Marsala – the Mysteries and the Veroniche
On Palm Sunday in Marsala, at the Church of St. Anne, is represented the entrance of Jesus to Jerusalem with a procession through the streets of the city center. On Wednesday it takes place the procession of the dinner in which a statuary group is brought in procession.
The central ceremony of the Holy Week in Marsala is the Holy Thursday procession, the Mysteries, whose origins date back to the end of the sixteenth century, during which the passion of Christ is interpreted by a large number of actors, gathered into groups, each of which represents a specific scene. The actors depicting Christ in the different paintings wear a wax mask. Each group is preceded by a hooded carrying the cross and the Jews playing the trumpet and the drum.
The procession is followed by little girls dressed in white which bring bread, milk and fruit of various kinds on the trays and by little girls and girls, called Veroniche, wearing very elaborate and colorful clothes and wear on their heads complex jewelery crowns from which long white veils descend. The crucial moment of the rite is the representation of the ascension of Christ to Calvary: the Christ overwhelmed by the weight of the cross and snatched energetically with the rope that tightens the waist by a Jew, falls to the ground repeatedly. Come to his rescue the Cyreneo who helps him get up and the Veronica, followed by gold-crowned bridesmaids, which piteously dries his face.
Slowly the procession reaches the Golgotha where Christ, along with the thieves, was crucified and subsequently deposed.
On the afternoon of Good Friday, after Mass in the Mother Church, begins the procession with Christ’s simulacrum in the urn and that of Our Lady of Sorrows. Many faithful, together with the authorities, the band and the different brotherhoods (Sant’Anna, SS. Immacolata, SS. Sacramento, Maria SS. della Cava), participate in the procession that winds through the streets of the city, ending late at night at the Sanctuary of Our Lady of Sorrows.