20/06/2008 - Num. 28 2008

Coral Day

Ancient history becomes a crafts tradition on Capri. - by Salvatore Borà.

Other versions: Italiano

Coral-fishing was practised around Capri in ancient times, though it only became an organized practice around 1800, according to the archives. Coral deposits once abounded around the island. The largest was at the “Bocche”, in the stretch of sea between Punta di Tiberio and Punta di Campanella; at Vitareta, around 200 m from the coast; at Gradola, near the Blue Grotto; between Matermania and Punta del Secco; 400 m from the Faraglioni; at Punta Carena near the lighthouse; and at various depths around the Grotte.
The coral-fishing haul was so abundant in 1277 that the ruling Angevins decided to establish a uniform excise duty to benefit the Crown on all coral fished; previously, the local customs had set this duty at their own discretion. Queen Joanna I of Anjou was always extremely keen on coral. She wore coral jewellery throughout her life, and as a little girl, had her clothing adorned with this precious gem. Following the construction of the San Giacomo Charterhouse, commissioned by Giacomo Arcucci in 1371, Queen Joanna II of Anjou awarded the monastery a number of sources of income. In addition to a levy of a tithe on fish taken from the waters belonging to the Charterhouse, she also awarded a tithe on coral. This gave rise to a succession of quarrels and disputes between the clergy, the bishopric and the university - in some years, the coral haul was worth thousands of ducats in levies to the monks.
The “coral banks” at the Maddalena in Sardinia and at the Bocche di Bonifacio were another major resource for Capri fishermen, some of whom ultimately decided to settle on the island.

THE “WIDOWMAKERS' SHALLOWS”
Eugenio Aprea, who met with some of these fishermen at the end of the 18th century, writes of a sandbank that they found full of coral and fish of all kinds. Fishermen from the Gulf of Naples, and others from further afield, regularly sailed to the sandbank in the hope of great profit. By fishing so far from their home island, however, they risked the wrath of sudden storms on the open seas. One night, when everything seemed to be set fair for a good night’s fishing, a huge and violent summer storm arrived out of nowhere, surprising and capsizing all of the fishing boats that were bobbing over the famous shallows. Not one of the fishermen on the many dozens of boats survived. Not for the first time did the sea sow grief among fisher families; this time, the exceptionally and frighteningly high waves caused a massacre. The widows of those poor fisherfolk never again removed their widows’ weeds. To this day, the site of that horrific disaster is known as the “Widowmakers’ Shallows” (Secca delle Vedove). Painter John Benner drew inspiration from this sorrowful episode in his beautiful oil painting of women, crying in desperation on a cliff.

THE TORRE CORAL
In the 16th century, the coral banks around the island began to go into decline. Faced with this development, the fishermen of Capri went to work for the boatowners who worked out of Torre del Greco, and set sail for Sicily and Tunisia. From April to October, their life was filled with backbreaking and thankless toil. They used to spend the days in the hold of a boat with only biscuits to eat and often brackish water to drink. Rarely did they have a chance to go ashore; they would go without sleep for days, all for a pittance for their toil and suffering.
However, there was no lack of takers for this life. Around two hundred young men set sail every year: it was the only way to save the money they needed to get married and start a new life. They weren’t afraid of the dangers of being taken prisoner by buccaneers or pirates who plied the Mediterranean in those days. Sailors used to open an account at a Congregation of Charity/Bank at Capri and Anacapri. These credit unions served to assist poor young girls who couldn’t get married for a lack of a dowry, as well as allowing the sailors to build up a sum of money… “To be used to free any contribuent who, God forbid, should be enslaved by the Turks... Should this sad deed occur, they may use all of the money accumulated from the capital... And should it prove to be impossible to pay for the many, fifty ducats shall be available for each one, informing the first who was enslaved; if all of the sailors upon a ship were enslaved at the same time, they should draw lots to decide who shall be first, second, third, fourth, and so on...”.
The banks were located in both towns, at the small churches dedicated to Santa Maria of Constantinople. Tradition has it that the picture of this Italy Virgin, popularly known as the Schiavona, was found in the hold of a pirate ship attacked and destroyed by a Torre del Greco coral-fisher’s boat off the coast of Sardinia. This particular Italy Virgin had been venerated by the Turks in Constantinople since the times of Emperor Constantine, before becoming the sacred symbol and protector of the Torre del Greco fishermen. Capri’s fishermen were also particularly devoted to the Virgin. Before embarking on any sea journey, they paid their respects to Santa Maria del Soccorso at the Monte Tiberio chapel (formerly dedicated to Saint Leonard, patron saint of slaves), or to Santa Maria a Cetrella on Monte Solaro. To this day, the people of the Marina Grande seaside village celebrate their most important feast day of the year on the second Sunday in September. The day is dedicated to the “Madonna della Libera”, so named because of the prayers said to her at the chapel in the Castle of Capri in order to free Capri fishermen held by the Turks.

