Music as representation of gender in Mediterranean cultures
Tullia Magrini
Women's "work of pain" in Christian Mediterranean Europe
Premise
By the end of the 1950s a group of anthropologists, led by J. G. Peristiany, started a discussion about the existence of the Mediterranean as a territory characterized by some common features that assured its cultural homogeneity. One of the main publications that contributed in founding the anthropology of the Mediterranean was the anthology Honour and Shame: The Values of Mediterranean Society edited by Peristiany in 1966. Even if Peristiany and Pitt-Rivers have claimed recently that they have never meant "to establish the Mediterranean as a 'culture area'" (Peristiany and Pitt-Rivers 1992: 6), their previous statements about "the continuity and persistence of Mediterranean modes of thought" (Peristiany 1966: 9) were actually understood by the scholarly world as an implicit acknowledgement of the existence of such a unified entity. The so-called "honor and shame" syndrome was one of the most important "modes of thought" that Peristiany and his colleagues in 1966 assumed to be pan-Mediterranean: their assumption was that "there exists a sex-linked, binary opposition in which honor is associated with men and shame with women" and both honor and shame are "inextricably linked, tied to one another in cognitive as well as affective terms" (Brandes 1987: 122). Since then this "syndrome" became constantly associated with Mediterranean studies.
It could be argued that the articles included in the Peristiany volume are perhaps less unanimous than the editor states; they focus on different societies, chosen among the most marginal ones in the countries bordering on the Mediterranean so as "to tribalize" them; and finally, they exemplify the classical shortcomings of Mediterranean anthropology, namely, the "failure to compare, to make use of history, to work in cities, to relate part to whole" (Boissevain 1979: 81-82). In spite of these difficulties, the concept of a pan-mediterranean "honor and shame" syndrome soon became the "bread and butter" of Mediterranean anthropology. As Stanley Brandes wrote a decade ago: "We must beware of discovering honor and shame, as such, everywhere simply because we have learned that they are by definition Mediterranean. Until now, scholars felt duty-bound to encounter manifestations of these moral Bobsy twins when carrying out fieldwork any place in the Levant, North Africa, and Southern Europe" (Brandes 1987: 123). In a word, the "honor and shame" syndrome became the flag of the anthropology of the Mediterranean. Still today, there is almost no anthropological study dealing with some Mediterranean society that omits to mention "honor and shame", sometimes simply as a link to previous literature (e.g. Abu-Lughod 1993), sometimes to support it (e.g. Gilmore 1987), or, more and more, to criticize it (e.g. Dubisch 1995). I will not comment here on the "honor and shame" syndrome itself: many scholars have already done so, calling our attention to the following points: the two concepts of male honor and female shame are not consistent throughout the Mediterranean (e.g. Marcus 1987, Herzfeld 1987); they do not appear everywhere in these countries, while, on the other hand, they may be found elsewhere (e.g. Pina-Cabral 1989, Lever 1986); above all, these values appear to be rather obsolete in many Mediterranean regions today (e.g., Davis 1987). I can only add that a report on the ideas of Italian men about women published in 1965 (that is, around the time when the volume Honour and Shame edited by Peristiany also appeared) revealed that opinions about issues such as virginity, sexual behavior before and after marriage, adultery, divorce, etc., were contrasting in the different Italian regions (Parca 1965) and were far from confirming the existence of a widespread "honor and shame" syndrome. It would be still more problematic to maintain today that there are "modes of thought" concerning gender, not to say the "honor and shame" syndrome, that are common to all countries bordering on the Mediterranean.
