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A LITTLE PILGRIMAGE IN ITALY
[Illustration: PERUGIA: LOOKING TOWARDS ASSISI.]
A LITTLE PILGRIMAGE IN ITALY
by
OLAVE M. POTTER
Author of 'The Colour of Rome.'
With 8 Coloured Plates and Illustrations by Yoshio Markino
Toronto
The Musson Book Company
Limited
First Published November 1911
Cheap Re-Issue 1913
Edinburgh: T. and A. Constable, Printers to His Majesty
FOREWORD
One morning of high summer three pilgrims met together in the City
of Genoa to sally forth in search of sunshine and the Middle Ages.
At least that was what the Poet said, for sunshine and Ancient
Stones were the passions of the Poet's life.
The Philosopher insisted that we went in search of Happiness.
It is no matter. But in fact we did meet one July day of sweltering
sunshine in Genoa, the Western Gate of Italy, which is a city of
grateful shadows, whose narrow streets defy the brilliant sun.
This is a book of simple delights, a chronicle of little pleasures,
so I shall not talk much of Genoa, although to my mind she is the
most Italian of all the great cities of Italy. Nor shall I speak of
Florence, or Naples, or Venice, or Rome. Doubtless, like me, you
have loved them all.
[Illustration: A STREET IN GENOA.]
If you come with me I shall take you away from the great cities
where your feet are bruised on the stony streets and never feel the
soft warm earth beneath their soles, where mountainous walls of
brick limit your vision to smoke-clouded strips of sky, where you
never smell the fragrance of the night. If you come with me I shall
take you to the hills, the deep-bosomed rolling hills, with their
valleys and their plains and with towered cities riding on their
crests. You will lie with me under the olives and stone-pines,
where the warm earth cushions your limbs in luxury, and the
sunlight flickering in the green shadows lights on a wealth of
flowers.
Then, if you will, come back to your haunted streets.
But I am persuaded that if you go there you will find a great
content among the little cities of great memories which stand
knee-deep in flowers upon the hills of Italy, or in those nobler
towns,--Siena, who belongs to the Madonna, and Perugia, whose name
is as a torch to light your feet into the Valleys of Romance. In
their streets you are seldom shut away from the mountains and the
sky; and little gracious weeds and grasses have spread a web among
their stones as though an elfin world sought to entrap a monster
and pull him down to ruin.
Our little pilgrimage took us to many shrines, and haunts of
peace and beauty. We made our discoveries, saw much, learned not
a little philosophy. And, most of all, we caught a glimpse of the
heart of Umbria--Umbria of the saints. We watched the gathering of
the golden maize in the plain below Assisi while we walked with
St. Francis among the vines and olives; we saw the vintage being
brought home with song and thanksgiving at Orvieto and Viterbo.
We dwelt among beautiful simple-hearted men and women, living in
little farms far from the toil of the modern world, who still
worship God in the gladness of their hearts and the spirit of the
ardent thirteenth century; who toil and spin and bear children
and lie down to die, not with the stupidity of animals or the
self-satisfaction of the bourgeoisie, but full of a beautiful
content, moved by a beautiful faith. We dipped into Tuscany too,
into Lombardy, into the March of Ancona, into Lazio, but nowhere
else was the world as perfect, as unspoiled as in Umbria. If you
are travel-stained with life, if the sweat of a work-a-day world
still clings about you, if you have lost your saints and almost
forgotten your Gods, you will cure the sickness of your soul in
Umbria.
[Illustration: GENOA: THE HARBOUR.]
CONTENTS
CHAP. PAGE
FOREWORD v
I. AREZZO 1
II. CORTONA 14
III. PERUGIA 24
IV. TODI 45
V. SIENA AND THE PALIO 58
VI. SAN GIMIGNANO DELLE BELLE TORRI 88
VII. MONTE OLIVETO MAGGIORE 105
VIII. CHIUSI 116
IX. HANNIBAL'S THRASYMENE 129
X. ASSISI 144
XI. GUBBIO 171
XII. ANCONA 188
XIII. LORETO 201
XIV. RAVENNA 216
XV. THE REPUBLIC OF SAN MARINO 234
XVI. URBINO 245
XVII. FOLIGNO 259
XVIII. CLITUMNUS 276
XIX. SPOLETO 280
XX. THE FALLS OF TERNI 296
XXI. NARNI 303
XXII. ORVIETO: THE CITY OF WOE 316
XXIII. VITERBO 333
XXIV. ROME 353
ILLUSTRATIONS
COLOURED PLATES
PERUGIA: LOOKING TOWARDS ASSISI _Frontispiece_
SIENA: TORRE DEL MANGIA _Facing page_ 62
SAN GIMIGNANO " 102
LAKE THRASYMENE " 137
ASSISI: THE LOWER CHURCH OF SAN FRANCESCO " 152
ANCONA: THE FISHING FLEET " 192
SPOLETO: THE AQUEDUCT " 292
THE FALLS OF TERNI " 298
HALF-TONES
GENOA: THE HARBOUR _Facing page_ viii
