OLD CALABRIA

I

SARACEN LUCERA

I find it hard to sum up in one word the character of Lucera—the effect

it produces on the mind; one sees so many towns that the freshness of

their images becomes blurred. The houses are low but not undignified;

the streets regular and clean; there is electric light and somewhat

indifferent accommodation for travellers; an infinity of barbers and

chemists. Nothing remarkable in all this. Yet the character is there,

if one could but seize upon it, since every place has its genius.

Perhaps it lies in a certain feeling of aloofness that never leaves one

here. We are on a hill—a mere wave of ground; a kind of spur, rather,

rising up from the south—quite an absurd little hill, but sufficiently

high to dominate the wide Apulian plain. And the nakedness of the land

stimulates this aerial sense. There are some trees in the “Belvedere”

or public garden that lies on the highest part of the spur and affords

a fine view north and eastwards. But the greater part were only planted

a few years ago, and those stretches of brown earth, those

half-finished walks and straggling pigmy shrubs, give the place a crude

and embryonic appearance. One thinks that the designers might have done

more in the way of variety; there are no conifers excepting a few

cryptomerias and yews which will all be dead in a couple of years, and

as for those yuccas, beloved of Italian municipalities, they will have

grown more dyspeptic-looking than ever. None the less, the garden will

be a pleasant spot when the ilex shall have grown higher; even now it

is the favourite evening walk of the citizens. Altogether, these public

parks, which are now being planted all over south Italy, testify to

renascent taste; they and the burial-places are often the only spots

where the deafened and light-bedazzled stranger may find a little green

content; the content, respectively, of _L’Allegro_ and _Il Penseroso._

So the cemetery of Lucera, with its ordered walks drowned in the shade

of cypress—roses and gleaming marble monuments in between—is a charming

retreat, not only for the dead.

The Belvedere, however, is not my promenade. My promenade lies yonder,

on the other side of the valley, where the grave old Suabian castle

sits on its emerald slope. It does not frown; it reposes firmly, with

an air of tranquil and assured domination; “it has found its place,” as

an Italian observed to me. Long before Frederick Barbarossa made it the

centre of his southern dominions, long before the Romans had their

fortress on the site, this eminence must have been regarded as the key

of Apulia. All round the outside of those turreted walls (they are

nearly a mile in circumference; the enclosure, they say, held sixty

thousand people) there runs a level space. This is my promenade, at all

hours of the day. Falcons are fluttering with wild cries overhead; down

below, a long unimpeded vista of velvety green, flecked by a few trees

and sullen streamlets and white farmhouses—the whole vision framed in a

ring of distant Apennines. The volcanic cone of Mount Vulture, land of

Horace, can be detected on clear days; it tempts me to explore those

regions. But eastward rises up the promontory of Mount Gargano, and on

the summit of its nearest hill one perceives a cheerful building, some

village or convent, that beckons imperiously across the intervening

lowlands. Yonder lies the venerable shrine of the archangel Michael,

and Manfred’s town. . . .

This castle being a _national monument,_ they have appointed a

custodian to take charge of it; a worthless old fellow, full of

untruthful information which he imparts with the hushed and

conscience-stricken air of a man who is selling State secrets.

“That corner tower, sir, is the King’s tower. It was built by the

King.”

“But you said just now that it was the Queen’s tower.”

“So it is. The Queen—she built it.”

“What Queen?”

“What Queen? Why, the Queen—the Queen the German professor was talking

about three years ago. But I must show you some skulls which we found

_(sotto voce)_ in a subterranean crypt. They used to throw the poor

dead folk in here by hundreds; and under the Bourbons the criminals

were hanged here, thousands of them. The blessed times! And this tower

is the Queen’s tower.”

“But you called it the King’s tower just now.”

“Just so. That is because the King built it.”

“What King?”

“Ah, sir, how can I remember the names of all those gentlemen? I

haven’t so much as set eyes on them! But I must now show you some round

sling-stones which we excavated _(sotto voce)_ in a subterranean

crypt——”

One or two relics from this castle are preserved in the small municipal

museum, founded about five years ago. Here are also a respectable

collection of coins, a few prehistoric flints from Gargano, some quaint

early bronze figurines and mutilated busts of Roman celebrities carved

in marble or the recalcitrant local limestone. A dignified old lion—one

of a pair (the other was stolen) that adorned the tomb of Aurelius,

prastor of the Roman Colony of Luceria—has sought a refuge here, as

well as many inscriptions, lamps, vases, and a miscellaneous collection

of modern rubbish. A plaster cast of a Mussulman funereal stone, found

near Foggia, will attract your eye; contrasted with the fulsome

epitaphs of contemporary Christianity, it breathes a spirit of noble

resignation:—

“In the name of Allah, the Merciful, the Compassionate. May God show

kindness to Mahomet and his kinsfolk, fostering them by his favours!