In spite of its shortcomings, the first literature on Mediterranean "honor and shame", when it is compared with most anthropological literature on non-Mediterranean countries appeared in the 1960s, represents an interesting early example of research on gender-based values. Since the "male" value of honor was thought to be inextricably linked to the "female" value of shame, the authors of that period had to take into consideration men as well as women, their roles in society and their mutual relationship. But how did the pioneers of Mediterranean anthropology portray women? Throughout the Mediterranean, women were represented as silent, passive, and marginal persons, who were secluded in their houses, covered head to toe for the shame of their bodies, and were apparently involved in no activity other than the silent display of their modesty. This representation soon became a stereotype that hindered a more thorough examination of the roles of women in Mediterranean societies. More importantly, this representation prevented the scholars from realizing that, while a part of the literature insisted on representing the chaste, secluded, mute "Mediterranean woman", the position of women was undergoing a dramatic change in most countries, as John Davis, for instance, has pointed out (Davis 1987: 22-34). When Gilmore in 1982 wrote that women are represented as "somehow foreign or isolated from the 'real life' of the community", he added that probably "we are caricaturing 50 percent of the Mediterranean world" (Gilmore 1982: 195). Jane Cowan also noticed recently, with reference to a town in Greek Macedonia, that "the selective insistence on the girl's confinement to the house is all the more striking in the context of the historical participation of Sohoian girls [...] in agricultural production and in waged work outside the house" (Cowan 1990: 117). The participation of women in work outside the house was in fact widespread in Southern Europe, as confirmed also by a survey of women's musical repertoires: there are many repertoires of songs that women performed while, for instance, working in the fields. Thus, the ideal of female passivity and the image of women cloistered inside the house may have been widespread, but did not always correspond with reality. It would perhaps be more correct to assume that the general silence about what women say and do gives evidence of the low social weight assigned to their activities, compared with those of men (Méndez 1988: 187).
The same is true about the role of women in musical activities, one that has been often overlooked as an expression of female identity and values. Mediterranean women, as we know very well, do practice many kinds of performing skills, which are for them important means of expression. We can say that symbolic forms of communication such as dance or songs were even more important in the past, when women enjoyed less freedom of expression in everyday life. But they did not receive the same attention that was reserved for the more socially representative repertoires of Mediterranean men, even if we should keep in mind that also the survey of male musical activity with regard to questions of gender is still at the beginning. Indeed, one of the main goals of this meeting is to offer an opportunity to examine how certain musical practices in Mediterranean countries, both today and in the past, were effective in creating and perpetuating some specific gender roles. More generally, our goal is to discover and emphasize the richness of various concepts of gender as they relate to the historical and present cultures of the Mediterranean, to reconsider the stereotyped view of gender that has been often proposed by the classical anthropological literature, and to offer new perspectives on these issues.
Religion and gender
One of the aspects that, in my opinion, is worthy of serious consideration in our discussion is the role of religion and religious musical events in modeling genders and/or in providing a space for the expression of gender-roles. Religious beliefs are extremely important in shaping a particular view of gender. Even if this is probably true everywhere, this topic seems particularly interesting as an element of differentiation among Mediterranean countries, where the three great monotheistic religions originated and developed side by side. Judaism, Islam, and Catholic and Orthodox Christianity are all monotheistic religions, believe in a male God, share a patriarchal view of society, and assign religious power to men. Of course, there are also profound differences among them, and we know that religious conflict, which also involves conflicting views of gender roles (Davis 1993: 94), was one of the most powerful agents of history in the Mediterranean and constitutes a problem still today, especially with regard to the resurgence of Islamic integralism. From a historical point of view, one of the major factors in the shaping of the Mediterranean was the opposition between Christianity and Islam, since both religions aimed at expanding their areas of influence. On the other hand, communities of the Jewish diaspora and Gypsies for a long time had to live within one of these religious areas and used religion as a means to either maintain their identity or mediate with their neighbors. It goes without saying that, in this complex situation (which is becoming now more and more complex because of the increasing mobility of peoples within the Mediterranean), distinctive views of genders played - and still play - an important role in maintaining the cultural identity of different religious communities. This is the reason why in our meeting we shall hear several papers devoted to issues of gender in the different religious Mediterranean communities, in view of exploring this avenue of research. However, we should keep in mind that the different Mediterranean religions are not equally distributed, let alone equally strong, within their own areas of influence and do not affect the public opinion on issues related to gender in the same way everywhere. Moreover, it is important to distinguish between beliefs that are upheld and promoted by religious authorities and those belonging to folk religion, the latter being the ritual-religious practices more frequently observed by anthropologists. This is why in this meeting we can hope to examine only some aspects of this complex reality.
