The History
The fascinating interweaving of history, legend and myth defines the contours of the beginning of human settlements in rural Enna. The story goes, that Sicani , industrious men, founded 1300 years before the birth of Christ, the city of Henna, and Morgantina Aidone. The other cities today part of the province, were founded by the Sicilians have appeared later. Later all the communities, despite the strong nationalistic spirit, were colonized by Greeks, Arabs, Normans, the Lombards, the Swabians, Angevins and the Spaniards. A succession of rulers, the mixing of peoples, languages, cultures and religions that over time becomes a cultural heritage of great prestige, despite the suffering of populations. Few rebellions, famine and many diseases that periodically decimated the population. It comes from here, especially favored by the Normans the cry of the different local patron saints. There was a swarm of Saints in the name of which developed real acts of urban guerrilla warfare (G. Verga “War of the Saints”).
The Holy Week is an expression of the most vaunted religiosity of the people Enna, formally the Passover rituals are based on those Spaniards but in fact they differ in the rush and fervor linked to traditional folk culture of the place .
The Myth
The first humans arrived in the province of Enna were, probably Trojans, and here they founded villages, built roads and built temples to their gods. Working the land and hunting, became powerful and wanted to dedicate the fortress of the highest “Mountains of the wool” (the Erei) Ceres , a pledge of the harvest goddess honored by all the people of Sicily. Around the first of the legends of demigods were born, of strange beings half human and half animal, of nymphs and giants. The credulity of the people and the imagination of poets and writers tied to every corner, every rock, every stone and a source of myth. The interior becomes a place of myth and legend and intoxicates with its mysteries and travelers great thinkers of the past: Cicero, Goethe and Stendal, and many others. But the myth par excellence is the “Rape of Proserpine,” daughter of Ceres and Jupiter, happened to Enna for by Pluto, god of the underworld, who wide the waters of Lake Pergusa loading it impulsively kidnaps the girl in the chariot drawn by four horses blacks. Ceres desperately seeking her daughter causing famines and droughts, flash floods and cataclysms, upsetting the ecosystem. A compromise solves the problem: Jupiter, questioned by the goddess Persephone states that six months living with his mother on earth and six months with her husband, Hades. From the myth of the birth of the seasons.