Picinisco is the last village on the Canneto itinerary, before tackling the roughness of the high mountains and reaching the coveted destination, for the companies or processions of devotees, who every year on the August bank holiday come on foot from the plains of lower Liri, from Cassinate and from the mountainous hinterland of the Mainarde, preserving one of the sanctuary's oldest and most cherished traditions, namely the pilgrimage on foot.
A population such as that of Picinisco, which has known since the dawn of time the splendours of the church of Canneto, but also the inconveniences of such a singular place in terms of altitude, isolation and climate variability, with the consequent and recurring problems of maintenance, renovation and accommodation of the sacred buildings for the multitudes of devotees who flock there, had its own parish pilgrimage to the sanctuary and its own particular devotion to the Madonna Bruna and her beloved mother, St. Anne.
The parish pilgrimage dates historically and thus with certainty from 1639 onwards. The evidence for this all comes to us from the archives of the village church of St Lawrence, and more precisely from the registers of the college of canons of that distinguished collegiate church.
I mentioned that the first pilgrimage to Canneto dates back to 1639. In fact, for that procession the church chapter received from the mayors of the place (“i sindaci della Terra”) a fee of 10 carlins to be divided among the individual canons, who had personally participated in that penitential rite at the feet of the Blessed Virgin. A manifestation of faith and penitence: that is what a pilgrimage to a sanctuary was then and must remain forever.
A new pilgrimage to Canneto from Picinisco is attested on 10 August 1642 with a fee of 10 carlins given by the same civil authority to the participating canons. Two other processions, again promoted by mayors, took place in 1645.
In November 1660, the mayors of the village paid the chapter of the collegiate church the sum of 20 carlins, both to encourage the canons to take part in a pilgrimage to Canneto, and for them to celebrate a Mass in honour of St Anne there. This time the capitulars' fee was doubled for the dual purpose of taking part in the walking procession and celebrating Mass. This is the first historical mention found on the
cult of St Anne in the church of Canneto. I will return there immediately.
Two other pilgrimages to Canneto are recorded on 4 May and 10 August l662. On 9 May the following year, at the request of the mayors, a litany to Our Lady of Canneto was recited in the parish church of Picinisco.
This public prayer made by the local people to Our Lady Bruna in their own parish church was edifying: it was an act of firm and confident faith in the intercessory power of the Mother of God, wherever she was invoked!
Three more pilgrimages to the shrine are recorded in 1665. These too, like all or almost all the others, were promoted “at the instance of the mayors” or, which was the same, “at the instance of the earth”. The specific purposes for which they were carried out are not recorded, but they were clearly penitential processions made out of public necessity, such as to obtain rain or the serenity of the sky, or to avert impending calamities, such as famines and earthquakes.
As for the indication of the destination, we find written: “S. Maria di Candita” or “di Candito”, as the historian Giulio Prudenzio di Alvito had already pointed out in 1574: an alteration of the original place name.
Regarding the cult of St. Anne, the Mass to be celebrated in her honour at Canneto in November 1660 during the parish pilgrimage of Picinisco proves in the most obvious and simplest way that a special devotion to the mother of Mary already existed at the shrine, which developed alongside and in the great light of the much older and deeper devotion that the faithful nurtured towards the Mother of God.
Later, this special devotion grew to such an extent that the same liturgical feast of St Anne on 26 July became another typical feast of the sanctuary of Canneto with its own pilgrimage, which was added to the five traditional days of Marian celebrations on the feast day of August. A feast and pilgrimage that still lasts today.
In the sanctuary of Canneto, St. Anne, because of her late motherhood, is invoked particularly by young brides, who wait in vain for the fruit of their love, or by those who, having obtained it, cherish the hope of a happy birth.