A STREET IN AREZZO " 8
CORTONA FROM THE PORTA S. MARGHERITA " 20
PERUGIA: PIAZZA DEL MUNICIPIO " 28
PERUGIA: THE RING OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN " 30
PERUGIA: PORTA EBURNEA " 40
PERUGIA: THE TOMB OF THE VOLUMNII " 42
A STREET IN SIENA " 66
SIENA: S. DOMENICO AND THE VIA BENINCASA " 68
SIENA FROM THE CONVENTO DELL'OSSERVANZA " 72
SIENA: THE PALIO " 84
SAN GIMIGNANO: THE WASHING PLACE " 96
CHIUSI: THE PALACE OF THE BISHOP " 126
A STREET IN ASSISI " 148
THE LITTLE CLOISTER IN S. FRANCESCO D'ASSISI " 154
ASSISI: THE PORZIUNCULA " 168
GUBBIO: PIAZZA VITTORIO EMANUELE " 180
GUBBIO: VIA CARMIGNANO " 184
LORETO " 202
SAN MARINO " 236
URBINO: SAN FRANCESCO " 252
FOLIGNO: THE WASHING PLACE " 268
THE TEMPLE OF CLITUMNUS " 278
A STREET IN SPOLETO " 288
THE CATTLE FAIR AT NARNI " 306
A STREET IN ORVIETO " 322
ORVIETO: ETRUSCAN TOMB " 330
VITERBO: MEDIAEVAL HOUSE IN THE PIAZZA S. LORENZO " 336
VITERBO: FROM A WINDOW IN THE PALACE OF THE POPES " 340
VITERBO: VIA DI S. PELLEGRINO " 346
ROME: ST. PETER'S SEEN FROM THE ARCO OSCURO " 354
ROME: A FOUNTAIN IN THE BORGHESE GARDENS " 358
LINE DRAWINGS
A STREET IN GENOA _See page_ vi
AREZZO: THE PRISON " 6
CORTONA FROM THE PIAZZA GARIBALDI " 16
PERUGIA: DETAIL FROM THE CHOIR OF S. PIETRO DE'
CASSINENSI " 24
PERUGIA: ARCO DI AUGUSTO " 27
THE GRIFFON OF PERUGIA " 32
FOUNTAIN IN THE CLOISTER OF S. PIETRO DE' CASSINENSI " 36
DETAILS FROM THE APSE OF THE CATHEDRAL OF TODI " 51
TODI: S. MARIA DELLA CONSOLAZIONE " 54
SIENA: BANNER-HOLDER " 61
SIENA: TORCH-REST " 64
SIENESE YOUTHS IN PALIO DRESS " 77
SEEN AT THE PALIO " 81
THE TOWERS OF SAN GIMIGNANO " 89
CHIUSURE FROM MONTE OLIVETO MAGGIORE " 107
CITTÀ DELLA PIEVE FROM CHIUSI " 118
ETRUSCAN CINERARY URNS " 122
CHIMNEYS AT PASSIGNANO " 133
ASSISI: S. MARIA MADDALENA AT RIVO TORTO " 159
ASSISI: THE CARCERE " 163
GUBBIO: THE LAMPLIGHTER " 173
GUBBIO: SAN FRANCESCO " 177
GUBBIO: THE MEDIAEVAL AQUEDUCT " 183
PEASANTS AT LORETO " 206
PILGRIMS AT LORETO " 211
RAVENNA: THE PINETA " 218
RAVENNA: SANT'AGATA " 221
RAVENNA: THE TOMB OF DANTE " 228
RAVENNA: COLUMN OF GASTON DE FOIX " 232
THE PALACE OF THE DUKES OF URBINO " 247
FOLIGNO: SAN DOMENICO " 263
FOLIGNO: WELL IN THE CASA NOCCHI " 265
SPELLO " 273
SPOLETO: PORTA D'ANNIBALE " 282
SPOLETO: SAN GREGORIO " 285
A FOUNTAIN OF SPOLETO " 290
SPOLETO: SAN PIETRO " 294
THE LOWER FALL OF TERNI " 300
FARMERS AT THE OX " 304
FAIR OF NARNI " 308
NARNI: MARKET PEOPLE " 310
NARNI: THE PONTE D'AUGUSTO " 312
BELOW THE WALLS OF ORVIETO " 318
ORVIETO: THE CLOCK TOWER " 320
ORVIETO: SANT'AGOSTINO " 326
ETRUSCAN NECROPOLIS BELOW THE WALLS OF ORVIETO " 329
OUTSIDE THE WALLS OF VITERBO " 334
VITERBO: THE MOAT OUTSIDE THE PORTA SAN PIETRO " 338
VITERBO: THE STEMMA OF THE CITY " 341
VITERBO: THE PALACE OF THE POPES " 343
VITERBO: FOUNTAIN IN THE PALAZZO MUNICIPIO " 344
VITERBO: THE HOUSE OF THE BELLA GALIANA " 345
ONE OF VITERBO'S MANY FOUNTAINS " 348
THE RUINED THEATRE OF FERENTO " 351
THE ALTAR OF THE UNKNOWN GOD ON THE PALATINE " 356
THE VIA APPIA " 360
AREZZO
We came to Arezzo in the cool of the evening. It had been a
breathless day. Even at Genoa the air hung heavy with the sirocco.
We found Pisa in a mirage, and the white hills of Carrara
glistening like the lime rocks of a desert.
It was good to be in Tuscany again--Tuscany with her grey farms
and lichened roofs, her towered horizons, her blue hills, her
vineyards, and her olive-gardens. We could hear the song of the
cicalas vibrating in the sunshine above the jar of the train; near
at hand the hills swelled up, clothed with the tender mist of
olives or linked with vines; stone-pines floated darkly against the
sky, and cypress spires climbed the hillsides in a long procession
like souls on pilgrimage.
Perhaps it is because Arezzo, little Arezzo, with her ancient
history and her tale of great men, was the earliest of our
hill-cities that we loved her at first sight. Coming from London
and Genoa, with the noise and dust and heat of long train journeys
still hanging about us, she seemed very cool and sweet among her
vineyards and olive-gardens. She has left her hill-top now that
she needs no more the walls which Sangallo built in the fighting
days of the Popes, and has trailed down to the railway in the
valley, leaving behind her wide piazzas which she has filled with
shady trees, and benches, and statues of her great ones. Her paved
streets, steep and clean, climb up the hillside between grey
palaces, green-shuttered, with wide Tuscan eaves, whose fantastic
outlines, seen in échelon against the sky, bring back a score of
memories of other clean-swept Tuscan towns.
