From Norman Sicily to Mount Pellegrino, the history of “Santuzza”, which became
during the plague of 1624 the main protector of the city.
Palermo has many symbols, but few have entered daily life with the same
intensity of Saint Rosalia. For the people of Palermo it is “Santuzza”, an affectionate diminutive that
It doesn’t reduce its size, but it makes it familiar. Italian Traditions retraces the story
human and spiritual of the future patroness, of whose life there remain few certain testimonies and
which, from the silence of a cave, has become a central presence in the city’s identity.
To understand his figure, it is necessary to distinguish historical data from hagiographic narration. The
certain information about her existence is scarce and the biography that still accompanies her today
took shape especially in the seventeenth century, when the Jesuit Giordano Cascini collected
testimonies and stories passed down orally. Devotion places Rosalia in Palermo
Norman of the 12th century, between 1130 and 1170, during the reigns of Roger II and William I.
According to tradition, she was linked to a noble family and would have been the daughter of Sinibaldo,
lord of the Quisquina and the Roses. This lineage, also supported by an inscription
discovered in the seventeenth century and deemed dubious by several scholars, it is not a certain fact. Other
narratives want her close to the court of queen marguerite of navarra and betrothed
to an aristocrat. The most relevant aspect of the story, however, concerns his decision to
give up comforts, marriage and court life to devote oneself to prayer.
Hermitism was no stranger to medieval Sicily, where monastic traditions coexisted
eastern and western. Rosalia would have lived between Palazzo Adriano and the mountains of the
Quisquina, then returned to the Palermo area and retreated to Monte Pellegrino. The cave
in which he would spend his last years became the place most closely linked to his
figure. Here, according to devotional sources, he died on September 4, probably in 1170. His
spiritual identity therefore arises from a gesture of subtraction: moving away from power and
society to seek an absolute relationship with the divine.
The cult of Rosalia was already present in Palermo before the 17th century, but it was during the plague of
1624 that the saint assumed the role of the city’s main protector. On July 15, while
the epidemic hit the population hard, in the cave of Monte Pellegrino they were found
human remains attributed to the hermit. Recognition was intertwined with visions and testimonies, among the
such as that of Vincenzo Bonello, a soap maker who said he had received from the saint
the indication to carry the relics in procession.
The rite took place on June 9, 1625. The subsequent retreat of the contagion was interpreted by the
Palermitans like the miracle with which their protector had liberated the city. The Senate ne
promoted the cult, the relics were kept in the Cathedral and in 1630 Urban VIII inserted the
saint in the Roman Martyrology. A presence that had remained on the margins until then thus assumed
a public role: a secluded woman was recognized, centuries after death, as
community guardian.
It is this contrast that makes the relationship between the patron saint and the Sicilian capital particular. The
saint who had chosen solitude is celebrated by a crowd; the woman who had abandoned
the ornaments of the court are carried on a triumphal chariot; the mountain hermit
becomes the face of the city.
The connection between Santa Rosalia and Palermo is concentrated mainly in two places. On the Mount
Pilgrim, the sanctuary incorporates the cave, inside which is the recumbent statue sculpted by
Gregorio Tedeschi in 1625. In the Cathedral, however, the relics attributed to her rest in the
large silver urn made in the seventeenth century. This movement between the mountain and the city returns
in the main celebrations dedicated to the patron saint. In July, the Festino commemorates the discovery
of the relics and the liberation from the plague, while the triumphal chariot crosses the Cassaro and
symbolically leads the Santuzza through the crowd to the sea. On the night between the 3rd and the 4th
September, however, the Acchianata accompanies the faithful towards the sanctuary along the ancient road
of Mount Pellegrino.
In the first case Rosalia returns to her people; in the second it is Palermo who reaches her on the
mountain. Between the clamor of the city streets and the silence of the cave, a bond is thus renewed
which has lasted for centuries: that between a woman who withdrew from the world and a city that continues to
rely on his protection.
