imbued with grand ideas. The structures included among the number of
their monuments are, as just observed, “indicative of some abstract
principle of grandeur and power, practically carried out in their
construction.” In the strength of their might, the Titanic race bade
defiance to the deities of Olympus, with whom they are poetically
represented as combating; but that does not preclude our supposing that,
in common with all the generations of man, however barbarous, the giant
races had their religious instincts, their altars, their rites.
Reverence, also, for the memories of their departed heroes, of their
progenitors, was a common feeling, most powerful in the earliest times.
In these two principles we trace the ideas to which the mysterious
monuments of the ancient Sardes owe their origin, and thence we arrive
at a reasonable conclusion respecting their object and uses.
Researches the most extended and the most profound, have failed to
penetrate the obscurity in which the mists of ages have enveloped the
origin of the primeval monuments of all nations, and of the people who
founded them. Something may have been contributed towards the solution
of the difficulties surrounding the subject, if we have been able to
connect existing monuments with a rude race of extraordinary strength,
the supposed giant-builders of those ancient structures. Such buildings
we discover in various parts of the world, varying in their details, but
similar as respects their simple but massive and durable forms. Gigantic
stature and strength of limb we consider to have been the essential
requisites, in the infancy of art, for transporting and raising the
ponderous materials; and these properties were characteristics of the
races of which, and of their Herculean labours, we find everywhere
corresponding traditions.
In the absence of a satisfactory reply to the inquiry, whence, when, or
how the giant race reached Sardinia, we are willing to accept the
alternative, as regards the founders of the Nuraghe and its other
ancient monuments, that these structures were the work of the
autocthonoi, the aboriginal inhabitants. But we embrace the theory in a
different sense from that in which it is proposed; suggesting that the
so-called giants themselves may have been the autocthonoi, and not
immigrants; and the remark is generally applicable. The etymology of the
words used by the Greeks and Romans, to designate the aboriginal races,
supports the conjecture of their identity; for, as already shown[93],
the term “giant” (γίγας) is not descriptive of extraordinary strength,
but, equally with the phrases _autocthonoi_, _terrigenæ_, and
_aborigines_, signifies “the earth-born,” the natives of the soil.
Further than this we cannot here pursue the inquiry. In a work of this
description, it would be idle to speculate on the means by which
aboriginal races, as well as a peculiar fauna and flora, were planted in
distant lands, whether islands or remote continents, on which they have
been found established by colonists and navigators, from the earliest to
the latest times. Ethnologists have laboured to solve the difficulties
surrounding the subject; with what success, those who have studied their
works must decide for themselves.
The Sardinian Nuraghe are probably among the oldest structures in the
world, and may therefore be reasonably considered the works of an
aboriginal race; but their origin, and that of the founders, are equally
involved in impenetrable mystery. Their rude, but massive and shapely,
cones have survived the ruin of the sumptuous edifices of Babylon and
Nineveh, of Ecbatana and Susa, of Tyre and the Egyptian Thebes. Like the
pyramids of Egypt, they have witnessed, from their hoary tops, the
current of untold centuries rolling onwards, wave after wave, in its
turbid course. They have marked the rise and the fall of empires, the
vicissitudes of fortune, the illusory hopes, the vain fears, and the
insatiable desires of successive generations of men, whose brief span of
existence has been that of a moment compared with the centuries that
have looked down from their summits. But unlike the Pyramids, whose
mysteries are partially unveiled, they give no note by which their age
or their history may be discovered. Mute on their solitary mounds, they
give no answer to the inquiries of the traveller or the learned, when
questioned,—what people of Herculean strength and undaunted will reared
their massive walls, wrought the dark cells under the cover of their
domes, and raised the ponderous slab which crowns the cone? No image of
man, no form of beast, neither symbol nor inscription, are sculptured or
graven on the solid blocks, within or without, to tell their tale. Well,
then, may the thoughtful traveller, contemplating with silent wonder
these mysterious cones, soliloquise in some such sort as this:—“Surely
these structures must have been raised before men had learned the arts
of writing and engraving, for how many thousands of the Nuraghe were
built, in successive periods, without their founders having acquired the
faculty of inscribing on them the name of a god or a hero, for a
memorial to future generations.”