Now that we were threading her byways, Arezzo, though she had
looked imposing from the valley, dwindled to a little brown city,
full of memories, and frescoed churches, and ancient houses in
which the labourer dwells in his poverty to-day where the rich
citizens of Arezzo once held great state. Capers and all manner of
pensive creepers grew out of the rough walls; fig-trees, roses,
wistarias, and oleanders in full blossom poured over them, so that
the air was full of fragrance. And there were flowers in the upper
windows of thirteenth-century houses, for your Tuscan is fond
of flowers, and will have his _garofani_ upon his window-ledge.
Through the low-browed gateways we could see women spinning in
arcaded courtyards; and the shoemakers and basket-weavers worked
at their humble trades as they sat on the steps of weather-beaten
Gothic houses.
And often as we wandered through her narrow streets we paused
to look down upon the calm beauty of the Tuscan plain, which
stretched from the vineyards below her walls to the blue mountains
of Chianti. Nor did it require any effort of imagination, while we
were walking in those mediaeval byways between the Borgunto and
the Via di Pellicceria, to people the rich valley with the pageant
which Dante witnessed while he was staying in Arezzo with the elder
Petrarch, both exiles from Florence.
'It hath been heretofore my chance to see
Horsemen with martial order shifting camp,
To onset sallying, or in muster rang'd,
Or in retreat sometimes outstretch'd for flight;
Light-armed squadrons and fleet foragers
Scouring thy plains, Arezzo! have I seen,
And clashing tournaments, and tilting jousts,
Now with the sound of trumpets, now of bells,
Tabors, or signals made from castled heights.'[1]
A common sight enough, heaven knows, in the Middle Ages, when every
little city sought to rule itself, and the populace and the petty
lords alike cloaked their ambitions under the old war-cry of Guelph
and Ghibelline!
There is an air of gaiety in Arezzo, a simple, almost pastoral,
joy. The philosopher felt it at once.
'We are like flowers,' he said, as we sat on a bench outside the
inn after our first breakfast in Tuscany. 'In London our roots
spread in the ground, and they get knotted and twisted in the
darkness. Here we shoot right up into the sun.'
And, indeed, Arezzo is a happy place, whose charm, it may be,
owes its origin to an earlier civilisation, which has left so
many broken fragments of its art scattered on the neighbouring
hillsides. They are garnered to-day in the museum among the
relics of Arezzo's history, of which they are the chief glory now
that the bronze Chimera and the magnificent Etruscan statue of
Minerva have gone to swell the treasures of Florence. There is not
a vase or _patera_ unbroken. The entire collection is composed
of fragments, moulds and casts in low relief. But every piece is
exquisitely beautiful; each one is like a shell cast by the tides
of fantasy upon the shores of a work-a-day world. And though the
streets of Arezzo are nearly always empty and silent, I think the
flutes and lyres and dancing fauns, with which the artists of
Arretium delicately graced their coral-coloured bowls and cups,
are not silenced yet upon this Tuscan hill. Perhaps the spirit of
the slim-limbed girls and youths, and merry little loves, whose
forms are beauty, and whose fragile feet seem scarce to bruise the
ground, dance still to their forgotten songs about the vineyards
of Arretium. It is as though the dream of some Attic poet, for I
cannot think that the heavy-eyed people of Etruria imagined such
gods, lingers on in this little Tuscan town, and the echo of its
ancient music vibrates in the stillness of the museum like the
murmur of waves in a shell. Or perhaps it is a magic in the air,
the subtle air of Tuscany, that poets sing of, which has inspired
more genius than we can find in all the rest of Italy.
For Arezzo, like Florence, has been the mother of great men.
Michelangelo, himself born but a few miles from Arezzo, wrote to
Vasari, 'Giorgio, of myself I have no power. I happened to be born
in the subtle air of your _paese_.'
Poets and artists, sculptors and musicians, have issued from
her walls. All the world knows that she bred Maecenas and
Petrarch, but only those who pause to read her chronicles know
how many of her sons have walked with History in the corridors of
Time--Margheritone, the Spinelli; Leonardo Bruni; Carlo Marsuppini,
and a host of other humanists; the fighting bishop, Guido Tarlati;
Vasari; and Guido Monaco, the Benedictine monk, born in the closing
years of the eleventh century, who was the inventor of our modern
system of musical notation.
Whether Arezzo occupies the site of Arretium, the city of the
Etruscan league, which is unlikely, or whether it rose like a
phoenix from the ashes of its ancient necropolis, or grew from a
Roman colony of that name near the Etruscan settlement, is not for
me to say, since antiquaries are undecided. In any case there is
little of either Etruscan or Roman antiquity outside the museum
to-day.
[Illustration: AREZZO: THE PRISON.]
It is the Middle Ages which have set their crown upon Arezzo.
Knowing her courage, and how it outweighed her strength so that she
dared to offer battle to her great neighbour Florence through many
stormy centuries, it is a marvel that anything of value should be
left. And in fact Arezzo boasts few civic buildings--the palace of
the Podestà or del Governo, now the prison, whose façade is covered
with the _stemme_ of her many rulers, and the Palazzo Comunale or
dei Priori, with its picturesque clock tower, are all that remain
of the mediaeval city, except some streets of fifteenth-century
dwelling-houses. But she has several noble churches--the Gothic
Duomo, majestically simple within and without, which crowns her
hill-top; the Pieve, Santa Maria di Gradi, with its wonderful
Pisan-Romanesque façade, hoary with antiquity; the great bare
church of San Francesco, enriched by Piero della Francesca's Story
of the True Cross; and Santa Maria delle Grazie in the vineyards
outside the walls.
