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Многие традиционные религиозные праздники на Сицилии несут в себе символизм, связанный с идеей плодородия растительности и человека, возвращения жизни и изобилия, и демонстрируют временную связь с производственными циклами основных сельскохозяйственных культур. Такие символические и временные связи особенно очевидны в случае трапез, устраиваемых по обету в праздник святого Иосифа (19 марта). Виды и форма блюд, приготовляемых по этому случаю, театрализованные элементы обрядов, сопровождающих священную трапезу, реальные и виртуальные участники этих обрядов (Святое Семейство, апостолы, так называемые вирджинедди , старички ) ясно отсылают к системе аграрнохтонических представлений, свойственных многим европейским и средиземноморским крестьянским культурам. Кроме того, время, когда отмечается праздник, имеет очевидную связь с весной и прорастанием пшеницы, отражая потребность в критический момент в защите сверхъестественных сил, проявляющих, несмотря на внешнюю христианскую коннотацию, хтонический и связанный с потусторонним миром характер., Numerous traditional Sicilian religious festivals have a symbolism related to plant and human fruitfulness and to the return of life and abundance and they reveal a temporal connection with the productive cycles of the main agricultural products. These symbolic and temporal connections are particularly evident in the case of votive banquets set up for Saint Joseph (March 19). The types and forms of foods prepared, performative moments that accompany the sacred meal, and the ritual actors who consume it (the Holy Family, the apostles, the virgineddi small virgins, the vicchiareddi little old men) clearly refer to an agrarianchthonic ideology typical to numerous EuroMediterranean peasant cultures. Moreover, the time when the festival is celebrated has an evident relationship with the spring and the germination of crops and reflects the desire that this critical moment be protected by supernatural forces that, despite the surface Christian references, are rooted in chthonic beliefs connected to the aft erlife., №2 (2019)

In Italy there are various records of the recurring presence of ceremonial breads; among these we may observe votive anthropomorphic breads, in particular in Sicily. These “special” breads are prepared for calendar festivals, for the patron saints’ days celebrations or anyway for celebrations of particular relevance for single communities, being connected to critical phases of the wheat cycle: that is to say, the month of May, the earing season, and June—July, the harvest season. This allows us to make the hypothesis that a devotional and votive value as regards these breads might be added to a more ancient logic of offerings to deities, connected to a vision of the rural world. In this sense, the ritual offerings and the consumption of votive anthropomorphic breads are aimed to recompose the bodily and the cosmic order.

Among the important parts of the traditional calendar rites in Sicily are bakery and pastry products made in special shapes. Being produced and consumed during certain rituals and being shaped to reflect their mystic connotations, these products become the integral signs of these rituals in both the constitutive and functional sense. What is refl ected in their symbolism, beliefs, and related practices is the deeply archaic peasant worldview in the framework of which these rituals had been shaped; and in particular, it is the meaning that is attached to the infl uence of chthonic forces in the cyclic reproduction of natural and social life.