This is the tomb of the captain Jacchia Albosasso. God be merciful to

him. He passed away towards noon on Saturday in the five days of the

month Moharram of the year 745 (5th April, 1348). May Allah likewise

show mercy to him who reads.”

One cannot be at Lucera without thinking of that colony of twenty

thousand Saracens, the escort of Frederick and his son, who lived here

for nearly eighty years, and sheltered Manfred in his hour of danger.

The chronicler Spinelli[1] has preserved an anecdote which shows

Manfred’s infatuation for these loyal aliens. In the year 1252 and in

the sovereign’s presence, a Saracen official gave a blow to a

Neapolitan knight—a blow which was immediately returned; there was a

tumult, and the upshot of it was that the Italian was condemned to lose

his hand; all that the Neapolitan nobles could obtain from Manfred was

that his left hand should be amputated instead of his right; the Arab,

the cause of all, was merely relieved of his office. Nowadays, all

memory of Saracens has been swept out of the land. In default of

anything better, they are printing a local halfpenny paper called “Il

Saraceno“—a very innocuous pagan, to judge by a copy which I bought in

a reckless moment.

[1] These journals are now admitted to have been manufactured in the

sixteenth century by the historian Costanzo for certain genealogical

purposes of his own. Professor Bernhardi doubted their authenticity in

1869, and his doubts have been confirmed by Capasso.

This museum also contains a buxom angel of stucco known as the “Genius

of Bourbonism.” In the good old days it used to ornament the town hall,

fronting the entrance; but now, degraded to a museum curiosity, it

presents to the public its back of ample proportions, and the curator

intimated that he considered this attitude quite

appropriate—historically speaking, of course. Furthermore, they have

carted hither, from the Chamber of Deputies in Rome, the chair once

occupied by Ruggiero Bonghi. Dear Bonghi! From a sense of duty he used

to visit a certain dull and pompous house in the capital and forthwith

fall asleep on the nearest sofa; he slept sometimes for two hours at a

stretch, while all the other visitors were solemnly marched to the spot

to observe him—behold the great Bonghi: he slumbers! There is a statue

erected to him here, and a street has likewise been named after another

celebrity, Giovanni Bovio. If I informed the townsmen of my former

acquaintance with these two heroes, they would perhaps put up a marble

tablet commemorating the fact. For the place is infected with the

patriotic disease of monumentomania. The drawback is that with every

change of administration the streets are re-baptized and the statues

shifted to make room for new favourites; so the civic landmarks come

and go, with the swiftness of a cinematograph.

Frederick II also has his street, and so has Pietro Giannone. This

smacks of anti-clericalism. But to judge by the number of priests and

the daily hordes of devout and dirty pilgrims that pour into the town

from the fanatical fastnesses of the Abruzzi—picturesque, I suppose we

should call them—the country is sufficiently orthodox. Every

self-respecting family, they tell me, has its pet priest, who lives on

them in return for spiritual consolations.

There was a religious festival some nights ago in honour of Saint

Espedito. No one could tell me more about this holy man than that he

was a kind of pilgrim-warrior, and that his cult here is of recent

date; it was imported or manufactured some four years ago by a rich

merchant who, tired of the old local saints, built a church in honour

of this new one, and thereby enrolled him among the city gods.

[Illustration: Lion of Lucera]

On this occasion the square was seething with people: few

women, and the men mostly in dark clothes; we are already under Moorish

and Spanish influences. A young boy addressed me with the polite

question whether I could tell him the precise number of the population

of London.

That depended, I said, on what one described as London. There was what

they called greater London——

It depended! That was what he had always been given to understand. . .

. And how did I like Lucera? Rather a dull little place, was it not?