Women's ritual-religious behavior in Southern Europe
By taking religious behavior into account, we can perhaps discover something more about the "mute" Mediterranean women. Women's religious and ritual behavior has a particular importance in Southern Europe, that is to say, in the countries where Catholic and Orthodox religions are widespread. In fact, scholars agree that in Southern Europe "women are more religious than men" (e.g. Schneider 1971: 20), or that, better said, they are "more active in religious practice than men" (Pitt-Rivers 1992: 227): "men are the religious skeptics, women the religious supporters", adds Brandes with reference to Andalusian society (Brandes 1980: 182).
Basic forms of religious behavior, such as attending Mass on a regular basis and taking confession and Communion, were traditionally more common among women than among men. Such behaviors were seen as a component of their social respectability, since they implied the adoption of Christian ideals of feminine behavior that were shared by their communities (e.g. virginity before marriage, sex viewed basically as a means for reproduction, etc.). However, it is important to remember that these basic forms of religious behavior did not exhaust the ritual-religious practices of Southern European women. On the contrary, folk religion also included other forms of behavior that were not always consistent with the orientations of the official church, but were nevertheless perceived by common people as genuine expressions of religious faith. If we aim to discover something more about the role of religion in women's life, we must carefully evaluate these practices. Folk religion "is very much about practice, about doing rather than simply about believing; ritual activities, whether within or outside the boundaries (physical or jurisdictional) of the church actually constitute religion [...] rather than 'expressing' or symbolizing it." (Dubisch 1995: 60). In speaking of these practices, I generally shall use the past tense because, even if some of them are still alive today, their role in the life of women has generally diminished in the last decades. However, the role of folk religion was until recently so important that we cannot fail to acknowledge its contribution in creating and maintaining a distinctive view of femininity.
Ritual-religious life provided Southern European women with an opportunity for self-expression: such rituals allowed them to be released from muteness in a public context, thus blurring the traditional gendered distinction between a male public sphere of action and a female private one. The sphere of religious practices was one of the few areas where women could behave as actors and emphasize their expressive and creative abilities. This was particularly true in those contexts where the social position of women was especially marginal (Rosaldo and Lamphere 1974: 9): it is well-known that groups who find themselves in a marginal position tend to resort to symbolic means of expression, such as music, rite, myth.
My goal here is to show how South-European women were able to take advantage of the public sphere of religious action to carry on a specific kind of work, which I would like to call the "work of pain". I suggest that within the sphere of ritual-religious events women were able to take their and their families' psychological sorrows and anxieties out of the private sphere and to express and elaborate these sorrows and anxieties through public performances according to socially acceptable ways of behavior. In this way they created a specific role for themselves and constructed a particular image of femininity. The term "work of pain", which I have chosen to identify this kind of activity, is parallel to the term "kin work", which was adopted by Micaela Di Leonardo to describe the American women's task of sustaining family networks (1984).
The "work of pain"
Before I begin my discussion, I want to emphasize that the condition and status of women may change greatly in Southern Europe, depending, among other factors, on the different family-contexts where they happen to live. It is well known that in these regions we find examples of different habits ruling over marriage, the most important of which being the virilocal or uxorilocal customary settings. In uxorilocal settings women could enjoy considerable support from their family: they lived in close contact with their parents and sisters and did not abandon their native place, friends and kin. To the contrary, as Loizos argued, in virilocal contexts women "at marriage experience a dislocation from, and a consequent diminution of, their natal kinship based identity and are drawn into muteness", while "men seem to identify more closely with the household and use their identification in prestige-oriented action more than women" (Loizos and Papataxiarchis 1991: 15). The literature offers well-known examples of the latter situation. For instance, in his study of the Albanian patrilineal kin-group of the Ghegs, Whitaker points out that women were never integrated into their husband's clan (Whitaker 1976: 195-203). Furthermore, since these clans were traditionally exogamous and were used to exchange wives with another clan in order to create an alliance, women often found themselves in a very difficult situation when this alliance broke down. In some cases, the women went as far as to kill their children "as a desperate outlet to their predicament" (Peristiany 1976: 11). Apart from these extreme cases, it is well known that in virilocal contexts the wife was often considered "a stranger" in the household. Peristiany writes: "The internal strains and conflicts of these families result in 5.4 per cent of the wives (of the 195 cases under study) leaving their homes, while a considerable number suffer from neurosis or 'bedevilment'" (1976: 18).
