side, we forget the wrongs alike of Jupiter and of the Goths. The
wonderful interior of the double basilica opens upon us. The first
feeling is simply puzzledom. A nave of vast width seems to be flanked
by two ranges of columns on either side, columns varying even more
than is usual in their height and in the width of the arches which
they support. When we look within the two lateral ranges, we are not
surprised to find each ending in an apse with a noble mosaic; we are
surprised to find the southern range interrupted by a cupola. This
last phænomenon will help us to the explanation of the whole mystery.
The church is in fact two churches thrown into one. When they were
distinct, they must have stood even nearer than the old and new
minsters at Winchester; indeed a plan in a local work shows, with
every probability, their walls as actually touching in one point. The
northern church was a basilica of the ordinary type, made up of
columns--some of them of very fine marble--put together, as usual,
without much regard to uniformity. All bear Corinthian capitals of
different varieties, and all carry the Ravenna stilt in a rude form
without the cross. The wall rose high above the arcade, and was
pierced with a range of narrow clerestory windows, but with nothing
else to relieve its blankness. This church the Tergestine antiquaries
attribute, but, as far as we can see, without any direct evidence, to
the reign of Theodosius. The southern church is, in its original
parts, the same in style as the northern, but it is much smaller and,
in its plan at least, thoroughly Byzantine. It was a small cross
church, with a central cupola, and its north transept seems to have
touched the south aisle of its northern neighbour. It is perhaps on
the strength of the plan that the church is assigned to the reign of
Justinian. But there is nothing Byzantine in the details; where the
original capitals remain, they are of the same somewhat rude
Corinthian character as those in the northern church; they have the
same stilt, and under the cupola there is even a bit or two of
entablature built up again. But the building went through much greater
changes than the northern church did in the work of throwing the two
into one whole. The date of this change seems to be fixed by a
consecration recorded in the local annals in 1262. The south aisle of
the northern church, the north aisle and north transept of the
southern one, were pulled down, and the space which they had covered
was roofed in to form the nave of the united building, while the two
earlier basilicas sank into the position of its aisles. In the
northern church this involved no change beyond the disappearance of
the south aisle and the blocking of its clerestory; the smaller church
to the south had to suffer far more. It had to be raised and
lengthened; a quadrangular pier on the south side marks the original
length, and the increase of height of course destroys the proper
effect of the cupola. Then, as the cupola of course rested on columns
with wider arches, its northern arch was filled up with two smaller
arches and an inserted column, so as to make something like a
continuous range. Still, late in the thirteenth century, they again
used up the old marble columns; but they now used a flat capital, by
which the additions of this time may be distinguished from the genuine
basilican work.
Probably no church anywhere has undergone a more singular change than
this. It is puzzling indeed at first sight; but, when the key is once
caught, the signs of each alteration are so easily seen. The other
ancient relic at Trieste is the small triumphal arch. On one side it
keeps its Corinthian pilasters; on the other they are imbedded in a
house. The arch is in a certain sense double; but the two are close
together and touch in the keystone. The Roman date of this arch cannot
be doubted; but legends connect it both with Charles the Great and
with Richard of Poitou and of England, a prince about whom Tergestine
fancy has been very busy. The popular name of the arch is _Arco
Riccardo_.
Such, beside some fragments in the museum, are all the remains that
the antiquary will find in Trieste; not much in point of number, but,
in the case of the _duomo_ at least, of surpassing interest in their
own way. But the true merit of Trieste is not in anything that it has
in itself, its church, its arch, its noble site. Placed there at the
head of the gulf, on the borders of two great portions of the Empire,
it leads to the land which produced that line of famous Illyrian
Emperors who for a while checked the advance of our own race in the
world's history, and it leads specially to the chosen home of the
greatest among them. The chief glory of Trieste, after all, is that it
is the way to Spalato.
TRIESTE TO SPALATO.
TRIESTE TO SPALATO.
1875.
Given such weather as suits fair-weather sailors, there can hardly be
any enjoyment more thoroughly unmixed than a sail along the coast of
Dalmatia. First of all, there is a freshness about everything. Here is
a portion of land which is thoroughly unhackneyed; the coasts, the
islands, the channels, of Dalmatia are as yet uninvaded by the British
tourist. No Cook's ticket can be taken for Spalato; no hotel coupon
would be of the slightest use at Sebenico. The land is whatever its
long and strange history, old and new, has made it. It has gone
through many changes and it has put on many shapes, but it has escaped
the fate of being changed into a "playground of Europe."
