The Olive tree (olea europaea) is an extremely long-lived evergreen ‘nun sicca mai’. (it never becomes dry) of the olaceae family, which accompanies all seasons in temperate regions, especially those of the Mediterranean.

“Gods sooner or later disappear, temples sooner or later empty and collapse,
but olive trees remain alive and bear fruit.”

Enzo Bianchi

THE OLIVE TREE

The olive tree’s trunk has inspired the fantasies of the greatest thinkers of the past: it is large, cylindrical in shape and is, more often than not, twisted, grooved and provided with ribs (the niervi) and mamelon swellings. In some places it may also have cavities (the purtùsa), due to decay. The non-straight and non-smooth image of the trunk has lent itself, in the past more than today, to a process of symbolisation. In fact, the great climatic changes to which Sicily ‘lovingly’ accustoms its cultivars forge the characteristic tangles of the trunk. The set of difficulties that the plant itself has to face in order to survive is flanked in the symbolism mentioned above by the farmers who laboriously tend it, finding in their aches and wrinkles furrowing their faces a not distant assonance with the olive trees.

“The olive tree begins to fade from within.
That is why its trunk hollows out and twists in on itself in perpetual motion.
And the more it dies inside, the more majestic it is outside.
This is how I tell the story of dignity”.

Monica Lazzari

I tell him about Cézanne. In the last months of his life he spoke to an olive tree, he had a daily prayer with it. I tell him that, having become an olive tree, he could draw, without taking the brush off the canvas, that olive tree and all the olive trees of the Mediterranean.

Nico Orengo

THE LEAVES

The leaves of the olive tree are narrow, distichous, lanceolate, glabrous and grey-green. Flowering, which occurs in spring, displays very small flowers, grouped in small axillary panicles of fifteen to thirty flowers. The fruit of the tree is technically called a drupe and varies in size and shape. No one, however, calls it that and the noun alívi or olíva is used. The olives have an intense green colour at birth, which then changes to a purple-purple hue. This particular colour transition, which is essential for evaluation for harvesting purposes, is called veraison.

THE FRUIT

Very few fruits manage to persist on the tree: most of the blossoms, destined to become fruit, fall off immediately after fruit set or during the summer or before harvesting (alívi nun sunnu mai sicùri: pi nenti cari tutta) [the olive harvest is never safe: for whatever reason the olives fall off the tree]. It turns out that the olive flowers capable of bearing fruit represent just 1-2% of the total number of flowers on the tree. Ripening and harvesting take place in the autumn season, more or less early, depending on the weather conditions during the summer and the coming autumn. Harvesting is usually prolonged until late winter and early spring, and the reasons for this are varied, one of the most common being of course the abundance of the product: the more the year is full, the more time is needed to complete the work.

THE OIL

Most of the harvested olives are taken to the oil mill and there begins the ‘miracle of Sicily’s gold’: the oil.

“And there in the sunny olive groves,
where only
blue sky with cicadas
and hard earth
exist,
there the prodigy,
the perfect olive capsule
that fills
the foliage with its constellations:
later the vessels,
the miracle,
the oil.”

Pablo Neruda

But as a precious commodity, one cannot only praise and sanctify extra virgin olive oil, one must sell it and produce economy. In fact, those who have oil to sell generally sell it directly at the mill and sometimes even before the olives are pressed. It is preferred to buy the oil on site and with a preventive system, because, in this way, the buyer has the opportunity to see and examine the olives. From the evaluation of the product he will draw a judgement on the quality of the oil. This practice is still very common today: it is considered the best way to ensure a good oil. Generally, it is the older, i.e. more experienced people who do it: they buy not only for their own families, but also for their children’s families and those of acquaintances who are unable to go.

THE SALE

The sale of extra virgin olive oil is also carried out by those who do not make it professionally: oil, in fact, unlike wine, does not take on value or value with the passage of time: ‘l’ogghiu s’avi a livàri prestu’ [oil must be consumed immediately]. As a habit, this calculation is made: the consumption of oil is forecast for the current year and for the year of discharge, the surplus is sold immediately.

“Not only does wine sing,
oil also sings,
it lives in us with its ripe light
and among the goods of the earth
I select,
oil,
your inexhaustible peace,
your green essence,
your rich treasure that descends
from the springs of the olive tree.”

Pablo Neruda

SICILIAN OIL AND SACREDNESS

But it would not be Sicily if in the bowels of every context sacredness did not hold sway, and it is in fact in the town of Pettineo, just 6 km from the municipality of Tusa, with which it borders, that the patron saint is Saint Oliva, to whom both a square and a church are specifically dedicated, inside which the Virgin’s coffin is kept.

