While staying in Palermo in the spring of 1787, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe climbed Mount Pellegrino, the mountain overlooking Palermo and home to the shrine of Santa Rosalia, the hermit saint venerated as the city’s patron saint. In his Journey to Italy he mentions both the mountain and the cult of the saint, testifying to the importance of this place in Palermo’s landscape and religious life.
The shrine of santa rosalia in the account of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (from Viaggio in Italia, trad. E. Castellani, VI ed., Milan 1997, p. 263 ff.)
Palermo, April 6, 1787
Saint Rosalie, patron saint of Palermo, is so universally known through Brydone’s description of her feast day that friends will certainly appreciate some news around the precise place where she is the object of special honors.
Santa Rosalia – Luca Giordano – Museo del Prado, Madrid
The great rocky massif of Mount Pellegrino, wider than high, rises at the northwest end of the Gulf of Palermo. Its beautiful shape cannot be defined in words: we find an imperfect reproduction of it in Voyage pittoresque de la Stelle. It consists of gray limestone from a very remote age. Its rocks are completely bare, no tree or bush grows there, and only the flat foothills are sparsely covered with grass and moss.
At the beginning of the last century the saint’s bones were discovered in a cave on this mountain and transported to Palermo. Their presence freed the city from the plague, and from that day Rosalie became the patron saint of the population; chapels were erected and grand celebrations decreed for her.
Antoon van Dyck, Saint Rosalie Crowned by Angels
Because the faithful made assiduous pilgrimages to the mountain, a road was built at great expense that, resting on pillars and arches like an aqueduct, zigzags up between two rock walls.
The actual shrine better suits the humility of the pious woman who took refuge up here than the lavish festivals instituted in honor of her total renunciation of the world. And perhaps the whole of Christendom, which for one thousand eight hundred years has been assiduously assiduously asserting its dominion, pomp and solemn triumphs over the misery of its founders and most zealous followers, counts no other sacred place furnished and venerated with such frank and innocent sentiment.
View of Palermo with Monte Pellegrino
Once past the ascent, one contours a rocky ledge, immediately having in front a steep wall in which the church and convent are, so to speak, incorporated.
The entrance to the cave
There is nothing inviting or attractive about the exterior of the church; we open the door without any curiosity, but as soon as we enter we experience an extraordinary surprise. We find ourselves in a vestibule that runs perpendicular to the church and is open to the nave. Here we see the usual stacks of holy water and some confessionals. The nave is an uncovered courtyard, enclosed on the right by rough rocks, on the left by the continuation of the porch, paved with slabs slightly indi nate to let rainwater flow; more or less in the center there is a small fountain.
The grotto proper has been transformed into a choir, without taking away anything of its natural roughness. A few steps lead up, and there before us is the large lectern with the missal, and on either side the stalls. Everything is illuminated by the daylight that penetrates from the courtyard or the nave. In the depth of the dark grotto rises the high altar in the center.
The Shrine of Santa Rosalia in the 1700s
As I have already said, the cave was left intact; but since water is constantly seeping from the rocks, it was necessary to keep the place dry. This was done by laying along the edges of the rocks lead gutters, connected to each other by various fittings. Wide at the top and narrow at the bottom as they are, and dyed a dirty green color, they make the cave look as if it were carpeted inside with large cacti. Water is fed, part sideways and part from behind, into a clear basin, which the faithful draw from to combat all evil.
Interior of the cave
While I was carefully observing all this, a priest approached me and asked me if I happened to be a Genoese and wished to have some mass said. I replied that I had come to Palermo in the company of a Genoese man, who was planning to come up here the next day, a feast day, and since one of us always had to stay at home, I had come up today to take a look. He invited me to do all my business, to observe everything well and to say my prayers. He especially pointed me to an altar, placed to the left in the cave, as a particularly holy place, and left.
Looking through the slits of a large auburn brass gate, I saw lamps burning under the altar; I knelt as close as I could and peered through the gaps. Inside was another dense lattice of interwoven brass wires, so that what was placed in the back stood out as if behind the weave of a veil.
Santa Rosalia – Sanctuary of Monte Pellegrino, G. Tedeschi, 1630
In the dim glow of some lights I glimpsed a beautiful figure of a young woman.
She seemed as if rapt in ecstasy, her eyes half-closed, her head leaning negligently on her right hand laden with rings. I was not satiated with contemplating that image; it seemed to me that it emanated an extraordinary charm. The mantle that covers her is of golden plate and imitates well a richly woven cloth of gold. The head and hands are of white marble, I dare not say high style, yet rendered with such naturalness and grace as to make one believe that the figure breathes and moves.
