THE VENERABLE MAIN CONFRATERNITY OF THE DEATH

 

   The Main Confraternity of San Catello, today incorporated in the Main Confraternity of the Death, in which it transformed fallowing its aggregation to the Confraternity of Death and Prayer of Rome in 1586; is , after the one of the " Beaters" of S. Antonino, the oldest Sorrentinian Confraternity. The date of its foundation in fact, goes back to the year 1380.

Initially the Confraternity of S. Catello had seat in what today has become the
refectory of the Enclosed Nun of the Covent of S: Mary delle Grazie (S. Mary of the Graces).
In 1568 on suggestion of the Archbishop, Monsignor Giulio Pavesi, the Confraternity moved to the
Church of S. Mark the Evangelist, located in Bagnagatte Street, today via Pietà (pity street).

The brothers carried out here their work of cult, among those there was also the pitiful job of
accompanying those condemned to scaffold, of caring for their burial, of giving Christian burial to the shipwreck victims, died in the sea, or to those who died outside the town's walls.

The Main Confraternity of the Death had a unique privilege, which

 unavoidably caused polemics and envy, it was thus, the one of deciding as much as they liked in which church to bury the dead, issuing also the so called "faith" of death. In the three years time from 1863 to 1865, the historic centre of Sorrento went through major changes.

In fact it is in this time that the Via Nuova (New Street), today Corso Italia, was built, parallel rectilinear to the street that was then the main street: via S. Cesareo.
The aim was to link more
comfortably Sorrento to Massa Lubrense.

But as for every story involving an improvement, the opening of the new road meant the complete change of Sorrento's aspect.

Besides the remaining part of a castle, located in the central and homonym square, also other buildings and churches were destroyed, and among those also the church of S. Catello, that according to the descriptions of several documents of the time, had to be one of the most beautiful of Sorrento.


The Confraternity moved, taking furnishings and equipments, to the church of Servant of Mary, which gave hospitality to the homonym congregation. The story of these two Confraternities will intertwines several times throughout the years.
The congregation between the two sodalities had been already created in 1717 when the Main Confraternity of the Death is received to its church the young "sons or servants of Mary". This hospitality, after a century and a half, will be exchanged by the brothers of the Servants of Mary.
A tight bond, in fact it was decided that anyone who will have become Brother of the "Congregation of the Servants of Mary" would have automatically been accepted as a brother of the Main Confraternity of the Death