File:Living Via Crucis of Badolato, Calabria 01.jpg

English: The Living Via Crucis of Holy Saturday, hosted in Badolato (Calabria, South of Italy), unfolds on a very winding path between ups and downs, between urban and rural areas, measuring about twelve kilometers, with over four hundred actors and extras, continuously from 1:00PM to 9:00PM and sometimes until 10:00PM.

The unknown actor or devotee who plays Jesus under the cross is changed three times! The Living Via Crucis of Badolato, in addition to taking place in a truly unique, spectacular setting, is rich in religious and devotional content. Following Christ, mocked and beaten by the Jews, numerous Roman soldiers also escort the two thieves, along with the women dressed in black and the self-flagellating men dressed in white, while the statues of the mourning Virgin Mary and the dead Christ are escorted by alabardieri, a group of children dressed in skirts, gloves, lace, ribbons, and lace, under a military suit, with decorated helmets, holding an alabarda and a typical white handkerchief of the eighteenth-century dandies.

A more feminine or effeminate and delicate aspect rather than a virile and military one. In any case, a male-female mix that hides an ancient meaning or symbolism that has not yet been deciphered, despite various attempts that still do not convince. In fact, for decades there has been debate about the figure of the alabardieri children, half woman and half man, so much so that some have thought they were the symbol of the androgyne, a residue of philosophy or fantasy, of mythology or of the allusions of Magna Graecia that have lasted for almost six centuries in these places before the Romans ended a dream and an epic in 202 BC.