The Ma Donna DiPierno Feast
by Thomas Frascella
The Ma Donna DiPierno Feast is a religious festival celebrating devotion to Mary the mother of Christ. The origin of the festival is the small southern Italian commune of San Fele in the Province of Potenza. The feast, celebrated in mid-August each year commemorates the discovery of a Statue of Mary depicting her as mother holding an infant Christ-child on her lap. The history of the feast recites that the statue was discovered in the year 1131 AD in a cave on nearby Monte Pierno where it had been hidden about a century before in order to safe guard it from Moslem pirates who had been raiding the area.
For almost 900 years the people of San Fele and the surrounding region have protected and preserved the statue which represents a tenth century rare surviving example of the fusion of Byzantine and Latin Church art. The traditional celebration as it occurs in San Fele includes the carrying of the statue from the church sanctuary in the tiny hamlet of Pierno, commune San Fele and transporting it several times around the perimeter of the church. The present church was specially constructed in Norman style to house the statue by the knights of San Fele upon their return from the third Crusade in the year 1189. The journey carrying the statue symbolically represents the number of times that the statue was removed from the community by force but miraculously was recovered and returned to the town. Tradition also dictates that the worshipers carry twigs of the oak and olive tree representing petitions for the blessing of peace and wisdom.
During the fourteenth and subsequent centuries San Fele like the rest of the adjacent region was exposed to repeated outbreaks of plague, specifically variants of the Black Plague and the Bubonic Plague. This was a natural consequence of the region’s geographic location along the trade route of the ancient Appian Way. During this period Marian devotion as well as devotion to St. Rocco, a figure associated with miraculous recoveries from the plague became quite common in the region. Essentially, every town and village in the region has a church and/or statue of St. Rocco and a Marian statue which is posed in a maternal rendering similar to the Di Pierno statue but minus its Byzantine aspects. Statues of Mary in this pose generally are referred to by the title Our Lady of Good Succor or Our Lady of Perpetual Care reflecting the image’s historic connection as protector from disease. The Ma Donna DiPierno feast and the St. Rocco feast are celebrated on the same day regionally.
Ma Donna DiPierno
St. Rocco- Ma Donna DiPierno an Italian/American Feast:
Italians began immigrating to the United States in substantial numbers around 1850. It is estimated that approximately 75,000 immigrated to the US between the years 1850-1880. Many of those who arrived at the port of New York settled, at least for a time, in the lower east side in what was considered the Five Points area. The area consisted of crowded largely substandard housing and poor sanitation even for the norms of its day. As a result there were unusual levels of disease. As an example, during this period the child mortality rate among the Italian population in the Five Points area was about fifty per cent, twice the rate of the rest of the city.
With the above as background it is not surprising that the oldest Italian American religious “street” festival is the St Rocco festival of Little Italy which began in the late 1880’s and continues to be celebrated to this day. What is less widely known about the festival is that while St. Rocco is a devotional figure common throughout southern Italy and Sicily the festival then and now is organized by a collective body of fraternal societies specific to Potenza. The original lead fraternal society of the festival was the society of Savoia di Lucania which enlisted the participation of other regional fraternal organizations representing towns of origin within a twenty mile radius of Savoia di Lucania. Among the participating societies represented was San Fele which falls within that geographic area. In addition to organizing, sponsoring and supervising the festival each Potenza society, initially with cloth banners, was encouraged to represent their local patron saint in the parade. According to Newspaper accounts from the period the San Felese community quickly upgraded from banner to copy of the DiPierno statue as part of the festival’s celebration.
While the 1880’s organization, devotion and celebration of New York’s St Rocco’s feast and its associated other local patron feasts is a natural extension of the religious practice, culture and traditions of Potenza it nevertheless also represents a unique and important turning point in Italian American history and American Catholicism. The festival was at the time,1880’s, expressly banned from being held by the Bishop of the Diocese of New York and his position represented the American Church’s position as well. The Potenza fraternal societies and the so called Scalabrini clergy who supported the festival were acting in direct contravention of the American Catholic Church’s position on such ethnically derived religious demonstrations albeit their defiance was with the support of the Vatican and Pope Leo XIII. The festival was a statement by both the Italian immigrant community and the Vatican that the American Catholic Church was not going to solve what the American Bishops of the time termed their “Italian Problem” by relegating Italians to “church basement services”. It is clear from the actions of Pope Leo that ethnically based Catholic traditions were going to be respected as mainstream Catholic. Pope Leo’s appointment of Blessed Bishop Giovanni Battista Scalabrini and his formation of Catholic Action sent dozens of Italian clergy to America to minister to the needs of the Italian immigrant community from within Italian based parishes. Probably, the most notable of the clergy sent was a young nun by the name of Frances Cabrini who was sent to America to the newly formed St Joachim’s parish in the late 1880’s. Of course she went on to become the first American Saint for her work among the immigrant populations establishing schools, hospitals, orphanages and other social service institutions.
It should be noted that the first two Italian based parishes in New York City, St Joachim and St Anthony of Padua both in the 1880’s had large San Felese membership. As the San Felese population expanded outward to Buffalo and to Trenton the community was very involved in the formation of St. Joachim’s Church in Trenton and St. Anthony of Padua Church in Buffalo. It should also be noted that the Buffalo and Trenton San Felese communities both have copies of the Ma Donna DiPierno statue in their respective original City parish Churches. St Joachim’s Church in the lower east side of New York was torn down due to urban renewal in the 1960’s but it is believed that the DiPierno statue from St. Joachim’s church in New York was transferred to St. Joseph’s Church in Little Italy where the St. Rocco festival now starts.
Each year as our community celebrates the Feasts of San Rocco and the Ma Donna DiPierno we should all take the time to remember the sacrifices, perseverance, courage and faith that our ancestors demonstrated on their journey to America.
© San Felese Society of New Jersey