In these kinds of virilocal contexts, where women experienced traditionally a marginal and mute condition, the sphere of ritual and religious action was virtually the only one that women could resort to in order to express and possibly solve their psychological problems. This point may be illustrated by mentioning, as an example, the rite of the Anastenaria in Greek Macedonia. According to the local tradition, the Anastenaria is a religious feast that celebrates the rescue of the holy icons of Saint Constantine and Saint Helen, carried out by the Thracians in the XII century when the Bulgarians set on fire the church devoted to the two Saints. However, Loring Danforth pointed out recently that this religious musical rite is also a "system of ritual psychotherapy [...] concerned with the diagnosis and treatment of a wide variety of illnesses", mainly of a psychogenic nature (Danforth 1991: 99); in particular, it is a powerful means for women to express and solve the inner and social conflicts that cause the kind of neurosis mentioned by Peristiany. According to Danforth, women perform this therapeutic ritual within the sphere of the devotion to the Saints Constantine and Helen in order to represent and elaborate their inner pains and conflicts that result from their difficult relationships with their mother-in-laws. In fact, within the households of this virilocal community, "the position of the daughter-in-law is strictly subordinate to that of her mother-in-law" (103). Thus, the Anastenaria provides women with symbols and models of action through which they are able to articulate and express their inner tensions, such as dancing while holding an icon of Saints Constantine and Helen or a red kerchief, walking on fire, and singing the story of Mikrokostantinos. This last song, in particular, expresses symbolically the conflict between mother-in-law and daughter-in-law and is considered by Danforth an effective means to bring to light and resolve this conflict. In conclusion, as Danforth say, "a woman's participation in the Anastenaria may actually restructure her family relationships in such a way as to resolve the conflicts present in her relationship with her mother-in-law. By becoming an Anastenarissa, a woman gains the support of her husband, since he is forced to commit himself publicly to helping her regain her health" (109).
The case of the Anastenaria is a good example of the kind of "work of pain" - accomplished within the sphere of a religious event - that I mentioned before. We find a very similar case in the old phenomenon of tarantism, a therapy based on music and dance that was once particularly widespread in an area of Apulia called Salento in Southern Italy. "According to De Martino's interpretation, tarantism aims at symbolically representing and acting out a critical situation (a psychological struggle which is not possible to remember, thus leading to neurosis) affecting over all women during the age of sexual development. In this perspective, tarantism plays a very important role in Salento's society, since it allows the symbolic performance and socialization of a deeply critical individual conflict, which can be communicated and therefore loose its most dangerous features" (Magrini 1994: 71-72). For the marginal and "mute" women of Salento, who had no other cultural means to express their pain, tarantism functioned as a symbolic means for the cathartic expression of disease and as a conceptual framework with which to interpret it. Furthermore, tarantism also had a strong religious component, since Saint Paul of Galatina was considered the protector of tarantists and, at the same time, was sometimes identified with the taranta itself (De Martino 1976: 106). Pilgrimages to Galatina and devotion to Saint Paul were an integral part of the tarantists' behavior: during the feast of Saint Paul, the women affected by tarantism could act out their disease in a public context with the support of their families.
