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(From notes by Pino Ruta)
Introduction to the Mysteries of Campobasso
The celebration, on the day of Corpus Christi, of this ancient city tradition that sees faith and folklore converge in the parade of the "Mysteries," is situated in a indefinite dimension not entirely relegatable to the sphere of the Sacred, nor reducible to the perimeter of the most profane traditions. The contextual representation of devils and saints, precisely on the day of the celebration of the Eucharist, in a context aimed at confusing the human and the divine, makes mysterious the meaning of this manifestation that, in its elusive matrix, stirring a mixture of astonishment and curiosity, manages to capture the imagination of everyone, religious and laypeople alike, in a perfect synthesis of the diverse and/or the opposite, placing itself in a deep note, placed beneath the most apparent conventions.
A "Mystery" linked, therefore, not only to the structures anciently designed by Di Zinno, inventions built by the "blacksmith-sculptor," perhaps even "alchemist," resorting to a metal alloy or to a not entirely known process, capable of challenging, over time, despite its apparent fragility, the weights and the continuous solicitations, bending and oscillating infinitely without deforming, but also to the socio-cultural and territorial context in which the sculptor's personality was shaped.
It is not merely a temporal coincidence that sees working, more or less in the same period and within the same Neapolitan circuits, Di Zinno and the artistic and artisanal craftsmen engaged in the construction of the Chapel of the Prince of San Severo (and in the sculptures of the Veiled Christ, of Disillusionment, of Modesty), under the guidance of the same Raimondo di Sangro, a renowned alchemist and, not by chance, experimenter of "alloys" and "anatomical machines" (still present today in the underground of the "Chapel")
As it doesn't seem irrelevant, in the choices of the mysterious figures represented by Di Zinno (choices that converge on objectively popular figures, namely on non-confessional religious messages and on socio-economic values, even enlightened and/or revolutionary), the 'contemporaneity' of Di Zinno with another prominent figure in the Molise and Neapolitan cultural landscape: Francesco Longano. Born in Ripalimosani (CB) in 1729, also of humble origins, also arrived in Naples to complete his training as a theologian and philosopher and subsequently merged into the university circuits of Federico II, or 1) Between the 17th and 18th centuries, many 'professional' confraternities developed, which united the devotional interests of the group with the economic interests and mutual assistance among colleagues and their families (such as the Company of Goldsmiths, Dyers, Butchers, Blacksmiths, and so on, also reflected in the names of numerous streets in the old town adjacent to the medieval part and in the closer expansion that extends towards the Murattian district: today via Ferrari and via Orefici). 7 in the Commerce chair, alongside Genovesi and within cultural and latomistic circles permeated by Enlightenment. There is something more in the activity of an 'ancient blacksmith' arrived, in the 18th century, in the 'workshops' of the Kingdom of Naples, in the school of Franzese, to learn the art of 'sculpture', strongly influenced by the spirit that pervaded the cultural circles of 18th-century Naples, always contaminated by the nativity scenes traditions and by mysterious cults, Egyptian and Hellenic, arrived since antiquity in the Neapolitan city and coming from the cradle of Mediterranean civilization."
Mystical and sculptural traditions that have left a mark not only in the symbolic construction of the Chapel of the Prince of San Severo, Raimondo di Sangro, datable to the same period, but also in the massive diffusion of Neapolitan Nativity art, an expression of that baroque style characterized by a Christianity less anchored to a strictly confessional vision and more permeated, instead, by popular, pagan, and oriental traditions: one example being the complex figure of the "Magi," or perhaps "Magicians," according to the oldest priestly and/or astrological tradition, of Persian or, more precisely, Chaldean origin. The formative years of Di Zinno, during which he developed the construction and sculptural techniques that would lead the sculptor-blacksmith to build the complex structures commissioned by the confraternities of Campobasso (both crusader - to which Di Zinno belonged - and Trinitarian), are the same years in which the Alchemist Prince (Raimondo di Sangro) constructs, in his laboratory, the complex anatomical machines (skeletons with intricate nervous systems, arteries, veins, blood vessels, marbleized viscera...) today.
