 main index © Jeff Matthews 2002-2012 entry Oct 2009
Virgins
Church
of Santa Maria
ai Vergini
When the ancient Greeks settled the area as Neapolis, they brought with them the concept of the fratria, an extended family group, a clan, headed by the fretrarco, the clan patriarch. In Naples, the term expanded to mean something more like “association” or “those with common interests,” not necessarily related by blood. The members of a fatria lived in the same area and even had their own unique rituals and festivals; it was the beginning of the sedili of the Middle Ages, the small administrative units of the city, each with its own town hall. Ten names of Greek fratria have come down to us: Aristei, Artemisi, Ermei, Eubei, Eumelidi, Eunostidi, Theodati, Kretondi, Kumei and Panclidi. Focus on Eunostidi; it was a group dedicated to the god, Eunosto, in Greek mythology, the god of temperance and chastity. (I am as bewildered as you are as to just how a group in which the men worshipped the god of chastity could survive.) In 1787 a group of Eunostidian tombs was found right in the area called the “the male virgins”, so that, indeed, seems to be the most-likely etymology. (There are a few other candidates, but they're boring.) The area itself (including the adjacent
Sanità
area) was originally the site of Greek tombs, then
Roman and Christian catacombs and then medieval
cemeteries, some of which may be visited today.
[see catacombs (1)
(2) (3)] Both
the Sanita and Vergini sections of Naples are at
the bottom of hills on all sides and slope up to
the north to the Capodimonte hill. This has led
to countless and devasting floods from rain
run-off (including floods that washed corpses
out into the streets from their cave
cememteries—see this entry on the Fontanelle cemetery).
The area is on what, according to geologists,
was once a volcano and the subsoil is virtually
all volcanic tufa rock, easy to dig (tombs for
example), but also easily channeled by running
water. Thus, the streets are uneven and crooked,
following, as they do, paths sculpted into the
rock eons ago. During the urban expansion under the
Spanish in the 1500s and 1600s, the area was
home to a number of large monastic complexes. In
the 1700s it became the site of some elegant
private villas by the likes of Ferdinado Sanfelice
(1675-1748), including his own family residence as
well as his Palazzo
dello Spanguolo. The Crucifixion,
anon. 14th century, in chamber
Interesting to students of art history
is the fact that, in spite of the overwhelming
presence of art and architecture from the 1500s
and 1600s, the Vergini
quarter of Naples still contains remnants of
churches and art from as early as the mid-1300s.
Some of these, such as the church of San Antoniello,
were not discovered until the 20th century because
they had been built over with—and incorporated
into—newer structures (in this case, the church of
Santa Maria
Succurre Miseris). The fragments that
remain are almost all beneath more recent churches
(note image,
above) and
are of the school of the influential painter and
mosaic designer, Pietro Cavallini
(c. 1250-c.1330), a Roman who lived and worked in
Naples at the Angevin
court for over ten years. The Vergini
quarter started to go downhill when a new road was
built over it in 1800 in order to
connect the heart of Naples to the Royal Palace atop the
Capodimonte hill beyond both the Vergini and the
Sanità
It was quite a piece of engineering, but it
by-passed and cut off both of those areas. Perhaps
from the fact that it is indeed now off the beaten
track, the Vergini
corresponds to what many people would like to find
in Naples, colorful street life and market-place
bustle still untouched by tourists looking for
colorful street life and market-place bustle. (They are wandering around the historic center of town.) —Ricciardi, Emilio.
La Chiesa di
Santa Maria
dei Vergini,
Naples, 1998. |