A little angel stands beside her and seems to fan her with the stem of a lily.
Meanwhile, the priests had entered the cave, had taken their places in the stalls and were chanting vespers.
I sat on a pew in front of the altar and for a while I stood listening to them; then I returned to kneel by the altar and tried to perceive more clearly the beautiful effigy of the saint, abandoning myself all to the fascinating mirage of the image and the place.
In the cave the chanting of the religious was now silent; water continued to flow into the basin by the altar, the looming rocks of the vestibule and nave narrowed the scene even more. In the wilderness of that wild cave, over which death seemed to have descended again, there reigned a great stillness, a great purity; the trappings of Catholic and Sicilian worship in particular regained almost all of its natural simplicity, and the illusion emanating from the figure of the beautiful ad dormentata was bewitching even to an experienced eye of the world In short, only with difficulty did I manage to tear myself away from the place, and it was already late at night when I returned to Palermo.
The facade of the Sanctuary of Santa Rosalia
(The account of the visit to the shrine of St. Rosalie had already appeared in the “Teutscher Merkur” of October 1788, before it was in included in the Italienische Reise. – Patrick Brydone (1740-1818) was an English naturalist who traveled to Italy in the years 1767-71 and collected his impressions in two volumes of letters).
The itinerary of Goethe’s visit to the Shrine of St. Rosalie
Already in other passages of the Italian Journey Goethe had referred to Santa Rosalia and her feast: entering the city from Porta felice he had observed that the door had no lintel “…damit der turmhohe Wagen der heiligen Rosalia an dem berühmten Feste durchfahren könne…” (“…so that the cart of Santa Rosalia, as high as a tower, may pass during the celebrated feast…”).
With this observation, Goethe describes a monumental city gate built in such a way as to allow the passage of the great chariot of the Feast.
From the balcony of his hotel he could see the most beautiful promontory in the world: “…von dessen Balkon wir das Meer und die Reede, den Rosalienberg und das Ufer überschauten…” (“…from whose balcony we dominated with our gaze the sea and the roadstead, the mountain of Santa Rosalia and the coast…”).
The mountain is called Rosalienberg, meaning “Rosalie’s mountain,” a sign of the strong connection between the landscape and the cult of the saint.
Images of the Feast of Santa Rosalia
The procession through the streets of Palermo
Goethe’s Ecstasy in Palermo: The Tale of the Feast of Santa Rosalia
Studies on Goethe stress the importance of Goethe’s reflections on the cult of Santa Rosalia and her Feast in the genesis of the “Journey to Italy.”
Indeed, it is noted that the Goethean account dedicated to Saint Rosalie is not a marginal episode, but one of the oldest and most revealing cores of the book’s future genesis.
In fact, the first text published by Goethe in Wieland’s Teutscher Merkur was precisely “Aus Rosaliens Heiligthum,” dedicated to the shrine of Saint Rosalie on Mount Pellegrino, above the port of Palermo (see A. Dröse and J. Robert, Reise- Journal und Journalpoetik. Goethes Bericht aus Rosaliens Heiligthum und die Anfànge der Italienischen Reise in Wielands Teutschem Merkur (1788/89), Università di Tubinga, publikationen.unituebingen.de). The choice is not accidental: it places Goethe’s Italian experience from the very beginning at a meeting point between landscape, religion, popular culture and aesthetic reflection.
Goethe conceived many of his Italian entries not as mere private notes, but as materials already geared toward periodical publication. Indeed, in a diary note intended for Charlotte von Stein, he states the overall program of his own observing:
“Meine Bemerkungen über Menschen, Volk, Staat, Regierung, Natur, Kunst, Gebrauch, Geschichte gehn immer Fort“
(“My observations on men, people, state, government, nature, art, customs, history proceed continually”: Goethe, Tagebuch der Italienischen Reise 1786, MA 3.1, p. 75).
This thematic opening also explains well the value of the text on Rosalie. In the shrine of Monte Pellegrino Goethe sees not only a place of local devotion, but a point where popular religion, nature, and artistic form touch. His gaze is not that of the Enlightenment polemicist, as in Brydone, but that of one who seeks a sensitive truth of places. Already the ascent to the mountain takes on an almost initiatory character in the tale:
“[Der Weg] im Zigzag zwischen zwei Klippen hinauf steigt.”
