Shaping sacred spaces: the feast of St Agatha and the development of its urban rituality

In this paper we introduce a preliminary study on the presence and influence of musical ritualities over the historical development of the festive celebration of St Agatha of Sicily. The aim of our enquiry is to observe how the form of the city of Catania has been improved and reorganized over the centuries according to the configuration of the feast, which employs various types of symbolic and ritual not exclusively musical practices revolving around the celebration of the patron saint. Among these, the procession with the relics of St Agatha throughout the city has to some extent resha ped the town plan. Also, ecclesiastical chant and instrumental music may have played an important role in the (re --)construction of an ideal place for such collective rituality, not to mention that two massive earthquakes (in 1169 and in 1693) and the massi ve eruption of 1669 have caused crucial actions to reconstruct the city. By trying to answer a few questions on the rearrangement of the feast to the ceremonial space (or viceversa ) over the centuries, this paper represents the most up to date (ethno --)musi cological work on the subject of the feast of St Agatha in Catania, as a city at the centre of the Mediterranean