The ritual practice of sung questing in honour of Saint Anthony the Abbot recalls key elements of his biography, transmitted by Saint Athanasius. Born in 251 in Koma, Egypt, and deceased in 356 in Quolzoum on January 17 at the age of one hundred and five, Anthony lived a hermitic life in isolated places, sustaining himself through food offerings; his struggle against noisy demons took place through the aid of song and prayer. He was also considered a powerful thaumaturge, capable of healing serious illnesses and freeing people from demonic possession.

The Order of the Antonines was formally established in the West in 1297, although the activity of religious followers inspired by the Egyptian saint had already been well established for some time. His followers specialised in treating ergotism and assisting people experiencing poverty, who were welcomed in foundations and hospitals. They lived through almsgiving and the breeding of communal pigs — raised by the entire community — whose fat was used to support both the institutions and their therapeutic practices. The presence of both the sick and the pigs was signalled by bells, much like the musicians who go on questing rounds carrying a bell fixed to the top of a staff. The present-day questing group also re-enacts the image of the community of hermits accompanying the saint, as well as that of the Antonines collecting goods for the poor and the sick. Song and music are the elements that give power to the ritual. According to local beliefs, they purify spaces from negative influences, just as for Saint Anthony the Abbot, they were the means to defeat the Devil.

Devotion to the saint, reconfigured within the framework of rural Catholicism, celebrates his distinctive attributes on January 17, conveying a dual form of ritual protection: over domestic animals — especially pigs — and against disease, including plague, scurvy and, notably, herpes zoster. In the area of the Gran Sasso and the Monti della Laga, various ceremonial forms are attested, ranging from sung questing to the performance of sacred representations, from the lighting of bonfires to the blessing of animals in front of churchyards.

In Tossicia, the historic capital of the Siciliana Valley, itinerant sung questing takes place during the week leading up to the feast, when a group of local musicians moves from house to house to celebrate not only the saint but also kinship ties, neighbourly relations, friendships, and the social bonds that form the fabric of the community, while collecting offerings intended to support part of the expenses for building the woodpile and lighting the bonfire. Welcoming the travelling groups is considered an honour, and refreshments are always offered, together with food to take away: sausages, cured meats, cheeses, biscuits — the traditional cellittë, bird-like biscuits — and, at times, roosters, rabbits and other live animals.

Carefully analysed by Annunziata Taraschi in her long-term ethnographic research, the questua (ritual house-to-house collection) of Tossicia is the result of a relatively recent revival. At the same time, the tradition of other itinerant groups from the surrounding areas and neighbouring valleys — who have long continued to pass through the village and its rural districts performing their sung rounds — has never been interrupted.

In the memories of older inhabitants, past forms of questua were carried out by groups of friends using simple instruments such as the crallë (wooden rattle) or small bells. Groups of children would move through the narrow lanes of the neighbourhood, receiving dried figs (carginë) and a few sausages as gifts; older participants travelled between the village and its hamlets, usually led by a figure embodying Saint Anthony, wearing a habit and a long false beard, collecting along the way products from pig slaughtering as well as chickens, rabbits, cheeses and eggs. Both children’s and adults’ groups would also receive small quantities of firewood, used to fuel the many bonfires lit on the day of the feast across the districts of Tossicia and in its numerous hamlets, such as Padula, Chiarino, Case di Renzo, Aquilano and Azzinano.

“If you give me a sausage, I’ll eat it nice and crisp / if you give me a big one, I’ll eat it raw and cooked / if you give me a whole pig, I’ll kiss both your hands” — this is part of a questua song still remembered in the village, in which the request for food offerings was explicitly expressed.

Armando Taraschi recalls that his father, an experienced farmer, was once called to assist a cow struggling to give birth; throughout the operation, as he pulled firmly on the calf’s legs, he invoked Saint Anthony the Abbot at each movement for protection. An icon of the saint was present in every stable, and can still be found today in some farms; as a sign of devotion and protection of livestock, small crosses were also made on the animals’ coats by trimming part of their hair with scissors.