S’Accabadora

The figure of the accabadora represents one of the most obscure and controversial aspects of the immense patrimony of popular traditions of Sardinia. With this term, derived in all probability from the Spanish acabar (finish), we designate a mostly elderly woman (although sporadically we refer to a male figure, s’accabadore), to whom was reserved the task of intervening on the hopeless dying men , to put an end to their continuing agonies. A real euthanasia that responded, on the one hand, to the compassion for the suffering suffered by the dying; on the other, to an order of practical reasons: in the subsistence economy of rural communities, treatment for the sick with no possibility of recovery subtracted resources and time from other vital issues, endangering the fragile balance of the families to which the sick belonged. The actual existence of these figures has been discussed for a long time, but the extraordinary quantity of more or less illustrious testimonies, of popular memories, of direct references in traditional proverbs, leaves little doubt about the historical veracity of the Aabadora, even if it is more difficult than ever. reconstruct an exhaustive profile, given the necessary secrecy of the office, due to the hostility of civil and religious institutions.

The first official testimony to the existence of the accabadora is due to Alberto La Marmora who, in the first edition of his Voyage en Sardaigne of 1826, reported this practice widespread in the most conservative areas of the island until the first half of the 18th century. To corroborate the words of La Marmora, the English writer and traveler William Henry Smyth affirmed that the abandonment of the practice had been due to the missionary work of the Jesuit Giovanni Battista Vassallo, carried out between 1725 and 1775. The testimonies of the two writers gave a la a polemic between those who affirmed the historical truthfulness of such practices and those who considered them popular legends, so much so that the La Marmora, felt called into question, in the second edition of its Voyage of 1839, was said incapable of deciding whether to believe or less to the testimonies collected. In 1833 the term accabadoras was inserted in the dictionary written by Goffredo Casalis. The religious and man of culture Vittorio Angius, a supporter of historical truthfulness, put the practice of the aabadura in relation with the ritual geronticide that the historical Timaeus of Tauromenio (IV-III century BC) claimed practiced in Sardinia by the hands of the children, fulfillment of the seventieth birthday of male parents. The geronticide, in turn, inserted in a ritual dedicated to the God Kronos and practiced in a state of intoxication to weaken the dramatic tension of the ritual, was put in relation with the Sardonic Rice. Father Bresciani, in his Costumes of the Island of Sardinia (1850), reported an episode narrated to him by a woman who, in her youth, struck by a serious illness, after having received extreme unction, was taken by such a person at the sight of the aadoraora horror that the trauma brought her to a sudden and miraculous recovery.

In the following decades, both Sardinian and foreign scholars and scholars dealt with the issue, and in 1906 a priest was an eyewitness to a particular case: an old woman who was disturbed approached the mother of a dying child, offering herself as an accabadora, but her mother refused , telling himself that he wished his son to earn heaven with the agony of suffering.

Some sources speak of a case of accabadura in Luras in 1929, with the aadoraora that was also the country midwife, and another in Orgosolo even in 1952. It was not simply a technical task, but was part of a complex ritual magic of which the actual act of the alambura was the extreme ratio. In popular belief, the long and troubled agony was the punishment for sins committed by the high material and symbolic value, for the existence of the agro-pastoral society. Among these, having cheated on the borders of the fields, so as to appropriate lands of others, or having thrown or burned a yoke (juvale, just) for the oxen, an action that was not done even when the tool it had become unusable, given its symbolic character.

The dying man was put under the yoke, in the belief that this hastened his death. The room had to be stripped of everything that had the task of protecting the sick (amulets, sacred objects) and of all that he held most dear (family affections, objects of material and sentimental value), so that the magic of the ritual it was not opposed by everything that could keep the dying man tied to life. The association of the yoke with the agony has also been found in other Mediterranean areas (Abruzzo, Romagna, southern France), a probable sign of a ritual similar to the accabadura widespread outside Sardinia.

Originally, a simple work yoke in the fields had to be used, replaced by a specially ceremonial type, up to symbolic miniaturization; the latter was obtained by men by carving a sprig of olive or olive, during the mass of Palm Sunday.

According to the evidence collected, from the Voyage of La Marmora to the modern ethno-anthropological research, the actual act of the accabadura was put into effect through suffocation or more commonly by striking at one specific point the dying man’s head. For this purpose, the yoke itself or a specially constructed instrument, called Su Mazzolu, was used, a sort of hammer made of olive wood of which only one specimen is known, preserved in the Ethnographic Museum of Luras. Accabadora did not receive direct remuneration for his service and once he had completed his task, he set off to avoid crossing and entertaining himself with the relatives of the deceased. Given the delicacy of his office, the accabadora was often called from a neighboring country, in order to avoid the involvement due to belonging to the same community as the family of the dead. His figure evoked fear and mystery: it is natural that, at least in relatively recent times, once his authority within the community had weakened, the accabadora became the object of superstition, often extended to his entire family.

The origin of its function was probably priestly: this is confirmed by the fact that, within the community, knowledge and powers, both practical and transcendental, were recognized.

Definitely more complicated to make hypotheses on the historical origin of the figure of the accabadora, even if everything suggests an archaic practice that has resisted even Christianization, at least in the inland areas and up to the Council of Trent. Officially abolished in the eighteenth century, it continued in a clandestine manner until the twentieth century, fought by the church and the state in a not very convinced manner, preferring to tolerate the increasingly sporadic episodes as remnants of barbarism, rather than as a dangerous social phenomenon.