Nothing like Paris, of course. Still, if I could delay my departure for

some days longer, they would have the trial of a man who had murdered

three people: it might be quite good fun. He was informed that they

hanged such persons in England, as they used to do hereabouts; it

seemed rather barbaric, because, naturally, nobody is ever responsible

for his actions; but in England, no doubt_——_

That is the normal attitude of these folks towards us and our

institutions. We are savages, hopeless savages; but a little savagery,

after all, is quite endurable. Everything is endurable if you have lots

of money, like these English.

As for myself, wandering among that crowd of unshaven creatures, that

rustic population, fiercely gesticulating and dressed in slovenly hats

and garments, I realized once again what the average Anglo-Saxon would

ask himself: Are they _all_ brigands, or only some of them? That music,

too—what is it that makes this stuff so utterly unpalatable to a

civilized northerner? A soulless cult of rhythm, and then, when the

simplest of melodies emerges, they cling to it with the passionate

delight of a child who has discovered the moon. These men are still in

the age of platitudes, so far as music is concerned; an infantile aria

is to them what some foolish rhymed proverb is to the Arabs: a thing of

God, a portent, a joy for ever.

You may visit the cathedral; there is a fine _verde antico_ column on

either side of the sumptuous main portal. I am weary, just now, of

these structures; the spirit of pagan Lucera—“Lucera dei Pagani” it

used to be called—has descended upon me; I feel inclined to echo

Carducci’s “_Addio, nume semitico!_” One sees so many of these sombre

churches, and they are all alike in their stony elaboration of

mysticism and wrong-headedness; besides, they have been described, over

and over again, by enthusiastic connaisseurs who dwell lovingly upon

their artistic quaintnesses but forget the grovelling herd that reared

them, with the lash at their backs, or the odd type of humanity—the

gargoyle type—that has since grown up under their shadow and

influence. I prefer to return to the sun and stars, to my promenade

beside the castle walls.

But for the absence of trees and hedges, one might take this to be some

English prospect of the drowsy Midland counties—so green it is, so

golden-grey the sky. The sunlight peers down dispersedly through

windows in this firmament of clouded amber, alighting on some

mouldering tower, some patch of ripening corn or distant city—Troia,

lapped in Byzantine slumber, or San Severo famed in war. This in

spring. But what days of glistering summer heat, when the earth is

burnt to cinders under a heavenly dome that glows like a brazier of

molten copper! For this country is the Sahara of Italy.

One is glad, meanwhile, that the castle does not lie in the natal land

of the Hohenstaufen. The interior is quite deserted, to be sure; they

have built half the town of Lucera with its stones, even as Frederick

quarried them out of the early Roman citadel beneath; but it is at

least a harmonious desolation. There are no wire-fenced walks among the

ruins, no feeding-booths and cheap reconstructions of draw-bridges and

police-notices at every corner; no gaudy women scribbling to their

friends in the “Residenzstadt” post cards illustrative of the

“Burgruine,” while their husbands perspire over mastodontic beer-jugs.

There is only peace.

These are the delights of Lucera: to sit under those old walls and

watch the gracious cloud-shadows dappling the plain, oblivious of

yonder assemblage of barbers and politicians. As for those who can

reconstruct the vanished glories of such a place—happy they! I find the

task increasingly difficult. One outgrows the youthful age of

hero-worship; next, our really keen edges are so soon worn off by

mundane trivialities and vexations that one is glad to take refuge in

simpler pleasures once more—to return to primitive emotionalism. There

are so many Emperors of past days! And like the old custodian, I have

not so much as set eyes on them.

Yet this Frederick is no dim figure; he looms grandly through the

intervening haze. How well one understands that craving for the East,

nowadays; how modern they were, he and his son the “Sultan of Lucera,”

and their friends and counsellors, who planted this garden of exotic

culture! Was it some afterglow of the luminous world that had sunk

below the horizon, or a pale streak of the coming dawn? And if you now

glance down into this enclosure that once echoed with the song of

minstrels

and the soft laughter of women, with the discourse of wits, artists and

philosophers, and the clang of arms—if you look, you will behold

nothing but a green lake, a waving field of grass. No matter. The

ambitions of these men are fairly realized, and every one of us may

keep a body-guard of pagans, an’t please him; and a harem likewise—to

judge by the newspapers.