Finally, I want to mention briefly a further case of "work of pain" in the context of a religious rite celebrated every year in Campania, another region of Southern Italy. In the crowd of worshippers who proceed to the Sanctuary of the Madonna dell'Arco at Pomigliano d'Arco, near Naples, on the Monday after Easter, I was able to observe women who fell down shouting as soon as they walked into the church and approached the holy icon. They were thus living publicly a private, psychological crisis: however, these crises are perceived by most worshippers who attend the event as a part of devotional behavior. Of course, the three cases I have mentioned are different, if only because they are connected to different social realities and manifest different problems and needs. However, they also have one thing in common, namely, the selection of a ritual-religious event as the privileged moment for the public manifestation and elaboration of women's pain: on these occasions, the action of women making public spectacle of themselves - in front of both their families and unknown people - has in itself a cathartic effect and is perceived as socially acceptable, not shameful.
At the same time, these kinds of ritual-religious practice construct an image of femininity that is associated with the expression of psychological suffering. Thus the "work of pain", even if it is not the exclusive property of women, is thought of as "gendered", i.e., a behavior mostly appropriate to the female world. After all, this is consistent with the well-known association between femininity and the world of emotions (e.g., Lutz 1986), as well as between femininity and suffering: the "woman's position within the cycle of life is recognized as one which affords them an uneven share of suffering a well as privileged understanding [...] As a mother, a woman has taken the first step in the hierarchy of 'understanding pain', an understanding which is the privileged territory of women" (Caraveli-Chavez 1980: 146).
The women's skill in understanding and elaborating pain is testified first of all by their ability to deal with death. The ritual of funeral mourning is in fact an emblematic case of female "work of pain". This ritual was widespread in many Mediterranean countries well before the advent of Christianity: we find examples of it in the Bible and in the Iliad, in ancient Egypt as well as in ancient Rome, and these examples also include cases of male laments (De Martino 1975: 195, 199). Early Christianity found ritual mourning inconsistent with the message of the new religion. Indeed, the gospels report that, as Christ was going to the Calvary, the women began lamenting, at which point Christ said to them: "Daughters of Jerusalem, don't mourn me, but yourselves and your children" (Luca, 23, 27-29). Moreover, the gospels do not depict the mother of Christ in the act of lamenting his death, but rather as silently absorbed in her grief. We should remember, however, that syncretism deeply affected the development of Christianity in the Roman age: many ritual practices that could not be eradicated were absorbed in the new religion. In the Acta Pilati of the fifth century AD the Mother of Christ is depicted while performing the ritual mourning for Jesus - an image suggesting that this kind of ritual had by then been accepted by the new religion.
We can assume, therefore, that the practice of ritual mourning was never completely discontinued until our century, when it was documented and studied by several scholars (e.g., De Martino 1975, Caraveli-Chavez 1980, Danforth 1982, Méndez 1988). Ethnographic documentation has confirmed that ritual mourning was an essentially feminine practice in our century. We can thus infer that, since women experience psychological pain more deeply than men, they are considered more equipped to deal with the greatest grief, namely, the grief caused by the death of a beloved person. Women can bear the deep pain of lamenting the dead person and even making a show of themselves to express their sorrow. This "work of pain" is not a sign of weakness: on the contrary, the elaboration of grief through ritual mourning is hard work: a work that in "face to face" communities was essential, inasmuch as it carried a deep meaning both for the relatives of the dead person and for the entire community. Death shakes and restructures the community, which must endure the loss and process the connected feelings of fear and grief. The task of controlling and assimilating these feelings is entrusted to the women, who do this work not only for themselves, but also to benefit the whole community, engaged in the collective confrontation of death. The technique of the lament erects a permanent separation between the dead and the living and transforms the fear of the dead person, who is believed to contaminate the world of the living, into a feeling of affectionate memory for the deceased. Thus, ritual mourning is "a process by which a new reality is constructed and death finally accepted" (Danforth 1982: 141).
