Vito Melodia

Vito Melodia was born in Vittoria, provincia Ragusa, Sicilia, on 30 May 1879, the firstborn son of Giovanni Melodia and Rosa Paulello Azzaro. The Melodia family originated in Altamura, Bari, where the men of the household worked in construction. Vito was the exception, becoming a painter, decorator, restorer, photographic modeller, and teacher of design. Melodia emerged at a time of architectural expansion in Vittoria, when wider trends in Art Nouveau and artistic modernism (the Liberty style) were being integrated into local traditions. Among the practitioners of this style, Melodia would be remembered as leaving 'un grande patrimonio artistico di particolare bellezza e di indelebile espressività.' (Commune di Vittoria), 'un pittore-artista tra i più importanti del liberty vittoriese'. (Local Guide)

On 6 June 1897, Vito, his father, his brother Vincenzo, and probably also their mother, became communicant members of the Waldensian church in Vittoria. In 1899 Vito was elected a Deacon and member of the Church Council. He studied at the "Regia Accademia di Belle Arti di Palermo", directed by the noted architect Ernesto Basile (1857-1932), in June of 1907 graduating with a diploma in painting. In the same year he married Giuseppina Busacca, primary school teacher, with whom he had nine children. He became an instructor, teaching at the Istituto d' arte di Vittoria e di Messina.

He travelled with his work, and was in Tunisia (1908-11), Argentina (1912), and in Morocco at Casablanca (1926-28): in all of these places he worked as a painter, leaving frescoes, and painting on tiles and wood.

"Vito Melodia was a painter who knew how to create, whether it be in the decoration of ceramics or in wood, an exceptional fusion between design and colour, breathing into his images and painted flowers the breathe of life [...] He understood how to represent, in the first thirty years of the twentieth century, a particularly happy representation of local art, leaving a great artistic inheritance to the inhabitants of Vittoria, among whom it was respected and preserved."

Apart from being a leading practitioner, Melodia was also an active evangelist and voluntary colporteur. During one of his journeys selling bibles, Vito met Giovanni D'Addeo at Riesi (AG), a former monk who had become pastor of the pentecostal community of Canicatti. The meeting was unexpected, in an inn where Melodia had stopped to refresh himself. Entering and seeing a table occupied by only one person, he asked whether he could sit at the same table. The other person consented. Waiting for the innkeeper, Melodia took a New Testament out of his pocket in order to read a portion of the Word of God, but before he commenced his personal reading, he asked the person before him, 'Do you want to hear?' The other person also took out a copy of the bible and said, 'Thank you, I have already eaten abundantly.' Melodia replied, 'Well then, are you a fellow evangelical?', and D'Addeo responded, 'By the grace of God!'

At the end of their meal, D'Addeo invited Melodia to participate in a meeting of about 12 people. It was at this meeting in 1923 that Melodia had a pentecostal experience, and also met Giovanni Sola. Sola was overseeing a small pentecostal community in Riesi, made up of about 15 members. For Melodia, it was his first contact with the Pentecostal reality. Giovanni Sola described this meeting as follows:

About 1923 there came to Riesi a brother Vito Melodia from Vittoria, who was a colporteur and seller of sacred scriptures. He came to find me either to sell some book, or to discuss religion, and so we talked about the Word of God and the Lord converted him to our faith. When he returned to Vittoria in the province of Ragusa, he left the work of selling books, and took up again his work of painting and decorating, inviting into his family and house friends, neighbours, relatives, preaching the Gospel, and so gathering around him some souls. I was living at Riesi but did not fail to visit the newly founded group often.

Even though in this period Pentecostals were treated dismissively--referred to as 'the tremblers' and 'fanatics' --Melodia accepted the Pentecostal message. Toppi imagined that his acceptance of the message 'was a veritable earthquake within the Waldensian community', sparking the intervention of the Council of the Church. 'Due to Pentecostal fanaticism that the Church suffered in the hour of its suffering (1924); even a member of the Council was carried away, creating a disastrous impression on the adherents.' Melodia's family became the centre of the small Pentecostal church which then formed at via dell'Acate 62, Vittoria. The community grew relatively quickly, reaching about 50 members including members of the Lombardo, Salerno, Rosselli, Mandarà, Bondì, Giombarresi, Mazza, and Mangione (from Ragusa) families. Also included were Antonino Emmolo (who later became pastor of the church at Santa Croce Camerina) and Gaetano Gerace. The common disruptions attended their work: 'it wasn't infrequent to be distracted by the striking of stones and insults from raggazzini in the street, or to be disturbed during services by stones being thrown against the door'. There were doctrinal innovations from some members regarding communion and Baptism, which required the intervention of Giovanni Sola. In his 'testimony', Sola remembered:

