La Congregazione dei Servi di Maria e il culto alla Vergine Addolorata nella Diocesi di Mazara del Vallo (Sicilia)arte e devozione

Abstract

The aim of this doctoral thesis is to demonstrate the significant influence exerted by the Order of the Servants of Mary, founded in Florence in 1233, on the devotion to Our Lady of Sorrows in the vast and ancient Diocese of Mazara del Vallo (Sicily) and to make known the way in which it came about. Since the studies carried out on the presence of this order in western Sicily and on the diffusion of its peculiar devotion to Our Lady of Sorrows in the diocese in question are very limited, we proceeded to search for useful documents in the Archives of the Episcopal Curiae of Mazara del Vallo and Trapani, in the Archives of the Mother Church of Marsala, in the archives of the Confraternities of Our Lady of Sorrows existing in the territory and, subsequently, in the Archives of the General Curia of the Order of the Servants of Mary in Rome. The study, analysis and comparison of the documents found allowed the acquisition of new and unpublished information. In the elaboration of the thesis, a precise order has been followed to facilitate its reading and enjoyment: a first part, introductory, deals with the origin and spread of the Order of the Servants of Mary, the Council of Trent and the Counter-Reformation, the cult of images and the influence exerted by the contemplative imagination of the Jesuits of St. Ignatius of Loyola, the Baroque focused on the pedagogical function of the image, the cult of Our Lady of Sorrows under the invocation of the Confusion, the extraordinary development of the cult of Our Lady of Sorrows promoted by the Order of the Servants of Mary in the 17th to 19th centuries, the reasons for the remarkable spread of the devotion to Our Lady of Sorrows specific to the Servants of Mary in Sicily, the opposition of the Sicilian clergy to the foundation of new convents, the Innocentian reform and the anti-ecclesiastical policy of the rulers. The second part of the thesis consists of a detailed transcription of the aggregations in the ancient Diocese of Mazara del Vallo and an enumeration of the other aggregations that took place in the neighboring dioceses of Trapani, Agrigento, Palermo and Monreale, in order to better understand the scope of the phenomenon. The third part of the thesis presents in-depth studies on the devotion to Our Lady of Sorrows proper to the Servants in some localities of the aforementioned diocese, namely Marsala, Mazara del Vallo, Trapani, Erice, Castelvetrano, Alcamo and Calatafimi, and concludes with a comparative analysis of the statutes found. The research work carried out offers us more information and allows us to make some considerations by way of conclusion. In the first place, aggregation was the simplest, most widespread and effective form of affiliation to the Order, for several reasons: one of them was due to the fact that access to the "spiritual treasures" of the Order only required the consent of the Prior General of the Order and that of the local Ordinary, which made it possible to overcome the many difficulties that the Servants of Mary had to face in spreading their particular devotion to Our Lady of Sorrows, difficulties due to the presence of numerous religious orders, difficulties due to the presence of numerous religious orders, some of which were deeply rooted and hostile to the Servants because of the collection of alms that they regularly collected, difficulties linked to the displacements to lands already difficult to access, or difficulties linked not only to the widespread poverty and delinquency they had to face, but also to the Innocentian reform and the anti-ecclesiastical policy of the Sicilian rulers.