The narrow strip of land on the eastern side of the Hadriatic on which
the name of Dalmatia has settled down has a history which is
strikingly analogous to its scenery. A coast for the most part barren
and rocky, but with its barrenness and rockiness diversified by a
series of noble havens, is fenced off by a range of mountains from a
boundless inland region. Each of these havens, with the cities which
from early days have sprung up on each, has always been an isolated
centre of civilization in a backward land. As a rule, broken only
during a few centuries of the universal sway of Rome, the coast and
the inland country have been the possession, by no means always of
different nations, but most commonly of different governments. On the
coast the rule of the Venetian has been succeeded by the rule of the
Austrian, while in the inland region the rule of native Slavonic
princes has been succeeded by the rule of the Turk. Yet the Slave,
though an earlier settler than the Turk or the Venetian, was himself
only a settler in comparatively recent times. Native Illyrians, Greek
colonists, Roman colonists, the rule of the Goth from Ravenna, the
rule of the Eastern Roman from Constantinople, had all to take their
turn before the land put on its present character of a more or less
Italianized fringe on a Slavonic body, of a narrow rim of Christendom
hemming in the north-eastern conquests of the once advancing and now
receding Mussulman.
So it is with Dalmatian history. As the cultivation and civilization
of the land lies in patches, as harbours and cities alternate with
barren hills, so Dalmatia has played a part in history only by fits
and starts. This fitful kind of history goes on from the days of Greek
colonies and Illyrian piracy to the last war between Italy and
Austria. But of continuous history, steadily influencing the course of
the world's progress, Dalmatia has none to show. Salona plays its part
in the wars both of Cæsar and of Belisarius; Zara reminds us of the
fourth crusade; the whole history of Ragusa claims a high place among
the histories of independent and isolated cities; Lissa recalls the
memory of two times of warfare within our own century. But if there
was any time when Dalmatia really influenced the history of the world,
it was when Dalmatia had no national being, when it was merely a
province of an universal dominion along with Britain and Egypt. Of the
great Emperors of the third century, who called the Roman power into
new life and checked the ever-advancing wave of Teutonic invasion,
many came from the Illyrian lands, several came from the actual
Dalmatian coast. And the most famous among them--Docles, Diocletian,
Jovius--not only came forth from Dalmatia to rule the world, but went
back to Dalmatia to seek rest when weary of the toil of ruling it.
But in our immediate point of view we must never forget that our
course now lies wholly, not only by subject lands of Venice, but by
lands where Venice appears in her highest character as the bulwark of
Christendom against the misbeliever. The shores and cities by which we
pass, were subject to the Serene Republic, but subjection to the
Serene Republic was their only chance of escaping subjection to the
Ottoman Sultan. Every town, every fortress, almost every point of
ground along this whole coast, has been fought for, most of them have
been won and lost, over and over again, in the long crusade which
Venice waged, if for herself, yet for Europe also. Her rule was an
alien rule, but it was still European and Christian; it shut out the
rule of the barbarian. It was a rule better and worse in different
times and places, but it had always the merit of shutting out a worse
rule than itself, which was ever ready to take its place. Whenever we
see the winged lion keeping guard, the thought should rise that he
kept guard over spots which he alone kept for Christendom, which he
alone saved from barbarian bondage.
* * * * *
The visitor to Dalmatia may be conceived as setting forth from the
harbour of Trieste--from Trieste with its houses climbing up to the
church and castle on the hill, with the background of mountains
growing in the far distance into snowy Alps. From the Dalmatian coast
itself no snowy Alps are seen; but the whole land is only a mountain
slope, and the cities are cities on a smaller scale than Trieste, and
which seldom run so high as Trieste does up the hill-side. But we must
not forget that, even at Trieste, Dalmatia is still a distant land.