The Mother of Sorrow
In Catholic and Orthodox Christianity the role of women as pain-bearers finds support in the cult of a female figure, namely Mary, whose exceptional magnitude within the Christian hierarchy is one of the greatest peculiarities of Catholic and Orthodox Christianity with respect to Judaism and Islam. However, the prominence of Mary is not an original feature of Christianity: in the gospels she appears only as a marginal figure, as a poor woman from Galilee who was the mother of Jesus (and it should be added that the gospels of Giovanni and Marco do not mention at all the Annunciation of Mary, the birth of Jesus, and the related events narrated by Luca and Marco). The cult of Mary developed later: only during the fifth century did the holy nature of Mary become a topic of theological debate. Given the strong influence of Hellenism on early Christianity, it is no wonder that the new Christian believers were in search of a female figure who could replace the Hellenistic goddesses. This led to forms of syncretism between Mary and many pre-Christian goddesses, such as the mother and redeemer Isis, whose worship was extremely widespread in the Roman Empire (C. Schneider 1967: 535, Baltrusaitis 1967). The Council of Ephesus, held in 431 AD, stated that Mary was the Theotokos, the Mother of God, thus putting an end to the controversy that had troubled the early Christians. Since then the prominence of Mary in Christian Mediterranean Europe increased steadily, in particular after the beginning of the second millennium (Wolf 1969). This is obviously not the place to survey the history of Mariology: I will limit myself to the observation that the most important points of disagreement about Mary between the Catholic and Orthodox churches - which concern Mary's Immaculate Conception and her Assumption or Dormition - do not seem to have changed the perception of Mary in folk religion. As popular iconography shows, both Orthodox and Catholic people perceive Mary first of all as "the mother": her being the symbol of motherhood is the first reason for her prominence among Catholic and Orthodox believers. Since she represents a universal female experience, Mary offers a model with whom women in the Christian Mediterranean world can easily identify. As Gill Dubisch writes: "On the level of popular devotional practice, the prominence of Mary has been used to explain the frequently observed noted greater participation of lay women in everyday religious life throughout the Christian Mediterranean. Mary, it is argued, provides a model for women in their daily lives, the model of the self-sacrificing and virtuous mother. This model is congruent with expected social roles for women, whereas the virtues exemplified by Christ do not provide such a satisfactory role model for Mediterranean men" (Dubisch 1995: 233; see also Saunders 1981: 440). In Nancy Frey Breuner's words: "Mary represents the ideal mother, the ultimate paragon, and she derives her power from the qualities of self-denial and nurturance. Women may respond to that image because they identify with these attributes, which are consonant with their experience in society" (Breuner 1992: 79).
It seems to me, however, that Mary is something more than simply a model of motherhood: one cannot forget that she is the "Mother of Sorrow", the mother who has lost her son, and who has experienced the greatest possible grief. It is the experience of grief that makes Mary such a human figure, that makes her close to all Christian Mediterranean women who have to endure pain in their everyday life. The prominence of the Mother of Sorrow is testified for instance by the impressive rituals for Easter, currently the most popular Christian rituals in Southern Europe (see Boissevain 1992). The traditional representation of the Mother of Sorrow with her breast pierced by seven swords provides a most vivid interpretation of Mary's suffering. This suffering is often conceived of as important as Christ's own passion: Christ died, was resurrected, and joined his father in heaven, but Mary remained on earth to mourn her dead son (Dubisch 1995: 214-5). Thus, her motherly grief becomes the most important point of reference for those women who also must cope with pain in their lives.
I will now illustrate this last point with materials that I collected during my fieldwork in Northern Calabria, where the Easter rituals are particularly impressive. I will mention only some parts of these rituals, which are indicative, in my view, of the ways in which women and men manifest their gender identity within the Easter drama in this territory. As in many other Southern European countries, a procession re-enacting the different moments of the passion of Christ takes place in the villages with the participation of the whole community. During the procession the women play a silent, though very expressive role: they carry on their heads the cinti, that is, devotional objects that may either be full of grain or support a set of candles. Light and food are thus the symbols that are associated with femininity during the ritual and represent the woman as feeder (whose archetype is the nursing mother) and redeemer.
Moreover, at Easter, in Northern Calabria as well as in many other regions of Southern Italy (e.g. Giallombardo 1977: 18), the women also prepare the so-called lavurieddi or crocette. They store some plants of grain in a dark room, so that the grain grows white and not green, as a symbol of the dead body of Christ. These plants, placed on a wooden cross (crocette) or, alternatively, in little pots (lavurieddi), are then put on the altars together with an image of Christ or of the Mother of Sorrow: they represent the grain that cannot grow, thus the same theme of death through the metaphor of food.
