Candles' donation (century XII- XIII)

Candelieri's parade (Faradda di li Candareri) draws its origin from the event of the Virgin Assunta's festival that it was originally celebrated in Pisa on August 14. Since XI century, Sassari had trade interest with Pisa and it hosted inside the walls of the city a huge colony of Pisans, who remained there until 1284. In that year they left Sassari becouse of the defeat against Genova (Battle of Meloria).

Pisa's colony had the same rules than Pisa, with its own consuls, judges and traditions. Moreover the colony had the so called "Oblazione dei Candeli" in honour of the Virgin Maria. Pisa's celebration was regulated by Republic rules, as we know from history. This event became a true Sassari's tradition, even when Pisans left.

At the beginnig this celebration was done with the donation of never used wax to the Saint Maria of Pisa Church for lithurgic celebration. This tradition was in use in all Pisa's colonies in Sardinia. City corporations of arts and works took this duty in name of the people. The wax was transported to the Cathedral with a religious procession. In the Tuscan cities the wax was artistically modeled in particular constructions (as in Lucca), or it was used for embellishing wood and paper columns (as in S.Giovanni Battista in Florence).

In Pisa the wax was shown to the public as images of Saints and other wood ornaments to form tabernacles taken by shoulder from some carriers with bars. Such coloums, besides a homage to the Virgin, aimed to increased the admiration of the public. The tabernacle had a weight minutely prescribed by the city Statutes and it was decorated with flags and accompanied by the sound of musicians. Later, these tabernacles were replaced by the wood columns provided of capital, whose transport was more practical and easy. This innovation allowed the carriers to lift upward the columns and to move dancing to the rhythm of the music.

Therefore the ceremony transplanted firmly to Sassari, although no documents are available. The Sassari's Candeliers, since then, faithfull traced the normes of Pisa's Statutes written seven centuries ago.

The only great change now is the wax, that doesn't embellish the columns and it has also disappeared from the popular memory.


The vote of the City (XVI century)

During the government of the Genoese Podestà in the city (1294 - 1323) it is probable that the offer of the candles has been abandoned and resumption to alternate phases, and a long period of suspension there was probably in the centuries XIV and XV, periods of turbulences, of wars and of pestilences. Besides the lack of documentation (the public file of the city had burnt from French in 1527) it doesn't allow to affirm nothing of precise. Just an epidemic of plague, however, was the occasion that I determine the restoration of the event.

The first sign to the procession of the Candelieri is found in a 1504 document. According to the investigations completed by the historical of Sassari Henry Costa, however, the institution of the event happened in 1528 as I vote to the Madonna to get the cessation of a pestilence.

A 1531 ordinance disciplined the carrying out of the event and the entry in the church of the eight belonging Candelieri to the principal city guilds: Agriculturists (Massai), Merchants, Tailors, Cobblers, Masons and Carpenters, Shepherds, who works the vegetable garden and Carters.

The vote was solemnly renewed in different occasions, during new waves of plague, so much that Pasquale Tola put the institution of the event in 1580 and " the renewal of the vote in 1652." The eight candles, that had a weight of 40 pounds every, were put to the eve of the event of the assumption around the bier of the sleeping Virgo, as to form a crown. The expense for the manufacture of the candaleros was to load of the city; this appointment was acquitted by the obreros, that every year was named.



The centuries XVII-XX

he procession came to lose with the time the austerity of the native religious procession. In 1694 the Spanish Viceroy, particularly careful to contain the government expenditures, it tried to suppress the event, that held too much expensive for the finances of the Commune but the citizen of Sassari it preserved his/her demonstration with the motivation that was not had to break up the narrow vote with the Madonna.

In the XVII century the offer votiva still included the candle and the Candeliere ; to the beginning of the following century, however, the guilds of Sassari is brought only in procession the stems, deprived of wax. The offer became so only symbolic.

In 1718 the Board Comunale imposed to replace the columns with a candle of five pounds, but the ordinance was not welcomed by the people and therefore you/he/she was not even respected by the it Filled.

Fifty-fifty of the eight hundred the Board Comunale of Sassari, together with the archbishop Varesini, they made a new attempt to suppress the parade of the wood Candelieri, considering a noisy event and by now too much secular, and they imposed to replace the columns with of the candles brought hand and with the parish crosses. This innovation was not born and for four years the rite was not celebrated anymore. In 1856, subsequently to a new epidemic of cholera, the old tradition was restablished.

From the epoch of the colony thin to Pisa to today, the event of the Candelieri has preserved a lot of part of its ancient aspect, but it has also enriched of new elements - pomp, liberty, spirit goliardico - that they have made to evolve its physiognomy. Some it Filled, as that of the Merchants, lost their interest for the demonstration, they were loosened.

The Gremio of the Shepherds disappeared following the come less than the economic importance of her social prestige; the Candeliere was pawned to the carters because of an outstanding debt. In the demonstration they took over, for against, other guilds as that of the Farmers (1937), of the Wayfarers (1941) of the Piccapietre (1955)., of the Blacksmiths (2007).

In 1979 the Intergremio was born, association that gathers the Filled of Candeliere and that it hocks him to protect and to guard the tradition of the great city event.