For he took his Orientalism seriously; he had a harem, with eunuchs,

etc., all proper, and was pleased to give an Eastern colour to his

entertainments. Matthew Paris relates how Frederick’s brother-in-law,

returning from the Holy Land, rested awhile at his Italian court, and

saw, among other diversions, “duas puellas Saracenicas formosas, quae

in pavimenti planitie binis globis insisterent, volutisque globis huo

illucque ferrentur canentes, cymbala manibus collidentes, corporaque

secundum modulos motantes atque flectentes.” I wish I had been there. .

. .

I walked to the castle yesterday evening on the chance of seeing an

eclipse of the moon which never came, having taken place at quite

another hour. A cloudless night, dripping with moisture, the electric

lights of distant Foggia gleaming in the plain. There are brick-kilns

at the foot of the incline, and from some pools in the neighbourhood

issued a loud croaking of frogs, while the pallid smoke of the

furnaces, pressed down by the evening dew, trailed earthward in a long

twisted wreath, like a dragon crawling sulkily to his den. But on the

north side one could hear the nightingales singing in the gardens

below. The dark mass of Mount Gargano rose up clearly in the moonlight,

and I began to sketch out some itinerary of my wanderings on that soil.

There was Sant’ Angelo, the archangel’s abode; and the forest region;

and Lesina with its lake; and Vieste the remote, the end of all things.

. . .

Then my thoughts wandered to the Hohenstaufen and the conspiracy

whereby their fate was avenged. The romantic figures of Manfred and

Conradin; their relentless enemy Charles; Costanza, her brow crowned

with a poetic nimbus (that melted, towards the end, into an aureole of

bigotry); Frangipani, huge in villainy; the princess Beatrix, tottering

from the dungeon where she had been confined for nearly twenty years;

her deliverer Roger de Lauria, without whose resourcefulness and

audacity it might have gone ill with Aragon; Popes and

Palæologus—brilliant colour effects; the king of England and Saint

Louis of France; in the background, dimly discernible, the colossal

shades of Frederick and Innocent, looked in deadly embrace; and the

whole congress of figures enlivened and

interpenetrated as by some electric fluid—the personality of John of

Procida. That the element of farce might not be lacking, Fate contrived

that exquisite royal duel at Bordeaux where the two mighty potentates,

calling each other by a variety of unkingly epithets, enacted a

prodigiously fine piece of foolery for the delectation of Europe.

From this terrace one can overlook both Foggia and Castel

Fiorentino—the beginning and end of the drama; and one follows the

march of this magnificent retribution without a shred of compassion for

the gloomy papal hireling. Disaster follows disaster with mathematical

precision, till at last he perishes miserably, consumed by rage and

despair. Then our satisfaction is complete.

No; not quite complete. For in one point the stupendous plot seems to

have been imperfectly achieved. Why did Roger de Lauria not profit by

his victory to insist upon the restitution of the young brothers of

Beatrix, of those unhappy princes who had been confined as infants in

1266, and whose very existence seems to have faded from the memory of

historians? Or why did Costanza, who might have dealt with her enemy’s

son even as Conradin had been dealt with, not round her magnanimity by

claiming her own flesh and blood, the last scions of a great house? Why

were they not released during the subsequent peace, or at least in

1302? The reason is as plain as it is unlovely; nobody knew what to do

with them. Political reasons counselled their effacement, their

non-existence. Horrible thought, that the sunny world should be too

small for three orphan children! In their Apulian fastness they

remained—in chains. A royal rescript of 1295 orders that they be freed

from their fetters. Thirty years in fetters! Their fate is unknown; the

night of mediævalism closes in upon them once more. . . .

Further musings were interrupted by the appearance of a shape which

approached from round the corner of one of the towers. It came nearer

stealthily, pausing every now and then. Had I evoked, willy-nilly, some

phantom of the buried past?

It was only the custodian, leading his dog Musolino. After a shower of

compliments and apologies, he gave me to understand that it was his

duty, among other things, to see that no one should endeavour to raise

the treasure which was hidden under these ruins; several people, he

explained, had already made the attempt by night. For the rest, I was

quite at liberty to take my pleasure about the castle at all hours. But

as to touching the buried hoard, it was _proibito—_forbidden!

I was glad of the incident, which conjured up for me the Oriental mood

with its genii and subterranean wealth. Straightway this incongruous

and irresponsible old buffoon was invested with a new dignity;

transformed into a threatening Ifrit, the guardian of the gold, or—who

knows?—Iblis incarnate. The gods take wondrous shapes, sometimes.

