The Hermitage: the story of S. Rosalia
The story of Santa Rosalia is a mix of evidence and legends, reconstructions and faith. Her life moves between Palermo and Santo Stefano Quisquina, between princely palaces and small caves protected by mountains, and it is the life of a young woman who dedicates herself to faith by renouncing principles and luxuries. There are few certain things about her short existence: the cave where she spent twelve years, and the one in which she died a few years later.
Rosalia lived in the 12th century; born in Palermo to Count Sinibaldo and Maria Guiscarda, her father planned a future for her worthy of her noble origins. She was about twelve or fourteen when she ran away from home to avoid marrying the prince they had chosen for her, and for twelve years (1150 - 1162) she hid in a small cave sheltered by the thick forest of Quisquina, in the province of Agrigento. Don't imagine a young girl walking alone for a hundred kilometers before finding a shelter: the cave in question is a very specific choice, since the Serra Quisquina belongs to her father and she knows well how thick it is and, therefore, suitable for hiding her.
It should not be thought that the Saint lived inside this cave in absolute solitude: in those centuries of flourishing hermitism, in fact, those who decided to leave behind comforts and riches to seek God in the sol Tudino and in prayer would retreat to a cave or a cell, but almost always in the vicinity of a church or a convent, both to have religious assistance from the nearby monks and to follow the liturgical functions. And this also applies to Santa Rosalia: we know, in fact, that at the time of the Saint there existed (as early as the year 1000) a convent of Basilian monks, of which there are still remains today in the countryside of Melia.
After this period of penance, Rosalia decided to return to Palermo, where she was allowed by Queen Margherita (wife of the King of Sicily William I), moved by the young woman's religious vocation, to move to a cave on Mount Pellegrino where she would continue to live in prayer and solitude until her death. The cult of Santa Rosalia was already widespread in the years immediately following her death, but only after 1624, the year in which the bones of the Saint found on Mount Pellegrino and carried in procession through the streets of Palermo freed the city from the plague, was the sanctity of Rosalia officially recognized. Tradition has it that Rosalia appeared in a dream to a seriously ill woman, Girolamo Gatto, promising her recovery if she went to Mount Pellegrino and indicating the exact point where her bones were buried. The search began, and on July 15, 1624 the bones were found. The commission of theologians and doctors, established by Cardinal Giannettino Doria to examine the remains found, reached an initially disappointing conclusion because the bones seemed to belong to more than one body. But a second miracle occurred: a man, Vincenzo Bonelli, a soap maker, after his wife died of the plague, fled to Mount Pellegrino and there Saint Rosalia appeared to him, who ordered him to tell the cardinal not to doubt the authenticity of the relics and to carry them in procession through the city; only in this way would the plague end. And so it happened. The feast, which is celebrated every year in Palermo around July 15, is nothing other than the historical reenactment of that miraculous event. In the same year 1624, forty days after the discovery of the bones of Saint Rosalia on Mount Pellegrino, an inscription in archaic Latin was found at the entrance to the Quisquina cave, attributed to Saint Rosalia herself: "Ego Rosalia Sinibaldi Quisquinae et Rosarum domini filia amore Domini mei Jesu Christi in hoc antro habitari decrevi" (I Rosalia Sinibaldi, daughter of the Lord of Quisquina and of the Mount of Roses, for the love of my Lord Jesus Christ, have decided to live in this cave.