La Festa di Sant’Erasmo
The Feast of Saint Elmo
Years ago we woke in Rome on the morning of il 2 giugno (June 2) to the sound of marching bands and the spectacle of a grand military parade along the Via dei Fori Imperiali. Italy was celebrating the Festa della Repubblica (Festival of the Republic or Republic Day).This national holiday—comparable in spirit to the American Fourth of July -- commemorates the day in 1946 when, following the end of World War II and the fall of fascism, the Italian people voted for a republic rather than a monarchy as their national form of government.
All of Italy marks this date with some fanfare, but our adopted seaside town of Porto Ercole on the western coast of Tuscany has a double reason to celebrate (festeggiare). June 2 is also la festa di Sant’Erasmo, the patron saint of the ancient fishing port and of all mariners.
“Ma chi fu questo Sant’Erasmo?” (Who was this Saint Erasmo?) I asked a friend born on June 2 in Porto Ercole and, naturally, named Erasmo. “Un vescovo” (a bishop), he told me. Several of his fellow Portercolesi (who share the same name) added that he was a martire (martyr) who once saved a ship of local sailors (marinai) from a tempest (tempesta) at sea.
To find out more, I went to Wikipedia, which presents the gruesome suffering of Sant’Erasmo (known in English-speaking lands as Saint Elmo) as the stuff of legend (leggenda). In the late third century, during the Roman persecution of Christians, Erasmo was jailed (incarcerato),"besprinkled...with foulness,” beaten with leaden mauls until his veins burst, thrown into a pit of snakes and worms, and covered with boiling oil and sulfur. Through it all he remained calm, “thanking and loving God." Then lightning struck and electrocuted everyone around him.
Continuing to preach the Gospel, Erasmo was again captured and tortured, this time with burning oil poured into his mouth and a searing hot metal cloak wrapped around him. An angel swept him to safety. Other torturers plucked out his teeth with pincers, scraped his skin with an iron wool carder, and pulled out his eyes with their fingers. In the grisliest account, Erasmo’s stomach was slit open and his intestines wound around a windlass. Perhaps because this type of winch is used to hoist anchors on ships, Erasmo became the patron of sailors.
As another legend goes, while Erasmo was burning alive, a bluish flame (fiamma bluastra) appeared on the top of the pyre (sulla cima della pira) and was interpreted as the saint’s soul ascending to heaven. The electrical discharges (scarica elettro-luminescente) at the mastheads of ships during storms came to be called "Saint Elmo's Fire” (fuoco di Sant’Erasmo), a sign of the martyr’s protection.
In addition to concerts, a rowing race, a festa danzante (dance festival), and a solemn mass, Porto Ercole is celebrating its saint and its republic with a tradizionale processione a mare (a traditional procession to the sea) and a spettacolo pirotecnico (display of fireworks) that we will watch from the villa we are renting above the port. And next time we are at sea, we will pray that San Erasmo’s fuoco keeps us safe from harm.
Words and Expressions
il santo patrono dei naviganti –- patron saint of sailors
temporali in mare -– storms at sea
fuochi d’artificio -- fireworks
Dianne Hales is the author of LA BELLA LINGUA: My Love Affair with Italian, the World's Most Enchanting Language.
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