THE MYSTERY OF STONE CLOAK

The mystery of Stone Cloak

In a sunny day together with the friends of the CAI of Acireale we have crossed oriental Sicily and the coast tirrenica of Calabria up to Palms. We are penetrated there then in the hinterland up to Platì, where we have done it escorts some good bread typical of the country. From there in few minutes we are to the beginning of the excursion that departs from the territory of been Born her Old, an ancient abandoned suburb officially for natural dangers. But in effects still lived by the everlasting nostalgic fellow townsman, rooted in their territory. Already to the beginning of the walk it appears us this enigmatic figure that now seems an Egyptian sphinx, now a grisly skull and crossbones.

The run is a path to which follows a stairway to wide footstep. We find again there in a shelter equipped with tables in wood, fountain and great trees that give us so much relief from the summer heat. We make the periplo of the great monolita, tall 136 mt., while you/he/she is being told here the history of the hermits that I/you/they are passed from over 700 years ago (you see under). Ignazio, among all the most skilled, it faces the slope of the stone discovering interesting ravines and panoramas mozzafiato, that is also however visible from different points of the path.

The monks basiliani in Calabria

A thing is certain, the Hellenic civilization in Calabria has not been alone that of Great Greece. A few centuries after the fall of the empire Romano of west another gust of Hellenism pervaded Southern Italy. Vehicle of this new germ of Aegean culture they were humble characters, driven by an intense spirituality, that you/they had chosen the street of the isolation and the penitence to feel himself/herself/themselves near to the only God that you/they revered: they were the monks basiliani. For these mystical ones that looked for solitary places and distant from the human temptations, the desert greens of Calabria were how much of you/they could wait better him after the long peregrinations from a coast to the other of the Mediterranean. The most greater migrations were had around the VII sec. AD In five centuries the region populates him of hermits, of monks in every lost angle of its territory.

Between steep precipices and arboreal tangles laure, hermitages, cenobi and monasteries are born. Also the Valleys of the Stilaro and the Allaro the inclusive area among the rivers Aces, Stilaro, Allaro, didn't remain out of this migration. You/he/she was studded of hermitages and of constituent cenobi the laurito of Stylus. The Valleys are found in the province of Reggio Calabria, to 15 kms from the sea and to 15 kms from the Greenhouses Calabre. It is not only the crib of the Byzantine culture and the oriental asceticism, but it is also inexhaustible wealth of uncontaminated and primitive nature. And' also the crib of the first southern industrialization (industrial archaeology). The countries that contain the art, the history, the culture and the nature of ours "Byzantine Island" I am: Caulonia, Stylus, Pazzano, Bivongi.

In the period of the struggles iconoclasts numerous Greek-orthodox monks, in escape from their centers of origin, they came on the actual territory reggino where they found shelter in the numerous caves that the slopes montani they offered. Their model of life was followed by numerous young people of the territory that devoted him to the monastic life and that italo-Greek monks are defined. The supreme ideal of the monks was the "hesychìa", the contemplation in the calm and in the silence. They lived devoting himself/herself/itself to the contemplation, praying and working; their feeding consisted in berries and raw vegetables, they dipped him in the cold waters of rivers and streams, they devoted him to the study of the sacred texts, they operated miracles. The elements caratterizzanti their daily life (contemplation, prayer, loneliness, job) they are the points hinge of the Rule of St. Basilio. The most greater part of the monks spent his/her own life passing from the ascetic form to the form cenobiale. Often founded the cenobis, they kept on living in I ascended moving himself/herself/itself in other places. The ascetics always became points of reference for the inhabitants of the territories where they established him to which taught to work and to cultivate the earth (them same united to I ascended him the job developed for the maintenance of the more poor men), they transmitted the study of the religious, literary and scientific disciplines. Area GRECANICA - And' the territory that extends him on the southern extremity of the province and he/she includes Bova, Roghudi, Gallicianò and Fortress of the Greek. And' the area of the " Greek of Calabria" in which the language and the tradition of the ancient Greek communities that were established in Calabria.Per a lot of time the spoken language survive it was the grecanico whose traces are recovered today still wherever (in the system of signs, in the idiom of the elderly ones, in the ancient dirges still in use in particular demonstrations…..).

