Bari Cathedral

After I returned from my morning’s side trip to Trani, I had a late lunch in Bari. It seriously disrupts the order of the universe to discuss my lunch at the start of an afternoon entry rather than the usual end of a morning post.

But here we are. I’ll brush over it exceptionally quickly to minimize the risk of destroying the fabric of the universe.

Spaghetti carbonara, wine, sparkling water, espresso. Food tasty. Ambience lacking.

There done. I don’t detect a disruption in the force so we can move on safely.

I told you yesterday that my desire to take a look inside the Bari Cathedral was thwarted by death. Fortunately, it wasn’t my death or the death of anyone I know, but I offer the deepest, sincerest condolences to the bereaved. But in the future I hope Bari will schedule its deaths and subsequent funerals around my travel plans. Is that too much to ask?

I tried again today.

Not the Bari Cathedral

I got to the Bari Cathedral, aka Cattedrale Parrocchia in Bari, and all of the doors were locked shut. My guidebook said the cathedral should have been open today, Sunday, at that time. It wasn’t.

I looked on and in the vicinity of the cathedral for a sign with opening hours. There was none.

Then it occurred to me. Today is Sunday. Despite the guidebook saying it is open Sundays at the time I was there, they probably decided they didn’t want to bring their staff in that day. God likely has to pay His servants in His house at least time and a half to work on Sundays.

I know that, by definition, God has exactly as much money as God, but he might not want to spend more than he has to on his help.

Or there might have been another explanation. But, whatever, the Bari Cathedral wasn’t open when I was there

In that same post yesterday, I mentioned a plaque that I saw on a wall opposite the side of the cathedral. I said that, probably due to my focus on trying and failing to get the camera function of Google Translate to translate it, I forgot to take a picture of it and I said I’d tell you about it if and when I remembered to do so.

The answer to the if question is yes. And the answer to the when question is now.

Here it is.

There was nothing to draw my, or anyone else’s, attention to it. I probably wouldn’t have seen it were it not for my visit to the Jewish Museum in Lecce having triggered me to notice Hebrew printing anywhere in Puglia because of the extreme unlikelihood of it.

After typing it in manually due to my failure with the camera function, Google Translate tells me that “sito della sinagoga altomedieval” is Italian for “site of the early medieval synagogue” and “perché da Bari uscirà la torah” is Italian for “because the torah will come out of Bari.” It was a little less clear on “vero locum sinagoga.” It’s either Italian for “true locum synagogue” or Latin for “but the place of the synagogue.”

Because the camera function of Google Translate wasn’t working for me on the sign, I didn’t try to translate the Hebrew. I don’t know how to enter Hebrew characters into my iPhone or MacBook.

For all I know, that might be the only recognition in Bari of the once vibrant Jewish community that ended centuries ago when extreme antisemitism resulted in the expulsion of the Jews. But at least there’s that.

Strada delle Orecchiette

There’s a street in the warren of small streets that’s known as “Strada delle orecchiette.”

After my failure at the Bari Cathedral, I took a walk over there. It’s not very far from the cathedral.

Strada delle orecchiette is not the actual street name. Searching for it in Google Maps will find it as a tourist attraction on Via Arco Basso.

I mentioned orecchiette before in one of my lunch notes, the one in Alberobello. It’s a pasta native to the Puglia region of Italy.

On Strada delle orecchiette women sit making orecchiette at tables on the street. Outdoors. With no special food protections. For sale to the general public. It occurred to me that it’s extremely unlikely that the Toronto Board of Health would ever allow that back in Toronto. But I haven’t seen any people here dropping dead from eating the orecchiette.

Right out in the open, the women kneed the dough, use a knife to cut off a bit needed for one of their orecchiette pasta shells, and then pinch the shell shape. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.

They sell bags of their finished products, in a few different colours, from the same tables.

I think there’s more activity on other days than today, a Sunday. There were some empty tables today. And some spaces that probably contain tables on other days.

But there were a half-dozen or so women busy with their orecchiette today. And even not full, it was still street with character to spare.

Wandering the Seashore

it was a few minutes after 4:00 pm when I left the Strada delle orecchiette. A lot of churches here post their hours as early in the morning until noon or 12:30 and then again from 4:00 or 5:00 until sometime in the evening. So I decided to go back and see if the Bari Cathedral was open yet. Nope.

I took a walk over to the same general area of the seashore that I visited on my first day in Bari, but at an end I wasn’t at then. It looks roughly the same.

Then I walked away from that area and ended up at the working port. As to be expected, it’s not very attractive. Fences keep the general public out. I didn’t take any pictures.

I saw a couple of big boats that looked like they might be car ferries. I didn’t see any big cruise ships, but I’ve read that they do visit in the summer. I also didn’t see any big cargo ships, but the presence of cranes that I think are for loading/offloading suggests they too visit. I didn’t walk the full length of the working port, and there were those fences, so I might have just missed one or two.

I decided it was then time to head back to my hotel, but I opted to take a bit of a diversion from the most direct route. A diversion to … you probably guessed it … a diversion to …

Bari Cathedral

Eureka! I found the Bari Cathedral open! Five o’clock must be their reopening hour.

The cathedral isn’t huge in terms of length or width, but it has a lot of height. It’s the sort of space that feels like it’s going to suck you up. In fact, standing there I had the feeling that a tractor beam would be activated at any moment and pull me up to the plain, wood ceiling. Spoiler: It didn’t.

There are few decorations in this off-white, stone cathedral. But there are nice two-tiered arches along the nave and a single, high arch over the altar.

I found the cathedral calming rather than draining as some of the excessively decorated churches can be.

There’s a crypt under the cathedral. As always with a crypt that has to support the weight of a heavy cathedral above it, there are lots of columns. The columns have four flat sides covered in coloured marble. Arches radiate out from each column.

The crypt contains the relics of Saint Sabinus.

Who?

I’ve heard of St. John, St. Paul, St. Mark, St. Luke, St. Mary, St. Nicholas (of course), and St. Clair. Okay, that last one is a street in Toronto. But I’ve always assumed that St. Clair Avenue must have been named after a saint.

But I’ve never heard of Saint Sabinus. That dude should fire his PR department and hire some new pros to help him with that.

And what is with all of these relics of saints in cathedral crypts? Is that why they name so many saints? So they’ll have enough bones to distribute to all of the cathedrals that want some?

I don’t know if they still put relics in new cathedrals, or if they still build new cathedrals, but I can imagine, back in the day, one of the pope’s aides coming to him and saying, “I’m sorry to bother you your Holy Popiness, but they’re building a new cathedral in Tsurisville and they need some saint’s bones for their crypt, but we’re all out.”

And the pope replies, “What about that Priest Putzius who died a little while back? Didn’t, on two separate occasions, in two separate towns, young children recover from a cold within a week of Putzius visiting the nearby town? And then there was the time that a cat that no one had ever seen before appeared when Putzius left a piece of fish out on the ground. Those are miracles right there.

“Verify them and if they check out as true miracles, I’ll have him canonized and tell Tsurisville to adopt him as their patron saint. Then we can have his bones dug out of the paupers’ field they were dumped in and ship them off to the Tsurisvillians’ new cathedral.’

The point is, like I said, I never heard of Saint Sabinus. And I can’t be bothered to try to research him.

And with today’s quota of irreverence met, it’s time to call it a day.

It’s a day.