There is the Istrian peninsula to be skirted, the peninsula whose
coast was so long counted among the subject lands of Venice, while the
inland region, under the rule of counts of Gorizia and dukes of
Austria, counted only among the neighbours of the Republic. The
Istrian coast, largely flat, is marked here and there by small towns
standing well on high points over the sea, or seen more faintly in the
more distant inland region. But we know that inland Istria is a hilly
land, and, even from the sea, the mountain wall may still be seen
skirting the horizon. Darkness has come on by the time we reach the
harbour of Pola, once Pietas Julia, now the chief station of the
infant navy of Austria. But the darkness is not so great but that the
dim outline of the vast amphitheatre can be seen, and the arrangements
of the Austrian Lloyd's steamers allow time enough to go on shore and
take in the general effect both of the amphitheatre and the other
buildings of Pola. We here get our first impression of the Venetian
towns beyond the Hadriatic, all of which seem to attempt in some sort
to reproduce their mistress, so far as Venice can be reproduced where
there are no canals and therefore no gondolas. But all have the same
narrow, paved streets, the same little squares, and, if the passage
of horses and wheels is not so utterly unknown as it is at Venice,
their presence is, to say the least, rare. The lion of Saint Mark is
to be seen everywhere else; by daylight therefore he is to be seen at
Pola also. But the Lloyd's arrangements condemn Pola, in the early
part of October at least, to be seen only by dim glimpses, while Zara
has an ample measure of daylight. Let no one however blame a
time-table which will bring him into Spalato with the setting sun, and
will allow him to take his first glance of Diocletian's palace by the
rising moon.
In the night we pass by several islands, but none are of any historic
importance. Veglia lies out of our path, or we might muse on the evil
deeds of the last independent Count, at least as they were reported by
his Venetian enemies, who were eager to get possession of his island.
The tale will be found in Sir Gardner Wilkinson's "Dalmatia and
Montenegro," a book which no traveller in these lands should be
without. The next morning's light shows us genuine Dalmatia, its coast
at this stage marked by the barren hills coming down to the sea and
the range of higher mountains further inland. We skirt among endless
islands, most of which seem barren and uninhabited; we pass along the
channel of Zara, and come to anchor off the city itself, standing on
its peninsula crowned with its walls--Venetian and later--and with
the towers of its churches rising above them. Here a stay of several
hours allows a pretty full examination of our first Dalmatian city--a
city however more Italian and far less thoroughly Dalmatian than other
cities to which our further course will lead us. There is time to
visit the _duomo_ and the smaller churches--to mark the two surviving
Roman columns--to thread the narrow streets, with their occasional
scraps of Venetian architecture--to stroll by the harbour, under the
gateways marked by the lion of Saint Mark, one of which so oddly
proves to be really a Roman gate with a Venetian casing. We may even,
if we so think good, climb the mound which, though crowned by a not
attractive Chinese pagoda, nevertheless supplies the best view of Zara
and her two seas. The _Albergo al Cappello_--the sign of the
Hat--supplies food certainly not worse than an Italian town of the
same class would set before a passing traveller. The meal done, to sit
out of doors in a _café_ is nothing new to any one who has crossed the
straits, not of Zara but of Calais; but it is a new feeling to do so
in the narrow streets of a Dalmatian town, and to add the further
luxury of maraschino drunk in its native land.
Night is now passed on board, and Zara is left by sunrise. Islands and
hills again succeed on either side, till we enter a narrow strait and
find ourselves in a noble harbour with a town in front, lying, like
most Dalmatian towns except Zara, at the foot of the mountains. We are
in the haven of Sebenico, but the haven of Sebenico is by no means the
whole of the inlet, which runs much further inland in the shape of a
narrow creek. We land, and give such time as is allowed us to a sight
of the little hill-side city. Shall we give Sebenico the last place
among the cities which we stay and examine in detail, or the first
place among the lesser cities to which we give such time as we can in
passing by? We are driven to this last course, not forgetting, if we
are minded to turn away from history and art to look for a while on a
striking natural object, that it is from Sebenico that we may best
make our way to the great waterfall of Kerka. And, as far as those who
have made no special study of Alpine matters may speak, the falls of
Kerka, rushing down in a company of torrents side by side, look as if
they had a right to take a high place among the falls at least of the
old world. But Sebenico is not simply the way to Kerka; there is
something to see in Sebenico itself. It is a hill city, but it is
emphatically not a hill-top city, but a hill-side city. We climb up
through the inhabited town to the castle, and when we reach the
castle, we are far from having reached the hill top. And to those who
make Sebenico their second halting-place on the strictly Dalmatian
coast it will have a special interest. Much smaller than Zara, it is
far more thoroughly Dalmatian; costume is more marked, and its
position gives it that peculiar air of quaintness which is shared by
all places where narrow streets run up a steep hill. And those streets
moreover are rich with architectural features, graceful windows and
the like, which witness to the influence of the ruling city. And there
is something not a little taking in the small _piazza_ of
Sebenico--the arcaded _loggia_ on the one side, the cathedral on the
other, with its mixed but stately architecture, its waggon-roof of
stone standing out boldly without either buttress or external roof.
