I’ve been on different branches of the Vie Francigene di Sicilia for more than a couple weeks now, and as I’ve moved along I’ve found myself wondering about motivation. Obviously, a core component of my motivation at this point is simply to cross the finish line, which is so dang close now. The beauty of pilgrimage, though, is that ideally it adds layers of meaning to a walk, imbuing the final destination, or stops along the way, with greater significance. Even as a non-Catholic, there’s a gravitational pull exerted by Santiago or Rome, and the collective impact of this invisible but very tangible force becomes more palpable by the day.
Along with the importance of the pilgrimage shrine(s), though, I’ve come to realize that a core part of the pull for me is the narrative hook–the overarching story that holds the route together, gives it coherence and focus. Because a story, like a route, has a beginning, a middle, and an ending, and the superimposition of a compelling narrative atop a defined route is kind of a force multiplier–each aspect mutually reinforces and elevates the other. We often distill pilgrimage down to two journeys, the walk within (one’s mind, one’s memories, one’s unresolved challenges) and the walk without (the physical journey). That overlooks, though, the walk through a narrative frame, and it is that story that galvanizes the experience as a whole.
When the organizers of the Magna Via Francigena, the first of the VFS that was established, back in 2017, co-opted that familiar name–”Via Francigena”–it could be viewed as a savvy leveraging of brand recognition. In the same way that “Camino” had become synonymous with long-distance, bed-to-bed, pilgrimage walking in Spain, the “Via Francigena” was the preeminent route in Italy. What better way to draw in experienced pilgrims to pursue this new route in Sicily? It’s funny, though, that both the Via Francigena and Camino Francés mean the exact same thing–the French Way. After all, both routes served primarily as feeder tracks for pilgrims and merchants from France en route to Rome and Santiago respectively.
Aside from brand recognition, then, the choice of “Via Francigena” in Sicily seemed to be a most curious one, at least initially. Why would the French travel down to Sicily in pursuit of their journey to Rome? Or, if one strained one’s imagination to consider this being part of an onward pilgrimage to the Holy Land, why would they walk across Sicily as a leg in that voyage?
Contemporary pilgrims might claim that one would gladly make this journey for the beauty, and I see their point, of course! Over these two days, as I have pushed deeper into the Sicilian interior, I’ve been struck at many points by the stunning views offered. Some of these days have as much elevation gain as the crossing from Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port to Roncesvalles, but instead of one singular ascent, the climbs are broken up into much smaller chunks, followed inexorably by descents–during which one is often distracted–and, thus, imperiled–by the sprawling vistas unspooling in all directions. On Friday, the walk into and out of Milena, while often obscured by thick rain clouds, was endless farm land, rippling across the hills all around me, and an even more dramatic version of this played out on Saturday as I slid along clay-heavy tracks between Sutera and Cammarata.
Of course, most of those medieval pilgrims weren’t looking for scenic detours. Necessary travel was dangerous enough, and there were far more established routes to follow for efficiency, safety, and value.
That’s not to say that “Vie Francigene di Sicilia” is dishonest nomenclature. The organizers have done an excellent job of grounding their different routes in historic documentation that lays out the legitimacy behind each branch. For example, the Via Normanna, which I began my walk on, and links Palermo to Messina along the north coast, is based upon a “Norman diploma from 1089, written in Greek,” which “notes a ‘Via Francigena’ in the Milazzo plain. A Latin copy of it survives to this day, dated April 1198, by order of the Empress Regent Constance of Hauteville, mother of the future Emperor Frederick II of Swabia and Sicily.” The Via Fabaria, meanwhile, which I followed in its entirety between Randazzo and Agrigento, dates to the year 1105, when “Sicily had been under Norman rule for twenty years, and in the centre of Bizini, today’s Vizzini, the Norman baron Achinus donated a piece of land to Abbot Ambrose, bishop of the diocese of Lipari-Patti, recently established by royal decree.” In the document laying out the terms of the donation, the text states, “This land nominally belongs to Licodia and in this way begins its journey and goes along the Via Francigena Fabaria.”
As for the Magna Via Francigena, there has long been a route of some kind linking Palermo and Agrigento, one of the most important arteries running through Sicily. Indeed, among even “the Romans, who with their armies advanced along it in the 2nd century BC, the Magna Via was the most important route,” and by that time it had already existed for six centuries! Not until 1096, though, did the first reference to the “Magna Via Francigena” appear in writing, and even that still needed to wait for Latin translation more than a century later.
Back to that question, then–why were all these French people making their pilgrimage to Rome in Sicily? The easy answer is that they weren’t. The nomenclature, accurate enough in its own right, is misleading given the contemporary context. The Vie Francigene di Sicilia have nothing to do with Rome, or even with pilgrimage in any sort of religious sense.