(“[The path] zigzags up between two cliffs.”)
The interior of the sanctuary surprises Goethe not because of its pageantry but because of its rough natural immediacy. He insists that the cave has been stripped of nothing of its original form:
“…daß man ihr nichts von ihrer natürlichen rauhen Gestalt genommen habe.”
(“…that nothing of its natural, rugged form has been taken away from it.”)
Goethe, Rosaliens Heiligthum, MA 3.2.
The center of the tale, however, is the apparition of the saint. Through the grating of the side altar Goethe glimpses the lying statue of Rosalie and describes it with an intensity that verges on erotic enchantment:
“Ein schönes Frauenzimmer erblickte ich bei dem Schein einiger stillen Lampen.”
(“I glimpsed a beautiful woman in the glow of some quiet lamps.”)
The most famous description follows:
“Ich konnte das Bild nicht genug betrachten; es schien mir ganz besondere Reize zu haben.”
(“I could not be satiated with contemplating the image; it seemed to me to possess quite special attractions.”)
Also:
“…daß man glaubt sie müßte Atem holen und sich bewegen.”
(“…so that it is almost believed that it must breathe and move.”)
Goethe, Rosaliens Heiligthum, dMA 3.2, c. p. 163.
The essay rightly insists that here Goethe is not simply describing a sacred sculpture. He transforms the saint into an aesthetic apparition, almost into a figure of beauty suspended between art, religion, and sensuality. The impression culminates in the gesture of kneeling not before a manifestation of the divine, but before the image itself:
“…alsdenn begab ich mich wieder zum Altare, kniete nieder, und suchte das schöne Bild der Heiligen noch deutlicher gewahr zu werden, und überließ mich der reizenden Illusion der Gestalt und des Orts.”
(“…then I returned to the altar, knelt down and tried to catch a more distinct glimpse of the beautiful image of the saint, indulging in the seductive illusion of figure and place.”)
Goethe, Rosaliens Heiligthum, MA 3.2, p. 163.
Herein lies one of the most original points of the text: religious devotion is transposed into aesthetic experience. There is no anti-Catholic sarcasm, but neither is there simple confessional adherence. Goethe experiences the shrine as a place of an “epiphany” mediated by art. This is why the pilgrimage to Santa Rosalia is part of a broader Goethean quest for an original, natural religiosity, not yet separated from sensible form.
The landscape of Mount Pellegrino and the cave itself reinforce this interpretation. Indeed, Goethe notes the silence and purity of the place in words that the sage interprets as traces of an archaic religion of nature:
“Es war eine große Stille in dieser gleichsam wieder ausgestorbenen Wüste, eine große Reinlichkeit in einer wilden Höhle.”
(“There reigned a great silence in this wilderness, as it were extinguished again; a great cleansing in a wild cave.”)
Goethe, Rosaliens Heiligthum, MA 3.2, p. 164.
In the original drafting of the Teutscher Merkur Goethe then closed the text with a remark that is very valuable today, later suppressed in the volume version, relating his own emotion to the force of illusion in the work of art. He goes so far as to suspect that the impression received depends in part on the Sicilian mood and wine; but he immediately comforts himself by recalling the testimony in Voyage pittoresque that the statue seems almost alive:
“…que l’on serait tenté de la croire vivante.”
(“…that one would be tempted to believe her alive.” Jean-Claude Richard de Saint-Non, Voyage Pittoresque, quoted by Goethe).
The strength of this episode thus consists in the double movement that animates it. On the one hand, Goethe indulges in illusion, in the beauty of the saint, in the suggestion of the place; on the other hand, he reflects on the sources, on previous descriptions, on the mediated character of his own experience. It is precisely this tension between immediate impression and literary consciousness that makes Rosaliens Heiligthum one of the inaugural texts of the Italienische Reise.
For the history of Palermo and the history of the reception of Santa Rosalia, this passage also has special value. Goethe does not merely record the existence of the cult: he restores the shrine as a totalizing experience, in which the rock of the mountain, the legend of the saint, the light of the lamps, the silence of the grotto, and the statue of Gregorio Tedeschi all come together. Rosalie appears there not only as the patron saint of Palermo, but as a threshold figure between popular worship and the religion of art. In this sense, her pilgrimage to Monte Pellegrino becomes one of the subtlest and most profound moments of her encounter with Sicily (A. Dröse and J. Robert, Reise-Journal und Journalpoetik, cit., passim).