The Byzantines, in the 885, they sent away Longobardi and Arabs giving back the administrative unity to the region that, in this period, taken the name of Calabria with which in the classical age the peninsula salentina had been denominated; The Byzantine recapture again engraved to Calabria the signs of the Hellenism, thanks also to the religious action of the monks basiliani that, I expelled from Sicily Arabic dagl'invasori, they succeeded in reconverting the abandoned local populations and the demoralized fugitive Greek from the island in an orderly community recreating, later around ten centuries, a society type Greek in southern Italy. St. Nile of Rossano and his/her companions emulated the ancient Greek pioneers in to spread their culture in the Mediterranean westerner, giving even a model to the Italian monachesimo in the Monastery of Grottaferrata (1004).

Because of the excessive fiscalismo, the Byzantine dominion doesn't represent a happy period for Calabria; agriculture decayed and the latifundium extended him; is added that the malaria, defeated only in 945, and the continuous raids of Saracen pirates estranged the inhabitants from the coast toward the surest places of the inside, it decayed therefore the urban area of Kaulon, the Greek city, actual Monasterace, to make to be born Stylus, Pazzano, Bivongi and Castelvetere that in 1800 it assumed the name of Caulonia; only in the century IX takes back the flow toward the coast provoking the typical Calabrian phenomenon of the cities geminate, the one to the inside and the other on the sea.

A religious movement has ever left in Calabria, where it found conditions spiritual and cultural ideal, a so deep and lasting furrow. The monks' presence basiliani has not only been of great importance from the religious point of view, but also from that economic-social. Around to them in fact numerous communities of farmers were picked up that really from the Basilianis they learned best techniques of cultivation and to draw its maximum product, enjoying of greater liberty and certainly of conditions that would never have had if you/they had been submitted to a vassal. They took care of the drainage of the swamps and they destined the uncultivated earths to the crop of the olivo, of the vineyard, of the wheat. Facilitating the small country ownership they made even of common use the two contracts of enfiteusi (right to enjoy of one other people's fund with the obligation to bring you improvements and to periodically correspond a canon).

The Basilianis constituted everywhere points of reference and an important practical and spiritual guide: «tillages, put to crop, fittingses of vegetable kind, organization of the production and the exchanges, installations of housing nucleuses with characteristic initials of slim farms, coordination “political” and cultural of these populations in name and bottom the aegis of a strong religious identification» (p. Flower from Cropani). Besides they founded the hamlets, urban centers of small entities, having gotten from the Basileis the faculty of “conducere homines” in the asked earths and gotten in concession. It was a real rebirth also characterized by an autonomous social life that said entrance to get organized himself/herself/themselves some Universitas with the figure of the Siundicos (Mayor) that it legally represented her/it.

The sign of their passage is represented by the numerous hermitages, cenobi and monasteries that they scattered in the region, terrestrial particularly proper for to live the monastic ideal from them embraced. He/she writes p. Flower from Cropani: «it makes conjecture D. Apollinare in Calabria to have been able to count to the number of 400». Him same it enumerates 104 of them and of them, to his/her epoch, 14 were still in life. To the monks basilianis are due, in fact, some among the most important architectural works in Calabria as the Catholic of Stylus and San Mark to Rossano or some of the names of Greek origin among the innumerable roads, fountains, villages, what Pirgo, near Grotteria, avente the ancient meaning of “tower.”

But in Calabria it is due above all to the Basilianis the so I live and felt cult of the Madonna: the Madonna Achiropita of Rossano, the Madonna of Capocolonna, the Greek Madonna of Island Head Rizzuto, that of Romania to Tropea and a lot of other anchor. After the veneration of the Madonna, under various titles, that emerged of the “Martyrs”, deeply rooted and valid base for the faith, according to the motto of Tertulliano: «Sanguis martyrum semen christianorum» (Apologetico, 50). When the relics or the bodies of saints were imported, they were subsequently erect churches, sanctuaries and chapels. From the altars “rocky” to the stately temples the pity and the art walked to peer I give for educating the people. The motivations explained him for a purely spiritual fact: the patronage of a saint, a received grace, the protest against the oppression of the enemies, a fact of weapons, a shipwreck, a serious illness, a benefit to be gotten or qualcos'altro. Every country for pious institution assumed the celestial patronage of a Saint, other centers chose for Patrona or Protectress the Virgo Maria under various titles.