Almost by accident, I have to note at this point, the trail following Cammarata, which skirts the edge of the Monte Cammarata nature preserve, delivered me on Saturday to the first established pilgrimage route that I’ve encountered in quite a while. It’s certainly the first that I’ve taken note of while walking in Sicily. It would have been even more obvious if I were walking southward, as a local pilgrimage runs from Santo Stefano Quisquina to the Hermitage of Santa Rosalia alla Quisquina, a lovely 17th-century church built against a cave mouth, that is for some reason closed on Saturdays. Rosalia, like so many of her peers, sought a life of isolation and quiet prayer, so she took to these isolated hills in the 12th century, ultimately spending twelve years immersed in Godly solitude. (Take that, Thoreau.) She had already escaped an unwanted marriage with Count Baldwin, chopping off her hair the day before the wedding and professing her absolute devotion to Jesus. In time, she was allowed to return to a cave closer to Palermo, on the aptly named Monte Pellegrino, where she died in her sleep at the age of 40.
Almost five centuries later, Rosalia’s remains were discovered, and very soon after this cave shelter was as well, prompting a Genovese merchant to abandon his career and invest all his wealth in the construction of a hermitage. By the 18th century, this was the most renowned–and among the wealthiest–shrines in all of Sicily. As tended to happen, the congregation grew fat and happy, and by the 19th century it fell into a pattern of decline, leading to its closure in 1928. Even still, though, the most dedicated of the friars stuck around, with the last one holding out until his death in 1985, at the age of 96. A walking route was established that links Palermo to this shrine, as Rosalia today is the patron saint of Palermo, believed to have saved the city from the plague, and it’s the route that I’m following for a couple days on this branch of the MVF. Even that bears underscoring–that the most important pilgrimage site of all the Vie Francigene is only accessible on a variant.
Beyond Count Baldwin, Rosalia had lived in the court of King Roger II, during the peak of Norman rule in Sicily. And those are the French folks who gave the Vie Francigene their name. In the Via Fabaria land grant, it was described as, “the road of the Franks, the knights who came from Normandy to expel the Muslims and Christianize Sicily.”
And so the choice of names for these routes is defensible, but I still find it curious, as it restricts the richly varied history behind this island and its many different peoples to one era, one dominant power, one specific narrative arc. In fairness, the organizers make ample reference to the Romans, the Byzantines, the Arabs, and the other waves of history that have washed over these shores in their discussion of these routes, but names have power, and frames focus our attention.
One of the challenges that they face, I suspect, is the cone of silence that hovers over some aspects of Sicilian history, or the parallel desire of putting forth a positive representation of Sicily to visitors from around the world. On Friday, I took my first break in Racalmuto. My initial impressions were of a bleak place. Most bars were shuttered. The first I entered was out of croissants. The bakery was closed, so I’m sure that didn’t help. The next bar similarly lacked food, but the woman assured me that more was on the way, so I settled in for a coffee and a break. Soon after, she delivered both a donut-like thing and a guide to the sights of Racalmuto.
As it happened, I had just reached the chapter in Peter Robb’s Midnight in Sicily when he makes a disastrous attempt to visit Racalmuto, in order to pay homage to the author Leonardo Sciascia. “Racalmuto was a mafia town,” Robb writes, and its name, of Arabic origins, means “the dead village” or “the ruined homestead.” I could identify with Robb’s struggles as he wandered the maze-like streets: “I continued along this lifeless street, blind, closed, dark and empty, while the thought gnawed at me that maybe the next parallel was full of people, animation, light and places to eat and stay.” I ultimately had a little more luck than Robb, who soon bailed on the attempted visit and headed to the train station.
Sciascia, who stayed in Racalmuto throughout his life, witnessed a sharp downturn in its fortunes, as the population dropped by a quarter, many of the houses were abandoned, and countless jobs were lost as the sulfur mines closed. And, of course, he saw the mafia grow in power.
Sciascia became the first Italian to devote a novel to the mafia in The Day of the Owl, published in 1961. About Sciascia’s style, Robb writes, he “started from a problem that looked susceptible of rational solution and moved carefully and logically to a conclusion of total unknowing and enveloping dread.”
The guide to Racalmuto, of course, spotlighted Sciascia. One can visit his childhood home. There’s a statue to him on the main road, opposite the church. There was no reference at all, though, to the subject matter of his books. The same is true on the Magna Via Francigena site, which often offers ultra-compact bullet points, or vague platitudes–like “Two towns, one territory, a shared history that has always led to the encounter and clash of hopes, projects, and traditions,” in the context of the stage linking Sutera and Cammarata. Even the Italian Wikipedia entry on Racalmuto avoids any discussion of the mafia or Sciascia’s treatment of that subject (though his personal page does dive in).
The more I walk around Sicily, the more fascinated I am by its multi-faceted, complex history, and its similarly layered and challenging present, and these trails have certainly been of service to that. At the same time, though, were I not reading and listening to relevant books on the subject, I would be nearly clueless, or I would be operating with a level of superficiality that would probably be worse.
I’m an outsider, and I need to pause, acknowledge that, and recognize that I’m most assuredly blind to all kinds of underlying dynamics that are in play for Sicilians organizing these routes in Sicily. As a pilgrim, though, trying to engage with these routes, and construct meaning from the experience, I wonder if they would be better served dropping the “Francigena” and focusing on “Vie di Sicilia.” Tell the story of this island! Yes, there are some undeniably bleak parts of that history, but it also features moments that rank among the highest in human history for multicultural harmony and shared understanding, and that legacy lives on in tangible ways. Instead of walking around Sicily, provide pilgrims with something specific to walk towards.