Saint Olive was also the patron saint of Palermo, along with Saint Agatha, Saint Nymph and Saint Christina, until the arrival of Saint Rosalie in 1624. The memory of Palermo’s devotion to the saint is expressed by the architectural structure of the Quattro canti, which delimits the space at the intersection of Via Maqueda and Via Càssaro.

According to the most accredited tradition, Saint Oliva was of Palermitan origin and was uprooted from the city for reasons of religious belief. It is said that her corpse, kidnapped by some Christians in Tunis, was brought back to Palermo and buried in the place where the Friars Minor later built their convent. One part of the tradition has it that it is in the well of this church that her bones are preserved, not yet found, however, despite multiple attempts to find them.

OLIVE MOSQUE

However, the saint’s body remained in Tunis, placed in the vicinity of a mosque which, for this reason, is called the ‘Olive Mosque’. It is also said that Muslims have such veneration for the Virgin of the Olive that they consider anyone who dares to blaspheme her cursed by Allah. The simulacrum of the Saint has as its main features an olive branch held in one hand and a book of divine praise in the other. The book of divine praise celebrates some essential episodes in the biography of the martyr, who, subjected to multiple tortures, accepted and endured them with indifference, singing praises to the Lord in front of the perpetrators of those tortures, as a testimony to her unconquerable faith.

SYMBOLOGY

The olive branch, on the other hand, is not to be understood as pleonastic and evocative of Saint Olive‘s proper name, but symbolises the direct connection, brought about through faith, between the earthly and divine dimensions. According to this perspective, the olive tree represents the axis of the world, i.e. the element, taken from the natural world, that connects the three planes of existence: the plane of the underworld, the plane of the earth and the plane of heaven.

The tree draws on the first plane through its roots, which develop in the depths of the earth, to the second it connects through its trunk, and to the last it reconnects through the articulation of its branches, which constitute the foliage.

ICONOGRAPHY

The iconography of the Saint is interpreted as follows by Father Giuseppe Orlando in the Life of Saint Oliva V. e M. from Palermo: ‘she is depicted as a warrior of heaven, holding the book of divine praise with one hand and an olive branch with the other, symbolising peace between God and man through the Crucifix, in whose honour she suffered martyrdom’.

The olive tree, re-proposing, in terms of symbolism, the episode of the dove bringing an olive branch to Noah after the end of the universal flood, and recalling the wood from which Christ’s cross was built, represents the re-establishment of peace between God and mankind, after the latter were terrified by the flood, and symbolises the boundless love that drove Christ to sacrifice himself for his children.

LITERATURE

“And the dove came back to him in the early evening;

behold, she had in her beak an olive branch.

Noah understood that the waters had receded from the earth.”

(Genesis, Old Testament)

“Who moved my bed? It would have been difficult even for an expert, unless a god came in person, and easily, willingly, changed its place. Among men, no, no living person, even in full vigour, would effortlessly move it, for there is a great secret in the well-made bed, which I made, and no one else.

There was a richly leafy trunk, an olive tree, in the courtyard, flourishing, luxuriant; it was as big as a column: around this I walled the room, till I had finished it, with thick stones, and above it I covered it well, strong doors I put there, firmly connected. And then I cut down the foliage of the leafy olive tree, and roughened the trunk on the foot, and squared it with bronze well and skillfully, and made it straight with a level, and worked a support out of it, and drilled it all out with the drill.

So, beginning with this, I polished the bed, until I finished it, adorning it with gold, silver and ivory. Lastly, I drew the leather breastplates, shining with purple. Behold, this secret I have told you: and I do not know, woman, whether my bed is still intact, or whether by now someone has moved it, cutting off the olive foot underneath”.

Homer, Odyssey, XXIII, vv. 184-204

SUPERSTITION

Be it ever that in Sicily one breaks a bottle of oil, even for the youngest this would arouse a contortions on the face, an instantaneous dumbfounding, perhaps the sacredness of oil has been engraved in the DNA, which in the sphere of everyday life provides a direct link to superstition: breaking a container of oil heralds imminent misfortune or sorrow, which may involve not only the person responsible for breaking the container, but also the members, in general, of his family.

But the Sicilian people are a people of a thousand resources, a people who turn around and react because for every ‘purtusu c’è na pezza’ (for every hole there is a patch/for every trouble there is a solution). Immediately to this unpleasant omen, by way of antidote, salt is poured over the liquid, in copious quantities, which assumes the function, if not of totally chasing away the impetuosity of misfortune, at least the partial one of blunting its impact and soothing the effects caused. By performing the gesture of applying the salt to the poured oil, the salt is given the same apotropaic charge as when it is thrown (outside the house or at the corners of the house itself) to ward off the negativity produced by the envy of people, who notice in others a wealth of various kinds (l’occhiu pisanti da mala genti/the evil eye).

RITES

And it is precisely on the subject of the ‘evil eye’ that in Sicily, without going too far back in time, it only takes two generations, those of grandmothers, who used to perform a rite against the ‘evil eye’ to ward it off. A rite that involved a mix of prayers and gestures on a plate with oil, salt and water, with the ultimate aim of dissolving this curse that plagued the daily life of some dear member of the family or neighbourhood, often with headaches and misfortunes of various kinds.

“Tri uocchi fuoru chi ti arucchiàru,

quattru fuoru chi ti sarvàru.

San Petru ri Roma vinía,

with his hand was purging an olive reed,

at the highest height the binary,

the eyes were hunting those who did evil: four loaves and five peas,

The goods in my house chilled me”

[Three eyes were the ones that looked at you wrongly,/ four were the eyes that saved you./ Saint Peter came from Rome,/ in his hand he carried an olive branch,/ he had blessed it at the high altar,/ he took out the eyes of those who did evil:/ four loaves and five fish,/ the good grows for me in my house].

OLIVE OIL TODAY.

The Culture as fortunately as the Cultivation of oil has, as we have well seen, spanned the centuries to the point of evolving, refining, industrialising to the point of bringing to the table a true cornerstone of everyone’s cuisine, from the tavern to the starred kitchen.

Today, enthusiasts have succeeded in developing the creation of the highest quality extra virgin olive oils either by selecting a single quality of olive or by carefully blending a few varieties of olives to obtain products with a unique flavour.

THE BLENDING

As often happens, especially in our country, there are two factions: the supporters of extra virgin extracted from a single variety (monovarietal or monocultivar) and the supporters of the art of ‘blending’, i.e. mixing oils extracted from different olive varieties.

However, it should be pointed out that every oil is different and there is no such thing as the absolute best oil.

Italy is endowed with an exceptional and extremely varied olive-growing heritage: to date, about 540 varieties have been registered from which it is possible to extract typical and unique extra virgin olive oils, made unmistakable by the synergy between cultivar (cultivated variety) and cultivation environment (understood as variability in terms of latitude, longitude, altitude, climate and soil characteristics).

The Olive tree (olea europaea) is an extremely long-lived evergreen ‘nun sicca mai’. (it never becomes dry) of the olaceae family, which accompanies all seasons in temperate regions, especially those of the Mediterranean.

“Gods sooner or later disappear, temples sooner or later empty and collapse,
but olive trees remain alive and bear fruit.”

Enzo Bianchi

THE OLIVE TREE

The olive tree’s trunk has inspired the fantasies of the greatest thinkers of the past: it is large, cylindrical in shape and is, more often than not, twisted, grooved and provided with ribs (the niervi) and mamelon swellings. In some places it may also have cavities (the purtùsa), due to decay. The non-straight and non-smooth image of the trunk has lent itself, in the past more than today, to a process of symbolisation. In fact, the great climatic changes to which Sicily ‘lovingly’ accustoms its cultivars forge the characteristic tangles of the trunk. The set of difficulties that the plant itself has to face in order to survive is flanked in the symbolism mentioned above by the farmers who laboriously tend it, finding in their aches and wrinkles furrowing their faces a not distant assonance with the olive trees.

“The olive tree begins to fade from within.
That is why its trunk hollows out and twists in on itself in perpetual motion.
And the more it dies inside, the more majestic it is outside.
This is how I tell the story of dignity”.

Monica Lazzari

I tell him about Cézanne. In the last months of his life he spoke to an olive tree, he had a daily prayer with it. I tell him that, having become an olive tree, he could draw, without taking the brush off the canvas, that olive tree and all the olive trees of the Mediterranean.

Nico Orengo

THE LEAVES

The leaves of the olive tree are narrow, distichous, lanceolate, glabrous and grey-green. Flowering, which occurs in spring, displays very small flowers, grouped in small axillary panicles of fifteen to thirty flowers. The fruit of the tree is technically called a drupe and varies in size and shape. No one, however, calls it that and the noun alívi or olíva is used. The olives have an intense green colour at birth, which then changes to a purple-purple hue. This particular colour transition, which is essential for evaluation for harvesting purposes, is called veraison.

THE FRUIT

Very few fruits manage to persist on the tree: most of the blossoms, destined to become fruit, fall off immediately after fruit set or during the summer or before harvesting (alívi nun sunnu mai sicùri: pi nenti cari tutta) [the olive harvest is never safe: for whatever reason the olives fall off the tree]. It turns out that the olive flowers capable of bearing fruit represent just 1-2% of the total number of flowers on the tree. Ripening and harvesting take place in the autumn season, more or less early, depending on the weather conditions during the summer and the coming autumn. Harvesting is usually prolonged until late winter and early spring, and the reasons for this are varied, one of the most common being of course the abundance of the product: the more the year is full, the more time is needed to complete the work.

THE OIL

Most of the harvested olives are taken to the oil mill and there begins the ‘miracle of Sicily’s gold’: the oil.

“And there in the sunny olive groves,
where only
blue sky with cicadas
and hard earth
exist,
there the prodigy,
the perfect olive capsule
that fills
the foliage with its constellations:
later the vessels,
the miracle,
the oil.”

Pablo Neruda

But as a precious commodity, one cannot only praise and sanctify extra virgin olive oil, one must sell it and produce economy. In fact, those who have oil to sell generally sell it directly at the mill and sometimes even before the olives are pressed. It is preferred to buy the oil on site and with a preventive system, because, in this way, the buyer has the opportunity to see and examine the olives. From the evaluation of the product he will draw a judgement on the quality of the oil. This practice is still very common today: it is considered the best way to ensure a good oil. Generally, it is the older, i.e. more experienced people who do it: they buy not only for their own families, but also for their children’s families and those of acquaintances who are unable to go.

THE SALE

The sale of extra virgin olive oil is also carried out by those who do not make it professionally: oil, in fact, unlike wine, does not take on value or value with the passage of time: ‘l’ogghiu s’avi a livàri prestu’ [oil must be consumed immediately]. As a habit, this calculation is made: the consumption of oil is forecast for the current year and for the year of discharge, the surplus is sold immediately.

“Not only does wine sing,
oil also sings,
it lives in us with its ripe light
and among the goods of the earth.
I select,
oil,
your inexhaustible peace,
your green essence,
your rich treasure that descends
from the springs of the olive tree.”

Pablo Neruda

SICILIAN OIL AND SACREDNESS

But it would not be Sicily if in the bowels of every context sacredness did not hold sway, and it is in fact in the town of Pettineo, just 6 km from the municipality of Tusa, with which it borders, that the patron saint is Saint Oliva, to whom both a square and a church are specifically dedicated, inside which the Virgin’s coffin is kept.

Saint Olive was also the patron saint of Palermo, along with Saint Agatha, Saint Nymph and Saint Christina, until the arrival of Saint Rosalie in 1624. The memory of Palermo’s devotion to the saint is expressed by the architectural structure of the Quattro canti, which delimits the space at the intersection of Via Maqueda and Via Càssaro.

According to the most accredited tradition, Saint Oliva was of Palermitan origin and was uprooted from the city for reasons of religious belief. It is said that her corpse, kidnapped by some Christians in Tunis, was brought back to Palermo and buried in the place where the Friars Minor later built their convent. One part of the tradition has it that it is in the well of this church that her bones are preserved, not yet found, however, despite multiple attempts to find them.

OLIVE MOSQUE

However, the saint’s body remained in Tunis, placed in the vicinity of a mosque which, for this reason, is called the ‘Olive Mosque’. It is also said that Muslims have such veneration for the Virgin of the Olive that they consider anyone who dares to blaspheme her cursed by Allah. The simulacrum of the Saint has as its main features an olive branch held in one hand and a book of divine praise in the other. The book of divine praise celebrates some essential episodes in the biography of the martyr, who, subjected to multiple tortures, accepted and endured them with indifference, singing praises to the Lord in front of the perpetrators of those tortures, as a testimony to her unconquerable faith.

SYMBOLOGY

The olive branch, on the other hand, is not to be understood as pleonastic and evocative of Saint Olive‘s proper name, but symbolises the direct connection, brought about through faith, between the earthly and divine dimensions. According to this perspective, the olive tree represents the axis of the world, i.e. the element, taken from the natural world, that connects the three planes of existence: the plane of the underworld, the plane of the earth and the plane of heaven.

The tree draws on the first plane through its roots, which develop in the depths of the earth, to the second it connects through its trunk, and to the last it reconnects through the articulation of its branches, which constitute the foliage.

ICONOGRAPHY

The iconography of the Saint is interpreted as follows by Father Giuseppe Orlando in the Life of Saint Oliva V. e M. from Palermo: ‘she is depicted as a warrior of heaven, holding the book of divine praise with one hand and an olive branch with the other, symbolising peace between God and man through the Crucifix, in whose honour she suffered martyrdom’.

The olive tree, re-proposing, in terms of symbolism, the episode of the dove bringing an olive branch to Noah after the end of the universal flood, and recalling the wood from which Christ’s cross was built, represents the re-establishment of peace between God and mankind, after the latter were terrified by the flood, and symbolises the boundless love that drove Christ to sacrifice himself for his children.

LITERATURE

“And the dove came back to him in the early evening;

behold, she had in her beak an olive branch.

Noah understood that the waters had receded from the earth.”

(Genesis, Old Testament)

“Who moved my bed? It would have been difficult even for an expert, unless a god came in person, and easily, willingly, changed its place. Among men, no, no living person, even in full vigour, would effortlessly move it, for there is a great secret in the well-made bed, which I made, and no one else.

There was a richly leafy trunk, an olive tree, in the courtyard, flourishing, luxuriant; it was as big as a column: around this I walled the room, till I had finished it, with thick stones, and above it I covered it well, strong doors I put there, firmly connected. And then I cut down the foliage of the leafy olive tree, and roughened the trunk on the foot, and squared it with bronze well and skillfully, and made it straight with a level, and worked a support out of it, and drilled it all out with the drill.

So, beginning with this, I polished the bed, until I finished it, adorning it with gold, silver and ivory. Lastly, I drew the leather breastplates, shining with purple. Behold, this secret I have told you: and I do not know, woman, whether my bed is still intact, or whether by now someone has moved it, cutting off the olive foot underneath”.

Homer, Odyssey, XXIII, vv. 184-204

SUPERSTITION

Be it ever that in Sicily one breaks a bottle of oil, even for the youngest this would arouse a contortions on the face, an instantaneous dumbfounding, perhaps the sacredness of oil has been engraved in the DNA, which in the sphere of everyday life provides a direct link to superstition: breaking a container of oil heralds imminent misfortune or sorrow, which may involve not only the person responsible for breaking the container, but also the members, in general, of his family.

But the Sicilian people are a people of a thousand resources, a people who turn around and react because for every ‘purtusu c’è na pezza’ (for every hole there is a patch/for every trouble there is a solution). Immediately to this unpleasant omen, by way of antidote, salt is poured over the liquid, in copious quantities, which assumes the function, if not of totally chasing away the impetuosity of misfortune, at least the partial one of blunting its impact and soothing the effects caused. By performing the gesture of applying the salt to the poured oil, the salt is given the same apotropaic charge as when it is thrown (outside the house or at the corners of the house itself) to ward off the negativity produced by the envy of people, who notice in others a wealth of various kinds (l’occhiu pisanti da mala genti/the evil eye).

RITES

And it is precisely on the subject of the ‘evil eye’ that in Sicily, without going too far back in time, it only takes two generations, those of grandmothers, who used to perform a rite against the ‘evil eye’ to ward it off. A rite that involved a mix of prayers and gestures on a plate with oil, salt and water, with the ultimate aim of dissolving this curse that plagued the daily life of some dear member of the family or neighbourhood, often with headaches and misfortunes of various kinds.

“Tri uocchi fuoru chi ti arucchiàru,

quattru fuoru chi ti sarvàru.

San Petru ri Roma vinía,

with his hand was purging an olive reed,

at the highest height the binary,

the eyes were hunting those who did evil: four loaves and five peas,

The goods in my house chilled me”

[Three eyes were the ones that looked at you wrongly,/ four were the eyes that saved you./ Saint Peter came from Rome,/ in his hand he carried an olive branch,/ he had blessed it at the high altar,/ he took out the eyes of those who did evil:/ four loaves and five fish,/ the good grows for me in my house].

OLIVE OIL TODAY.

The Culture as fortunately as the Cultivation of oil has, as we have well seen, spanned the centuries to the point of evolving, refining, industrialising to the point of bringing to the table a true cornerstone of everyone’s cuisine, from the tavern to the starred kitchen.

Today, enthusiasts have succeeded in developing the creation of the highest quality extra virgin olive oils either by selecting a single quality of olive or by carefully blending a few varieties of olives to obtain products with a unique flavour.

THE BLENDING

As often happens, especially in our country, there are two factions: the supporters of extra virgin extracted from a single variety (monovarietal or monocultivar) and the supporters of the art of ‘blending’, i.e. mixing oils extracted from different olive varieties.

However, it should be pointed out that every oil is different and there is no such thing as the absolute best oil.

Italy is endowed with an exceptional and extremely varied olive-growing heritage: to date, about 540 varieties have been registered from which it is possible to extract typical and unique extra virgin olive oils, made unmistakable by the synergy between cultivar (cultivated variety) and cultivation environment (understood as variability in terms of latitude, longitude, altitude, climate and soil characteristics).