Antonio Genovesi (Castiglione del Genovesi, November 1, 1713 - Naples, September 22, 1769) was an Italian writer, philosopher, economist, and priest. He studied philosophy and theology, ordained as a deacon and priest, inspired by the essential religious values of Christian philosophy. After founding a private school of metaphysics and theology, he arrived at the University of Naples, first at the chair of metaphysics (embracing theological positions - Elementa Metaphysicae - considered heretical by some), then in 1745, to the chair previously held by Vico and to economics, when the transformation "from metaphysician to merchant" took place, as he himself wrote in his autobiography, becoming the holder of the chair of "commerce and mechanics."
Paolo Saverio Di Zinno had enjoyed a purely Neapolitan education, in the workshop of Gennaro Franzese, between 1737 and 1742. Upon returning to his hometown, he equipped a workshop capable of executing, in imitation of the wooden statuary workshops of the early eighteenth century in Naples, continuous casting sculpture, satisfying a demand that came from the Region, capable of exporting its statuary works.
In Capitanata, Abruzzo, and Campania, one can find numerous sculptures of the Assumption, the Immaculate Conception, Martyr Saints, Patron Saints, reflecting a refined and virtuosic rococo culture in these regions. This culture was also infused with a narrative vein of realistic effectiveness that the "popular" clientele of the provincial areas was particularly equipped to appreciate.
During his stay in Naples, Paolo Saverio Di Zinno devoted himself to observing the sculptures of Neapolitan baroque art and the silverware of the treasure of San Gennaro, as well as the sculptures of the Certosa di San Martino, where the greatest artists of the first half of the eighteenth century had worked. The preparatory studies for the equestrian monument of Charles III, never realized, and the projects for allegorical floats can be considered as reminders of the Neapolitan experience, later used with particular effectiveness in the design work related to the realization of the machinery of the Mysteries.
"Mysterium Magnum" Campobasso, city of the "Mysteries" Between sacred and profane, still visible in the underground chambers of the chapel, built in Naples adjacent to Piazzetta Nilo, using sophisticated techniques not yet fully understood. These were years in which, within the same Neapolitan circles, in-depth studies on "Palingenesis" as a true regeneration of the human form from its own ashes were developed; years in which there was an increasing focus, following the seventeenth-century publicistic tradition, on symbolic and allegorical images permeated by Magic, Kabbalah, and Alchemy, representing fantastic and/or utopian, in short, mysterious, forms not intelligible to all, but capable of expressing messages of moral, social, and cultural renewal.
These were years in which the reference to Prisca Theologia, that is, the mysterious and initiatory wisdom of the ancient world, was linked, after a pause of over a thousand years, to the modern polemic against the absolutism and dogmatism of power and, in particular, against the power, culture, and even the religion (of the State) represented by the Spanish Monarchy and the Catholic Church. Therefore, even artistically, through baroque sculptural art and the use of more malleable materials such as wood and clay, better capable of expressing emotions and making divine figures more human, representations aimed to bring saints and men as close as possible, even symbolically, through images.
A religious tradition that, expressed artistically, not only has always inspired the tradition of the Neapolitan nativity scene but also ends up influencing the very setting of Di Zinno's mysteries. Although commissioned by religious brotherhoods, these mysteries are situated within a vision or reconstruction of the relationship between God and man that is not transcendent but immanent. In this vision, not only are the more traditional canons of Catholic proselytism abandoned (canons according to which only consecrated statues could represent God and the saints, even when they were carried outside the churches in procession), but there is also a true reversal of the more traditional confessional relationship between man and faith.
