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389. The story of Festino. The Saint
St. Rosalia's holy day is celebrated on September 4,
while the mid-July "Festino", is rather an immense, beautiful,
popular votive offering for a grace received.
It has been established by the 1624 plague survivors:
she, the "Santuzza", was the one who saved the people of Palermo from death,
thus achieving a place on the top of the city hall.
As though to spite St. Agata, St. Oliva, St. Ninfa, and St. Cristina, who,
from the heights of their niches in "Quattro Canti" square,
hadn't had the power to defeat the disease.
There is no record of St. Rosalia's life,
and her story is wrapped in myth and legend.
It seems that she lived in Palermo during the twelfth century, at the time of the Normans.
It is also believed that her family home was located here, in the area of Olivella
namely "Olim Villa", the latin for "once home" of the noble Sinibaldi family:
in other words, a beautiful and luxurious villa just out-of-town, in the countryside.
The "Triunfi" sung in the alleys of the city
tell that Rosalia was related, on her mother's side,
to the Norman Count of Sicily Roger I.
They also tell that she was betrothed to a certain Baldovino,
a nobleman, who had saved Count Roger's life from a lion attack
during a hunting expedition on Mount Pellegrino…
People from Palermo are very skillful!!
The young Rosalia, preferring an ascetic life-style to marriage, fled away:
she became a hermit, a Basilian nun,
and took shelter in a cave in the area of Quisquina,
today also known as Santo Stefano Quisquina, a town in the Province of Agrigento.
Apparently, however, the inscription found inside the Quisquina cave
is a seventeenth-century fake… Apparently!
Later she moved to Mount Pellegrino,
which, at that time, could only be accessed by that gorge,
the so called "Porco" Valley.
There is historical evidence that the hill was inhabited by hermits,
who wanted to be left alone, and to get closer to God.
Instead, there is no record about the Sinibaldi family,
nor about the person who actually proclaimed the young Rosalia a saint.
What we know for sure is that during the reign of King Frederick the II,
her blessing was already invoked with the prayer "Sancta Rosalia, ora pro nobis"
Let us be content with this!
to be continued...