CUSMANO, GIACOMO. — Priest, founder of the pious “Opera del boccone del povero,” born in Palermo on 15 March 1834, died there on 14 March 1888. He was a physician when, in 1859, he took the ecclesiastical habit; he was ordained in December 1860. After seeing a family set aside a bite for a poor person at every course, he too began to gather leftovers and distribute them to the needy, founding for this purpose the association of the “Boccone del povero,” canonically erected in 1868. After establishing various pious institutions in Palermo and Sicily, in 1880 he founded the Serve dei poveri (v. BOCCONE del POVERO), then the Servi dei poveri, laymen, and in 1887 the Missionari servi dei poveri to direct the two congregations.
Mario Colpo
CUSPIDE. — The term c. (or guglia, pinacolo, freccia) commonly designates the highest part of a building that ends in a point. Such cusps are found in medieval monuments, and particularly on bell towers. At first they had little elevation and took the form of a cone or a square pyramid; later, a pyramid with a polygonal base. They were built in stone or in timber covered with lead. Little slender during the Romanesque period, the cusps became very pointed in the Gothic, sometimes reaching a height equal to that of the parts of the building they terminate. Still within Gothic architecture, the cusps assumed such large dimensions as to have wide and ornate windows, to the point of giving them the appearance of lacework in stone. The decoration of the spires was often completed with cruciform flowers, gargoyles, or climbing leaves placed along the edges. Among many, the perforated spires of the cathedrals of Strasbourg and Burgos are noteworthy.
In Italian Gothic, the spires of Milan Cathedral stand out, erected at various times (the tallest, supporting the famous Madonna, dates from the 18th century), which present an interesting example of stylistic mimicry. Among modern constructions, the terminal pinnacle of the Mole Antonelliana in Turin and that of the dome of S. Gaudenzio in Novara, both by A. Antonelli, and the conical spires of the bell towers of the church of the Sagrada Família in Barcelona should be remembered.
By c. one understands more generally an architectural motif whose fundamental line is an acute angle. Thus one has monocuspid, bicuspid, tricuspid, and polycuspid buildings, according to whether they end in one, two, three, or more cusps.