The common men are sanctified, dressed as saints, placed on shoulder-borne floats, lifted from the ground, and projected towards the sky (as in the more traditional processions where consecrated statues of saints are carried on shoulders). Di Zinno's works, carried in procession, are in fact observed from bottom to top, not in a frontal position but according to a so-called "ascensional" vision that highlights the chiaroscuro of the moving sculpted figures, giving the flesh a diaphanous light, in transparency, typical of beings touched by celestial splendor.
This is why this manifestation is appropriately termed "Mystical", where men, dressed as saints (incarnations of virtues), detach from the ground, float halfway to the sky, amidst devils and serpents, in search of a lost "reintegration". This concept is rooted in Jacob Bohme's "mysterium magnum" (1675-1724): "Thus the Heavenly became a Mystery for man and he remained suspended between time and Eternity, as if half-dead for heaven": hence the rationale behind a manifestation that sees men, dressed as saints, floating halfway to heaven, amidst devils and serpents, seeking a lost "reintegration."
This is the context in which the apparently "folkloric" or "artistic" work, but actually "theurgical," is prepared and developed, leading Di Zinno to the construction of the Mysteries. He creates structure-sculptures that are not only complex in terms of technical, mechanical, and functional aspects (from the alloy they are composed of, to the distribution of weights and structures capable of supporting and moving human figures), but also unique in terms of symbolic, artistic, spiritual, and social significance.It's a process of so-called "divination" that - by reversing the more traditional relationship between man and God and transitioning from a "transcendent" vision (typically confessional and/or Catholic) to an "immanent" vision (of Egyptian origin, inspired by the worship of Isis and Osiris, according to which man himself is the repository of the divine spark) - processes not consecrated sculptures of saints and biblical figures (emerging from churches), but even "human sculptures", that is, living sculptures in motion. In these sculptures, men from various social and age groups, often common people, dress up as saints and rise, detaching themselves from the ground, like saints, towards the sky in a new and more humanized form of divination.
These criteria, when applied to religious art, represent a real break from a vision hitherto inspired by a "transcendent" relationship between man and God, i.e., a relationship in which religious figures and symbols were typically placed above and beyond human reach.
From which sources did Di Zinno draw? Living in the time of Sanfelice, Domenico Antonio Vaccaro, Nicola Tagliacozzi Canale, artists of the Neapolitan ephemeral, this is the legacy already highlighted by many scholars. Paolo Saverio Di Zinno derives from the observed models the modes of composition, namely the transition from static to dynamic mode, typically baroque. The preparatory sketches express a careful attention to the momentum of the representations later realized in the plasticity of sculpture.
In this context, the oldest mystical traditions (Eleusinian or Egyptian) survived in the Mediterranean and even in Naples itself (traces of which can be found in the same Piazzetta "Nilo", adjacent to the Palazzo di Raimondo di Sangro and the chapel of the Prince of San Severo) find their maximum expression in a theurgical approach where there is not a transcendent God outside and above men (as has always been taught by the confessional church), but there is an immanent God in which a small part of divinity is in man, as taught by the Egyptian tradition and the mystery of Isis and Osiris, in which the God is torn apart and each piece ends up becoming an integral part of a man.
"Mysterium Magnum" Campobasso, city of the "Mysteries" Between sacred and profane, those of the saints were often deprived, even in their plastic and, therefore, sculptural representation, of their proximity to the most common human passions. On the contrary, just as in the representations of the Neapolitan nativity scene, figures linked to a religious world anchored to common people (shepherds, blacksmiths, shepherds, washerwomen, and even musicians up to cherubs, figures bridging men and God) had long survived; likewise, in the Neapolitan baroque art of the 18th century, this ancient tradition resurfaces and merges with the noblest artistic and sculptural representations of the 1700s to convey a message, not only social but also spiritual, more common and in conflict with the more traditional dogmas of a monarchic or ecclesiastical culture and faith.
