Le cattedrali in Sicilia tra XVI e XVII secolo

Between the sixteenth and seventeenth century also the “Norman” cathedrals of Sicily underwent changes and renovations. The stories emerging from documentary evidence and through the analysis of the architectonical remains reveal specific problems and dimensions of the phenomenon. In spite of an expected adjustment to the directives of the Council of Trent, repeatedly evoked by historians as the only explanation to these mutations, we can rather see resistance to any mutation and to the liturgical prescriptions, while we witness an intensification of relevatory debates. The cathedrals are in fact a place of unstable equilibrium between the authorities involved and interested in affecting the monuments with interventions of symbolic value. In addition to the church hierarchy (the bishop and the chapter, inter alia, not always in harmony), the balance of power between representatives of the civic power and the royal one is to be considered. The worship of the tombs of the ancient kings becomes a singular topic of interest that, on several occasions, is the primary core of renovations and transformations. The great transformation project, drawn up by Cosimo Fanzago, of the Cathedral of Palermo (from 1651) is dramatically challenged and stopped in the name of antiquity and sanctity of the cathedral. In the cathedrals of Catania, Mazara and Monreale, the new requirement of visibility of the altar in the choir is deeply interwoven with the exposure of tombs or devices that allude to the foundation and the royal protection. In the Basilica of Agrigento the collapses due to instability of the structure allow the construction of a new architectural core for the choir, magnified by the royal protection, while the idea of moving this core behind the altar, into the new apse, failed. The rhetorics underlying these careful renewal programs end up then to resize, or at least balance, the strictly liturgical dimension of the phenomenon, while some terms used in the documentation as “Modern” or “Roman” acquire over time polysemous meanings which create additional caution in interpretation. Only at the end of the seventeenth century, there are two major projects of “modern” renewal in the cathedrals of Catania and Mazara, but the specific circumstances underlying are part of a series of more conventional and decipherable factors.