Everything is ready in Sardinia for the bonfire of Sant’Antonio Abate. This is an extremely heartfelt festival, but oddly enough, it’s not celebrated all over the island. Some of the towns we like to go to enjoy the atmosphere around a huge bonfire are Mamoiada, the queen of the moment, with its Mamuthones dancing around the flames, but also Sedilo and Ghilarza, where the 18-year-olds organise the party for everyone.
The fire is lit up on the afternoon of January 16th and the party goes on all night long around tall flames burning in honour of an ancient Saint whose statue arrived in Sardinia from Spain, like those of many other saints.
One of the most active researchers on Sardinian rituals and traditions, Dolores Turchi, tells us the story of this important saint. Actually, the stories, because there are many tales and legends our elderly tell us about Saint Anthony.
The one close to me, however, in the area of central Sardinia I come from, strongly turns around fire. Even though the saint is the central figure, this festival dates back far before Christianity reached Sardinia and has its roots in the agro-pastoral traditions and habits of following a calendar strictly linked to the seasonal cycle.
As a travel advisor from Sardinia, I always suggest that my clients attend local festivals to get to know the island and our rich culture first-hand. These celebrations in honour of Saint Anthony Abate never fail to captivate the attention and interest of culturally sensitive travellers, curious about the juxtaposition of pagan and Christian rituals so frequent in Sardinia.
But who was Sant’Antonio Abate?
Sant’Antonio Abate is a significant saint in the Christian Catholic tradition, and in Sardinia, he is a revered figure.
There are many myths and folk tales surrounding him, but the one that resonates most with my background is that once upon a time, on Earth, men suffered deeply from the cold because there was no fire.
Saint Anthony felt deeply sorry for humankind and thought about going back to Hell (apparently, he had already been there and extinguished all the fire that was making people in Hell suffer) to steal some fire. It wasn’t easy to do, but after some good thinking, he found a solution.
He knocked on Hell’s door, asking to enter because on Earth, he was too cold and needed some heat. The devils, Hell’s dwellers, recognised him and rejected him, but upon his insistence and not letting go, they let him in, paying close attention so he wouldn’t do any damage again.
Once inside, taking advantage of a moment of distraction of the demons, he placed his stick on the fire and quickly waved the demons goodbye, announcing he was going back home.
Once on Earth, he blew strongly on the stick and gifted the Sardinian people with fire, chanting:
Ohu, ohu, in chelu, in terra
e in d’ognia lohu!
(“Fire, fire, in the sky, in the earth and everywhere!”)
Or, depending on the area:
Fogu, fogu per su logu;
linna, linna po sa Sardigna!
(“Fire, fire for the place; wood, wood for Sardinia!”)
If this myth reminds you of the Greek myth of Prometheus, who stole the fire from the gods to give it to humankind, you are not alone.
What do we do to honor Saint Anthony Abate?
The most popular and scenic occurrence is the lighting of a bonfire in the main square of the town. Some towns have one main bonfire (also called “tuva“, an empty trunk usually of an oak tree that is filled with the musk used in the Nativity scene for Christmas or branches of myrtle, and set on fire) and smaller ones on the backstreets.
The fire of Saint Anthony is a welcome warm break in the middle of the cold and gloomy days of winter between the just-ended Christmas holidays and the upcoming Carnival madness.
The bread of Saint Anthony
But Sardinians being Sardinian, could we miss a special type of food for the occasion? I didn’t think so.
Depending on the town, the bread prepared for this occasion bears a different name. Where I live, it’s called “panischedda” and we also have “tziriccas“. They are not exactly a savory type of bread but a sweet one instead.
The main ingredient, in fact, is not flour but what we call “sapa”, cooked must, sometimes of wine, sometimes of prickly pear. In my town in particular, we use prickly pear to make sapa.
These cakes are offered to the saint with a request for some grace, somehow tying the saint to such a request. In Sardinia, in fact, making a donation “requires” the returning of the favour, so the saint was somehow compelled to “give back”.
While back in the day, the seasonal cakes and foods were only prepared on the specific occasions, now, to my joy, I can find sapa-filled tziriccas also during the year and I hardly resist their somewhat sour sweetness.
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