On the very day of the Eucharistic celebration (itself a form of inverse theurgical practice) and the feast of Corpus Christi, moving from an artistic plane more connected to popular folklore than to the art of sculpture, a different vision of the concept of faith is transferred symbolically, religiously, and therefore spiritually. It retrieves those ancient mystical traditions (Persian, Egyptian, and Hellenic), of which the Neapolitan tradition (of Egyptian and Mediterranean derivation) had preserved traces since antiquity. Thus, it is a strictly "theurgical" manifestation aimed at representing, in a plastic key, an ancient so-called "transmutatory" practice aimed at allowing the elevation (not only physical) of matter to a higher existence and, through it, a connection with the Creator.
This practice has its roots in the Eleusinian mysteries and the classical world (Greek, Egyptian, and Babylonian), and it distinguishes itself in two branches: the "telestic" or the art of infusing divinity into a statue (the so-called more common "consecration") and the "mantic", which is performed through the practice of a medium (so-called "trance"), like the Pythia of the Oracle of Apollo at Delphi, which in modern psychological sciences is defined as an "altered state of consciousness" and which proceeds through a divination of the human (today heritage of the theosophical and noetic sciences).
As for the first type, the very Eucharist of the Catholic Church (whose recurrence coincides with the feast of Corpus Christi) is a representation of it: through this sacrament, the divinity, Jesus Christ, who by transubstantiation is present in the offering (the host), is transferred from the priest to the faithful through the use of prescribed materials (bread and wine): "dogma saturo Christianis quod in carne transit panis et a vinum in sanguinem" (St. Thomas Aquinas, Hymn Lauda Sion Salvatorem). On the contrary, regarding the second type, it is the very parade of the Mysteries that gives the plastic representation of a theurgical practice opposed to the sacrament of the Eucharistic miracle of Christ (as administered by the priest to the faithful): the reunion with the divine does not occur through the administration from outside of a sacrament by the minister of worship, but through the elevation of man towards the divine in a direct relationship between man or his consciousness (which will be discussed briefly and in the course of the deepening of the individual Mysteries) and divinity.
Two distinct theurgical practices well represented by Giordano Bruno himself (Nola-Na: 1548 - 1600), in the "de Magia Mathematica", according to a path of "Descent" (from God to man) or, conversely, of "ascent" (from man to God): "God transmits His influence to the angels, the angels to the celestial bodies, the celestial bodies to the elements, the elements to the mixed bodies, the mixed bodies to the senses, the senses to the soul, the soul to the living being"; on the contrary: "The living being ascends through the soul to the senses, through the senses to the mixed bodies, through the mixed bodies to the elements, through the elements to the heavens, through the heavens to the demons or the angels through these to God or the divine operations". And again, always Giordano Bruno in the "de Magia Naturali": "...so from God there is a descent through the world to the living being, while to the living being it is given to ascend through the world to God".
In the Mysteries of the Egyptians, Iamblichus spreads on the roots of these, based on a precise cosmological conception very similar to other older conceptions: that according to which "all things are filled with gods...and every series multiplies and proceeds to extreme terms: in fact, what pre-exists to the One, before all things, has manifested in everything, therefore also in the classes of souls subordinate to this or that God" (Proclus). With theurgy, practices are used to restore this contact between connected or immanent essences: in short, the theurgical practice, therefore, follows the reverse path to that of the soul descending into matter as it rises from it towards that. In the same sense, it appears far from random the choice by Di Zinno to connect certain Mysteries (especially the Mystery of Saint Isidore and that of Saint Nicholas) to the two Solstices (respectively, the Summer Solstice - Mystery of Saint Isidore - and the Winter Solstice - Mystery of Saint Nicholas): "The descent and ascent are marked by virtues through the exit and entry from the two doors of Cancer and Capricorn of which the first is called the door of the gods, the second of men" (G. Bruno: "De Magia Mathematica", Magical Works, Adelphi, Milan 2012). Nor is it random the circumstance that the parade of the Mysteries - which is the plastic or artistic representation of a theurgical practice of this latter type - is celebrated on the same day as Corpus Christi - a feast dedicated instead to the celebration of the Eucharistic sacrament; at the same time, in the parade of the "mysteries" (as well as in the Neapolitan nativity scene) a true plastic, artistic, and living representation is configured of the oldest theurgical practices or of the oldest traditions that characterized the ancient Eleusinian, Egyptian, and Babylonian mysteries (the same ones of which the so-called Magi or Magicians were guardians, always present in that culture not only Christian, but even more ancient, that is, pagan, early Christian). While, in fact, in the Mysteries of Corpus Christi it is man who rises (upward) as a Saint and who, in his immanent representations of good and evil, in which devils and saints coexist and touch (also physically) (as in the chariot of Saint Michael the Archangel), in a continuous struggle between the temptations of pleasure (the Maiden) and the strength of virtues, seeks salvation; in the Corpus Christi of the Eucharistic sacrament, instead, it is the priest who, by administering the host to the faithful, in a spirituality (transcendent) revealed and transmitted by the Church and the Ministry of worship to man and not sought by him (leveraging his own human strength and virtues), saves him.
