and punish the foreman. Her prayer was answered. The foreman, coming to Palermo not long after, was attacked by unknown persons and given such a thrashing that he remembered it all the rest of his life. The unknown persons were of course Decollati. The poor carter in some way was discovered to be innocent, and reinstated in his position.
All this and more may be read in Dr. Pitrè's interesting pages.[1] The concentration of the cult in Palermo and at the little church beside the Oreto I have already accounted for. Its general popularity in the island is doubtless attributable to the generations of tyranny suffered by the inhabitants at large and particularly by the poorer classes. These classes supplied most of the victims of the law. Tyranny produced lawlessness. The poor had little to lose, and the violence of brigands and marauders was chiefly directed against the wealthy and the powerful. A brigand became the hero of the countryside. When he was caught and put to death with the forms of justice after due confession and the rites of the Church, and with all the pomp and circumstance of a public execution, the sufferer, (l'afflitto, as he was called), received the rank of a martyr, and honours quasi-divine were paid to him. These honours were extended by analogy to all other criminals, however atrocious, provided they met their death in the same conditions. It was impossible to distinguish between them, for popular sympathy was always and inevitably against the rulers. Priests lent themselves to the development of the cult, nor need it be supposed that their motives were wholly unworthy. They were probably themselves drawn from the lower strata of society, and may be supposed to have had a
- ↑ Pitrè, Biblioteca, vol. xvii., pp. 4 et seq.; vol. i., p. 77; vol. ii., p. 38. La Vita in Palermo, vol. ii., c. xviii., where an impressive account is given of executions in Palermo to the end of the eighteenth century. Mostra Etnografica Siciliana, pp. 51, 80.