The dramatic climax of the Holy Week is reached on the night before Good Friday, when two separate rituals take place, one perfomed by women, the other one by men, in one of these villages. The old women gather together and sing in the main church, located in the heart of the village, thus performing the most important part of their "work of pain". What they sing is in fact a planctus, that is, the lament of the Mother of Sorrow for her dead son. The melodic design is indeed characteristic of the lament, as well as the text, which is in the classical form of a dialogue.
In her planctus, the mother recalls the beauties of her son, his cheeks, his holy feet, his holy hands, his sweet mouth, his bright eyes, his golden hair, and compares every trait of the living Jesus with the miserable look of the dead Christ. The mother tells Jesus that he was both husband and father to her, even though she actually bore him. She tells him that she cannot stop mourning, she wants to keep him on her breast and wash him with her tears; she begs him to let her stay with him in his grave, and - when he answers that this is not possible - she tells him that she will wait until he comes out of the tomb, and that if he does not come out she will start to cry and to tell the reason of her mourning to everybody, and that she will mourn him as long as she will live (Magrini 1986: 413-417)
There is clearly a strict relationship between this planctus Mariae and the ritual of the lament mentioned above. This relationship becomes apparent, for instance, in the way in which the mourning Mary dialogues with her dead son and, above all, in the her desperate attempt to deny the reality of the irreparable loss. At the same time, this planctus displays the characteristic therapeutic aspects of the lament: in fact, finding ways to transform pain through words, gestures, and sounds is the first step toward the overcoming of pain and towards the reintegration of the bereaved into reality. At any rate, it is important to emphasize here that the main agent of this therapeutic practice is not Mary, of course, but rather those women who, by performing the planctus, can find the words, the sounds, and the gestures to carry on their own "work of pain" and to lament symbolically their own losses. However, the ritual of the lament of the Mother of Sorrow has also an important part in the representation of Mary as a powerful model of the suffering woman - a model full of humanity. It is no wonder that Christian women may easily identify with her as their first "fellow woman" in the experience of grief (see Toschi 1976: 685).
Of course, there may be further contextual circumstances that reinforce the message of this ritual. If we accept the idea that Easter, in addition to its religious meaning, takes on a wider significance as emblematic representation of an experience of loss and detachment, then the identification with the Mater Dolorosa becomes even more meaningful for the women of these villages. On the one hand, they live in a region that adopts the uxorilocal setting, which means that mothers must experience detachment from their sons when they get married. On the other side, we cannot overlook the fact that so many people from this Italian region were forced to emigrate elsewhere in search of jobs and economic security. This is probably another reason why these women are so sensitive to the theme of loss and detachment.
The prominence of the Mother of Sorrow within the Easter rituals, in this context, is enhanced further by the behavior of the men of the same village during the night of the Good Friday. While the women lament the death of Christ in the main church, some men perform the ritual of the battenti outside the church. Dressed in red, with their face partly covered, the battenti wound their own legs, then run barefoot across the village and offer their blood to the Mother of Sorrow on the steps or on the walls of some churches. It must be emphasized that this ritual is not related to the death of Christ, but rather to the fulfillment of a personal vow to the Mother of Sorrow. Viewed in psychoanalytic terms, this behavior may be connected to a deep unresolved feeling of dependence on the mother, symbolically represented by the Mater Dolorosa (see Magrini 1986: 92-109). However, for the purpose of this paper it is more important to emphasize that the behaviors of men and women during this ritual are completely different: while the men offer a physical sacrifice, like in many other Christian rituals, the women offer their ability to elaborate psychological suffering. This may be perhaps assumed as a hint to understand the different roles associated with femininity and masculinity within ritual-religious events.
