Sa Pipia 'e Càresima, between calendar bread and ritual bread

His pipia is Carèsima and Varr. It is a calendar bread, just like on bread 'e sa cida e sim. (literally, 'the bread of the week'). The latter, widespread in the Campidanese area, consisted of seven pipieddas (dolls) of bread grafted into a thread, like the veins of a necklace. Unlike central Sardinia, where the time interval between cooking (cooking, metonymically indicating, as the final moment, each bread roll) and the other of carasau bread took longer, since, thanks to the carasatura process (roasting and, therefore, dehydration), bread enjoyed a longer shelf life, in the Campidano, bread was baked on a weekly basis. Every day from the thread of bread and so on, a doll was taken off and given to the children of the house for more playful than food purposes. The removal of the constituent elements of this composite bread made immediately visible the time left until the next baking, a crucial moment in domestic activity because it was aimed at producing food par excellence.

Sa pipia 'e Caresima, documented not only in the Campidano (but also, for example, in Barigadu and Barbagia), was a bread with an anthropomorphic feminine shape, more or less pintada and sim. or froria and sim., that is, decorated, depending on the expertise of the housewife, with many legs to take off for each week of Lent. The legs, always in accordance with the level of exorative complexity, could have fringed ends, in order to evoke toes (like fingers in arms). Often the bread doll was accompanied by a paper doll.

Not only calendar bread, but also related to the field of ritual breads, by virtue of its temporal location at a time of the calendar year rich in rituals, Sa Pipia de Caresima finds comparisons in the Mediterranean area, for example on the island of Crete.

Once shaped, decorated and cooked, sometimes subject to a polishing process (isaddadura), exposure to steam before being fired again, it was hung in homes on Ash Wednesday, often near the fireplace. Each detached leg was mostly burned in the fire, as a symbol of the time spent. The ritual of the visual elimination (through the removal of each leg of the bread pipe) of the Lenten season that had passed was also a sign of an ever closer proximity to the Easter solemnity, a time of joy and the end of Lent penance. The fact that Pipia 'e Carisma was exhibited in homes just on Ash Wednesday is not without meaning. Known as Mèrculis de Lessia (and sim.), on this very day with lysivia, a solution obtained by treating wood ash with boiling water, all the household dishes, especially the pots, were washed, so as to degrease them from any residue of lard, which could have contaminated the time of abstinence and the Lenten sacrifice.

(Cover image: “Ritual bread”, Mastio Albeto)

Update

7/4/2025 - 11:40