It is the same all over Italy. What little town is there, however
broken, but has ancient churches and palaces to crown its hill and
keep troth through the ages with its vanished greatness? Arezzo is
particularly rich. The most expectant pilgrim to Italy's shrines of
art, even though he come straight from Florence, will be thrilled
by the golden church which soars from the crest of Arezzo's hill
between the gracious old Palazzo Comunale and the public gardens,
gay in July with the flame-coloured pennons of a flowering tree,
which Mr. Markino tells me is called Urushi in Japan. For the
Aretines have lavished wealth upon their cathedral, and the Ark of
San Donato, which is one of the most beautiful mediaeval shrines
in Italy, a rival to Orcagna's masterpiece in Or San Michele, is
alone worth the long hot climb. The exquisitely wrought marble is
yellowing with age; it is as finely carved as Oriental ivories;
the trefoils and the edges of its panels are set with lapis
lazuli. And here we have the reverence of the Trecento, with its
rude handiwork redeemed by its ardent sincerity. For the sculptors
saw nothing strange or irreverent in filling their scenes of the
lives of Madonna and San Donato with all the incongruous details of
their own day, so that we have at the same time jesters and angels,
knights a-horseback and heavy-headed saints, and the queer beasts
of mediaeval imaginings.
Close at hand is the tomb of the splendid old fighting Bishop of
Arezzo, Guido Tarlati, who crowned the Emperor Lewis of Bavaria
with the Iron Crown of Lombardy in defiance of the excommunications
of John XXII., and who led his people to battle against the Pope as
readily as he led their prayers to God. A great man this, who has
a worthy tomb, for Agostino and Agnolo of Siena carved the history
of his stirring life below his recumbent form when he was laid to
rest, and have shown us incidentally the life of the Trecento in
all its vigour and humour. Two angels draw back the curtains of his
bier, revealing him as he lies asleep, with folded hands and an air
of extreme piety and humility, belied by the long recital of his
little wars, and the story of his triumphs, from his Consecration
as a Bishop to the Coronation of Lewis, and his death in 1327.
[Illustration: A STREET IN AREZZO.]
There are many other treasures in the Duomo, besides the column
upon which San Donato had his head cut off, 'without any regard for
the axe,' as the custode explained, pointing out a deep gash in the
marble to remove the lingering doubts of any sceptic; there is an
exquisite relief by Rossellino in the Chapter House, and many Della
Robbias have set their seal of piety and graciousness on altar and
tomb in the Chapel of the Madonna. But it was not any of these
things which claimed our thoughts the first time that we entered
the dim aisles of Margheritone's soaring Gothic church. After the
glare and heat of the piazza, where the sunlight reflected from
the yellow walls of the cathedral dazzled our eyes, we found the
darkness of the nave, illuminated by a solitary altar lamp, and
threaded with shafts of jewelled light filtering through painted
glass, as grateful as the shade of some primeval forest formed by
the interlacing branches of giant trees. For, within, the Cathedral
of Arezzo is like the Gothic churches of the north, and it may
be that the grim Margheritone, whose agonised crucifixions adorn
so many chapels in Tuscany and Umbria, was himself inspired by
northern architecture. He returned to his native town from Florence
in the train of Gregory X., fresh from the Council of Lyons; and
Gregory, who left 30,000 _scudi_ to the Comune for the erection
of the new cathedral, may well have made some suggestions as to
the style of architecture which was to be employed. He died in the
neighbourhood some months later, early in the year 1276, and his
beautiful thirteenth-century tomb by Margheritone is one of the
chief ornaments of the cathedral which he helped to endow.
In Arezzo we were fortunate to find a real country inn; a clean,
cool place, with floors and stairs of red brick, and an alfresco
dining-room in the garden.
I remember how gay we were, how our burdens of care slipped from
our shoulders as we sat to eat below the trees on those first
nights in Tuscany. Were we not on the road again, knowing nothing
of the morrow, forgetful of everything but the joy of yesterday,
dining when we were hungry, sleeping when we were tired, with no
thought but for the beauty of the ways which opened out before us,
no care but that we might pass unwittingly some of the quaint and
lovely fragments of art and architecture with which our path was
strewn?
'Peregrino, quasi mendicando,' said Dante, bitter in his exile, but
we did not want for the luxury which money cannot buy. It is only
Italy of the little towns that can make you forget the work-a-day
world. Nowhere else can you be so content with what is often meagre
fare, so careless of the morrow, so full of the joy of to-day, as
you are in Italy.
At night we sat at rough trestle tables in the little garden of the
Albergo della Stella with the star-strewn canopy of night above us,
and an electric light hanging like a fire-fly from the branches
of an acacia tree. The level note of night crickets singing in the
ilexes made an accompaniment to the distant clatter of dishes and
the snatches of talk from other tables behind the tall bamboos. The
food was simple--_minestre_, perfectly grilled steaks, fresh fruit,
and generous _fiaschi_ of the good red Tuscan wine, for which the
vineyards of Arretium were praised. And here we lingered, talking
of the wide-eaved Tuscan house in the Via del Orte, where Petrarch,
the first of the great Italian humanists, was born, and Dante came
to visit the elder Petrarch, who had been exiled from Florence
by the same turn of the political wheel as himself; of Vasari,
who filled his niche as a biographer so much better than he ever
filled it as an artist; of Piero della Francesca and the vigorous
young world he pictured on the bare white walls of San Francesco;
and of San Bernardino who, like St. Francis, purged Arezzo of its
devils and laid the foundations of Santa Maria delle Grazie, that
exquisite church outside the city walls which Benedetto da Maiano,
Andrea della Robbia and Parri di Spinello enriched with the sister
arts. For it was San Bernardino who, coming to Arezzo, and finding
that the citizens were in the habit of practising pagan rites for
an oracle, which they imagined dwelt in a wood outside their gates,
preached such a fiery sermon from the pulpit of San Francesco that
they wept before him like little children. But he, insisting that
they should do penance, gave orders that on a certain day a great
wooden cross should be brought to him, and that the people should
come in solemn procession to exorcise the demon. That week the
citizens of Arezzo went about their work with fear and trembling,
and some of them cast doubtful looks down to the valley where the
oracle was hid. But on the appointed day, though I doubt not that
many did absent themselves, a great company followed the saint,
carrying the cross, down to the hateful wood.