There is no doubt that Easter rituals provide the occasion for the most direct identification of women with the Madonna as Mother of Sorrow. The role of the suffering Mother, however, also appears in other ritual actions, such as pilgrimages. As we all know, pilgrimages are a very complex and polymorph phenomenon that may be studied from a variety of perspectives (e.g. Bohlman 1996, Boissevain 1992, Dubisch 1995). I only would like to point out here that most pilgrimage sites in Southern Europe are sanctuaries dedicated to the Madonna (for instance, in Southern Italy, nearly 40% of sanctuaries). This figure itself points to the exceptional status of the Madonna in popular devotion. We also know that pilgrimages are not only a female phenomenon; men participate too. But, according to the scholarly literature, the "work of pain" carried on during pilgrimages seems once again performed mostly by women, by means of behaviors that are widespread both in Catholic and in Orthodox Christianity and have been observed in various regions of Southern Europe. These behaviors involve actions that are generally performed before arriving at the sanctuary or at the holy icon or statue within it. They may include the following: crawling towards the sanctuary on the knees, walking barefoot, dragging the tongue on the ground, breast-beating, touching and kissing holy objects, loosening the hair, bringing offerings, wearing a white dress (that will be left at the sanctuary as an offering), shouting, crying, having crises, invoking the Madonna, insistently begging for a grace (e.g., Rossi 1986: 76, Dubisch 1995, Brandes 1980). Devotional behavior may thus include self-humiliation and public display of pain. By performing these actions, women affirm their particular role of taking on themselves their pain, as well as that of their children, their husbands, and other members of their family, and of acting according to a resolution obtained through divine grace. Thus the manifestation of suffering becomes again a means to reaffirm the women's role as actors of the "work of pain". Moreover, "the identification with the Panayia [Mary] as a suffering mother lends a particular moral force to their own performance of suffering as enacted at the pilgrimage site" (Dubisch 1995: 217). It is worth stressing that, besides using materials offered by traditional religious behavior in order to perform a public representation of their pain, women also create images that are central to religion : "Their ritual and prayer focus not on Christ, but on the Panayia. Instead of the martyred son, they produce and reproduce images of the suffering mother" (Dubisch 1995: 219).
Pilgrimage is often accompanied by singing, performed while travelling toward or walking around the pilgrimage site. Singing is another important part of the devotional behavior of the worshippers and illustrates their relationship with the Madonna. I will offer just one example of pilgrims singing during their way to the sanctuary of the Madonna del Pettoruto, in Calabria: the text celebrates the power of the Madonna - she being the mother of all people and the mistress of the whole world - praises her beauty, depicts her while helping them in the different moments of their journey to the sanctuary, and concludes by requesting a grace (Magrini 1986: 394-409). These songs portray the Madonna as an omnipotent holy figure who can satisfy any need of her worshippers. At the same time, through her being the "Mother of all people," she appears endowed with a human dimension that allows her to understand and share the pain of her devotees, protect them and fulfil their needs. In this way, the same privileged understanding of suffering that creates a bond among the women on earth also creates a bond between these women and our Lady in Heaven: the notion of shared pain provides the reward of female bonding. At the same time, just as the women act as mediators between their families and the sacred world, the Madonna is often conceived as a mediator between the humans and God or Christ.
Conclusion
Women of the Christian Mediterranean world often shared in the past the powerless condition of all females living in a male-dominated society. Finding themselves in a socially "muted position", women resorted to symbolic means of expression and found in religious and ritual behavior one of the few sanctioned emotional and expressive outlets available to them in public contexts. Within this sphere of action, women could become the actors of events having a meaning both for themselves and, in many cases, for their community as well. The kinds of event I have examined here are related to the expression and elaboration of suffering, and it seems that a strict association between femininity and suffering is common in the contexts that I have examined. The parallelism found between the women's suffering expressed in religious practices and the prominence of the Madonna, the Mother of Sorrow, as the main female figure of the Catholic and Orthodox religions, creates a bond between the human and the sacred. Thus, in Mediterranean Catholicism and Orthodoxy, human and sacred femininity seem unavoidably bound together in the common destiny of bearing and elaborating the painful sides of life.
References
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