The rediscovery of the priest-ethnographer of Barbagia

He had opened the solemn procession which on 20 June 1959 deposed the remains of Grazia Deledda, moved from Rome, to the tomb inside the church of Solitudine, in Nuoro, where they still rest. He, Raimondo Calvisi, who later became a monsignor, was a parish priest at the time and lived in three rooms next to that small temple at the foot of Mount Ortobene. But her name in the history of the Church of Barbagia is not linked to the ceremony in memory of the Nobel Prize writer even if in the year of the celebrations for the 150th anniversary of her birth it is almost a thought. Rather to the foundation of scouting in Sardinia and even more to his five books that tell extinct rites, lost popular traditions such as the argia dance or the dinner of souls, incredible figures like “s'accabbadora”, the magical and legendary world. Readings that have always been indispensable for ethnographic scholars who have drawn from his works, published between 1966 and 1976 by the Fossataro publishing house in Sassari, finding precious stories and testimonies, accurate reconstructions, effective dialogues, characters, objects, ex voto , parties, poems, sayings, fundamental rituals to understand many social and cultural dynamics of the past. A vast and incredible heritage, translated in writing from the oral narration of which he, born in Bitti in 1892 and died in 1978, country curate in Lula, Olzai, Siniscola, Nuoro, was an attentive witness as if he were a scrupulous researcher.

The debut book opens with “La festa di Alarvè” which identifies Lollove, a village of Nuoro of which Don Calvisi had been parish priest. At the procession in honor of San Biagio the war between two factions explodes, there is a shooting, a general stampede. The priest stays as long as he can, but he understands that the situation is at another risk. Before leaving the camp, however, he invokes the saint saying in limba: «Even if your head were cut off, yours could be made new. Mine no. " One of the most irresistible stories is “Su ballu 'e s'arza”. The priest-ethnographer explains: «A secular tradition considered this remedy infallible against the bite of the arza. A procession was formed which was attended, in a fixed number, by seven widows, seven brides, seven spinsters chosen previously: and a more or less large crowd of men destined to be mere extras, but still indispensable too ».

Those books, for some time now unavailable except, in lucky cases, in the antique markets, are now revived thanks to a new initiative of the publisher Carlo Delfino, edited by the priest's nephew, Diego Casu, and by the writer Natalino Piras. Fresh off the press is the first volume that respects the original title and setting: "Stories and testimonies of life in Barbagia" with illustrations by Giovanni Canu and a preface by Raffaelllo Marchi, intellectual and anthropologist, who with insight in 1966 underlines: "It is perhaps the first time in Sardinia that popular life is seen from below and from within, to a degree of identification, between the witness and the thing witnessed, which would seem to exclude any detachment and even those limits, inherent to the priestly ministry, and to doctrine, to morality, especially to the author's unique and ascertained faith, which precisely in this case could not strictly speaking be excluded ”.

Pira and Casu explain in the presentation of the new edition entitled “Sa paraula e sos libros”: «The five books are at the same time the memory of magical time, the story of an experience and anthropological investigation». Raimondo Calvisi loved short and concise homilies, a Latinist without however wanting Latin in masses, he liked being in the midst of people. "Conciliar priest, Johann, humble but also aware of his value as a researcher and writer", is defined by the authors who take care of the publication of the complete work by adding a sixth volume that collects other writings. In the early 1920s, Calvisi in Nuoro was the animator of the scouts: he founded the second section in Sardinia. In 1926, however, scouting becomes outlawed. He was reborn in 1946: he is always its animator. He is a parish priest between Barbagia and Baronia, he refines his knowledge, grasps the changes taking place and begins to write down everything he can. His five books still remain a point of reference for scholars today, starting with the authoritative Clara Gallini. Piras and Casu explain: «In the decade from 1965 to 1975 there was an epochal change in the social, cultural and economic fields in Italy and Sardinia. Monsignor Calvisi sensed in time that change that could lead to the oblivion of that oral tradition and gave it a written form ». And again: "In Raimondo Calvisi the man and the priest coexist, the country curate as mediator between high and low culture and the self-taught anthropological science, planner of plots worthy of his characters and acute digger of psychologies of otherwise rude people , of tenacious concept in respecting but also in breaking pacts of unwritten laws of traditional society ». In short, a figure to be rediscovered to rediscover a lost world and above all to regenerate its memory.