Light blue cope made of brocaded fabric with palmette decorations: the cope is a large cloak almost down to the feet used in processions by the most important dignitaries of the Church. It is also called pluvial because it bears a richly decorated hood on the back to shelter from the rain. This blue vestment was only used during celebrations related to the Virgin Mary, such as the Assumption or the Immaculate Conception. Use of this colour is only recorded in Spain, in some dioceses in Portugal and in the colonised nations of Central and South America. This is also a confirmation of the link between the customs of our territory and those of the Iberian Peninsula.

Madonna del Soccorso (Our Lady of Succour): Statue in white Carrara marble with gold decorations depicting the Madonna carrying Jesus in her arms and at her feet the Devil with monstrous features, on her right, while on the opposite side is a child who, frightened by the Devil’s presence, seeks protection between the folds of the Madonna’s cloak, who comes with a large mace in her right hand to strike the unfortunate Devil. Unfortunately, all that remains of the original mace is a marble butt placed under her right hand. Instead, the silver globe in the hand of Jesus, traces of which had been lost for several decades, was miraculously saved when it was found during the last cataloguing update. Renaissance scholars place the statue among those made by the Gagini school at the turn of the 15th to 16th century. The statue was originally placed in the Chiesa del Soccorso, demolished a century ago together with the adjoining Monastery of the Holy Spirit to make way for a school. It was later placed in the Jesuit Church on the other side of ‘Corso Umberto I’ to maintain its cult. Unfortunately, in 1976 the Jesuit Church was closed due to static problems. The statue, furnishings and other works of art remained inside the church in a situation of total decay and abandonment. It was only in 2003 that the statue underwent a meritorious restoration and cleaning. To avoid returning the statue to its previous state of decay, it was decided to permanently place the statue inside the Mother Church. The statue weighing around 750 kg was placed in the niche of the Mazara Chapel where it can now be admired in all its beauty.

An altar flounce from the second half of the 18th century, with gold embroidery on a net with a Marian monogram, made for the central altar dedicated to the Immaculate Conception, to whom the Cathedral has been consecrated since at least the 16th century, and to whom the confraternity of Mary Immaculate was founded in the 16th century. Such a precious altar flounce is made to enhance an altar of great prestige. There are records of the central chapel being built in the last decades of the 16th century financed by Governor Enriquez Cabrera, who chose it as his burial place.

Saint Benedict Joseph Labre simulacrum. From a chance find of a simulacrum and its identification we recover the 18th century story of a young Frenchman who came to Italy: born in Amettes, France, on 25 March 1748, when he arrived in Italy he took up permanent residence under the 42nd arch of the Colosseum. Pilgrimaging between churches, he presented himself in all those that remained open for the adoration of the Forty Hours. For this reason he was renamed the poor man of the 40 hours. His fame in Rome spread to such an extent that his spiritual advice was sought after by Cardinals and Nobles.

In his wanderings among churches and shrines all over Europe to devote himself to lengthy adoration, he travelled more than 33,000 km on foot and even passed through Modica, probably to embark from the village of Pozzallo to the island of Malta. Because of his life of hardship, he died on Holy Wednesday 1783, aged just 35, after feeling ill in the Church of Santa Maria dei Monti where he was buried and where there is still a simulacrum identical to the one in Modica. He was beatified on 20 May 1860 by Pope Pius IX° and then canonised on 8 December 1881 by Pope Leo XIII°, at the instigation of important religious orders.

Painting depicting the ‘Delivery of the Keys of Paradise to Saint Peter the Apostle’. An eighteenth-century canvas of excellent workmanship but an anonymous author in which St. Peter is the recipient of the silver key and the golden key that represent the spiritual power derived from Christ and justify the primacy on which papal authority is based. From the conclusion of the Council of Trent, the sacrament of penance became a central theme of Catholic doctrine. The church after Luther’s reformation had to justify its very existence. And it does so primarily by reminding everyone of the importance of Penance. It is evident that the cloth speaks of the forgiveness of sins: only Peter can allow our entry into Paradise because only he, in his role as Prince of the Apostles, is entitled to obtain the remission of sins.