You/they must not be forgotten he/she asked her of “Greek rite” risalenti to the century VIII, when under Pipino, the Kingdom in Naples, chased the Longobardis, it was separated between Greek and Franchi. Some Greek populations were found in Italy on the occasion of the Gothic wars of the century V, especially the practising Bulgarian the Catholic Greek rite, which you/they stayed in the Valley of the Mingardo not to return in their native centers anymore. This rite he affirmed up to 1600. A lot of other cappellanies, risen among the century XIV and the XVI, they stayed for long time. Two were the motives of it: the deep faith of the same founders (sub invocatione Sanctorum…) and the united hereditary succession to the suffrage of the soul of the founders and benefactors (donationis mortis causes… volens greets animae suae providere, et deinde de suis bonis recte disponere of it aliqua discord oratiur inter heredes).

Other worth of the Basilianis is to have disseminated the peninsula of Icons: images of Madonnas or scenes of the Passion painted to temper to vivacious colors. Contained in rudimentary constructions to day and situated to the angles of the roads or on the columns of entry of the chiesettes, they invited the wayfarer to stay himself/herself/themselves, to pray and to meditate. And always to the Basilianis it is due the maintenance of codes, sacred images, works of art and the Greek-Latin culture, copying and miniating in parchment. The most illustrious personalities of this movement are: Elia the Young one (820-903), been born to Emma, to which the foundation of the monastery is owed to Silane and of that more famous to Palms that from him he/she takes the name. It is always besides due to him the first document agiografico (that is on the study of the life of the saints) of Calabria; Elia the Spelota, been born to Reggio (865-960), which conducted a life from hermit in the cave of Melicuccà; Nicolò from Rossano (910-1004), founder of the Greek monastery of Grotteferrata, famous center of the order; innumerable others, among which Nicodemo of Violet, Leo of Africo and Cristoforo of Colesano

The mystery of the tied up archaeological site to the monks Basiliani

Rocky installation of the Sbariatis

Beginning from the XII century determined him in Calabria a meaningful immigration of ethnic groups from the east (in wide measure religious) and a withdrawal of the housing installations toward the inside also in relationship to the Arabic raids along the coasts. The inside areas guaranteed therefore greater safety and in Calabria human installations were developed organized in caves, what they testify a particular model of social life that had as protagonists the monks “Basiliani”. These testimonies find the tallest expression to Zungri with the Rocky installation of the Sbariatis, both for the vast area on which develops him, around 3000 meters you square, both because it results documented a frequentazione of the site up to the XIV century, having integrated in many cases the structures ipogee (house-cave dug in the rock), with manufactured epigei (structures out earth) that they contribute to enrich, on the plain storiografico and urbanistico/architettonico this ancient installation. The rocky village of Zungri, dated by the researchers among the XII and the XIV century, you/he/she is constituted by around 100 house-cave dug in the rock with environments monocellulari and bicellulari, some also to more plans. The rocky complex articulates on a costone exposed southeast along one of the slopes of the ditch “Malopera.”

Clearly legible it is the urban plant of the installation and the road net that it serves the housing system, articulating himself/herself/itself in runs and stairways drawn in the rock, that from mountain in valley they conduct to the various housing cells ipogee. The complex installed you, of great scientific interest, the borders of the actual center you/he/she is situated to lived of Zungri, to few footsteps from the historical center almost to want to testify a continuity and a bond with the origins of the laughing country that today we see. Rocks of St. Pietro and Stone Cloak

There are testimonies of the passage of the monks basiliani in the territories aspromontani of the valley of the great stones. In the Rocks of St. Pietro they are still visible the ascetics' pallets dug in the alive rock; Among Stone Cloak and the inhabited area of been Born her vì it is a place he/she dictates Afrundu (from the Greek acrantos, turned appellative to the Lord) where a grangia existed (monastery with attached farm) of Greek origin; on the pianoro on top of Stone Cloak they are noticed rests of constructions; to the feet of Stone Cloak the rests of the church of St. George are finally found.