The Goddess of Rapino and the Grotta del Colle (CH)

di Giusi Di Crescenzo

The Grotta del Colle in Rapino, in the province of Chieti, on the eastern slope of the Maiella, is certainly one of the most evocative archaeological sites of the Abruzzo Mother Mountain and also a clear example of how the ancient history of the sacred is the history of places of nature that more of others make us perceive the relationship with transcendence.

A cave of a remarkable size (about 40 x 60 meters high up to 12 meters) in which the dripping of water from the ceiling creates an even more fantastic atmosphere.

At the entrance, the remains of a small church dedicated to Sant'Angelo later called Santa Maria in Cryptis built on an "Italic temple": the last testimony of the very long religious attendance of the place.

The various excavation campaigns - from the 40s and 50s and then at the end of the last century - have revealed a destination as a sacred place from the Upper Paleolithic - or from the Eneolithic - up to the Roman age, with pauses in the final Bronze Age and in the early iron age; as in most Caves of the same type. That of Rapino is one of the few in Abruzzo revisited after the Iron Age.

According to the archaeologist Maria Josè Strazzulla: “… the phenomenon of reoccupation of caves must be considered the product of a highly selective process, probably related to precise territorial dynamics … We find ourselves … faced with forms of religiosity with an exquisitely indigenous flavour, of a magical-religious nature, in some cases perhaps linked to the probable presence of water, but above all to be reconnected to the suggestion of the places and to a well-rooted awareness that these were repositories of ancestral memories to which the cults of the ancestors were connected, which had to exercise so much weight in the formalization of a religious identity of historical age…"

Not only the dominant position over the wide plain towards the sea but also all the archaeological documentation found in the cave must lead one to think that it was a place of worship for a much wider territory than the local one: as evidenced by the fact that not far from the cave in the 1956 superintendent Cianfarani identified an Italian fortified center called Touta Maruca: the most important city of the Marrucini before the development of the city of Teate (today Chieti) in Roman times.

The archaeological interest around this cave was born from the discovery in 1932 by some local inhabitants of the bronze statuette later called "the Rape Goddess”. An initial campaign of excavations followed in 1946, then in 1954 and in the 90s.

The dating of the "Goddess" to the third century. BC, rather than the V or VI century, as maintained for stylistic reasons by some scholars, it would be related to another significant find in the cave: that of the Tabula Rapinensis, a bronze tablet, (15 x 15 cm) in the Oscan language, attributed precisely to the III century. BC of which traces were lost during the last world war. Finding that according to Strazzulla would denote: “…The importance that the cave would have had even later on with respect to its territorial framework of reference…” since it is found for the first time, in relation to cult practices for Jupiter the father and for Ceres, the reference to “toutai maroucai lix, or the lex populo Marruco”, where “touto” means “in its broadest sense, as a state entity marrucina. The cave must therefore have constituted a sort of religious central place for the entire Marrucini ethnos since its formation and well beyond the impact with Rome."

According to Adriano La Regina's interpretation – an interpretation not shared by all – the cult practices engraved on the Tabula would be a law establishing sacred prostitution within the cult of Ceres Giovia.

"The text is irregularly engraved in the Latin alphabet and can be attributed to the end of the XNUMXrd century BC due to the shape of the letters and the presence of the letter G, already distinct from the C. The transcription presents some difficulties, but can be reliably obtained from an examination of the different graphic reproductions available. When a new examination of the original becomes possible, the reading can perhaps be improved."

Always according to the interpretation of La Regina: “The law does not concern a Venditio servorum sub corona“, that is a normal sale of slaves, but “the institution of sacred prostitution to increase the finances of the sanctuary of Jupiter the father. A Jovian priestess, that is of the sanctuary, who administers a particular treasure, that of Ceres, is put in charge of the question. This recalls the institution of the cult of Ceres and Venus particularly widespread among both the Peligni and the Marrucini."

The continuity of attendance of this cave, and its value in the history of the sacred in the land of Abruzzo, arrives in other forms up to the present day: although the cave has been abandoned for many centuries, there is a traditional religious festival which takes place in Rapino on 8 May, very particular for its sacred direction, which seems to perpetuate with great charm the all-female rituality of the celebrations in honor of Ceres - or the Goddess of the earth, of the harvest, of the generating power, of the succession of the seasons , of the resurrection of life after winter.

It is the Feast of the Virgins, in which young women, aged between six and ten, parade in procession through the town and reach a country shrine dedicated to the Madonna del Carpino. Madonna who must protect the crops and guarantee conspicuous rains for the crops.

Dressed in white, their tunics are sewn with traditional gold jewels belonging to the family. The feast is lived today as a rite of passage towards adulthood.

So Maria Concetta Nicolai, in a card written for the magazine D'Abruzzo, highlights the references to much older rites: "The girls' clothing precisely recalls the ancient descriptions of hierodulia: the curling of the hair is connected to the sphere of Apolinnean aesthetics and virginal eros. Remember, in this regard, the juridical expression of the virgo in capillis, indicating in Latin law the condition of purity. The gold ornaments represent the double value of death-rebirth which constitutes the very structure of the rite of passage ... Even in the Christian form the processional and public aspect of the ceremony remains: the virgins are led before and shown to the community and, in the name of this, they ascend to the reliquary of the Madonna del Carpino which substitutes, in the representative forms and in the sacral geography, the cave that is no longer used."

In short, a very explicit example of how Christianity has perpetuated the veneration of the maternal power of a goddess in a syncretic form.

Giusi Di Crescenzo - 2021

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REFERENCES

1. Maria Jose' Strazzulla - "Forms of devotion in the places of worship of ancient Abruzzo"- in Sacrum Facere: Proceedings of the XNUMXst Seminar on the Archeology of the Sacred – Trieste 17-18 February 2012 – University of Trieste Editions 2013;
2. Emanuela Ceccaroni, Amalia Faustoferri, Andrea Pessina – “Valerio Cianfarani and Middle Adriatic cultures” – in Proceedings of the Chieti-Teramo Conference – 27/29 June 2008;
3. Maria Concetta Nicolai – From Abruzzo – YEAR XI No. 49;
4. Adriano The Queen – The Tabula Rapinensis - Adapted from The Places of the Gods – Sacred and nature in Italian Abruzzo – edited by the Archaeological Superintendence of Abruzzo – Province of Chieti – 1997;
5. Anna Dionysius – The Cave of Colle di Rapino – www.sabap-abruzzo.beniculturali.it;
6. Vincenzo D'Ercole, Vincenzo Orfanelli and Paola Ricciarelli - The Grotta del Colle di Rapino – www.sanniti.info;
7. Leo DiSimone – “The cult of Demeter and its possible influences on the Marian cult" - In Dialoghi Mediterranei – Bimonthly periodical of the Euro-Arab Institute of Mazara del Vallo – no. 34 of November 2018.