‘Theca of the Holy Bodies’. The recently created shrine contains the holy bodies of four martyrs killed by the Romans a few years before the Edict of Toleration issued by Emperor Constantine in 313 AD. They are St Donatus the Bishop, St Concordius, St Eugenius and St Cirilla. Their remains were donated to the Church of St Peter the Apostle in Modica in 1661, which made individual reliquary urns in silver and organised a feast carrying the four holy bodies in procession for several centuries. In the same reliquary, one can admire a splendid 18th-century gilded monstrance frequently used in Corpus Christi processions and the arm of St Peter the Apostle enriched with a tiny relic of the Prince of Apostles that is carried in procession for the feast of St Peter on 29 June together with the coffin of ‘St Peter and the paralytic’. 

On the altar, you can admire a mid-18th century Baroque trunk for Eucharistic exposition: a gold-on-silver laminated aedicule with a wooden core that was placed on the central altar for the exposition of the Eucharist on the occasion of the Forty Hours. A work particularly rich in Baroque decorations, it was found in very poor condition, having been abandoned for decades in damp rooms that favoured the deterioration of the structure and the damaging work of xylophagous insects. The meritorious work of volunteers from the parish prevented the final collapse of the Baroque masterpiece. The quarantore was the typical form that adoration of the Sacrament took in Italy in the early 16th century, recalling the 40 hours that Jesus Christ spent in the tomb before his Resurrection. Only with St Charles Borromeo in 1565 was there a stable organisation of this practice. In Rome, the great proponent of the quarantore was St. Philip Neri who took it up as one of the main devotional practices for his Confraternity. The practice soon spread to Sicily and even in the Collegiate Church of San Pietro Apostolo in Modica, a confraternity of the quarantines developed that contributed to giving particular solemnity and stability to Eucharistic adoration during the Easter season.

The reliquary with the Collegiate Joys and the minireliquaries. On 9 May 1659, with a special bull, Pope Alexander VII, in view of the high population of the city of Modica and the daily celebration of 60 masses in the Mother Church of St. Peter the Apostle, authorised the archpriest Giovanni Battista Vassallo to use the bishops’ own insignia (mitre, pastoral baculo, pastoral ring and prestigious vestments also in processions outside the Church). From that date, mitre and ferula were used during liturgies, as well as the pastoral staff during processions, on which we find the engraving ‘Giovanni Battista Vassallo first Mitred Archpriest of the populous city of Modica’. The chapter’s mace opened solemn processions and was carried by a leading figure of the Chapter of Canons. Ferula and mace carry the insignia of the Collegiate Church of St. Peter (papal tiara and crossed keys) on their heads. The conducting of the Eucharistic liturgy was facilitated by the presence on the altar of three cartegloria, like those on display in the shrine, which carried the fixed parts of the mass in Latin (creed, glory, saint, etc.) printed in clear characters to aid the celebrant’s memory. A central figure in the second half of the 17th century was Archpriest Giovanni Battista Vassallo, nephew of Petra Mazara, the church’s main benefactor. Already at the age of 28, he assumed the leadership of the Collegiate Church of St. Peter and held it until his tragic death under the ruins of the earthquake of 11 January 1693. During Vassallo’s regency, the church of San Pietro had jurisdiction over three parish churches and 40 sacramental churches, reaching as far as the seaside village of Pozzallo.

