BORDIGHERA
Ventimiglia—Internecine conflicts—Republics—Genoa obtains the
Ligurian coast—Siege of Ventimiglia—Guelf and Ghibellines—The
Lascaris family: Paul Louis Lascaris—The Cathedral and
Baptistery—S. Michaele—Camporosso—Dolceacqua—Bordighera—San
Ampelio—Relics—Retreat of the sea.
VENTIMIGLIA, crowning a rocky ridge above the Roya, was formerly the
capital of a county comprising of all the coast to Porto Maurizio. What
Mr. Adington Symonds says of Italian towns generally in the Middle Ages
applies equally to those on the Riviera:—
“It would seem as though the most ancient furies of antagonistic
races, enchained and suspended for centuries by the magic of Rome, had
been unloosed; as though the indigenous populations, tamed by antique
culture, were reverting to their primeval instincts. Nor is this the
end of the perplexity. Not only are the cities at war with each other,
but they are plunged in ceaseless strife within the circuit of their
ramparts. The people with the nobles, the burghs with the castles,
the plebeians with the burgher aristocracy, the men of commerce with
the men of arms and ancient lineage, Guelfs and Ghibellines, clash
together in persistent fury. One half the city expels the other half.
The exiles roam abroad, cement alliances, and return to extirpate
their conquerors. Fresh proscriptions and new expulsions follow.
Again alliances are made and revolutions are accomplished. All the
ancient feuds of the towns are crossed, recrossed, and tangled in a
web of madness that defies analysis.”[18]
Certain prominent and prevailing features pertain to this portion of
the Ligurian seaboard. The towns, even the villages, are planted in
spots as inaccessible as could be obtained; they were all walled about
in the rocks whereon they stood, and were so crowded within their walls
that the “high street” does not attain to a width beyond nine feet, and
every lateral street is six feet and even less in width. The houses
run to a great height, and hold themselves up mutually by throwing out
buttresses, arched beneath, for their stay one against another. The
inhabitants of the seaboard were driven to this by fear of the Moorish
pirates.
These little communities organised themselves as republics, with their
consuls, freely elected. But the nobles, living in their castles,
looked upon them with jealous eyes. They had their serfs under them,
and they saw that these villages and towns were growing in consequence
and in wealth. Unhappily every town was at enmity with every other
town—each was jealous of the other; and the nobles offered their
services, generally to a distant town against that nearest at hand.
When they had served against the rival place, they asked for, and
were allowed, a town residence. Then the palace of the noble in the
walled city, or even village, became a centre of intrigue. Parties were
formed in every town, and the nobles and wealthy burghers arrogated to
themselves supreme control over the affairs of the place. This led
to revolts and fighting in the streets. On the Ligurian coast, the
Republic of Genoa stepped in, took advantage of these civic broils,
and, by plausible assurances of good government under her strong hand,
managed to get nearly the whole seaboard, with its towns, under her
protection. The protection Genoa afforded soon turned to exaction and
interference with the liberties of the towns she protected. Thenceforth
ensued a series of revolts.
Ventimiglia, which was a place under the rule of its count, was
taken and sacked by the Genoese in 1140, and its count constrained
to make submission. The mouth of the Roya, with its harbour, excited
the jealousy and ambition of Genoa, as did in like manner Nice and
Villefranche; for Genoa desired to monopolise the whole of the trade
of the Mediterranean along the Ligurian coast and Corsica. Allies
and friendly towns could traffic freely with Genoa; but the ships of
independent states were taxed, and their freights almost crushed by
onerous duties, before they could enter the port. The sea-coast towns
like Ventimiglia and Villefranche, not under Genoese control, were
a hindrance to the control and monopoly of the entire trade by the
grasping Republic, consequently the Genoese were persistent in their
attempts to force them to submission.
In 1196 the count and the Genoese combined against the city of
Ventimiglia, and failing, in spite of a siege of two months, to capture
the town, they organised a league of the whole of Liguria against
the gallant and resolute place. The allies established their camp on
the Cape of S. Ampelio and ravaged the country, but could not reduce
Ventimiglia. Then the Genoese spread a report that a large Ventimiglian
galley which had been cruising off the Spanish coast had been captured,
and that all the crew would be hung unless the town surrendered. The
Ventimiglians, in great alarm for their kinsmen, submitted, and the
Genoese entered and took possession of the town.
