Babbo Natale a Pacentro

I thought you might enjoy a picture of Babbo Natale (aka Santa Claus aka il Professore Coleman) recently captured, in purportedly a surreptitious fashion, in situ a Pacentro, Italia in the upper left corner of this postcard ....

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[William Coleman]

The man in red in the postcard is playing a much more interesting role than Babbo Natale. Babbo Natale, or "Daddy Christmas," is the Italian equivalent of Santa Claus and is not a native Italian anyway, but a recent import from northern Europe. Italian children traditionally do not receive their gifts at Christmas, but two weeks later at the feast of the Epiphany on January 6th. And they don't receive them from a rotund figure in red, but from a good witch called the Befana.
Rather than Babbo Natale, the photo is from a celebration that takes place in late August each year in Pacentro, a 13th century town high in the mountains of Abruzzo. The festival celebrates an enlightened nobleman, Jacopo Caldora, who ruled Pacentro and the Peligna Vally which it overlooks during the mid-15th century. Over 150 actors in 15th century costume recreate events that took place at the Caldora castle, whose towers can be seen in the background of the photo.
This year's celebration, on August 20 and 21, recreated the investiture of several young knights, a witchcraft trial (the two accused women, you'll be happy to know, were acquitted), a "fidanzamento" or wdding engagement, and a wedding ceremony.
Myself and the other man in the picture are notaries. Unlike American notaries, who merely witness signatures, notaries in medieval (and modern) Italy are members of a highly respected and well-paid profession whose members performed (and perform) a much more important function. In Italy, notaries are the attornies who write contracts.
In the Middle Ages and Renaissance, members of all the professions wore costumes that identified their professional status. The two of us are dressed in the formal red costume worn by notaries. Our function in the ceremony at the Caldora castle is to preside at a wedding ceremony.
Before the late 16th century, when the Council of Trent ruled that clergymen alone should conduct Catholic weddings, the ceremonies could be performed by by priests or by notaries. We two notaries -- my colleague Latinus de Stofano (actually a cousin, Fernando Garofalo, who is a member of the national Italian police, the Carabinieri) and myself Salvatore Iacobucci (in real life William Coleman, professor of Medieval Studies at the City University of New York) -- would have first composed the documents for the wedding, including the contract stating the details of the wife's dowery. Then we would have performed a ceremony that included a reading of the bride's dowery. At the recreation of the ceremony, we read the provisions of the dowery and attested to their fathers' approval of the dowery and of the wedding. Then I asked the couple to publicly exchanage a promise to be husband and wife, according to the laws of church and state. At that point I invited them to exchange a public kiss to symbolize their marriage. With this public declaration, they conferred the sacrament of marriage on each other.
At the end of the various ceremonies at the castle, the musicians, soldiers, knights, ladies and gentlemen of the court, the presiding count, judges, and we two notaries paraded through Pacentro. A display of swordsmanship and flag throwing then took place in the main piazza of the town. Afterward, we all returned to the castle, excahanged our elaborate 15th century garments for the prosaic but much more comfortable clothing of the early 21st century, and enjoyed a meal of local foods on tables set up around the castle towers.
The celebration in 2006 is scheduled for Saturday, August 19th, and Sunday, August 20th. For anyone interested in a part of Italy that fortunately hasn't been discovered by mass tourism, Pacentro -- in the National Park of the Maiella -- offers spectacular mountain scenery and the chance to see a two-day recreation of its fascinating historical past.