We The Italians | Italian traditions: The Perdonanza Celestiniana

Italian traditions: The Perdonanza Celestiniana

Italian traditions: The Perdonanza Celestiniana

  • WTI Magazine #82 Aug 19, 2016
  • 1961

WTI Magazine #82    2016 August 19
Author : folclore.it      Translation by:

 

On August 28 and 29 of every year, L'Aquila (Abruzzo) renews the solemn rite of the Perdonanza (Forgiveness), the perpetual plenary indulgence that Celestine V, on the same evening of his coronation as pope, granted to all the faithful of Christ. Before ascending to the papacy, Pietro Angeleri (this was his secular name) had spent many years of hermit life, especially in a cave on Mount Morrone, above Sulmona, receiving by his devotees the appellation of Peter of Morrone.


On July 5, 1294 he was designated by the conclave met in Perugia as successor to Pope Nicholas IV, whose death in 1292 had left vacant for more than two years the Papal seat. From the hermitage of Sant'Onofrio at Morrone in which he had retired, Peter, on the back of a donkey and with King Charles II of Anjou and his son Charles Martel as grooms, quickly got back to L'Aquila.


On August 29, 1294 in the Basilica of Santa Maria di Collemaggio, built by his own will and consecrated in 1288, he was elected pope. The solemn ceremony was attended by the two kings, cardinals and nobles, but above all a great people, more than two hundred thousand people who received from the new Pope a gift of extraordinary scope.


Those who confessed and repented sincerely, from the evening of August 28 to the vespers of the day 29, the feast of St. John the Baptist, and had devoutly visited the Basilica of Collemaggio, would simultaneously receive the remission of sins and absolution from punishment.


Until then, the plenary indulgence was granted only in favor of the Crusaders departing for the Holy Land and the pilgrims who came to the Porziuncola of Assisi: mostly rich people, who in exchange for substantial alms would get at least a partial remission of sins: but from then on, in L'Aquila, forgiveness would be renewed annually and also granted to the poor and dispossessed.


The Celestine indulgence appeared immediately in its spiritual meaning, but also in its political significance as an important opportunity to enhance the economic and social power of the young city. L'Aquila profited enormously from the extraordinary event: Pietro da Morrone spread very far his fame and a great growth came from it to the building development, the repopulation from the people of the countryside and the trades that were beginning to connect. On September 29, the papal chancellery formalized the granting of Celestine V with the enactment of a responsible edit of the city civil authority, which guaranteed the preservation, arrogating to himself the right on ceremony of Forgiveness, to which the religious authorities were only invited to attend.


The ceremony, only with modern term called "Perdonanza", was enriched particularly after 1327, when the Pope Celestine remains were "transferred" from Ferentino (Frosinone), where they were kept, in Collemaggio, and his relics shown to the people. It was in the fifteenth century, however, that developed the custom of entering Collemaggio through the Holy Door on the left side of the sacred building, as happened in the Roman patriarchal basilicas on the occasion of the jubilee, held for the first time in 1300 by Pope Boniface VIII.


Peace, solidarity and reconciliation are the key concepts of the Edit of Forgiveness for those who - without distinctions of social class, confessed and truly repented - 722 years after the creation of the precious papal document receive a plenary indulgence, or the remission of sins and the absolution of punishment. The Celestine Pardon is a symbolic call for peace among all peoples who today as yesterday is a vital need in a geopolitical landscape punctuated by war and death. L'Aquila forgiveness is the cradle of the universal spiritual value that takes shape through the Holy Door of the Basilica of Santa Maria di Collemaggio: the solemn ritual that Pope Celestine V, a month after his election as Pope in 1294, granted to all the faithful in the basilica built by his own will. The humble hermit of the Morrone, the first pope resigning of papal history, has left to L'Aquila a social message of revolutionary importance.