancient tradition”6 it was this event which led the citizens of Licata to place Angelo’s relics in a wooden reliquary, lined with red silk, in 1468.7 Hereafter, he habitually granted miracles, and also directly appeared to the people of Licata on two occasions: in 1553 he forced a Turkish raiding fleet to withdraw from an attack on Licata,8 and then saved the city from the plague in 1625.9
It was with an eye to such events that
„the citizens of Licata, desiring to honour the saint more fittingly, and mindful of the benefits received in their own day, resolved to commission a new and more splendid silver reliquary, so that the relics of so great a martyr might be venerated with greater honour and reverence.“
Thus, a certain Lucio de Anizi of Ragusa was commissioned to craft the reliquary between 1615 and 1623. The reliquary’s association with Angelo’s vita is visually reinforced to the faithful by a series of engraved reliefs which run around the casket. These stress the saint’s connections to both the eastern and central Mediterranean through key events in the saint’s life. Herein, a special emphasis is placed on Angelo’s movement between these coasts by way of the sea, and a central panel prominently recalls the saint’s encounter with the Muslim pirates. In this way, the artefact seeks to orientate the figure of Angelo, not only by reference to religious life in Sicily or the eastern Mediterranean, but through his mobility between these spheres. The Mediterranean is thus envisaged as a liminal space, whose coastlines are habitually shaped and sustained by processes of human exchange.
The reliquary, therefore, does not simply house Angelo’s remains; it is a vessel which gives material form to an idea of Heimat whose sense of belonging is not tied to a single place, but is rather understood within a mobile, sacral, itinerary which draws together a network of cities, seas, and peoples within a dynamic trans-Mediterranean network. Indeed – echoing how the saint’s relics are ritually carried into the waves by the citizens of modern Licata – as the silver reliquary was first placed upon the high altar in 1623, this association was clearly understood and expressed by the people of Licata who chanted: “Rejoice, holy Jerusalem, consecrated by the blood of Christ! // Rejoice, city of Licata, enriched by the relics of Saint Angelo!”.11
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1 Such traditions have been discussed in: Ludovico Saggi, S. Angelo di Sicilia: Studio sulla vita, devozione, folklore, Textus et. Studia Historica Carmelitana, 6 (Rome, 1962).
2 Saggi, S. Angelo, pp. 117–119; Andrew Jotischky, The Carmelites and Antiquity: Mendicants and their Pasts in the Middle Ages The Carmelites and Antiquity: Mendicants and their Pasts in the Middle Ages (Oxford, 2002), pp. 196–197.
3 For example, the text refers to the conquest of the eastern Mediterranean by the Othomani, a reference which alludes to the Ottoman advance through Greece and the Balkans, and probably the Fall of Constantinople in 1453: ‘De vita San Angeli Carmelitae’, in: Jean Bolland, Godefrido Henschenio, and Daniele Papebrochio (eds), Acta Sanctorum quotquot toto orbe coluntur, vel a catholicis scriptoribus celebrantur, quae ex Latini set Graecis, aliarumque gentium antiquis, 68 vols (Antwerp/ Brussels, 1643–1794, repr. Paris/ Rome, 1863–1870), vol. X, par. 2 (1680, repr. 1866), p. 35.
4 quae similes porcorum assatorum carnibus videbantur: ‘De vita San Angeli Carmelitae’, p. 40.
5 ‘De vita San Angeli Carmelitae’, pp. 10–57.
6 Vetustissima et notissima fama est, ex traditione antiquorum: ‘De S. Angelo martyre presbytero ex Ordine Carmelitarum Leocatae in Sicilia’, Acta Sanctorum, vol. X, par. 2, p. 60.
7 ‘De S. Angelo martyre presbytero’, Acta Sanctorum, p. XX.
8 Ludovico Saggi, ‘Angelo di Sicilia, santo’, in: Alessandro Ghisalberti et al. (eds), Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, (Rome, 1960–), vol. 3 (1961), pp. 235–237.
9 ‘De S. Angelo martyre presbytero’, pp. 65–67.
10 Praesentes vero cives, prae oculis habentes beneficia hodierna... volentes in minori parte tali tantoque Martyri retribuere, ut eius Reliquiae maiori honore et veneratione venerentur, decreverunt: ‘De S. Angelo martyre presbytero’, p. 60.
11 Gaude Jerusalem sancta, Christi sanguine sacrata // Gaude civitas Leocatae sancti Martyris ditata Angeli Reliquiis: ‘De S. Angelo martyre presbytero’, p. 61.
Kommentar von Leonhard Gerke, TP A01
John Aspinwalls Beitrag zeigt, wie sich die Vorstellung überregionaler Zugehörigkeit zu einem sakralen Netzwerk im Kult des Stadtheiligen von Licata auf Sizilien, des Hl. Angelus v. Jerusalem, manifestiert. Zentral ist dabei der „Verweischarakter“ materieller Gegenstände, die auf sinnlich nicht direkt Erfahrbares hindeuten: Die Einbindung der Stadt und ihrer Bewohner in ein transmediterranes Netzwerk religiös bedeutsamer Orte ist im Reliquiar materialisiert und so für die Sinne präsent. Eingebunden in die alljährlichen Prozessionen, weist der silberne Schrein über sich und den Ort seiner Verehrung hinaus auf den größeren Rahmen, in dem sich christliche Zugehörigkeit verorten kann.
Wie im Fall des Rocks Christi aber braucht es eine Geschichte, um den Verweis des Objekts zu verstehen und Zugehörigkeit erfahren zu können: Die Vita des Angelus erzählt von seiner Geburt im Heiligen Land und beschreibt die Stationen seines Lebensweges von Jerusalem bis nach Sizilien; erst dieser Hintergrund macht es möglich, die Bilder auf dem Schrein einzuordnen und den Heiligen als Symbolfigur eines transmediterranen christlichen Netzwerks zu begreifen.
Aus der Perspektive des Teilprojekts A01 ist vor allem die Rolle des (Mittel-)Meeres überraschend: Während in der Odyssee das Meer als Raum der Gefahr und Unsicherheit menschliche Bindungen löst und Heimkehr verhindert, ist es im Kult des Heiligen Angelus ein verbindendes und Zugehörigkeit stiftendes Element. Voraussetzung dafür ist die Multilokalität der christlichen Heilstopographie, die Orte rund um das Mittelmeer miteinander verknüpft, auf deren Zusammengehörigkeit sodann im lokalen Heiligenkult verwiesen wird. Während es für Odysseus Heimat nur an einem einzigen Ort (Ithaka) geben kann, können sich die Gläubigen von Licata als Angehörige einer polytopen christlichen Heimat verstehen, die gerade durch das Meer zusammengehalten wird.