In the year 1238 ensued a general rising in places of importance
along the coast occasioned by the intolerable exactions of Genoa, and
its interference with the liberties of the towns. The governor of
Ventimiglia took refuge in the castle and sent a messenger to Genoa for
help.
Fourteen Genoese galleys were despatched to his aid, and hovered about
the mouth of the Roya. After a severe conflict, the Genoese succeeded
in landing and taking the city. At this time a number of the citizens
migrated and founded a colony at Bordighera, but of this the Genoese
disapproved, and they sent a fleet in 1239 and destroyed the little
settlement. The contests of Guelfs and Ghibellines broke out, to
aggravate the disorder and misery of the country.
Some clear-headed men saw that Italy was, like ancient Greece, a
congeries of conflicting atoms with no bond, no consistence, and
no chance of becoming a nation, a power, that no chance existed of
domestic strife being stayed unless there were some strong central
government to hold all the jarring elements in compulsory quietude.
They looked back to the grand days of Rome, and hoped, under an
emperor, to make of Italy once again what she had been, a dominant
power in the world, and one in which, within her Italian borders, peace
would be maintained. This was the Ghibelline dream and policy. But the
opposed faction was for the maintenance of the present disintegration,
the continuance of the independence of every little town, or rather
of its own party in the town. The Pope naturally was zealous on this
side. He dreaded an united and strong Italy, which would control him.
His only chance of occupying the most prominent place and exerting
the greatest power in the Peninsula lay in fomenting disorder, in
setting every princeling and every town by the ears. Accordingly,
whilst posturing as champion of the liberties of the republics, he was
actuated solely by self-interest, which lay in keeping all powers in
Italy weak by periodical blood-letting. The Papacy was the great and
persistent enemy to national unity. The party of independence was that
of the Guelfs.
Frederick II. united the empire and the kingdom of the Two Sicilies
under one sceptre. Master of the South, he sought to recover the
lost prerogatives of the empire in Lombardy and Tuscany, and it is
probable that he would have succeeded and consolidated Italy into one
kingdom but for the bitter hostility of the Papacy, which carried on
an implacable war of extermination against the house of Hohenstaufen.
The struggle was for an united Italy, a strong Italy, a peaceful
Italy, and this was precisely what the Popes would not endure to have.
They dreaded the formation of a single kingdom in Italy, with, as a
consequence, the presence there of a rival and predominant power. But
this purpose of the Popes was not seen clearly at the time. Dante saw
it; he knew that the future of Italy was involved in the contest, and
he could not understand aloofness in the strife. He terms those who did
not feel the pangs and ecstasies of partisanship in this mortal strife,
“wretches who never lived,” and he consigned them to wander homeless on
the skirts of limbo, among the off-scourings of creation.
Banners, ensigns, heraldic colours, followed the divisions of faction.
Ghibellines wore the feathers in their caps on one side, Guelfs on
the other. Ghibellines cut up their fruit at table crosswise, Guelfs
straight down; Ghibellines sported white roses, Guelfs affected those
that were red. Yawning, throwing of dice, gestures in speaking, and
swearing, served as pretexts for distinguishing the one half of Italy
from the other. So late as the middle of the fifteenth century, the
Ghibellines of Milan pulled down the figure of Christ from the high
altar of Crema, and burnt it, because the face was turned towards the
Guelf shoulder.[19] The Grimaldi were strong Guelfs; the county of Nice
was so as well, but the town was Ghibelline. The Lascaris of Tende and
Ventimiglia, the Dorias of Dolceacqua and Oneglia were Ghibelline.
The county of Ventimiglia had been formed in 778 by Charlemagne, and
given by him to a Genoese noble, Guido Guerra, with the title of
Marquess of the Maritime Alps, on condition that he should maintain at
his own cost a company of soldiers to defend the littoral within his
Marquisate. The county passed in the thirteenth century to William, son
of the Greek Emperor Lascaris II., of Nicæa, who married the heiress
and descendant of the Guido Guerra family. But William Lascaris soon
after ceded the county to Charles of Anjou, in exchange for diverse
other fiefs in the interior of Provence, amongst others that of
Tourvès, between Brignoles and S. Maximin, where may be seen the ruins
of the noble castle of the Lascaris. In 1266, Charles of Anjou, in his
turn, ceded the county of Ventimiglia to the Grimaldi and Fieschi,
consuls of the Republic of Genoa, on the condition that they should
furnish provisions and munitions to the Provençal troops occupying the
kingdom of Naples.
