  |
|
The Scampanata Festival (Bell Festival) is typical of Anghiari, a medieval village in the province of Arezzo, and it is part of the cycle of spring festivals. The local community decided to revive this special tradition every five years. The Scampanata Festival has several features in common with European rituals like charivari (chivaree): collectively mocking someone who has broken a rule of social behaviour; making a racket with improvised instruments; carrying the victim; and groups of young people participating. But the Bell Festival differs from other forms of charivari in several respects: its cyclical nature and its duration which at one time was the entire month of May, and especially its motivation, i.e. punishing a person who has slept late. In this region, the cocciate was more common than the charivari. It was aimed at widows who remarried or older women marrying for the first time.
World War II brought a lengthy interruption to the Bell Festival; but in 1980, the custom was revived as part of an attempt to recover local traditions. Every five years since then, every member of the Bell Society is called to the town square at 6 AM, each Thursday and Sunday in May. All who arrive late, no matter where they were or what their excuse, are punished for breaking the rule. They are carried on a multicolored, hand-drawn tumbrel decorated with May flowers. While it is pulled through the steep streets of the town to the deafening clatter of musical instruments, people hurl food (flour, eggs, cocoa) and debris at the "victims" and hold a fish in front of their faces. By the end of the ride, they are unrecognizable, exhausted and queasy, and look more like puppets than human beings. For the community, this event is not only an opportunity for collective revelry, but also an outlet for personal animosities and hostility that cannot be expressed under ordinary circumstances.
With its similarities to some pre-Christian fertility rituals and to the cyclical ceremonies that mark spring renewal, this particular tradition may have derived from a primitive agricultural ideology which characterized the region in the past. In response to the economic concerns of an agricultural society, the importance of spring renewal was expressed in a collective celebration corresponding to the needs of the community. It involved transferring to a single individual the communal guilt for breaking the laws of nature, and expiating any wrongdoing through a ritual that restores the natural order.
|
|
|
