The Icon at the Amphitheatre

Abstract

This chapter opens with some background to Bartolo Longo’s early life in Puglia and his formative time as a young man in Naples, before returning to Pompeii to explore the events of his first four years in the Valley, from October 1872 to May 1876. These years saw Longo’s initial efforts to spread the Rosary devotion amongst the residents of Valle, and his acquisition of the painting that would become widely known as ‘the Madonna of Pompeii’. Much of the discussion in the chapter revolves around this painting, since its origin narrative helps to illuminate some of the most fundamental aspects of the Pompeian devotion. Another site introduced here is the small chapel that stood on top of the nearby Monte Gauro (today Monte Faito) whose patron, St Michael Archangel, was chosen as the new shrine’s protector. This chapter demonstrates an important point: although this book is focused on the shrine’s reception of the classical (Greek and Roman) past, the ancient city of Pompeii was nevertheless simply one element in the much larger historical universe of the Valley of Pompeii, and the full meaning of the classical ruins within this Catholic context can only be understood when we view the ancient city alongside the other sites of memory that surrounded it—places which in turn formed part of a broader ‘legendary topography’ of the Pompeian Valley.