FISHERMEN CELEBRATE
In the late 19th century, another feast day was celebrated in the centre of Capri, though the tradition has since died out. English writer John Richard Green wrote in 1876: “...The only real break in the winter’s dullness is the Feast of the Coral-fishers... generally one of the last Sundays in January. Long before daybreak the banging of big crackers rouses the island from its slumbers; and high mass is hardly over, when a procession of strange picturesqueness streams out of church into the sunshine. At its head come the “Daughters of Mary”, some mere little tots, some girls of sixteen, but all clad in white, with garlands of flowers over their veils and girdles of red or blue. Behind come the fishermen, young sailorboys, followed by rough, grizzled elders, bearing candles like the girls before them, and then the village brotherhood, fishers too, but clad in strange garments of grey, with black hoods covering their faces, and leaving nothing but the bright good-humoured eye to guide one, under this sepulchral figure, to the Giovanni or Beppino who was cracking jokes yesterday in the Blue Grotto. Then beneath a great canopy upborne by the four elder fishers of the island, vested in gowns of ‘samite, mystic, wonderful’ - somewhat like a doctor of music’s gown in our unpoetic land - comes the Madonna herself, ‘La Madonna del Carmelo,’ with a crown of gold on her head and a silver fish dangling from her fingers. It is the Madonna of Carmel, who disputes with San Costanzo, the saint of the mother church below, the spiritual dominion of Capri. If he is the ‘Protector’ of the island, she is its ‘Protectress.’ ...
“On the other hand, all the girls go with the fisherfolk, in their love of the Madonna. ‘Ah yes, signore,’ laughs a maiden whose Greek face might have served Phidias for a model, ‘San Costanzo is our Protector, but he is old, and the Madonna is young - so young and so pretty, signore - and she is my Protectress.’...
“Slowly the procession winds its way through the little town, now lengthening into a line of twinkling tapers as it passes through the narrow alleys which serve for streets, now widening out again on the hillsides where the orange kerchiefs and silver ornaments of the Caprese women glow and flash against a magnificient background of color in the sun. And then come evening and benediction, and the fire-works, without which the procession would go for nothing, catharine-wheels spinning in the piazza, and big crackers bursting amidst a chorus of pretty cries of terror and delight.”


THE ART OF CORAL
The word “coral” most probably hails from the Greek korallion, meaning “hard skeleton”, though there are those who believe that it derives from the Hebrew word goral, which was used to refer to the stones cast in oracles in Asia Minor and the Mediterranean - coral was prevalently used for this purpose.
For the Ancient Greeks and Romans, coral was “the greatest fruit of the sea”. Ovid wrote in his Metamorphoses: “It is like soft grass that grows not on the ground but in the sea. The salt water putrefies the little plants until the leaves fall off, and then sea spray carries them to shore. They harden in the air; anybody who touches them would say that they are made of stone, yet not long before they were grass.”
The old fisherman’s town of Torre del Greco, at the foot of Vesuvius, has long been associated with this precious gem from the sea. Documentation on Torre del Greco sailors fishing for coral dates back to the 15th century. It was at Torre del Greco that the Royal Coral Company was founded in 1790; on 22 December 1798, Ferdinand IV of Bourbon passed the Coral Code, with the intention of regulating the Coral fishing industry.
In the late 1800s, around 290 coral boats set sail from Torre del Greco every year. A Coral Working School was founded in town in 1878 (converted into a Coral Museum in 1993). Once a small fisherman’s village, Torre del Greco has become the capital of working this red gold. Though there is no longer a coral-fishing industry in the town, it remains the world’s leading location for working coral.

A PASSION FOR CORAL
Costanzo, Alfonso, Costanzo: on Capri the Alberino family has crafted coral for generations. With the same intense passion. A passion that led Alfonso to open La Fiorente, a small shop selling coral and cameos, back in 1946. In the 1980s jewelry made with the “red gold” was joined by sapphires, emeralds, rubies, and a centrepiece of pearls personally selected by Alfonso’s son Costanzo, and the old coral shop was on its way to becoming a jeweller’s. But the passion for coral alone had never faded, and led to the opening of a separate store specializing in coral and cameos of all kinds, to suit all pockets: Don Alfonso.