II

MANFRED’S TOWN

As the train moved from Lucera to Foggia and thence onwards, I had

enjoyed myself rationally, gazing at the emerald plain of Apulia, soon

to be scorched to ashes, but now richly dight with the yellow flowers

of the giant fennel, with patches of ruby-red poppy and asphodels pale

and shadowy, past their prime. I had thought upon the history of this

immense tract of country—upon all the floods of legislation and

theorizings to which its immemorial customs of pasturage have given

birth. . . .

Then, suddenly, the aspect of life seemed to change. I felt unwell, and

so swift was the transition from health that I had wantonly thrown out

of the window, beyond recall, a burning cigar ere realizing that it was

only a little more than half smoked. We were crossing the Calendaro, a

sluggish stream which carefully collects all the waters of this region

only to lose them again in a swamp not far distant; and it was

positively as if some impish sprite had leapt out of those noisome

waves, boarded the train, and flung himself into me, after the fashion

of the “Horla” in the immortal tale.

Doses of quinine such as would make an English doctor raise his

eyebrows have hitherto only succeeded in provoking the Calendaro

microbe to more virulent activity. Nevertheless, _on s’y fait._ I am

studying him and, despite his protean manifestations, have discovered

three principal ingredients: malaria, bronchitis and hay-fever—not your

ordinary hay-fever, oh, no! but such as a mammoth might conceivably

catch, if thrust back from his germless, frozen tundras into the damply

blossoming Miocene.

The landlady of this establishment has a more commonplace name for the

distemper. She calls it “scirocco.” And certainly this pest of the

south blows incessantly; the mountain-line of Gargano is veiled, the

sea’s horizon veiled, the coast-lands of Apulia veiled by its tepid and

unwholesome breath. To cheer

me up, she says that on clear days one can see Castel del Monte, the

Hohenstaufen eyrie, shining yonder above Barletta, forty miles distant.

It sounds rather improbable; still, yesterday evening there arose a

sudden vision of a white town in that direction, remote and dream-like,

far across the water. Was it Barletta? Or Margherita? It lingered

awhile, poised on an errant sunbeam; then sank into the deep.

From this window I look into the little harbour whose beach is dotted

with fishing-boats. Some twenty or thirty sailing-vessels are riding at

anchor; in the early morning they unfurl their canvas and sally forth,

in amicable couples, to scour the azure deep—it is greenish-yellow at

this moment—returning at nightfall with the spoils of ocean, mostly

young sharks, to judge by the display in the market. Their white sails

bear fabulous devices in golden colour of moons and crescents and

dolphins; some are marked like the “orange-tip” butterfly. A gunboat is

now stationed here on a mysterious errand connected with the Albanian

rising on the other side of the Adriatic. There has been whispered talk

of illicit volunteering among the youth on this side, which the

government is anxious to prevent. And to enliven the scene, a steamer

calls every now and then to take passengers to the Tremiti islands. One

would like to visit them, if only in memory of those martyrs of

Bourbonism, who were sent in hundreds to these rocks and cast into

dungeons to perish. I have seen such places; they are vast caverns

artificially excavated below the surface of the earth; into these the

unfortunates were lowered and left to crawl about and rot, the living

mingled with the dead. To this day they find mouldering skeletons,

loaded with heavy iron chains and ball-weights.

A copious spring gushes up on this beach and flows into the sea. It is

sadly neglected. Were I tyrant of Manfredonia, I would build me a fair

marble fountain here, with a carven assemblage of nymphs and

sea-monsters spouting water from their lusty throats, and plashing in

its rivulets. It may well be that the existence of this fount helped to

decide Manfred in his choice of a site for his city; such springs are

rare in this waterless land. And from this same source, very likely, is

derived the local legend of Saint Lorenzo and the Dragon, which is

quite independent of that of Saint Michael the dragon-killer on the

heights above us. These venerable water-spirits, these _dracs,_ are

interesting beasts who went through many metamorphoses ere attaining

their present shape.

Manfredonia lies on a plain sloping very gently

seawards—practically a dead level, and in one of the hottest districts

of Italy. Yet, for some obscure reason, there is no street along the

sea itself; the cross-roads end in abrupt squalor at the shore. One

wonders what considerations—political, aesthetic or hygienic—prevented

the designers of the town from carrying out its general principles of

construction and building a decent promenade by the waves, where the

ten thousand citizens could take the air in the breathless summer

evenings, instead of being cooped up, as they now are, within stifling

hot walls. The choice of Manfredonia as a port does not testify to any

great foresight on the part of its founder—peace to his shade! It will

for ever slumber in its bay, while commerce passes beyond its reach; it

will for ever be malarious with the marshes of Sipontum at its edges.

