“Leviathan? Is that you… Leviathan? The old coastal town of Sorrento, near the large city of Naples in southern Italy, has been caught in a strange and mysterious “whale” incident in the past few days. A fin whale, roughly estimated to be 24 meters long and theoretically not supposed to be off the coast of Italy, appeared out of nowhere and died in the quiet fishing port of the old town. Since the size of this mother whale is amazing, it is the largest whale remains known in Italy and even in the whole Mediterranean Sea; and the Catholic saint guarding Sulindo is “San Antonino of Sulindo”, who is famous for “repelling whale sea monsters”, so the coincidence of the record-breaking whale carcass and the folklore overlap, this huge and mysterious dead whale has become an incredible story in Italy. The unbelievable and wonderful story.
The unexplained death of this huge fin whale was found by the townspeople of Sulindo in a bizarre process: at first, the townspeople found a baby whale wandering in the fishing port last week, and kept hitting the floating dock with its head. Such a rare close encounter also surprised the whole town, and the film of the baby whale even became a feverish topic on Italian Shake. However, the abnormal movements of the baby whale also made the local seniors and government units extremely worried. On the one hand, the baby whale got lost or got entangled in the fishing net and ran aground; on the other hand, they were afraid that the fishing boats in the village would come and go, and if they accidentally hit the baby whale, it would be a safety risk for both of them.
So in order to confirm the condition of the baby whale and guide it out to sea, the Sulindo government also found professional divers to go down to the sea on January 17, not expecting that once the people entered the water, they found a huge thing submerged under the surface – a huge dead mother whale – and the weird thing is that after leading the divers to find the dead whale, the baby whale that had been wandering around the harbor for days just disappeared into the sea, leaving only the whole town asking questions of the surprised Sulindo townspeople who didn’t know what to do.
The whale carcass in Sulindo quickly became a topic of news discussion throughout Italy, because the 24-meter-long heavyweight whale carcass seriously paralyzed the sea traffic in and out of the fishing village, but the exaggerated size of the broken Italian record, and even the broken Mediterranean record, but can not be “salvaged and handled” in the small fishing village of the old tourist town. It was not until a few days later that the whale surfaced like a puffer fish because of internal corruption and the carcass began to swell. The Italian government then coordinated with the Navy, the Marine Patrol Agency, the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries and experts from all sides to send a tugboat to “tow” the carcass of the whale all the way to the neighboring commercial port of Naples, where it was then handled by a professional dock.
The “towing task” of the whale was not completed until the early morning of January 20. After that, Italian marine biologists and research universities will first conduct an autopsy to confirm the exact cause of death of this female whale (since there is no obvious trauma to the carcass, fishing net entanglement, ship collision, external injuries caused by death have been ruled out), after which the whale’s skeletal specimen will also be processed at the university and set up as “Italy’s largest record”, in addition to then choosing a suitable nature museum for display.
However, Italian cetacean experts are surprised, and even puzzled, by the appearance of the “Sulindo whale” – because this northern hemisphere fin whale, which is supposed to be an active group between the British Isles and the Iberian Peninsula, is, according to the Italian newspaper La Repubblica, only found in the Balearic Islands off the east coast of Spain and east of Valencia, and rarely continues eastward towards the Mediterranean Sea, and hardly ever in Italian waters.
Is this the return of a legendary miracle? In addition, the surfacing of the mysterious whale has also brought the devout Catholic community in Italy to a frenzy, because the town of Sulindo, where the incident took place, has been known nationwide for the legendary story of “Sant’Antonino and the Sea Monster Whale”, which is a wonderful story widely known in southern Italy.
Sant’Antonino di Sorrento is a Catholic saint who guards the waters of Sorrento and Naples. It is said that he was an Italian Catholic monk in the 7th century who went into exile to escape the barbarian invasion and landed in Sorrento to preach. In the legend, St. Andronico late in Life, he was determined to live in seclusion, and developed a strong “exorcism strength” – but one day, a “sea monster whale” suddenly appeared by the port of Sulindo to rest on the shore, the town’s curious children so naughty to come forward to play, who knew that the fire of the sea monster whale suddenly opened its mouth, and swallowed one of the children alive into the belly The whale suddenly opened its mouth and swallowed one of the children and returned to the sea.
According to Italian folklore, San Andognino, with the power of God, forced the whale out of the sea, and the whale could not stand it. According to Italian folklore, St. Andronico, by the power of God, forced the sea monster whale out of the sea and spat out the child he had swallowed. Since then, the story of the saint’s fight with the sea monster has become the patron saint and guardian legend of Surindo.
The people of Surindo believe that the saint’s bones buried in the town by St. Antoninus are the source of the miracle that protects the town from calamities. Such as several shipwrecks, Arab pirates, Moorish invasion… It was the “apparition of St. Antoninus” that was able to repel the foreign armies. It is said that in the 16th century, Sulindo was sacked by the Ottoman Turkish navy and even the bones of the saint were taken back to Istanbul. It was only after the Church and the elderly merchants sent someone with a large sum of money to “redeem” the saint that the legend of the guardianship returned to Sulindo and continued again.
Perhaps because of the coincidence of the story of the giant whale, and the fact that it happened exactly one month before the town’s celebration of faith, “San Antonino Day”, both the legend and its corroboration have caused great excitement and interest in Italian public opinion. Therefore, some sages and the media have been calling for the academia to “return some of the whale bones to the town of Sulindo after the scientific autopsy is completed? We all hope to offer the giant whale sea monster in the church of San Andonino, as a kind of legendary miracle memorial?
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