CHAP. XXXVI.
_Oristano.—Orange-groves of Milis.—Cagliari.—Description of.—The
Cathedral and Churches.—Religious Laxity.—Ecclesiastical
Statistics.—Vegetable and Fruit Market.—Royal
Museum.—Antiquities.—Coins found in Sardinia.—Phœnician
Remains.—The Sarde Idols._
The high road between Sassari and Cagliari, called the _Strada Reale_,
runs through the great level of the Campidano for a distance of 140
miles, and as there is a daily communication between the two cities by
the well-appointed _diligences_ already mentioned, the journey, unlike
others in Sardinia, is performed with comfort and rapidity. But,
whatever he may gain by the exchange, the traveller will hardly bid
adieu to the mountains and forest-paths of the Gallura and Barbagia
without regret.
About half way, stands Oristano, an old city, of some 6000 inhabitants,
with some of the Spanish character of Alghero. Though fallen from its
former importance, the place is still wealthy, and, in some degree,
commercial. It is, however, deserted in the summer and autumn, when the
atmosphere becomes so pestilential from the inhalations of the
neighbouring stagna and lagunes as to justify the proverb:—
A Oristano che ghe vù,
In Oristano ghe resta!
The most striking object in the place is the belfry of the cathedral, a
detached octangular tower, roofed with a pear-shaped dome, of coloured
tiles, and commanding from the summit a fine view of the plains from the
sea to the distant mountains. The orange groves of Milis, a village
lying a little out of the high road to Oristano, are worth a visit. The
trees are considered the finest in Europe. I have never seen orange
trees that will bear comparison with them in any part of the world,
except on some of the Dutch farms in the Cape colony, where they are
still more magnificent; vying in size with the European oaks, planted,
probably at the same time, by the German settlers from the Black Forest,
the disbanded soldiers of the States of Holland, to whom many of the
African Boers owe their origin. Such orange groves, when loaded with
blossoms and fruit, glowing in the shade of their dense masses of glossy
deep-green foliage, are perhaps the most charming of vegetable
productions. No idea of their richness and beauty can be formed from the
dwarf, round-topped trees, one sees in most orange districts. Here, as
in South Africa, they owe their luxuriance to abundant irrigation. Some
of the trees at Milis are from thirty-five to forty feet high, and there
are said to be 300,000 of them of full growth. The annual produce is
estimated at from fifty to sixty millions of fruit, and, being in great
repute for their quality, they are conveyed to Sassari and Cagliari, and
all parts of the island, the price varying from 1-1/2_d._ to 4-3/4_d._
per dozen, according to circumstances.
Cagliari, the capital of Sardinia, a city containing upwards of 35,000
inhabitants, is seen to most advantage when approached from the sea, the
campagna in the vicinity being neither fertile nor picturesque. Standing
at the head of a noble bay or gulf, twenty-four miles in depth and
twelve across, with good anchorage everywhere, its advantageous position
pointed out Cagliari as a seat of commerce from the earliest times. The
Phœnicians, the Greeks, and Carthaginians were attracted by the fine
harbour, and the inducements offered by the neighbouring heights for the
construction of a fortified town. The Romans made it the chief seat of
their rule in the island. The port, called the Darsena, is capable of
containing more than all the shipping at present frequenting it, with
such a depth of water that, while I was at Cagliari, one of the largest
steamships in the royal Sardinian navy lay alongside the quay.
In the view from the gulf, the eye first rests on the upper town,
surrounded with walls and towers, and crowning the summit of a hill
upwards of 400 feet above the level of the sea. At the base of the
heights lie the suburbs of the Marina, Stampace, and Villanova, the
former occupying the space between the Castello, or Casteddu, as the
whole circuit of the fortified town is called, and the port; and, with
the two other suburbs, on the east and west of the Marina, forming one
long continuous line of irregular buildings. In our _tableau_, the
Casteddu towers proudly over the lower town, which has grown up beneath
it since the Middle Ages. It still retains its original importance,
containing all the principal public buildings, and being the residence
of the government officials, and, in short, the aristocratic quarter.