It is not hard to picture to-day--the Mystic chanting as he walked
at the head of the procession; the hot and dusty way through the
vineyards below the city walls, for San Bernardino was loth to
start until all the people were met together; and the fear of the
crowd as they drew near and heard the music of the oracle-haunted
spring. But Bernardino, whose heart was ever with the angels,
caused the fountain to be cast down and the trees to be felled,
lest by any chance some evil might yet lurk in the wood. And,
knowing the heart of the people, that where a man has once
worshipped he will worship again, even though it be to other gods,
he built a little chapel to the glory of Our Lady of Mercies, and
he begged Messer Spinello to paint the Virgin for an altarpiece.
But not every one who comes to Arezzo visits this lovely church
down in the vineyards, in spite of the marvellous beauty of Andrea
della Robbia's 'cornice,' which frames Spinello's Madonna delle
Grazie as she stands among the stars, like the Mother of the World,
with strange, sad eyes, and shelters in her cloak the little people
of Arezzo, humbly kneeling in penitence at her feet.
CORTONA
Cortona! Not one of us but thrilled as we drew near her. For few
cities bear so fair a name or seem as full of promise as Cortona.
Although the world has long since passed her by, she loiters on her
hill-top between the valley and the sky like a forgotten goddess
who is loth to quit her great estate. Her towering walls encompass
her about, those mighty walls built for a mighty people which
Virgil sings of in the _Aeneid_; she frowns as though she were
still girt for war, and had forgotten how to smile; her lean grey
castle, stark upon the crest of the hill, points to the heaven like
an avenging sibyl.
No wonder that her history is spare since the days when she and
her great neighbours, Arretium and Clusium, joined the Etruscan
League in 310 B.C.; for even to-day, with excellently engineered
roads scaling her hill, she is difficult of approach, and her stout
walls and impregnable position offered no inducement to invading
armies, who were content with harrying her fertile plain, as they
passed by to Umbria and Rome. We know she was a Roman colony in the
time of the historian Dionysius, but scant mention is made of her
under the Roman Empire; and although she was one of the earliest
Episcopal sees, and is still the seat of a bishop, it was not until
the thirteenth century that the chronicles of Cortona began to take
a place in mediaeval history. She is still withdrawn from the world
upon her mountain; her houses are still huddled together in the
shelter of her great walls, built by the Unknown People; she still
hides her poverty from the eyes of the careless traveller as he
rushes past the foot of her hill on his way to Rome or Florence.
After the motor-omnibus had deposited us in the Piazza Signorelli,
and we had deposited our luggage in a rather dreary-looking inn
whose only claims to notice were its exquisite views over the
Tuscan plain to the inland sea of Thrasymene, we sallied out full
of anticipation to see the legendary birthplace of three such
widely different characters as the mythological Dardanus, founder
of Troy; Brother Elias, the erring and ambitious follower of St.
Francis; and Luca Signorelli, that courtly gentleman and great
painter of the fifteenth century.
But we were disappointed. Cortona, notwithstanding her lovely name
and her ancient and picturesque site, is a dirty little place, with
unsavoury streets and a baroque cathedral. She has treasures, of
course. What little town in Italy has not? Her tumble-down palaces
are built of warm red brick; her churches have some fine pictures;
her Palazzo Pretorio is covered with the escutcheons of the princes
who were her overlords, but she has no charm unless you catch her
unawares before the sleep is shaken from her eyes early on a summer
morning.
[Illustration: CORTONA FROM THE PIAZZA GARIBALDI.]
We found so little to detain us in her dingy, unkempt streets that
we decided to push on the next day to Perugia. We tried our tempers
in the inn, the most lethargic inn that it was our misfortune
to visit, endeavouring to get some lunch, and after waiting an
hour and a half we found the _gnocchi_ stale and the coarse meat
uneatable. So we went out again into the siesta heat, determined
at least to see the great Etruscan lamp which is the pride of
Cortona's museum, and the pictures which Luca Signorelli painted
for her churches.
Cortona was asleep. She was as still as a lizard on a sunny wall;
even the tiresome children who had followed us all the morning,
agape for soldi, had vanished; the air was vibrant with the tremolo
of the cicalas; the sunlight stretched like a shimmering veil
across the valleys. And in a moment all our vexation vanished.
Italy the Beautiful came out to meet us, smoothing away all
disagreeable memories as a cool hand laid on the forehead will
smooth out pain; we forgot the hatefulness which had been piling
itself up all day--the dust, the smells, the too-glaring sun,
the stupid inn with its bad-tempered maid-servant, the screaming
children, the baroque cathedral!
In the cool grey church of San Domenico, which stands in the
flowery public gardens of Cortona, we found not only one of Luca's
great pictures but a pageant of Quattrocento saints and Madonnas
in richly gilt Gothic frames over the three altars which fill
its eastern wall. In the Gesù, a little ancient church which
clings to the hillside close to the cathedral, we discovered an
Annunciation by Fra Angelico, almost as beautiful as that exquisite
picture which he painted on the wall of his monastery-home in
Florence. It is very like the fresco in the corridor of San Marco.
The Madonna is sitting in the same light and airy loggia reading
in some little book, as the Angel Gabriel, with his iridescent
wings still poised for flight, alights at her feet, filling the air
with glory. Outside, the grass is starred with the flowers which
Angelico loved to paint; and far away, silhouetted against the sky,
we see the Angel with a flaming sword driving Man and Woman from
their Garden of Paradise, whose gates not even the coming of Christ
could reopen on earth.