But this particular defect of the place is not Manfred’s fault, since

the city was razed to the ground by the Turks in 1620, and then built

up anew; built up, says Lenormant, according to the design of the old

city. Perhaps a fear of other Corsair raids induced the constructors to

adhere to the old plan, by which the place could be more easily

defended. Not much of Manfredonia seems to have been completed when

Pacicchelli’s view (1703) was engraved.

Speaking of the weather, the landlady further told me that the wind

blew so hard three months ago—“during that big storm in the winter,

don’t you remember?”—that it broke all the iron lamp-posts between the

town and the station. Now here was a statement sounding even more

improbable than her other one about Castel del Monte, but admitting of

verification. Wheezing and sneezing, I crawled forth, and found it

correct. It must have been a respectable gale, since the cast-iron

supports are snapped in half, every one of them.

Those Turks, by the way, burnt the town on that memorable occasion.

That was a common occurrence in those days. Read any account of their

incursions into Italy during this and the preceding centuries, and you

will find that the corsairs burnt the towns whenever they had time to

set them alight. They could not burn them nowadays, and this points to

a total change in economic conditions. Wood was cut down so heedlessly

that it became too scarce for building purposes, and stone took its

place. This has altered domestic architecture; it has changed the

landscape, denuding the hill-sides that were once covered with timber;

it has impoverished the country by converting fruitful plains into

marshes or arid tracts of stone swept by irregular and intermittent

floods; it has modified, if I mistake

not, the very character of the people. The desiccation of the climate

has entailed a desiccation of national humour.

Muratori has a passage somewhere in his “Antiquities” regarding the old

method of construction and the wooden shingles, _scandulae,_ in use for

roofing—I must look it up, if ever I reach civilized regions again.

At the municipality, which occupies the spacious apartments of a former

Dominican convent, they will show you the picture of a young girl, one

of the Beccarini family, who was carried off at a tender age in one of

these Turkish raids, and subsequently became “Sultana.” Such captive

girls generally married sultans—or ought to have married them; the wish

being father to the thought. But the story is disputed; rightly, I

think. For the portrait is painted in the French manner, and it is

hardly likely that a harem-lady would have been exhibited to a European

artist. The legend goes on to say that she was afterwards liberated by

the Knights of Malta, together with her Turkish son who, as was meet

and proper, became converted to Christianity and died a monk. The

Beccarini family (of Siena, I fancy) might find some traces of her in

their archives. _Ben trovato,_ at all events. When one looks at the

pretty portrait, one cannot blame any kind of “Sultan” for feeling

well-disposed towards the original.

The weather has shown some signs of improvement and tempted me, despite

the persistent “scirocco” mood, to a few excursions into the

neighbourhood. But there seem to be no walks hereabouts, and the hills,

three miles distant, are too remote for my reduced vitality. The

intervening region is a plain of rock carved so smoothly, in places, as

to appear artificially levelled with the chisel; large tracts of it are

covered with the Indian fig (cactus). In the shade of these grotesque

growths lives a dainty flora: trembling grasses of many kinds, rue,

asphodel, thyme, the wild asparagus, a diminutive blue iris, as well as

patches of saxifrage that deck the stone with a brilliant enamel of red

and yellow. This wild beauty makes one think how much better the

graceful wrought-iron balconies of the town would look if enlivened

with blossoms, with pendent carnations or pelargonium; but there is no

great display of these things; the deficiency of water is a

characteristic of the place; it is a flowerless and songless city. The

only good drinking-water is that which is bottled at the mineral

springs of Monte Vulture and sold cheaply enough all over the country.

And the mass of the country people have small charm of feature. Their

faces seem to have been chopped

with a hatchet into masks of sombre virility; a hard life amid burning

limestone deserts is reflected in their countenances.

None the less, they have a public garden; even more immature than that

of Lucera, but testifying to greater taste. Its situation, covering a

forlorn semicircular tract of ground about the old Anjou castle, is _a

priori_ a good one. But when the trees are fully grown, it will be

impossible to see this fine ruin save at quite close quarters—just

across the moat.