One day I fell impelled by the Spirit of the Lord to go to Vittoria: praying to God I felt consistently commanded to go, but in my own self I didn't see the need. However, I went, and found that into the church there had come two people, husband and wife, who did not follow the true faith; the husband in fact said that there was no need to baptised in water because we were born justified and that the Lord's Supper should be celebrated every week at midnight, and he did so every Sunday. Various new and simple believers believed what he was saying was true, and they exalted him as a holy man. I had to fight for eight days with the Holy Bible in my hand, causing them to understand that what the man was saying was not true, and was false. After eight days of battle during which the wife of brother Vito Melodia was a great help to me in convincing her husband and other believers that this two, husband and wife, were in error, having picked up this strange doctrine who knows where, we exorted the two to repent and be corrected, but they did not want to accept it, and came no more to church with us. How many tears and sighs did I shed in that time, but the church remained healthy, and in peace. Before leaving Vittoria I prayed to the Lord as to whether I should stay any longer, and the Lord caused me to understand that I was to stay another three days. The revelation was very clear and specific, but I did not understand why. Left to myself, I would have travelled on to other churches, but I could not disobey the command of the Lord. In the following three days there were many blessings from God, the Lord sealing with the gift of the Holy Spirit [some] 11 believers, the first believers to be baptised in Vittoria. After the previous great unpleasantries, God visited the church with great blessings, and the testimony of the Gospel broke out into the social life of the town. Already well known and respected around Vittoria, Melodia became even better known as a valid instrument in the hands of God for the vigorous growth of the Pentecostal work in the city. His interest in souls was extraordinary, his social connections faultless. The work of Spiritual transformation was readily seen, not only in brother Vito [Melodia] but also in all the believers in the community.

Another visitor remarked on one of the members of the church.

In the same year 1924, I changed from farm work to manual labour, and at work, I met a Pentecostal brother, Giombarresi Giuseppe, with whom I worked for three days noting that he was not like other men.

Out of the core group, Emmolo Antonino became pastor of the church begun at Santa Croce Camarina (RG).

In 1926, the Melodia family, perhaps for economic reasons, transferred to Casablanca in Morocco, returning in 1928. In these two years, as they were a long way away, pastoral care of the community was entrusted to Calogero Giambarresi assisted by assistance from Ginosa (Poli). When he returned to Vittoria from Morocco, Vito Melodia once again took over the leadership of the community.

In the same year (1928), the first general convention of Pentecostal churches was held in Rome, which in practice represented the constituent assembly of the Pentecostal movement. Melodia could not participate due to his professional engagements but sent a letter of 'adhesion'. He did, however, participate in the following convention, held from the 24th to 25 December 1929 in Rome. In the same year brother Gaetano Gerace, after conversion of his wife, was inducted into the leadership of the community of Campobello di Licata (AG). Gerace thus left Vittoria with all of his family, establishing himself for a time at Campobello di Licata before later transferring to Ravanusa where he would stay for the next 14 years.

During the economic depression of 1929-1930, Melodia's work as a decorative painter began to fall away and he was constrained to live, after having helped many people, by painting advertising hoardings. During one rainy day he was struck with a form of viral influenza, and died a day later due of pleurisy, on 25 October 1930.

Melodia is remarkable not only as a direct connection to Waldensian revivalism, but to the large number of early Italian pentecostals who arose from artistic and aesthetic communities. He made a significant contribution to the emergence of the first generation of churchplanters in Sicily, particularly in the Southeast.

Mark Hutchinson

Sources:

Commune di Vittoria, http://www.comunevittoria.gov.it/index.php?content=luogo&id=49

Local Guide to Vittoria, http://www.7mates.com/it/guide/europa/italia/sicilia/vittoria.html.

Mezzasalma, Pamela, 'Vito Melodia: un artista liberty nella Sicilia del primo Novecento', Tesi di laurea: anno accademico 1999/2000, Università degli studi della Tuscia: Dipartimento per la conoscenza e la valorizzazione dei Beni Storici e Artistici, 2000.

Toppi, F., Testimonianza, Cristiani Oggi, 16-31 October 1990.