Up close with the statues

Joseph Grima: Il-Vari tal-Ġimgħa Mqaddsa fil-Gżejjer Maltin, Sensiela Kullana Kulturali 78, PIN, 2012, 273 pp.

The context surrounding the traditional Holy Week statues is explored in a book by Joseph Grima.

In his foreword to Il-Vari tal-Ġimgħa Mqaddsa fil-Gżejjer Maltin, Grima explains that the context surrounding the Holy Week processional statues is just as important as the statues themselves.

The book contains a list of the Good Friday and Easter Sunday processional statues, each of which is included with a photograph and an explanation, but they cover just three chapters out of eight.

Although Holy Week really begins on Palm Sunday, for many Maltese it begins two days earlier when thousands accompany the 68 processions of Our Lady of Sorrows.

The statues in themselves are shorn of sense unless placed within the processions, so Grima explains the origins of these manifestations.

These owe their beginning to the 1573 papal bull Pastoralis Eternis that led to the formation of Lenten processions which, in turn, gave birth to the Good Friday manifestations, of which there are now 19, 14 in Malta and five in Gozo.

Information connected with the statues is also given: funereal music, decorative elements and the way they are carried. The same exercise is carried out in Chapter 3 with regard to Easter statues and processions, but also includes explanations on symbols and iconography.

The book takes into consideration the statues’ iconographical development. Chapter 4 deals with their relatively slow development up till 1960 and then moves to place on record the great changes that have enveloped these Passion processions from 1961 to date.

Chapter 5 gives pen-portraits of 37 artists whose works are carried shoulder-high in processions every year.

Grima is an established historian with a soft spot for Holy Week manifestations.