The best houses in the Marina are occupied by the foreign consuls and
persons engaged in commerce, so that there is a marked distinction
between the upper and lower parts of the city.
Besides a strong citadel, there are, in the circuit of the
fortifications three massive towers, called the Elephant, the Lion, and
the Eagle, built by the Pisans; and the Castello is entered by four
arched and embattled gateways. One of these was in the act of being
demolished during my recent visit to Cagliari, in order to afford freer
communication between the upper town and the Marina. Its removal seemed
emblematic of an improving state of society, tending to level the
barriers of caste, and engage the rising generation of the privileged
orders in pursuits calculated as much for their own benefit as the
development of the resources with which Sardinia abounds.
Easy access to the Casteddu is gained by a circuitous avenue cut on the
sloping side of the hill and under the escarped heights. Being planted
with trees, it forms a pleasant walk, commanding extensive views of the
Campidano, the distant mountains, and the Gulf of Cagliari. The direct
ascent from the Marina is steep and toilsome, it being gained by a
series of narrow avenues and flights of steps, landing in streets
running parallel with that side of the Castello. These also are narrow
as well as lofty, like those of most fortified places in the south of
Europe. Here we find the best shops; and the thoroughfares have a busy
appearance, except in the heat of the day, when most of the inhabitants
indulge in the _siesta_.
The cathedral, standing in the heart of the Castello, was built by the
Pisans with part of the remains of a basilica founded by Constantine. It
is on a grand scale, having three naves, and a presbytery ascended by
several ranges of steps. The church is embellished with fine marbles,
and the ornaments being rich, with some good pictures and grand
monuments, the effect, on the whole, is striking. A crypt hewn out of
the solid rock, under the presbytery, is regarded with great reverence
by the Sardes, as containing the supposed remains of two hundred martyrs
removed there from the church of St. Saturninus, in 1617.
Among the fifty-two churches in the Castello and the suburbs, I will
only mention that of St. Augustine, attached to which is the oratory
built by himself during a short visit to the island. A story is told of
one of the beams for the roof proving too short; upon which the saint,
quoting to the workmen the text declaring that to those who have faith
all things are possible, ordered them to pull at one end while he took
the other, when, scarcely touching it, the beam stretched to the
required length. St. Augustine's remains were transported here in 505,
from Hippo-Regius, where he died, by the Catholic bishops exiled from
Africa by Thrasamond, king of the Vandals.[94] The Chronicles inform us
that these bishops, two hundred and twenty in number, were sustained by
the benevolence of Pope Symmachus, a native of Sardinia, who sent them
every year money and clothes. St. Augustine's relics remained at
Cagliari till 722, when Luitprand, king of the Lombards, in consequence
of the danger to which they were constantly exposed by the invasions of
the Saracens, obtained them from the Cagliarese, and carrying them to
Pavia deposited them in the duomo of that city, where they rested, till
in 1842, these were restored to Hippo by the French.[95]
The church of the Jesuits, at Cagliari, is described as distinguished
among the others for the sumptuousness of its style, and its decorations
of coloured marbles and columns. It was closed, with the adjoining
college, at the time of my visit. The Jesuits formerly possessed large
estates, and had colleges in several of the principal towns of the
island. The whole were suppressed long ago; but in 1823, the late king,
Carlo Felice, partially restored and re-endowed the order, some of the
monks being re-established in the college of Cagliari. Of late years,
there seems to have been a considerable reaction in the temper of the
Sardes as regards religion, at least, in the towns. No people were more
bigoted, more priest-ridden, more credulous of the absurdest
superstitions. But in a conversation I recently had on the subject with
a very intelligent and well-informed friend in the island, he assured me
that the utmost laxity now prevails in the religious sentiments of the
people. They have lost all respect for the clergy, calling them
_bottégaie_, shopkeepers, as mindful only of the gains of their trade;
and the churches _bottége_, shops. There is no vitality in the religion
of the people, the services are a mere mummery, and the system is held
together principally by the attractions of the popular _festas_, such as
those described in a former chapter as scenes of bacchanalian revelry
tricked out in the paraphernalia of religion. As for the Jesuits, the
most obnoxious of the ecclesiastics, my friend stated, that the populace
of Cagliari “burnt them out,” intending, I apprehend, to convey that
they were violently expelled.
