BLOG PALERMO 9: The Beati Paoli Sect

PALERMO: The Beati Paoli Sect

Yesterday we walked thru the historical center of Palermo.... Very nice and relaxing walk...Corso Vittorio Emanuele, Piazza Marina and...San Matteo Church. The outside is Baroque . They started to build it in the 1633. Above the main door you can see the very beautiful stucks of the Serpotta. The Serpotta also made 2 wonderful statues in the "presbiterio" that hould represent the Faith and the Hope.

Inside the church you can visit the Cripta. Around 160 sq meters.

Behind a Confessional there is a Secret door. This secret door connects the church to the huge Catacombs that were used by the Beati Paoli!

Beati Paoli is the name of a secretive sect thought to have existed in medieval Sicily. The sect, as described by the author Luigi Natoli in his historic novel I Beati Paoli (written as a series under the pseudonym William Galt in 1909, then re-published as books in 1921 and 1949), resembles an order of knights fighting for the poor and the commoners. Whereas the novel is fictitious, Sicily's history bears some evidence that the Beati Paoli actually existed.

the existence of the Beati Paoli is still in dispute, but it is commonly believed that Natoli's book was at least part historical account with some fiction thrown in. The book takes place between 1698 and 1719 during which Sicily passed from being under Spanish rule to Piedmontese to Austrian.

It is said that their principal meeting place was a cave in the Capo quarter near the Chiesa di Santa Maria di Gesù , also called Santa Maruzza; the church is still there but the cave entrances have been blocked off.

I Beati Paoli is considered by some a precursor to the current Mafia, the roots of which are in agrarian Sicily. Although the two groups haven't been directly linked, similar mentalities and principles, including the famed "omertà" or code of silence, show some definite overlap.

The Beati Paoli were represented in the Sicilian popular imagination as a sort of Robin hoods. They took from the rich to give to the poor. To be more exact, they fought against vary abuses of power from riches and nobles on oppressed and underprivileged. I heard a lot stories about these Beati Paoli when I was very young from many people. Those same people swore to me that those stories were all true and not legend.

The Beati Paoli, when moving through the dark alleys and underground passages of Palermo, they were always dressing entirely in black tunics and were concealing their heads in long black hoods. In their punitive actions to rectify un-justices, they were dispensing crude punishments (meaning death by stabbing) through their secretive and unmerciful underground Court.

posted by blog.giorgioshouse.com [11/09/2009 17:44]