Mr. Neale, whom, as he does not rule Sebenico to be a "church city,"
we may now quote seriously, holds that the cathedral of Sebenico is
"in an exclusively architectural view the most interesting church in
Dalmatia." He adds that "in truth it is one of the noblest, most
striking, most simple, most Christian of churches." This is high
praise, especially when bestowed by Mr. Neale on a church which was
consecrated so lately as 1555. But there is no denying that, strangely
confused as is its style, the church of Sebenico is, both inside and
out, not only a most remarkable, but a thoroughly effective building.
The internal proportions are noble; the height is great; the columns,
though their arches are pointed, might have stood in any basilica at
Rome or Ravenna; the barrel vaulting carries us away to Saint Sernin
at Toulouse and to the Conqueror's Tower. The details are a strange
mixture of late Gothic and _Renaissance_, very rich and somehow very
effective. It is not exactly like that class of French churches of
which Saint Eustache at Paris is the grandest example, where a
thoroughly mediæval outline is carried out with _Renaissance_ detail.
At Sebenico we see side by side, a bit in one style and a bit in the
other, and yet the two contrive to harmonize. We go down again to the
haven; we mark a few classical capitals preserved, as we here preserve
ammonites and pieces of rock-work; we start again to make the second
portion of our second day's voyage, and to reach the most marked and
memorable spot in our whole course.
After Sebenico the coast is for a while almost free from islands.
Presently we pass along among a few small ones, and Lissa, famous for
piracies two thousand years back and for more regular warfare in our
own century and in our own day, shows itself in the distance. Our
course has by this time turned nearly due east. We pass by Bua, hardly
conscious that it is an island. We pass by the mouth of the bay which
Bua guards, hardly conscious of the depth of the inlet into which it
leads, or that two cities--Traü and fallen Salona--are washed by its
waters. For the child of Salona, the great object of a Dalmatian
voyage, is coming within sight far away. The mighty campanile of
Spalato rises, kindled with the last rays of sunlight; presently the
cupola of the metropolitan church, the long line of the palace wall,
the buildings of what is plainly no inconsiderable city, stand out
against their mountain background. The sun has gone down behind the
western headland, but we can get our first glimpse of the city, its
arcades and tower and temples, by that moonlight which is as good at
Spalato as at Melrose. We have been in the home of Diocletian, and we
go back to our ship, for the next day to bring us to the one city
along these shores which the might of Venice could never bring into
subjection.
* * * * *
In such a voyage as this many points necessarily escape notice, and
the great objects of study are well reserved for the return journey.
In all travelling for instruction's sake, it is a point specially to
be insisted on that every place should, whenever it is possible, be
seen twice. Nothing fixes a thing so well in the memory as going
through the process of recollection. And, in such a voyage as this, it
is no bad way to go at once to the furthest point, to see on the way
so much of the several points as the arrangements of the steamers
allow, and to stop a longer time at the important places coming back.
In this way a general notion of Dalmatia and its cities is gained
first of all--a notion which may be enlarged and corrected by more
minute examination of the chief places, and of course, foremost among
them, of Spalato itself. But Spalato, though the great object of a
Dalmatian voyage, is by no means its final object. When we have
reached Spalato, we have not yet gone through half our course. Before
we can come back to study its wonders more worthily, we have to spend
a day in the archipelago of larger islands, nearly each of which,
unlike their northern fellows, has some old historical memory. We have
for part of another day to sail along that still narrower strip of
Christendom which fences off Ragusa from the Mussulman, to thread our
way through the lovely Bocche of Cattaro, till we reach the furthest
of Dalmatian cities, with the path to unconquered Montenegro over our
heads.