This is a practice, that of the Mysteries, condemned by St. Augustine who, explicitly referring to Porphyry's Letter to Anebo, seeks to demystify the theurgical practices by contrasting them, instead, with the miracles of God. A perfect synthesis of our oldest traditions not only Christian but pre-Christian and Mediterranean: mysterious traditions, of Chaldean, Mithraic, and Jewish origin, which Di Zinno transfers onto the floats, in the figure of Abraham; in the representation of the Cosmic Egg present at the center of the Immaculate Conception float; in the depiction of the struggle of Saint Michael the Archangel against the devils; in the Tau or Egyptian Cross and in an indefinite series of symbols that characterize the entire procession. Well, the interpretive key, both on the religious (or more precisely spiritual) and artistic level, in short, on the symbolic plane, of Di Zinno's work is all there and exudes not only the most widespread and common culture of Neapolitan nativity scenes - with the craftsmanship and miniatures ranging from wood to terracotta - but also the transition, on the artistic level, from the Renaissance style (detached from passions) to the more humanized one of the Baroque aimed at accentuating and highlighting, also by resorting to the use of more malleable and plastic materials compared to marble, those human components aimed at depicting, even in sculptural representations, the passions, the emotions, or rather the humanity of the subjects. A procession devoid of consecrated saint statues that sees, instead, as protagonists, the people themselves in their material and spiritual inclinations towards good or evil and that traces the different manifestations through which humanity seeks to elevate itself, cultivating virtues and defeating evil (or vice), not within the confines of the most rigid confessional traditions, but in the everyday life, or rather through the exercise of the most common operative virtues. A spiritual but by no means confessional vision, almost profane, aimed precisely at overturning the most traditional and common relationship of man with faith (and also with the church), in overcoming a Manichaean vision always inclined to separate good from evil which are instead found in direct contact with the contextual representation of devils and the maiden, in a continuous struggle of man and within man (the beginning and end of all things), or in a continuous struggle between good and evil, through the practice of those operative virtues that allow us to overcome, at every moment, the temptations represented by pleasure and sensuality. Therefore, a "theurgical" representation still linked to faith and Christian religion, but completely non-denominational, overturned compared to the most common canons, bordering on the profane, where we do not see a prominent presence of clergy, but only men in their relationship with their spirituality and with their deepest emotional and operative components, in a continuous struggle that is not guided by a shepherd, but managed and resolved only by men and, even more evidently, by the Maiden with herself and with the relationship with heaven, which rises and stands out behind the floats carried on shoulders.