And then, remembering the story of Filippo Brunelleschi, we went
into the Duomo to see the famous sarcophagus which legend claims to
be the tomb of the Consul Flaminius, and which the great architect
of the dome of Florence Cathedral walked sixty miles to see. For
one morning when he was discussing antique sculpture in the Piazza
of Santa Maria del Fiore with Donatello and some other artists,
Brunelleschi heard of a Roman sarcophagus in Cortona. Straightway
he left his companions, and fired by his passion for the works of
antiquity, 'just as he was, in his mantle, hood and sabots, without
saying a word of where he was going,' came to Cortona and made a
drawing of it, returning at last to Florence where he showed it to
the astonished Donatello, who had not been able to guess where his
friend had disappeared.
But it was in the early morning, as I have said, that we discovered
the nameless charm of Cortona--that same charm which we found in
a different guise in all the little towns of Umbria and Tuscany.
Our inn, though it towered more than a thousand feet above
the valley, was at the bottom of the city, for Cortona in the
immemorial Etruscan fashion hangs from the crest of her hill. Even
the ambitious motor-bus could not climb higher than the Piazza
Signorelli, because nearly all the streets above it are so steep
that they are built in shallow steps. And they are so deserted that
in one of them we found rabbits contentedly nibbling the grass
which grew between its paving-stones. So the next morning, very
early, while the day was cool, we climbed up to the great church
of Santa Margherita, which stands with the ruined Fortezza on the
crest of Cortona's mountain.
To me it is always rather strange that this harsh Tuscan citadel
should ignore the name of Brother Elias, that great and restless
spirit who sought to wed Love not to Poverty, as Francis did, but
to Ambition. His name is hardly spoken in Cortona, but the body of
Santa Margherita, whom some call the Magdalen of the Franciscans,
because they love to draw comparisons between the life of Christ
and His humble follower, is enshrined upon the hill-top like
the light that cannot be hid. Her church has been restored, and
there is little of the ancient building left except her beautiful
fourteenth-century tomb, the silver shrine which was the gift of
Piero da Cortona, and the lovely rose-window which is preserved
in the modern façade. In the aisle are the flags and ship-lantern
of some knight of Malta, who prayed to Margherita in the hour of
peril, and was saved by her intercession.
Yet it was not for Santa Margherita that we climbed Cortona's hill
at dawn, but to see the rich plain of Tuscany in its amphitheatre
of blue hills, each with a towered city for its crown--Chiusi,
Città della Pieve, Montepulciano, and a host of others to which
we had not learned to give their names. It was a panorama of
surpassing beauty which opened out before us. Fold on fold the
mountains lifted their heads above the mists of the valley, rising
always towards the mighty crest of Monte Amiata, which was to loom
upon so many of our horizons while we were journeying through the
heart of Italy. And far away the sunshine lightened the opal waters
of Lake Thrasymene, lying like a forgotten sea in the bosom of the
Umbrian hills, with the towers of Castiglione del Lago rosy in the
dawn.
[Illustration: CORTONA FROM THE PORTA S. MARGHERITA.]
Even here the Rocca stood above us on its scarp, the key of the
strong citadel which claims descent from Dardanus of Troy. On
either side of Santa Margherita the mighty walls, including many
courses of Cyclopean masonry, climbed down towards the peaceful
plain. We passed through a gap which had once been a gate, and saw
them plunging down the hillside holding the crumpled brown roofs
of the little shrunken city in their elbow. So was Cortona of the
Unknown People fortified; so was the city of the Etruscans girt
about, and Hannibal and Flaminius have looked upon these walls as
they passed by to battle upon the reedy shore of Thrasymene.
Up on the hillside men and girls were reaping in the shadow of
the ancient wall. 'And the reapers, reaping early,' quoth the poet
softly to himself. Their laughter floated down to us. Every now and
then a girl would straighten her lithe figure, stand upright curved
scythe in hand, and sing, her clear notes soaring like a lark's in
the crystal air. At our feet Cortona nestled in the embrace of her
great wall, and far below, the plain of Tuscany rolled away to the
hills where the sunlight fired the towers of other mountain cities.
So in the dawn we grew to love Cortona, for the fantastic beauty
which is her own, and for her aloofness. As we passed down into
her steep-paved streets we paused a moment in San Francesco, where
Brother Elias lies buried with his hopes and ambitions; where, too,
is kept the ivory case with a fragment of the True Cross which
the Patriarch of Constantinople gave to Elias when he visited
that Court as Nuncio of Frederick II. And we lingered in little
San Niccolò, which, with its loggia and cypress-garden, is the
loveliest of Cortona's churches; and which, for all its poverty,
treasures three pictures by Luca Signorelli, who belonged to its
confraternity.
Down in the Piazza Signorelli we found the motor-omnibus already
waiting to take us to the station. The narrow streets were crowded
with black-browed Tuscan peasants selling fruit and vegetables,
and doing a thriving business in skinned frogs strung on wooden
skewers. These looked particularly unappetising in pails of not too
clean water, and the atmosphere was putrid after the freshness of
the air above. Again we had the sense of stifling heat and odour,
and again the swarms of dirty children who had tracked us yesterday
rose, as it were, out of the earth. We were glad enough to leave
Cortona, but not until we had experienced many vexatious delays.
For when we had fetched our luggage from the inn and settled our
account with the rather difficult landlady, the driver of the
omnibus was not forthcoming. And when at last we persuaded him to
leave the shelter of the cool Palazzo Comunale, a glazier took the
ill-chosen opportunity of mending two of the broken windows in
the omnibus. We had given up all hope of catching our train when
half an hour later we swung out of the town and began our perilous
descent down to the plain.
