A Catholic Ritual with Snakes in Central Italy. Tradition as an Ecological and Dynamic Force

For at least four centuries, the inhabitants of Cocullo, a tiny village in the province of L'Aquila (Abruzzo, Italy), have been capturing and handling non-venomous snakes to honour St. Dominic of Sora, abbot and saint of the Catholic Church who resided in this region during the eleventh century. St. Dominic showed the locals how to survive despite the presence of wild animals, which he tamed just as Saint Francis of Assisi pacified the Wolf of Gubbio. But, as is known, touching a snake means breaking a Christian taboo which assumes, in accordance with the Bible, that serpents are a dangerous incarnation of Satan. We are thus dealing with an extraordinary tradition of using snakes in a Catholic rite that survived to the present day. Only a hundred years ago, a procession in honour of St. Dominic was followed by killing snakes to be eaten for propitiatory reasons. Today, snakes are becoming extinct and due to a new culture and policy are no longer slain but released in forests in the same spot where they were captured, in compliance with a zoological monitoring plan sponsored by the Italian Ministry of the Environment. This cultural mediation between traditions and innovations is the result of three decades of collaborative ethnography, made possible by anthropologists who have analysed the social functions and meanings of the rite of St. Dominic. From a cultural point of view, the Cocullo ritual represents cultural diversity and biodiversity, with traditional culture helping to safeguard the natural environment, although from outside it may seem to be the opposite. The presented case-study suggests practicing cultural mediation in a comprehensive perspective, since "tradition" is not a radical opposite of "innovation" and works as a dynamic and perpetually restructuring force.