The Archeological Park of Manduria: meeting the Messapians (Part 2)

 

A walk in the history of Manduria to meet the Messapians, a proud and rich people. Let’s follow their footprints in the Archeological Park of Manduria.

Let’s continue our walk in the history of Manduria and the Messapians and restart exactly where we stopped.

Go to Part 1

Leggi in italiano

The cemetery nucleus

In the park there are many cemetery nuclei, but Anna shows us the one that perhaps is the most articulate and varied that we can see.

We balance among the graves dug in the rock, one next to the other, in no particular order. They have different dimensions and date back different periods. Some of them are small and make us think that there could be young little corpses inside, but it seems that we’re wrong. Actually, the Messapians dedicated to children another funeral ritual: they were placed in a vessel and buried near the parents’ house. So, who was in these little graves?

Most likely, adults were here, buried in a fetal position. Anna gives us two explanations for this custom: the first, a bit philosophic, where the deceased was welcomed back in Mother Earth’s womb after death; the practical explanation, instead, is linked with less advanced excavation techniques. Actually, this kind of grave is archaic.

The more we go ahead in time the bigger and more regular the graves become: some of them are even plastered and still there are traces of paint. In the more recent of them there’s a nook inside: they’re family graves and this added little environment was an ossuary for the deceased  that previously occupied the grave.

The deceased made his/her journey to the afterlife with grave goods. Thanks to these objects, today we can understand who s/he was and his/her social position. And that’s the most interesting part.

In the graves of some women, they found a particular vase, the trozzella, a Messapian element, linked with water worship and exclusively feminine. They discovered that just those who were high-ranking women owned this vase, just those with an important position in the community. This discovery, together with what we’ve learned in front of the Plinian Fount, says that the Messapian society was matriarchal.

Walking in the Archeological Park doesn’t just mean to go through a place where someone found some evidences, but it’s a true journey in history and it’s like if we know the Messapians a little more, like if we know something more about their culture, their wealth and pride in their way of defending themselves, careful and strategic, and in their respectful care for their deceased.

San Pietro Mandurino    

Now we leave the Walls to visit another place, always in the Park, that mixes history with legend: the church of San Pietro Mandurino.

Before entering and discovering this little church framed in the countryside of Manduria, we stop a moment to listen to a story. They tell that in 44 AD, Saint Peter arrived in Manduria by sea and met King Fellone, who was seriously ill. The Apostle baptized him in river Chidro and the king healed. From there, Saint Peter started his work of evangelization and put the first stone of this little church.

We don’t know how true this story is, but now we proceed with the discovery of this legendary building. It’s composed of three elements of different periods and we are going to pass through them. Let’s go in.

The building from which we enter it’s the most recent. It dates back the 12^th century and there are two small environments, one with a fake-trullo-vault ceiling (fake because they used mortar to keep the blocks together, on the contrary a true trullo has a self –supporting structure); the other has a barrel-vault ceiling.

The frescos of Saint Peter in the apse and of Saint Rosalia on the adjacent wall welcome us. We don’t stay long because Anna invites us to descend some stairs carved into the rock to access in the underground environments beneath the church. She guides us toward a door, in a room, the most ancient part of the complex.

We’re in the 4^th-3^rd BC century, in an underground burial chamber. On the walls there are the frescos of the nativity, of the magi on horseback (yes, horses and not camels, as Renaissance art shows us the three kings). Next to the door, there are Jeremiah and Isaiah, who prophesied Jesus’ birth. Painting them, they put the Old and the New Testament together in one room.

All the characters of the story told on this wall are Byzantine; the only element that reminds us that we are in the Messapian land are the purplish beams painted on the ceiling.

This is the moment when Anna talks about the end of the Messapians. The Roman Quintus Fabius Maximus captured Manduria in 209 BC, taking 3000 prisoners. But why?

Manduria, which, as we saw, had a flourish network of commercial contacts, allied with Taranto and Brindisi and Romans couldn’t tolerate such an affront.

The decline of the Messapians began in that moment and Manduria suffered a sort of damnation memoriae until it even disappeared from the pages of history. In 1090, Ruggero I of Altavilla brough it to light again with the name of Casalnuovo. Finally, in 1789 the town had again its Messapian name with Ferdinand IV of Bourbon.

We cross the door, which once was closed and represented the division between the world of the living and the one of the dead, and we are in a underground church of the 8^th century AD.

In Byzantine churches, we count the aisles from east to west. So, here we haven’t 5 aisles divided by carved columns, but 2 with the respective apses, an unusual feature even for a Byzantine underground church. In an apse there is the  Descent from the Cross; in the other there’s Saint Anthony with a pig on a leash.

On the other walls, in every alcove, there’s the fresco of a Christian saint that, still with incredibly vivid colors, tells how the discovery of faith charged his or her life. Many of them are long-bearded, wear humble clothes and are dove in natural and solitary places where they live their hermits life.

There are also local saints, like Saint Sofronia, who lived on San Pietro Island, in front of Taranto, and after death the nature took care of her corpse. It seems to do it still nowadays, with a little gecko still in correspondence with the ear of the saint, as it was an earring.

We are at the end of our journey in the history of the Messapians, a journey begun and ended in the bowels of the earth, at the beginning in a sacred and pagan place, then surrounded by Christian holiness.

I thank Anna and Cooperativa Spirito Salentino for having guided me and made me discover how rich Messapian civilization was and the beauty of the Archeological Park, with its history and its mysteries.

If you want to know the Park and to have information about how to book a guided visit, you can visit directly the website of the Archeological Park.