After all we had some minutes to spare, though I should not care to
make the journey again, for we took more than one corner of that
switchback road on two wheels. But the driver was confident of our
approval. 'Ecco signore, the train has not yet arrived,' he cried
triumphantly. _Facilis descensus Averni!_
[Illustration: PERUGIA: DETAIL FROM THE CHOIR OF S. PIETRO DE'
CASSINENSI.]
PERUGIA
'For bodiless dreams through double gateways go
Of horn and ivory, from night's realm forlorn;
And those that through the ivory gate are borne
Deceive, and what they tell is unfulfilled;
But those that issue through the polished horn
Fulfil themselves for mortals to whose sight
They issue.'
J. W. MACKAIL'S Translation of the _Odyssey_,
xix. 562.
'Look!' said the chronicler, 'there is Perugia. Perugia, whom I
have loved so long for her name alone.'
The poet sighed.
'I could almost envy you because you do not know her. See how her
loggia'd towers frame the heavens, and how she stretches out her
lovely arms to welcome us!'
We came to Perugia from Cortona. In an hour we slipped from that
austere Tuscan citadel into the heart of an enchanted land--Umbria
Mystica--the home of saints, where Beauty and Romance walk in the
valleys with the gentle Gods of Arcady; where brooding peace hangs
in the luminous air, and on whose aerial hills great memories dwell
in the little cities full of dreams that men have built for them.
We skirted the enchanted shores of Thrasymene, the spell-bound
lake which lies like an opal in the bosom of the Umbrian Hills,
and found ourselves among vineyards and olive-gardens, where the
Madonnas of Perugino and Raphael are living their beautiful and
simple lives in the fields, and the great-eyed oxen draw Virgilian
ploughs below the olives, or roll along the dusty roads with
scarlet fillets on their milk-white heads.
Perugia is the queen of this enchanted land, the crown of Umbria.
Think of her name--Perusia Augusta the Romans called her; was there
ever a more lovely name, or one which History enriched with more
poetic legends? For Felice Ciatti, that brilliant scholar of the
seventeenth century, in summing up the Greco-Trojan tradition and
the popular belief that Noah, the Patriarch, was the founder of
the city, thought nothing of addressing the Perugians, in one of
his Lenten sermons, in these stirring words--'No marvel is it if,
to-day, ye Perugians possess the justice of the Armenians, the
wisdom of the Greeks, the prosperity of Augustus, and the sanctity
of Noah, for ye are descended from them all.'
And if these legends leave you cold, think of the Carlovingian
tradition in which such great names as Oliver the Paladin, and
the puissant knight, Count Roland, 'the Falcon of Christendom,'
and the tyrant Orgoglioso, play their parts with the lovely lady
Prossimana. Or, if this does not stir you, would you rather learn
romance from the nomenclature of her ancient gates? Here, long
since vanished, was the Portal of the Sun, the gate through which
blind Homer thought that dreams entered into a city from the east.
It still gives its name to a whole quarter of Perugia--the Rione
della Porta Sole--and though no man can point to the actual Porta
Sole, when the wind blows coolly through any of Perugia's eastern
gates, and you look across the valley at Assisi, it will be strange
if you do not think of Dante's words:
'There hangs
Rich slope of mountain high, whence heat and cold
Are wafted through Perugia's eastern gate:
And Nocera with Gualdo, in its rear
Mourn for their heavy yoke. Upon that side,
Where it doth break its steepness most, arose
A sun upon this world, as duly this
From Ganges doth; therefore let none, who speak
Of that place, say Ascesi; for its name
Were lamely so delivered; but the East,
To call things rightly, be it henceforth styled.'[2]
[Illustration: PERUGIA: ARCO DI AUGUSTO.]
Here, at the end of a winding street of mediaeval houses, is the
Porta Eburnea, the Ivory Gate through which Homer thought that
False Dreams were expelled from a city; and close to Sant'Ercolano
is the Porta Cornea, the Gate of Horn, whence issued all True
Dreams. The Porta Eburnea was, indeed, the gate of False Dreams,
for it was by that way, so Matarazzo tells us, that the Baglioni,
that strange and beautiful and ungodly race who lived and died by
violence, always passed out to battle. Of the others the Porta
Augusta, the greatest of the Etruscan gates, once bore the proud
name Porta Pulchra, because of its beauty even in a beautiful
city; and another was named, and is still named, after the God of
War. Is it not irony that all the rest should bear the names of
saints, for Perugia, a city of turbulent desires, has ever bred
more warriors than saints? Even to-day there are few monks or
nuns in Perugia; it is the military who are in evidence, and not
a few churches and cloisters have been despoiled to house them.
In fact Perugia, notwithstanding her mediaeval monuments, is a
gay and much begarrisoned city, not provincial like Siena, but
really the capital of a state. I have never seen so many smart and
pretty women in any Italian town of the size as I found at Perugia
in high summer, nor so many soldiers. The Corso is full of them,
both morning and evening. They promenade up and down, 'wearing
out the pavements,' in the phrase of the immortal and energetic
Fortebraccio; or they sit at cafés gossiping after their siestas.
At night they become an army. It seems as though the entire
population congregated then in the Corso and the Piazza Vittorio
Emanuele, where there is a band and a mushroom growth of tables and
chairs. On Sundays they promenade in the cathedral in just the same
gay and careless fashion, except that the boys doff their hats, and
that here you see shaggy-haired and devout peasants kneeling among
the beautifully-dressed Perugian ladies.
[Illustration: PERUGIA: PIAZZA DEL MUNICIPIO.]