In earlier visits to the Continent, and reflecting on the subject at
home, the question had often occurred whether, with advancing
intelligence, and growing aspirations for civil and religious liberty,
the people of Catholic countries might not be drawn, in the course of
events, to a movement similar to that of our own Reformation of the
Church in the 16th century; the ruling powers, as then, taking the
lead, and emancipating their States from the papal yoke. Thus, while
abuses and gross doctrinal errors were reformed, the exterior frame of
the establishment, its hierarchy, ceremonial, privileges and property
would remain intact; the whole system being so arranged as to be brought
into harmony with the action of government, and to meet the demands of
an enlightened age. Why should there not be more reformed national and
independent churches?
In this view, when conversing with foreigners of intelligence, I have
often pointed out the distinction between the Anglican Church and the
“Evangelical” and other Protestant communities abroad. Such a reform
would seem to be well suited to answer the wants of the kingdom of
Sardinia in the present state of her relations with the Court of Rome.
It would consolidate the fabric of the constitutional government; and we
may conceive that the cabinet of Turin, and perhaps the king, are
enlightened enough to be sensible of its advantages.
But it may well be doubted whether the masses of the population, in
either that or any other Catholic country, are ripe for such a
revolution. In this age of reason, the dogmas which formed the war-cries
of Luther and Calvin have lost their influence on the minds of men, and,
except in some sections of the various religious communities, a general
apathy on doctrinal subjects has succeeded the excitement with which the
Reformation was ushered in. The tendency of the present age is in the
direction of more sweeping reforms, and when the time comes, as no
thoughtful man can doubt it will with growing intelligence, for the
people of Europe to cast off the shackles of superstition and bigotry,
it may be feared that things of more serious account than ecclesiastical
systems and institutions may be swept away by the overwhelming tide so
long pent up.
Meanwhile, there appears little probability of any great change. The
territorial distinctions between Catholic and Protestant States remain
much the same as when they were shaped out in the time of the
Reformation, and the wars succeeding it. Each party holds its own; and
there is little probability of a national secession from the Church of
Rome, even in the Sardinian dominions, where many circumstances concur
to point out its expediency, and even its possibility. Among others, it
will not be forgotten, that the standard of Protestantism was raised in
the valleys of Savoy, ages before it floated triumphantly in the north
of Europe.
In 1841 there were 91 monasteries in Sardinia, containing 1093 regular
monks, besides lay brothers, &c., and 16 convents with 260 nuns; the
whole number of persons attached to these institutions being calculated
at 8000. There are about the same number of secular clergy, including
the bishops, dignitaries, and cathedral chapters, with the parochial
clergy, the island being divided into 393 parishes. The population of
Sardinia, by the last returns I was able to procure[96], was 541,907 in
1850; so that one-ninth were ecclesiastics of one description or
another. It should be stated, however, that most, if not all, the
monasteries and convents have been lately suppressed, and the religious
pensioned off, so that the system is dying out.
The revenues of the bishops' sees, and the cathedral and parochial
clergy, were calculated in 1841 at about 66,000_l._, arising from church
lands, besides the tithes, estimated at 1,500,000 lire nove, or
60,000_l._, supposed to be a low estimate, the tithes being worth one
million of lire more. These revenues are exclusive of voluntary
contributions, alms, offerings, and collections. The church lands
contributed upwards of 3000_l._ annually as state subsidies, for the
national debt, the maintaining roads and bridges, and the conveyance of
the post. Mr. Tyndale estimates “the revenue of the see of Cagliari at
from 60,000 to 80,000 scudi,—from 11,520_l._ to 15,360_l._ per annum;
while that of the priests is about 1000 scudi, or 192_l._” This gives
some idea of the incomes of the Sardinian clergy. I imagine that the
government has not interfered with any part of the ecclesiastical
revenues, except those attached to the monasteries.