PARENZO.
1875.
Parenzo, the ancient colony of Parentium, is likely to be, for many
travellers in Istria and Dalmatia, their first point of stoppage after
leaving Trieste. To such travellers it will be the beginning of the
dominion of Venice in spots lying wholly beyond the Hadriatic, the
first glimpse of the long series of lands and cities, from Istria to
Cyprus, which once "looked to the winged lion's marble piles," and
where the winged lion still abides in stone to keep up the memory of
his old dominion. The short voyage is a lovely one. Looking back,
there is Trieste on her hill-side, with her suburbs and detached
houses spreading far away in both directions, and backed by the vast
semicircle of the Julian Alps, with the snowy peaks of their higher
summits soaring above all. The northern part of the Istrian peninsula,
as we see it from the sea, has a strikingly rich and picturesque look,
which is lost as we follow the coast towards the south. The small
Istrian towns, each one of which has its civil and ecclesiastical
history, jut out, each one on its own smaller peninsula; and in this
part of the voyage the spaces between them are not lacking in signs of
human dwelling and cultivation. Capo d'Istria, once Justinopolis, lies
in its gulf to the left, to remind us that we have passed into the
dominions of the Cæsars of the East. Forwards, Pirano stands on its
headland, its _duomo_ rising above the water on arcades built up to
save it from the further effects of the stripping process which is so
clearly seen along the coast. The castle, with its many towers capped
with their Scala battlements, rises over town and church, with a
picturesqueness not common in Italian buildings. The church, on the
other hand, is as far from picturesque as most Italian churches are
without, and the detached campanile is simply, like many other Istrian
bell-towers, a miniature of the great tower of the ruling city. But
neither Capo d'Istria nor Pirano is so likely to cause the traveller
bound for Dalmatia to halt as the other and more famous peninsular
town of Parenzo. Long before Parenzo is reached, the Istrian shore has
lost its beauty, though the Istrian hills, now and then capped by a
hill-side town, and the higher mountains beyond them, tell us
something of the character of the inland scenery. At last the
Parentine headland is reached; the temples which crowned it are no
longer to be seen, but the campanile of the famous _duomo_, with its
Veronese spire, and one or two smaller towers, have taken their place
as the prominent objects of the little city. On the side which would
otherwise be open to the Hadriatic, the isle of Saint Nicolas shuts in
the haven guarded by a round Venetian tower. The other side of the
peninsula is washed by the mouth--here we must not say the estuary--of
a stream yellow as Tiber, which comes rushing down by a small
waterfall from the high ground where the Parentine peninsula joins the
mainland. On this peninsula stood the older _municipium_ of Parentium,
and the colony, some say the Julian Colony of Augustus, others the
Ulpian Colony of Trajan. The zeal of Dr. Kandler, the great master of
Istrian antiquities, made out the position of the forum, patrician and
plebeian, of the capitol, the theatre, and the temples. The traveller
will probably need a guide even to the temples, though one of them
keeps the greater part of its stylobate, and the other one has two
broken fluted columns left. A single inscribed stone in the ancient
forum he can hardly fail to see; but the truth is that the Roman
remains of Parentium are such as concern only immediate inquirers into
local Parentine history. At Pola it is otherwise; there the Roman
remains stand out as the great object, utterly overshadowing the
buildings of later times; but at Parenzo the main interest, as it is
not mediæval so neither is it pagan Roman. As at Ravenna, so at
Parenzo, the real charm is to be found in the traces which it keeps of
the great transitional ages when Roman and Teuton stood side by side.
Against the many objects of Ravenna Parenzo has only to set its one.
It has no palace, no kingly tomb--though the thought cannot fail to
suggest itself that it was from Istrian soil that the mighty stone was
brought which once covered the resting-place of Theodoric. Parenzo has
but a single church of moment, but that church is one which would hold
no mean place even among the glories of Ravenna. The capitol of
Parentium has given way to the episcopal precinct, and the temple of
the capitoline god has given way to the great basilica of Saint
Maurus, the building which now gives Parenzo its chief claim to the
study of those for whom the days of the struggle of Goth and Roman
have a special charm.
* * * * *