SAINT GENNARO’S FEMALE RELATIVES

NAMES SAINT GENNARO’S FEMALE RELATIVES

PHYSICAL
DESCRIPTION Mainly old women, black-veiled and dressed.

PLACE NAPLES, POPULAR AREAS

TIME Since the beginning of St. Gennaro Worship ( He died in 305 AD )

WHAT HAPPENED During the ceremony of the Saint’s blood melting, Saint Gennaro’s ‘female relatives’ or ‘sisters’ sing religious songs for hours in order to please the Saint to do quickly his miracle. Being His ‘relatives’ the women are also allowed to call Him names. They even go so far as abandoning themselves to hysterical screamings and movements resembling to possessed women.
Gennaro, in Latin Jannarius, died martyr in Pozzuoli, a small village near Naples, in 305 during the Emperor Diocleziano’s persecutions. At that time he was young but according to the popular tradition and to a silver bust of Angevin period, he is portrayed like a ripe aged man in Episcopal vestments. His bones were first transferred in the Catacombs that are still named after Him and from there in the City Cathedral.
On the 19th of September His martyrdom anniversary, the Saint’s blood, kept in an ampulla, melts in the bishop’s hands in front of a big crowd, with ‘ the relatives’ placed in the front row. The origins of this tradition date back to the ancient pagan usage of female elements in religious ceremonies such as the Ceres’s priestesses in Rome who were from Naples area.
Saint Gennaro ‘s worship in Naples is very ancient. The first Saint pictures go back to the Byzantine coinage at the beginning of the Christian Age.

NAMES	SAINT GENNARO’S FEMALE RELATIVES
PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION	Mainly old women, black-veiled and dressed.
PLACE	NAPLES, POPULAR AREAS
TIME	Since the beginning of St. Gennaro Worship ( He died in 305 AD )
WHAT HAPPENED	During the ceremony of the Saint’s blood melting, Saint Gennaro’s ‘female relatives’ or ‘sisters’ sing religious songs for hours in order to please the Saint to do quickly his miracle. Being His ‘relatives’ the women are also allowed to call Him names. They even go so far as abandoning themselves to hysterical screamings and movements resembling to possessed women. Gennaro, in Latin Jannarius, died martyr in Pozzuoli, a small village near Naples, in 305 during the Emperor Diocleziano’s persecutions. At that time he was young but according to the popular tradition and to a silver bust of Angevin period, he is portrayed like a ripe aged man in Episcopal vestments. His bones were first transferred in the Catacombs that are still named after Him and from there in the City Cathedral. On the 19th of September His martyrdom anniversary, the Saint’s blood, kept in an ampulla, melts in the bishop’s hands in front of a big crowd, with ‘ the relatives’ placed in the front row. The origins of this tradition date back to the ancient pagan usage of female elements in religious ceremonies such as the Ceres’s priestesses in Rome who were from Naples area. Saint Gennaro ‘s worship in Naples is very ancient. The first Saint pictures go back to the Byzantine coinage at the beginning of the Christian Age.