Many of us have experienced the excitement of being in Panni for the end of August festival with its annual processions in honor of the Madonna del Bosco, San Costanzo, San Vito and San Rocco. Surely you have asked yourself the same questions that I asked myself during my first Panni festival. When and how did the Madonna’s coronation occur? Where did the Madonna come from in the first place? Why have Panni descendants and ancestors all over the world brought this Patron Madonna with them to immigrant shores?
The story is this: One day a shepherdess saw an apparition of the Madonna and found the icon of the Madonna and Child among the branches of a cerro tree at the edge of the Panni woods. The Madonna expressed her desire to have a church built in her honor on that spot. The shepherdess brought the news back to the parish priest and the townspeople. Later the Bishop assigned the icon the name Maria Santissima del Bosco, more simply Madonna del Bosco, because of the location of the appearance in the woods (bosco).
The archives of the Diocese of Bovino, of which Panni was a part, dates the Church’s construction to 1503 thanks to the funding of Tommaso Carafa, Lord of Bovino and later (in 1507) the Lord of Panni as well. It is located about two and a half miles from town at the eastern foot of Mount Crispiniano. The Convent was built in 1633, and it became the home of an order of St. Augustine monks until 1737. The Church and the Convent make up the “Sanctuary”. Control then passed to the Parish of Panni whose priests cared for the Church but neglected the Convent. In 1903, about 1,500 feet from the Sanctuary, a small, sacred shrine or chapel was erected on the precise place where the statue had been found. This construction was accomplished with American partners.
Continuous maintenance was required due to landslides causing many problems for the priests of Panni. By the end of the last century, it was in pitiful, unsafe condition. The Convent was then reborn through the effort of the Apulia Region, the Diocese, and Panni’s residents. It demands continuous and costly repairs; however, it is the pride of Panni.
Over the centuries several miracles have been attributed to the Madonna del Bosco who granted favor for: the absence of victims of the 1732 earthquake; the end of incessant rain and landslides in 1794; the end of the lengthy 1797 drought; and for the relief from the 1837 cholera epidemic.
In the early 1890’s Archpriest Don Giuseppe Bianchi made an appeal to the Vatican for the coronation of the Madonna del Bosco. The ministers in Rome accepted the request and delegated the Bishop of Bovino, Mons. Michele De Iorio, to celebrate the sacred rite. In recognition of these miracles, the Coronation took place on August 27, 1894, in the light blue gazebo called the “Chiosco” built specifically for the occasion.
The “Chiosco”, in Piazza Matteotti near the Town Hall, is the location of the annual ritual of the Dressing of the Madonna on the morning of June 24 when the statue is brought back to town from the Sanctuary. The Madonna is draped in a veil woven of gold, and both she and the child are adorned with gold crowns amid flowers. The statue is placed on a pedestal and placed inside a throne canopy richly strung with gold necklaces and precious stones that have been donated by the town’s faithful over the centuries.
When the Dressing is complete, fireworks are set off, the band strikes up, and a procession towards the town and Mother Church commences. A double-row of women leads the procession followed by the other residents of the town. Throughout the town colorful flower petals are strewn before the icon, and she passes beneath each family’s most precious linens. Richly colored tablecloths, bed covers and drapes are hung across balconies or hung from windowsills – a moving Panni tradition.
The procession concludes at the Church of the Assumption where she is placed to the left of the main altar until her end of summer return to the Sanctuary in the Woods.
The original statue was used until 1800; subsequent statues were restored or rebuilt several times.
For five centuries the residents of Panni have held in their hearts and honored their beloved Madonna del Bosco. Is it any surprise then that every single Pannese who ever left Panni was given a photograph, postcard, bookmark, or tiny icon of the Madonna del Bosco? Should we be at all surprised then that the Pannese societies in Rhode Island; Toronto, Canada; Foggia and Prato, Italy as well as many other towns where Pannese settled all created a Chapel in the Woods and passed on the Panni tradition of honoring its beloved Madonna del Bosco to all of its descendants?
This is the history of our Madonna del Bosco.