The county of Tende was founded by Charles of Anjou for the Princess
Irene, daughter of Theodore Lascaris, and sister of the above-mentioned
William, when she married Robert Guerra of the family of the Counts of
Ventimiglia, and Robert then abandoned his patronymic of Guerra and
assumed that of Lascaris. The county of Tende subsisted till 1579, and
was then ceded by Henrietta, Duchess of Maine, last descendant of the
Lascaris-Guerra to Emmanuel-Philibert, Duke of Savoy.
Theodore Lascaris I. had married Anna, daughter of Alexis III., and he
was chosen Emperor of Constantinople at the time when the Crusaders
occupied Byzantium and founded there a Latin empire, under Baldwin
of Flanders, 1204. Theodore was constrained to fly into Anatolia and
make of Nicæa the capital of the Greek empire; so it remained till
the expulsion of the Latins in 1261. The only daughter of Theodore
Lascaris I. married John Ducas, who succeeded to the Empire of Nicæa.
Ducas died in 1255, leaving a son, Theodore Lascaris II., who died in
1259, and his eight-year-old son John remained to be the victim of the
unscrupulous Michael Palæologus, who had his eyes torn out. This John
had, however, five sisters, and one of these, Eudoxia, in 1263 married
William, Count of Ventimiglia; and another, Irene, became, as already
said, the mother and ancestress of the Lascaris Counts of Tende. The
Lascaris arms are: gules, a two-headed eagle displayed, or.
Paul Louis Lascaris, who entered the Order of Malta, belonged to the
Ventimiglian branch of the family. He was born in Provence in 1774. He
was on the isle when Napoleon appeared before Malta in 1798. Hompesch
was Grand Master, a weak old man; the knights of the Order might easily
have defended the island till the English fleet under Nelson came to
its aid, but French gold and promises had created a party of traitors
within; of these Lascaris was chief, and on June 11th La Valetta
capitulated. “On my word,” said General Caffarelli, “it is well that
there was someone inside to unlock the gates to us, for otherwise we
should never have got in.”
After his treason Lascaris did not venture to remain in Malta, but
attended Bonaparte to Egypt. Upon the rupture of the Treaty of Amiens
in 1803, Napoleon, having resolved on attacking the English in India,
commissioned Lascaris to go to the East, there make the necessary
studies for the execution of his plan, and explore the frontiers, map
down roads, wells, etc. Whilst Lascaris was in the East he married
a beautiful Georgian akin to Soliman Pacha. In 1810 he visited in
succession the Arab tribes in Mesopotamia, and turned his face
homewards in 1814. On reaching Constantinople he heard of the fall of
Bonaparte, and departed for Cairo, where he died shortly after, and all
his notes and maps fell into the hands of the British consul there. All
known of his adventures in the East comes from a narrative given to the
world by his dragoman Fatalba.
Ventimiglia is not only in itself a marvel of picturesqueness,
occupying a ridge above the Roya, but its situation, with the sea
before and the snow-clad Alps behind, is exquisitely beautiful.
The streets are narrow, as space was precious, but the Strada Grande
is lined with quaint old houses of the city nobility and well-to-do
citizens, and have marble balconies, their sculptured entrances, and
heraldic decorations. The cathedral occupies a terrace, with the palace
of the Lascaris having an open loggia and staircase on one side of
the piazza. The cathedral, dedicated to S. Barnabas, fondly deemed to
have founded it, is a fine church of the thirteenth century, vaulted
without groining ribs. Beneath it, at the east end, is the very early
baptistery, unhappily remodelled in the seventeenth century. This
contains a huge stone baptismal basin, with stage inside on which
children could stand, whereas it is deep in the middle for adults. Two
recesses are at the sides; one of these is for the priest performing
the ceremony. In the vestries are portraits of the bishops, several in
surplice and rochet, looking very much like English prelates.
But more interesting even than the cathedral is S. Michaele, at the
farther end of the town, a church of the twelfth century, with a rich
west doorway, having on the capitals a range of quaint carving of human
beings. The church is vaulted in the same manner as the cathedral.
Beneath the choir is a crypt, one pillar of which is a milestone from
the Via Aurelia, of the time of the Emperor Antoninus. A slab in the
floor bears rich early interlaced work.
The side aisles of this church had fallen into ruin, but have been
judiciously restored, along with the body of the church.
Outside the walls of the town, towering above it, are the remains of a
castle, which is held to date from Roman times, but which was enlarged,
altered, and mainly rebuilt in mediæval days.