I lamented this fact to a solitary gentleman who was strolling about

here and who replied, upon due deliberation:

“One cannot have everything.”

Then he added, as a suggestive afterthought:

“Inasmuch as one thing sometimes excludes another.”

I pause, to observe parenthetically that this habit of uttering

platitudes in the grand manner as though disclosing an idea of vital

novelty (which Charles Lamb, poor fellow, thought peculiar to natives

of Scotland) is as common among Italians as among Englishmen. But

veiled in sonorous Latinisms, the staleness of such remarks assumes an

air of profundity.

“For my part,” he went on, warming to his theme, “I am thoroughly

satisfied. Who will complain of the trees? Only a few makers of bad

pictures. They can go elsewhere. Our country, dear sir, is _encrusted,_

with old castles and other feudal absurdities, and if I had the

management of things——”

The sentence was not concluded, for at that moment his hat was blown

off by a violent gust of wind, and flew merrily over beds of flowering

marguerites in the direction of the main street, while he raced after

it, vanishing in a cloud of dust. The chase must have been long and

arduous; he never returned.

Wandering about the upper regions of this fortress whose chambers are

now used as a factory of cement goods and a refuge for some poor

families, I espied a good pre-renaissance relief of Saint Michael and

the dragon immured in the masonry, and overhung by the green leaves of

an exuberant wild fig that has thrust its roots into the sturdy old

walls. Here, at Manfredonia, we are already under the shadow of the

holy mountain and the archangel’s wings, but the usual representations

of him are childishly emasculate—the negation of his divine and heroic

character. This one portrays a genuine warrior-angel of the old type:

grave and grim. Beyond this castle and the town-walls, which are best

preserved on the north side, nothing in Manfredonia is older than 1620.

There is a fine _campanile,_ but the cathedral looks like a shed for

disused omnibuses.

Along the streets, little red flags are hanging out of the houses, at

frequent intervals: signals of harbourage for the parched wayfarer.

Within, you behold a picturesque confusion of rude chairs set among

barrels and vats full of dark red wine where, amid Rembrandtesque

surroundings, you can get as drunk as a lord for sixpence. Blithe

oases! It must be delightful, in summer, to while away the sultry hours

in their hospitable twilight; even at this season they seem to be

extremely popular resorts, throwing a new light on those allusions by

classical authors to “thirsty Apulia.”

But on many of the dwellings I noticed another symbol: an ominous blue

metal tablet with a red cross, bearing the white-lettered words

“VIGILANZA NOTTURNA.”

Was it some anti-burglary association? I enquired of a serious-looking

individual who happened to be passing.

His answer did not help to clear up matters.

“A pure job, _signore mio_, a pure job! There is a society in Cerignola

or somewhere, a society which persuades the various town

councils—_persuades_ them, you understand——”

He ended abruptly, with the gesture of paying out money between his

finger and thumb. Then he sadly shook his head.

I sought for more light on this cryptic utterance; in vain. What were

the facts, I persisted? Did certain householders subscribe to keep a

guardian on their premises at night—what had the municipalities to do

with it—was there much house-breaking in Manfredonia, and, if so, had

this association done anything to check it? And for how long had the

institution been established?

But the mystery grew ever darker. After heaving a deep sigh, he

condescended to remark:

“The usual camorra! Eat—eat; from father to son. Eat—eat! That’s all

they think about, the brood of assassins. . . . Just look at them!”

I glanced down the street and beheld a venerable gentleman of kindly

aspect who approached slowly, leaning on the arm of a fair-haired

youth—his grandson, I supposed. He wore a long white beard, and an air

of apostolic detachment from the affairs of this world. They came

nearer. The boy was listening, deferentially, to some remark of the

elder; his lips were parted in attention and his candid, sunny face

would have rejoiced the heart of della Robbia. They passed within a few

feet of me, lovingly engrossed in one another.

“Well?” I queried, turning to my informant and anxious to learn what

misdeeds could be laid to the charge of such godlike types of humanity.

But that person was no longer at my side. He had quietly withdrawn

himself, in the interval; he had evanesced, “moved on.”

An oracular and elusive citizen. ...

III

THE ANGEL OF MANFREDONIA

Whoever looks at a map of the Gargano promontory will see that it is

besprinkled with Greek names of persons and places—Matthew, Mark,

Nikander, