Pisa pays homage to Saint Torpè on the 72st anniversary of the first pilgrimage. The Municipality of Pisa has prepared a solemn programme of festivities, aimed at the French pilgrims who will be in Pisa to pay homage to Saint Torpè, led by the Mayor of the French town, and above all at the Pisans, who now know very little about that Saint.

PROGRAMME

Sunday, April 26, at 6:15 p.m. at the Church of San Torpè (Largo Parlascio) – Holy Mass and the investiture of the Ambassador of the Northern Team of the Gioco del Ponte;

Tuesday, April 28

• 4.30 p.m. at Bagni di Nerone - Award ceremony for the contest “Pisa and Saint-Tropez: A Bond Between History, Culture, and Religion” open to second-year French language classes in the city’s middle schools.
  In case of inclement weather, the ceremony will take place inside the Church of San Torpè;
• 6:15 p.m. at the Church of San Torpè - Holy Mass;

Wednesday, April 29

• 10:00 a.m. at the Church of San Torpè - Holy Mass in French with a floral tribute in the presence of the pilgrims from Saint-Tropez and the City Administration;
• 11:45 a.m. at the Sala delle Baleari - welcome to the French pilgrims;
• 6:15 p.m. at the Church of San Torpè - Solemn Eucharistic celebration;

HISTORY AND TRADITION

Few Pisans know the story of the martyr Torpè, who was beheaded 'in litore pisano' (in the Pisan litore), and of the fact that his head is contained in a precious reliquary housed in the church of the same name in the Bagni di Nerone (Baths of Nero). Equally few are those who know that every year, on the feast of the saint, a large group of French people from Saint-Tropez make a devout pilgrimage to Pisa to venerate and pray to the martyr saint who lived at the time of the Apostle Peter. In Pisa, the pilgrims are welcomed by the municipal administration and receive sober hospitality from the Carmelite Fathers.

According to tradition, Torpè, a Roman soldier who converted to Christianity, suffered the martyrdom of beheading on the beaches of Pisa in 68 A.D.: his body, missing his head, was left adrift on a boat together with a rooster and a dog that reached the French coast, where Saint-Tropez stands today. The head, however, was recovered and jealously guarded to this day in the church today officiated by the Discalced Carmelite Fathers.

Saint Torpè was certainly highly venerated in Pisa in the past, and it is no coincidence that Turino Vanni painted him with Saint Ranieri next to the Virgin, both wearing the Pisan insignia: Ranieri holds the better known white cross on a red field (the flag of the people), while Torpè holds the red flag, the emblem of Pisa. Many prodigies are attributed to him, including, on 29 April 1633, the deliverance from the plague that was rampant in the city of Pisa. In the course of time, the cult in the city waned, and the circumstance of a Frenchman from Saint-Tropez happening upon the church at the Bagni di Nerone in 1953 gave rise to an uninterrupted pilgrimage of Frenchmen to Pisa for over seventy years. In Saint-Tropez (where the saint's body was kept and was unfortunately later lost), the celebrations take place instead in mid-May with the famous 'Bravade', during which the simulacrum of the saint is carried on the shoulders of four valets of the Municipality of Pisa and is festively welcomed through the streets of the town, while an army of musketeers, sailors and bravadeurs greet him by firing countless rifle shots.