[Illustration: DOLCEACQUA]
At Camporosso, up the Nervia, is a little church of the early part of
the twelfth century, now serving as chapel to the cemetery. It has apse
and tower of this period; the rest has been rebuilt. It is constructed
of rolled stones from the river-bed. The roof consists of slabs of
nummulite limestone.
Above Camporosso on the Nervia is Dolceacqua.
“After winding through woods of olives, carpeted in spring by young
corn and bright green flax, Dolceacqua suddenly bursts upon the view,
stretching across a valley, whose sides are covered with forests of
olives and chestnuts, and which is backed by fine snow mountains.
Through the town winds the deep blue stream of the Nervia, flowing
under a tall bridge of one wide arch, and above frowns the huge
palatial castle, perched upon a perpendicular cliff, with sunlight
streaming through its long lines of glassless windows. The streets are
almost closed in with archways, which give them the look of gloomy
crypts, only opening here and there to let in a ray of sunlight and a
strip of blue sky. They lead up the steep ascent to the castle where
the Doria once reigned as sovereign princes.”[20]
An electric tram connects Ventimiglia with Bordighera. This latter
place is unceremoniously dismissed by Hare in these words: “The town
contains nothing worth seeing.” The statement is certainly incorrect.
Old Bordighera contains a good deal that is worth seeing—the quaint
town gates, the steep and picturesque streets, and the glorious view
from the little piazza before the church. There also by the seaside is
the chapel of S. Ampelio with its cave, in which the apostle of the
district lived and died.
Little authentic is known of S. Ampelio, for there is no early life of
him extant. Tradition says that he was a blacksmith from the Thebaid,
who left Egypt and settled here. His bones were carried off in the
twelfth century to San Remo, and thence later to Genoa. The fête of S.
Ampelio is on May 14th. The chapel was enlarged and restored in 1852.
The transfer of the relics of S. Ampelio to San Remo exhibits a curious
feature of mediæval enthusiasm. In 1140 the citizens of San Remo, at
war with Ventimiglia, took a number of the townsmen prisoners. They
would release them on one condition only, that they should reveal where
were secreted the bones of S. Ampelio. The Ventimiglians, to obtain
their liberty, betrayed the secret; the old hermit had been laid in the
grotto he had inhabited during his life. Thereupon the people of San
Remo carried off his body.
What is the peculiar fancy for possessing a few pounds of phosphate of
lime? Whence comes the devotion to relics?
S. Chrysostom tells us of pilgrims travelling from the ends of the
earth to Arabia to see Job’s dunghill, and he says that they drew “much
profit and philosophy” from the sight.
One can understand how that certain churches should be greedy to
possess relics, and steal, or even invent them, because the possession
brought money into their coffers; but the money would not have come had
there not been, deep-seated in the hearts of the people, a conviction
that there was something supernatural, a divine power surrounding and
emanating from these relics.
[Illustration: S. AMPELIO]
For my own part I think it is a survival of the worship of ancestors
that existed among the prehistoric races of Europe. We know that to
them the sepulchre, the dolmen, the kistvaen, the cairn, were the most
holy spots in the world, the centres of their common life, the tie that
bound a clan together. When these primeval people became absorbed in
conquering races, and adopted other religions, they carried along with
them the cult of old bones and ashes. The ancestor was forgotten, and
the spiritual father, the saint, took his place, and the worship of the
dead was transferred from the ancestor of the tribe to the apostle of
the new religion in the district.
Bordighera was founded in 1470 by thirty-two families, who migrated to
it from Ventimiglia. There was, however, at the time some portion of
walls standing, and these new settlers completed the enclosure, and
squatted within.
At one time, perhaps even then, the sea came up to the foot of the
rock, where are now orange and lemon orchards, but the current that
sets from west to east along this coast filled it up. On digging, the
old sea-shore is found, and the name Bordighera signifies a creek
provided with stakes and nets for catching fish.
Bordighera is happy in having had an exhaustive historian, Mr. F. F.
Hamilton (_Bordighera and the Western Riviera_, London, 1883), and this
work is supplemented by Mr. W. Scott’s _Rock Villages of the Riviera_,
London, 1898, by which he means the villages built upon rocky heights.
He describes only such, however, as are near Bordighera. This book will
be a help to such as desire to make excursions from that winter resort,
and these two works together render it unnecessary for me to enter more
fully into the history of Ventimiglia and its offspring Bordighera, and
into minute description of them and their neighbourhood.