Among the goods recovered on the occasion of the opening of the exhibition area, it was decided to exhibit a number of mini-reliquaries dating between 1595 and 1604 and particularly valuable Marian reliquaries from the 17th and 18th centuries. Frequently, the most valuable reliquaries were used to display relics of the Virgin Mary. Marian devotion is not only a constant element in the life of the Modican church, but the intensification of the call to Mary during the most difficult phases in the life of the city and the entire Church is obvious. In fact, while the 17th century was studded with earthquakes, famines and epidemics, the Church also experienced profound reforming tensions. The mapping made in 1955 by historian Belgiorno shows that 29% of Modica’s 157 churches were dedicated to the Virgin Mary. Even in churches not dedicated to the Madonna, the most prestigious altars are always dedicated to her in her various meanings. Modica’s toponymy fortunately retains part of the original street names, even if the reference to the Madonna was systematically removed. Thus, Via Santa Maria di Loreto has become Via Loreto, Via Santa Maria della Scala has become Via Scala, Via Santa Maria di Portosalvo has become Via Portosalvo, Via Santa Maria ‘Ex audi nos’ has become Via Exaudinos, etc.). Moreover, in the face of the misfortunes that hit the city of Modica, the people asked for the protection of the Madonna delle Grazie after the miraculous discovery in 1615 of a slate slab on which the Madonna and Child was painted. Thus the first sanctuary was born and the city of Modica was consecrated to the Madonna delle Grazie, its patron saint, with a temple built by concession of the Church of San Pietro, which would have jurisdiction over the sanctuary until 40 years ago, when the first parish priest of the Sanctuary of the Madonna delle Grazie was appointed.

Painting depicting the ‘Transit of St Joseph’. The presence of this painting reminds us of the importance of the Mazzara family and in particular of Baroness Petra who had this chapel built from 1665 onwards for the celebration of daily suffrage masses for her family members.

No information comes to us from the four evangelists about the death of St Joseph. The origin of his cult, which dates back to the 2nd century A.D., has recourse to the apocryphal Gospels. According to the Proto Gospel of James, Joseph left this life before Jesus’ public mission and was assisted in his agony by Jesus himself and the Virgin Mary. It seems that the cult originated in the city of Nazareth by the Judeo-Christians. After their expulsion from Nazareth in the 7th century, the cult spread to Egypt and then, thanks to translations into Latin, developed in our territories as well. But St Joseph’s death contributed to the development in Modica, too, of the so-called ‘good death’ practices, or rather a spiritual path of preparation for the passing of the body, as St Joseph’s was understood as an ideal death next to his wife and in the arms of his own son, moreover before the latter went on the mission that would lead to his death.

Such ‘practices’ found concrete expression in the foundation at the Collegiate Church of St. Mary of Bethlehem of an Archconfraternity of the Oration and Death with the aim of giving a dignified burial to the indigent and the poor, otherwise left to die in the streets.

This iconography soon found rapid diffusion in Modica through the creation of other pictures and paintings in other churches such as the church of San Giovanni Evangelista or the church of the Madonna della Catena.

The eighteenth-century painting in San Pietro Apostolo in Modica corresponds to a testamentary will expressed by the priest Giuseppe Mazzara, brother of Baroness Petra Mazara, who had the family chapel built in 1665, where he celebrated two masses a day for his dead. In his testamentary will, the priest chose as his final resting place a chapel where a canvas depicting the death of St Joseph was to be placed. The transit of St Joseph originally placed in this chapel was probably the one now displayed on the right side of the Church of the Most Holy Saviour dated 1667, a period corresponding to the planned completion of the Mazara chapel by the Calisti masters of Carlentini. Some curiosities relating to the transit of St. Joseph in St. Peter’s refer to the presence of the Prince of the Apostles in a defiladed position, easily recognisable by his clothing and beard. Furthermore, in the top left-hand corner, two subjects can be seen conversing, while the one on the left holds a lens in one hand and an unspecified ream of paper in the other. None of these characters are present in the 1667 painting, where, in addition to the members of the Holy Family, only angels, the dove of the Holy Spirit, the Almighty waiting for Joseph with outstretched arms and a cat under the table are depicted. Perhaps, a century after the death of the benefactress who had the chapel built, as well as respecting Joseph’s testamentary wishes, a way has been found to recall Petra’s great devotion to the Prince of the Apostles by including him among the figures assisting St Joseph. Moreover, the presence of the Prince of the Apostles is a red thread that recurs throughout the church.

The Mazara family represents a link between the most important churches in Modica Bassa, having already operated in the 16th century with determination and munificence in the church of Santa Maria di Betlem, and then transferring its attentions in the following century to the mother church dedicated to St. Peter the Apostle. Recent genealogical research has ascertained the kinship ties between the Mazara family and the Caggia family, who also contributed equally to the concrete growth of both major churches of Modica Bassa during periods characterised by great difficulties.