Perugia is not a religious city. It is true that she furnished the
most ardent disciples of the thirteenth-century Flagellants;[3]
and that Fra Bernadino of Siena, preaching to her from the little
pulpit outside the cathedral of San Lorenzo, brought her to such
a passion of repentance that not only did she burn her vanities
in the piazza before this ardent Flame of God, as the Florentines
were to do later for Savonarola, but she built in his memory that
exquisite oratory covered with reliefs in terra-cotta by Agostino
Duccio, under the shadow of San Francesco. Yet for the rest it
seems as though she has not forgiven the papacy for grinding her
under its heel in the stormy sixteenth century, when Paul III.
built his fortress on the ruined palaces of the Baglioni; although,
on the Feast of the Ring of the Virgin, which, for all her air of
cynicism, she still counts as one of her treasures, we saw the
peasants who had climbed her hillside in the dawn worshipping with
the simple faith of the Middle Ages.
Matarazzo has told the story of this Ring, and how it was
stolen from Chiusi, where it was held in great veneration, in
the thirteenth century by a German priest, and brought by the
intervention of the Holy Virgin to Perugia. It is shown in San
Lorenzo in a finely-wrought casket thrice a year; otherwise it
is kept in an iron chest, whose seven keys are in the custody of
different citizens. We arrived early enough to go into the loft,
where the chest is lodged, above the Altar of the Sacrament, and
see the Ring being put _sans cérémonie_ into its place in the gold
casket before the red silk curtains were drawn back and the holy
relic lowered to the altar. A short mass was said, and the casket
was placed on a table in the centre of the chapel for the people to
pass one by one in front of it.
It was a sacrament, a holy and beautiful thing, to watch them as
they passed, these peasants with their broken dusty hats and rugged
faces, who had come up from the valleys with their Madonna-like
wives. They pressed their lips to the glass, and held up their
rosaries and rings to touch the shrine. All had some special sign
of love and reverence.
[Illustration: PERUGIA: THE RING OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN.]
I watched them till my eyes were filled with tears because of
the beauty and the pathos and the blessedness of it all. One
by one they passed. First, an old woman, her white hair hidden
beneath a gold kerchief, and a smile of rare peace on her gnarled
face, pressed her lips to the casket and handed up her rosary
that it might touch the shrine. She passed down with bent head.
Next came a girl of the splendid Umbrian type, deep-chested and
straight-limbed, her head carried high. She kissed the glass
and lifted up her ring, maybe her wedding ring, then crossed
herself, and passed on with trembling lips. Old men there were who
touched the shrine with shaking fingers, and stumbled away into
the cathedral to pray. Children were lifted up to kiss it. And
there were others besides the kerchiefed women and their peasant
husbands--people of the town, complacent burghers and their stout
wives, and the dainty white-robed girls of Perugia. And nearly all
passed out with uncertain lips as if they had been strangely moved.
Across the nave is the Miraculous Madonna which Giovanni Manni
painted on a column. She is in a gilt frame, set about with silver
hearts, which gleam in the darkness of the aisle like the smiles of
those who have found joy in her. I do not wonder that the people
of Perugia love this Madonna, for she is very beautiful. Her hands
are raised in blessing, but to me her tender eyes are full of
wonder, as though having no belief herself she marvelled at these
worshippers for their faith, and loved them exceedingly because of
it. We always found some poor, rough-headed peasants kneeling in
the great ugly church before her, and ever she blessed them, and
wondered at them, and seemed to give them peace.
[Illustration: THE GRIFFON OF PERUGIA.]
Perugia is a mediaeval paradox. When you stand upon her ramparts
in the clear shining of the morning, and look across the hills
and vales of Umbria, you wonder that the hot breath of war and
the scent of blood should have reached her. For she stands at the
head of two wide plains full of enchanted silence--the Valley of
Spoleto with its many little cities starring the green hills, and
the Valley of the Tiber which sweeps from the gates of Perugia
southwards to Rome. The mountains, which close them in, are clothed
with vines and olives, and swell softly like the many bosoms of
Diana of the Ephesians. The valleys are a garden, and the hills
roll softly to the horizon till they grow aerial in the distance
and hang upon the heavens like fantastic clouds. Little white
cities crown them or clamber up their slopes, and rivers wind down
the valleys, with sunlight glinting on their waters, between the
tall poplars swaying on their banks like girls who gather flowers
by a stream. The high brown shoulder of Subasio, made sacred by its
memories of Umbria's greatest saint, shuts off the bleak and hungry
Appennines which clasp Gubbio and Gualdo and a hundred other little
cities to their barren breasts. But here you have the landscape
of the Quattrocento artists with the clear pale light and blue
aerial hills which are the hall-mark of the Umbrian masters. Nor
can you ever tire of watching it, for every day and every hour some
subtle change sweeps over the face of this immortal loveliness;
and it is always beautiful, whether you look across the sunlit
mists at Assisi in a blue veil of cloud-shadow or see her smiling
and rosy in the sunset, or whether you stand at night under the
scented laurels of Perugia's _passeggiata_, and see the lights of
distant hill-cities riding like ships upon the dim horizon of a
soundless sea. It became a custom, almost an act of worship, to
congregate upon the bulwarks of Perugia before the sun slipped
behind the western hills, to watch the light pouring into the plain
like liquid gold into a bowl of translucent glass, tinted all the
colours of the prism. Even when night had drained this ancient
chalice of the golden wine of the sun, and the lights of lonely
farmsteads were twinkling on the hillsides, we were loth to leave
it.
Yet these fair valleys have been drenched with blood and scorched
by fire; Hannibal and his Gauls and Africans gave battle to
Flaminius, the maker of roads, by the lake of Thrasymene; they
have been devastated by Goths and Lombards; the German Kings of
Rome have harried them, and the history of Perugia itself has been
one long tale of battle and murder. It is as though the Griffin of
Perugia, the strange Etruscan beast which is to this day the device
of the city, has never sheathed its talons in anything but human
flesh.