The Thornless Rose, as the legend says, is Rosalia Sinibaldi (1130-1170) who is better known as Saint Rosalia, patron saint of Palermo since 1624, but worshipped since 1196 in Palermo, where she is nicknamed "la Santuzza", i . e., "the little Saint" in Sicilian.
Above, a detail of the little drawing I made in my diary; below, the same drawing in its entirety, photographed without and with flash.
When I was a child, I was deeply fascinated by Saint Rosalia's legend for three main reasons : she refused to get married, she left the Royal Palace (Palazzo dei Normanni) and the Court of the King Roger II of Sicily and she chose to live as a hermit on Mount Pellegrino, "the most beautiful promontory in the world", as Wolfgang Goethe said and wrote many centuries later, when he visited Sicily in 1787.
While observing the promontory from my balcony and my garden, I thought that the rebel Rosalia lived on Mount Pellegrino surrounded by animals and talking to them, like Saint Francis of Assisi, and that she loved free-climbing on the promontory: in fact, I imagined Rusulìa (as she is called in Sicilian) as an adventurous girl, and not just a mystic recluse.
I craved for a trek on the cliff, but all I was allowed to do, when I was seven, it was going on Mount Pellegrino with my parents, visiting the Sanctuary and having a picnic that was not al fresco at all, for I remember precisely that it was a sweltering Saturday in August, when my father was on holidays.
The Sanctuary, built in the cave that the Santuzza elected as her home, was full of ex-voto offered by miraculated people : many of these gifts per grazia ricevuta were quite disturbing (all kind of anatomic parts, often represented in a very realistic way)
Photograph taken by me last year in my favourite and secret Parisian park.
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