“I peeped into Mosta’s celebrations and saw the immense domed space filled with 10,000 people swarming around their Passion statues’’ ‒ Robin Bryans in Malta and Gozo guidebook (Faber and Faber, 1966). Holy Week in the Maltese islands sees the amalgamation of religious beliefs and spectacular pageantry. Few other local traditions show the same signs of vitality, change and motion as that of the Good Friday procession-turned-pageants with life-sized images representing the main events of the passion and death of Christ. Master statuarian Carlo Darmanin (1825-1909). Photo: Times of Malta Various influences have been at work in shaping this tradition. The original impulse came from the Franciscan friars (popularly known locally as Ta’ Ġieżu) who, notwithstanding the ravages of past and present-day sectarian conflicts, still have connections with pastoral work in the Holy Land and carry out specific activities revolving around the Holy Sepulchre. There was also a direct influence from religious customs in Spain and analogous traditions in Sicily where similar processions introduced on the pattern of the Genoese casazze in the 16th century were gradually elaborated under Spanish...
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