Berkley Center

La colomba pasquale—the Easter dove—is a sweet Italian cake of flour, almonds, and eggs. It perches first on bakery shelves, then on Italian family tables. Chocolate eggs ensconced in flashy Hello Kitty and Hannah Montana foil join the celebration, and the Easter feast begins.

In all its memory, Italy has been celebrating Easter Sunday with large family gatherings, having declared the following Monday, La Pasquetta, a national holiday to facilitate travel and prolong bonding. I've received many a “Buona Pasqua” as Milanese friends depart to their families’ regions (usually their grandparents' residence) for the holy weekend. Regardless of the religious participation of its celebrants, the Italian Pasqua is fundamentally a culmination of tradition—culinary, familial, and historical—much of which is not evidently religious. The extravagant, quirky, and centuries-old Carnivale celebrations throughout Italy precede Lent, the 40-day period of preparation for Easter. Thus, anticipation of Pasqua begins in January with the start of local festivities. This tradition-based revelry—jousting, musical processions, fruit wars, masquerade balls—was pagan in origin, only later to be infused with spiritual meaning to render the celebrations palatable to the Church. In a near reversal of intent, now Pasqua, an inherently religious event, has acquired secular overtones and the fuchsia-foil baggage of consumerism. The evolution of these festivities, first the shrouding of pagan celebrations with religious significance to assuage the politically and economically powerful papacy, now the secular re-coloring of these celebrations to expand their relevancy, highlights a dynamic and persistent tension between religion, popular life, and political power. 

“Italia” as a unified nation existed only after 1861; prior centuries witnessed Roman emperors, papal administrations, and local families wrestle for primacy over towns-turned-city-states. The relations between local populations and the Church mirrored this political diversity. When centuries ago the yoke of the Catholic Church joined political and spiritual reigns in the figure of the pope, religion gained a degree of separation from popular power. Its association lay with the governing authority; the Italian people—la gente—were its sole possessors no longer. While theocratic rule fused state and religious power within the papal states, the Milanese witnessed the employment of spiritual reigns to bolster political legitimacy under the Visconti. Throughout the late Middle Ages, the Visconti family held its subjects in a regimented military order. The Milanese dukedom collected money from the citizens for the construction of the magnificent Duomo—to serve as a dual symbol of divine power and the strength of the Milanese city-state. 

In my last letter, I spoke about the present-day political influence of the Church since the 1929 establishment of Vatican City. When the exercise of the papacy's political reign was confined to a fraction of a square mile, and the Italian government could claim its dominion no longer, the Catholic Church's influence in Italy evolved into one of pastoral guidance to the faithful. Its power lingered as political voice and ethical shaper. Previously, I related that the Church greets the tourist in the spires of the Duomo and the resident in newspaper headlines. As a Milanese student, I’'d yet to encounter Catholicism outside the context of a political dispute. But surely the anticipation of a three-day Holy Weekend indicated some interaction of public and religious life. 

I was unsure what to make of the legally observed religious holiday until a recent encounter. As I left a restaurant in Milan's city center on a Friday night, a priest bore a cross shrouded in white. He led a modest mass of chanting faithful along Via Torino, past the shuttered doors of upscale furniture and fashion vendors, stopping in the piazza of a nearby church. There, the group recited prayers and scriptures, recounting one stage of Christ's crucifixion before heading to, presumably, another location. It was Venerdì Santo (Good Friday), and the religious was invading public life. The friend accompanying me that night, an Irish student, witnessed my incredible astonishment. I explained to her that I had not once in Milan seen such animate evidence of Catholicism. The extension of a spiritual ritual—the Stations of the Cross—beyond the walls of churches into the streets of Milan presented a contrast to the only public interactions I had witnessed: those of priests and politicians in the context of national politics, with the assumption of governmental primacy. 

There are two religious Italys, it seems. After three months in Milan, I'm seeing that the Catholic faith and the Catholic Church—the latter in all its physical, political, and historical power—are distinct entities, having birthed disparate traditions. The Catholicism manifested in political power and popular life has a vitality apart from the Catholic faith; this Catholicism comprises the faith's institutional accouterments. Catholicism as it is practiced maintains rather a quiet presence—in the hearts of its adherents, whose intimacy, when made public, has the power to astound. Though they have together shaped the history of the Italian land for millennia, the Catholic Church and the beliefs at its foundation have begun to fragment along the public-private axis. As a foreigner, I'm not able to understand truly what it means to be an Italian Catholic. But I have learned that to be an Italian citizen, personal religious subscription aside, is to commence a civic interaction with the most powerful religious-political institution in world history.