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Case Studies | Social Science | Italy | Volume 8 Issue 9, September 2019

The Tamil People and Santa Rosalia: Ruhunu Maha Kataragama Dewalaya to Mount Pellegrino

Salerno Rossana M. ^[4]

Abstract: During the XII century, in the Norman period, the ‘60s were characterized by a greater spread of saints and hermits. The period of William I called “the bad” is for the kingdom of Sicily a period marked by infighting and intolerance of the barony. This is the period where the hermit experience of Saint Rosalia to become consolidated in Palermo. Rosalia, after having left the comforts of the royal palace, decided to live in solitude on Mount Ercta, that is Mount Pellegrino. Today, the Tamil community live from Palermo, Hindu, please Saint Rosalia as hermit and ancestral protector of the mountain. This is not a phenomenon of “religious syncretism”, but a real movement: the mother of Sri Lanka also inhabits mountain Monte Pellegrino as in Sri Lanka lives in Mount Kataragama – “Ruhunu Maha Kataragama Dewalaya”. The rituals and pilgrimages to Her, you can see - deliver suffering and doubts, difficulties in relationships and desires, integrations and social disintegration. Prayers in Saint Rosalia are submitted in writing and delivered to the sanctuary on the mountain and on the whole are a testimony sometime anguished, some funny once more and moving feelings of not mediated and expressed in a private language (Tamil) that should not be able to be read by foreign eyes.

Keywords: religious syncretism, sociology of religion, territory, Tamil, saint, sacred, sanctuary, pilgrims, pious

Edition: Volume 8 Issue 9, September 2019,

Pages: 1977 - 1979

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