Modica is a Baroque town perched in the mountains of southern Sicily, an island just off the tip of the Italian mainland. With over one hundred churches, it is the site of one of Sicily’s most beloved Easter traditions.
The Spanish, before there was a unified Spain and therefore starting with the Kingdom of Aragon, occupied Sicily for approximately 500 years. When Modica was destroyed by an earthquake in 1693, it enabled Spanish nobility to rebuild it entirely in the (at that time) new Baroque style. This has made Modica one of the most beautiful cities in Italy.
Architecture was not the only thing the Spaniards left behind. They brought recently discovered chocolate from the new world and many of their religious traditions. To this day, Modica is a renowned center of chocolate production, somewhat in the style of the Aztecs — the chocolate is richer, intense, and a bit grainy. One bite sends a pleasant buzz through your system equivalent to a jolt of dark espresso.
One of the loveliest things they left behind was the “Easter Kiss,” also known as “A Maronna Vasa Vasa.” Unfortunately, everything this year is cancelled, but I thought the Sicilians here and there might enjoy seeing this video I shot last year. Based on the vision of St. Pseudo Bonaventure and his Meditations of the Life of Christ, the ritual recounts the meeting of the newly risen Christ and his mother, the Virgin Mary. This meeting accounts for an odd discrepancy in the Bible — namely, why was Christ’s mother not at the tomb the next morning with the other women who found His body gone? The answer: she had no need to because she had already met her risen Son.
As with all things, the Sicilian flare for the dramatic is phenomenal. So in Modica on Easter morning, a procession of people line up behind the band — for every festival there is almost always a procession with a band — to follow the figure of Christ. The figure is huge and it is not alone. Coming from the other side of the town is a huge marionette representing the Virgin Mary.
