December 13 — Feast of Saint Lucy
Celebrate the Saint of Light and Sight, Italian Style
Today is Saint Lucy’s Feast Day, where Hope comes to dark winter days.
The festa also brings me back to Siracusa, Sicily, and the island of Ortygia, where she is honored, along with other amazing females…
Ortygia’s Duomo is built around the remains of a Greek Temple that honored the Goddess Athena, patron of Wisdom, Craftsmanship and Heroic Endeavors, who became Minerva to the Romans. Sprung from the head of Zeus, Athena was a real career goddess who did such great things as guide Odysseus home, think up the Trojan horse, and give Greece the olive tree.
The Duomo’s Baroque and Norman designs blend around the massive Doric columns of Athena’s temple. It’s amazing to be outside to see how the columns are blended…
Or inside the church, and touch the stones of the temple…you feel such a powerful blend of spirits!
Once a sculpture of Athena graced the rooftop of this structure, where she stood with her golden shield, serving as a beacon to sailors. Now you’ll see Athena was replaced with a statue of the Virgin Mary, and there is a Saint Lucy statue up there, to her left…
Inside the Duomo, there’s a chapel dedicated to Saint Lucy, Patron of Syracuse and Eyes.
Lucy was born in the third century to a noble Syracuse family and early on decided to live for God and remain a virgin. This didn’t sit well with her parents who wanted to marry her off, but Lucy managed to turn things around. She took her sick mother to pray at the tomb of Saint Agatha in Catania, and when her mother was miraculously healed, she took Lucy’s side and stopped hounding her about finding a man.
Thus Lucy could go about her saintly work, which was bringing food to Christians who were hiding out in underground tunnels. In order to guide her way through those dark tunnels, she wore a wreath of candles on her head, which is where the Swedes got the idea to always represent her with that wreath.
Despite herself, beautiful Lucy had many Syracuse admirers. One of them couldn’t stop telling her how much he loved her eyes, so she plucked them out and handed them over to him on a plate, hoping he’d leave her in peace.
Lucy’s rebuffed guy was so insulted, he turned Lucy over to the authorities for being a Christian. The governor’s idea for a punishment was to drag the belligerent girl to a whorehouse, but even with a team of oxen pulling her, Lucy miraculously could not be budged. When burning her at the stake didn’t work, she was finally beheaded at a place on the Syracuse mainland where a church, Santa Lucia al Sepolcro, now stands.
If you’re in Syracuse for Lucy’s Feast Day (December 13), there’ll be processions and you’ll be eating cuccia, wheat soaked in milk and sugar. The wheat commemorates a sixteenth-century Syracuse event, where the locals prayed to Saint Lucy to end a famine, and miraculously a ship sailed into the Ortygia harbor loaded with grain.
And you shouldn’t miss stopping by the Church of Santa Lucia alla Badia (in the same piazza), to see the beautiful fresco on the ceiling…
OR go over the bridge to Siracusa’s Basilica Santuario di Santa Lucia to see Caravaggio’s dark and intense masterpiece, the Burial of Saint Lucy. It was painted just a few months before Caravaggio died, when he was exiled to Syracuse, having been accused of murder in Rome. It’s a powerfully haunting work, showing Lucy with her throat slashed, surrounded by mourners and gravediggers.
For the Golden Day, have lunch in the piazza at Ristorante Regina Lucia…Ravioli di Pesce is extraordinary…
And it’s so wonderful to be in the piazza with that view, and sometimes tango dancers…
Ortygia is one of many amazing places included in “100 Places in Italy Every Woman Should Go” — a perfect holiday gift for an Italophile.
OR Give yourself the Gift of Travel and come with me on a GOLDEN WEEK IN SICILY — that includes a Golden Day in Ortygia…DETAILS: Golden Week in Sicily – Susan Van Allen’s Italy
