Elliot Wise and Dr. Mark J. Johnson, Art History and Curatorial Studies

The cult of Madonna dell’Arco is centered at a large pilgrimage church several miles outside the city of Naples on the slopes of Mount Vesuvius. The shrine attracts thousands of pilgrims every year who come from all over the Campania region of southern Italy to venerate a miracle-working fresco of the Virgin and Child. This image of Madonna dell’Arco, or the “Madonna of the Arch,” first gained its reputation for supernatural powers in the 1450s. The fresco originally stood in a roadside shrine near the ruined arches of a Roman aqueduct. One day, an angry boy who had lost a game threw a ball viciously at the painting of the Madonna and Child. To his astonishment, the Virgin began to bleed from the spot where the ball had bruised her left cheek. Since then, faithful Italians have flocked to Madonna dell’Arco’s shrine to pray for miracles and leave painted votive tablets as offerings.

My research project on the cult of Madonna dell’Arco grew out of my involvement with BYU’s Apolline project. Our team of professors and students worked at an archaeological dig about twenty minutes away from Madonna dell’Arco’s shrine. During May of 2006 we began excavation on a fifth-century A.D. Roman country villa, which had been devastated by a lava flow from Mount Vesuvius during the Early Christian period. Under the supervision of Dr. Mark Johnson from the Art History and Curatorial Studies department, I had hypothesized that the cult of Madonna dell’Arco might stem from the mixing of Christianity and paganism around the time that the country villa had been buried in ash. Since few Italian scholars had looked into the origins of Madonna dell’Arco’s cult, and almost no work had been done on it in English, I decided to investigate its roots, hoping that my work would expand the scope of the Apolline project.

I began to study what I could about Madonna dell’Arco during the months before I left for Italy. Most of the literature was in Italian, and several of the books were unavailable in the United States. Still, I was able to get a fairly good idea of the significance of the cult and delve into the history of other miracle-working images in Italy. As our departure for Italy drew closer, I prepared a paper setting forth a tentative hypothesis linking Madonna dell’Arco back to Egyptian mystery religions and especially the cult of Isis, which had spread through much of southern Italy beginning in the second century B.C. Living just a train ride from Naples and a short walk from Madonna dell’Arco allowed me to test and re-evaluate my guesses on the cult’s origins. As I worked in the library at Madonna dell’Arco’s Center for the Study of Religious Folklore, studied the votive paintings in the shrine museum, and visited other famous pilgrimage centers along the Bay of Naples, I decided that my theory connecting the cult to Isis was not as feasible as I had thought.

Instead, I began developing another theory that I had come up with while studying at BYU. In my research on Italian miracle-working images, I had come across an article dealing with a famous Byzantine icon. Known as the Hodegetria of Constantinople, this painting of the Virgin and Child was one of the most revered images in the eastern world. Pilgrims who visited Constantinople wrote accounts describing the mysterious Tuesday ceremony in which the heavy icon miraculously became light enough for a single man to lift it. The icon bearer would carry the image on top of a tall scaffolding and march in procession around the market place, purifying the city. The cult of the Hodegetria continued until Constantinople was conquered by Turkish armies in 1453 and the icon destroyed. Southern Italians, who had traded with Greece and the eastern Mediterranean since ancient times, had also been captivated by the Hodegetria Virgin and Child. Not long after the icon was destroyed, the Hodegetria cult, along with its tradition of Tuesday processions, began spreading throughout Italy. These transplant cults generally took the name “Madonna of Constantinople,” or “Madonna di Constantinopoli.”

Interestingly, the legend recounting Madonna dell’Arco’s first miracle occurs in the 1450s—precisely the time that Constantinople was destroyed and the Hodegetria cult began to spread rapidly throughout southern Italy. The processions during the two most flamboyant feast days celebrated at Madonna dell’Arco’s shrine bear some interesting similarities to the Tuesday ceremony enacted in Constantinople. On the Monday after Easter and the Monday after Pentecost, throngs of pilgrims journey to the shrine of Madonna dell’Arco. Many of them carry large poles with images of the miraculous fresco at the top, blessing the streets of the little communities clustered around the base of Mount Vesuvius as they make their way to the church. The practice seems to stem from the men in Constantinople who carried the Hodegetria high in the air on a scaffolding. The fact that Madonna dell’Arco’s liturgical calendar continually sets Mondays aside as sacred days seems to be a variation on the Tuesday theme in Constantinople.

Working in the shrine and visiting other churches in the Naples area helped confirm my hypothesis connecting Madonna dell’Arco into the tradition of Byzantine devotion to the Virgin. Often my research was slow and laborious as I plodded through Italian literature and looked at photographs of the votive panels. At other times, I stumbled across valuable connections accidentally. One day while walking to a museum in Naples I happened to notice a Baroque church dedicated to Madonna di Constantinopoli. I was very excited to find such direct evidence for a Hodegetria cult just a few miles away from Madonna dell’Arco’s shrine. I had been a little concerned that the fresco at Madonna dell’Arco did not bear any resemblance to the Hodegetria icon. In fact, it did not even have any stylistic elements that smacked of Byzantine artwork. The Church of Madonna di Constantinopoli calmed my fears since its sacred painting of the Virgin enshrined over the altar did not look anything like a Byzantine icon either. At the same time, many of the votive paintings left at Madonna dell’Arco’s shrine did include a Byzantine-style image of a Virgin and Child who often appeared alongside depictions of Madonna dell’Arco. I learned that this was the “Brown Madonna,” venerated at the Church of S. Maria del Carmine Maggiore, a “sister shrine” to Madonna dell’Aro located in Naples. When I visited the Brown Madonna’s church, I was excited to see that this image—so closely connected to Madonna dell’Arco—actually was a Byzantine icon.

My research has not ended yet. The origins of the Brown Madonna’s cult and its interaction with the cult of Madonna dell’Arco will provide an important key to tracing the Byzantine influence both at Madonna dell’Arco’s shrine and at many of the other pilgrimage centers in Naples. For now, my findings on Madonna dell’Arco will be published in the Apolline Project magazine this winter, and I plan on presenting them at the BYU Inquiry Conference next year. In May of 2007 I will return to Italy with the Apolline Project to study the Brown Madonna.