The fruit and vegetable markets of large foreign towns must always be
attractive to a traveller, especially in the South and East, where the
fruit, in great varieties, is so abundant, and he meets with vegetables
unknown in the gardens and cookery of his own country. Not only so, but
the dresses, and even the gestures and manners, of the country people,
to say nothing of the dealings of the buyers, form a never-failing
source of interest and amusement; while an additional zest is lent in a
warm climate, by the freshness of the early hour at which the visit must
be paid to be really enjoyed. The market at Cagliari is held in the
suburb of Stampace, and approached by one of those avenues shaded with
exotic trees, which make such agreeable promenades in the neighbourhood
of the city. The principal supply comes from Pula, Arabus, and other
villages at considerable distances from Cagliari; the soil in the
vicinity being too arid to be productive. The supply appeared abundant,
and of excellent quality. Among the fruits,—it was in the early part of
September,—I noted grapes, figs, pears, oranges, lemons, citrons,
peaches, melons, and prickly pears. Among the vegetables, the heaps of
tomatas, chilis, and other condiments were surprising, and there were
gigantic “_torzi_,” a kind of turnip-cabbage, and other varieties, whose
names have escaped my memory.
My visit to the Royal Museum was also paid at an early hour, through the
kindness of Signor Cara, the Curator, who was so obliging as to show me
also his cabinet of antiques at his private residence,—rich in cameos,
intaglios, and scarabei of rare beauty. The Royal Museum occupies a
suite of small apartments in the University. The collection owes great
part of its objects of interest, and their good order and arrangement,
to the indefatigable zeal and disinterested devotion of Signor Cara,
whose appointments, and the allowance for purchasing objects, are not
unworthy of a liberal government.
The collection of Roman antiquities occupying the entrance-wall is very
meagre, considering the many stations established in the island during
the republic and empire. Besides two colossal consular statues, having
an air of dignity, and with the toga well chiselled, there was little to
observe but some Roman milestones, sarcophagi, and fragments of various
kinds.
[Illustration: SARDO-ROMAN COIN.]
The coins of the Roman period are numerous, but most of them of little
value. One here figured is, however, unique; being, I imagine, the only
coin known to have been struck in the island. Atius Balbus, whose name
and bust appear on the face[97], was grandfather of the Emperor
Augustus, and prefect of Sardinia about sixty years before Christ. The
reverse represents a head wearing a singular cap, crowned by an ostrich
plume; with a sceptre, and the words “Sardus Pater,” who is supposed to
be the founder of Nora, the first town built in Sardinia, and of Libyan
and Phœnician origin.[98]
[Illustration: CARTHAGINIAN COIN.]
The cabinet also contains about 100 coins of the Carthaginian period.
Many such are found in the island, but, as may be supposed, not in
numbers equal to those which attest the long duration of the Roman
power. While Captain Smyth was engaged in his survey of the coast, a
farmer in the island of St. Pietro, successively a Greek, Carthaginian,
and Roman station, passed his ploughshare over an amphora of
Carthaginian brass coins, of which Captain Smyth purchased about 250.
“They were,” he states, “with two exceptions, of the usual type:
obverse, the head of Ceres; and reverse, a horse or palm-tree, or both.”
Some presented to me by Carlo Rugiu, one of which is here figured, have
a horse's head on one face, and the palm-tree with fruit, probably
dates, on the other.
There are specimens in the British Museum, but not so good as those
given me by Signor Rugiu. The coins in the possession of Captain Smyth
appear to have represented the horse in full detail, as he mentions the
peculiarity of their having a Punic character between the horse's legs,
differing in every one. It need hardly be observed how appropriate, on
an African coin, were such devices as the date-palm of the desert, and
the horse, emblematic of its fiery cavalry.
[Illustration: SARACEN COIN.]