A manifestation, it was said, certainly influenced by the contemporary Longano and infused, also and above all, with a significant social and civil dimension, anchored both to a religious idea (from which it was impossible to disregard in the 1700s and in Molise), but also and above all to an idea of a "purgatory" on earth (an idea that inspires the writing "the reasoned purgatory"), by virtue of which it is necessary "...to initiate, on this earth, the realization of greater social justice, without postponing to the afterlife the hope of finally correcting earthly inequalities and injustices..." and to achieve this goal it is necessary to radically modify the same religious message embedded in the obscurantist power practices conveyed by the clergy to the lower classes, by refounding a natural religion capable of renewing the miracle of Christianity from its origins, through the "gospel of reason", or according to a "civil" function: a religion as a "human need", but to be related to civic and social implications. In this interpretative key, Di Zinno has declined and represented, on the artistic level, what was deepened by the contemporary and fellow countryman F. Longano on the theological, philosophical, historical, and economic level, representing as protagonists of the Mysteries humble people, with skilled hands often worn out by fatigue or symptomatic of poverty, or sharecroppers (Mystery of St. Isidore), cobblers (Mystery of St. Ignatius), even poor people (as in the Mystery of St. Januarius) placing "hard work", that which "no one has ever placed in the role of virtues" and which "...is instead the foundation of all others..." at the center of human virtues: "...who more than hard work preserves the body, nourishes the spirit, improves the State... hard work unites you with your fellow human beings, makes you despise vices, makes you free, makes you honest, makes you social... hard work is useful..."; representing that "man cannot offer a more acceptable (or pleasing) victim (or sacrifice) to God, nor one more propitious to his deceased ancestors, friends, acquaintances, than that of his daily sweat"; illustrating, under the influence of French Enlightenment thought, spiritual, moral, and civil codes functional to the improvement of man and the growth of society or by subtracting them "from the commerce of hypocritical priests or ignorant and unscrupulous friars, to whom, to live in the lap of pleasure and idleness, it was necessary to spread the black veil of superstition and make the people live perpetually involved in profound blindness" (Longano: The Reasoned Purgatory).
A manifestation that, commissioned in the eighteenth century by brotherhoods, starting from the representation of "Saints," often protectors of "Minor Arts" (St. Ignatius, St. Isidore, St. Leonard), through biblical figures (such as the figure of Abraham) placed beyond the barriers of a single religious confession, proceeds through a cosmological (equinoctial and/or solstitial) and/or mystical (Neapolitan and/or Egyptian) vision, which from antiquity to the twentieth century permeates every corner of the city, inside and outside places of worship (as illustrated in the last part of this work). Hence the reversal or minimization, through an almost imperceptible desecration, halfway between faith and folklore, of that religious, traditional, and confessional system, more widespread and deeply rooted in the culture of the time, structurally conservative and, therefore, often complicit in a condition of discomfort and prejudice; concurrently with the conveyance, through the representation of the procession of the Mysteries (and the different symbolic levels of access to them), of a new message not only religious or spiritual, but also political and social, capable of striking and taking root, even unconsciously, on the deepest notes of the spectator, regardless of their belonging and socio-cultural background. This message finds punctual confirmation and correspondence in the individual Mysteries which, as reconstructed in a symbolic key, have managed to preserve, even today, unequivocal traits of their matrix, both magical or mystical, spiritual, operative, or social, despite the inevitable alterations due to time or the necessary maintenance activities carried out over the three centuries that separate us from their ideation and creation. 8) As specified below, the commissioning of the Mysteries has its starting point in the many "professional" brotherhoods that, inspired by the ancient Minor and Major Arts, between the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, tended towards a fusion between the devotional interests of the group and those economic and mutual assistance. Many of the Mysteries commissioned by the brotherhoods of Campobasso and built by Di Zinno are precisely inspired by some Minor Arts (Guilds of Butchers, Bakers, and Oil Merchants. Blacksmiths, Locksmiths, Stonemasons, and Carpenters. Armorers, Swordsmiths, Cobblers, Ragmen, Vintners, and Innkeepers) distinguished from the so-called Major Arts (judges and notaries, doctors and apothecaries).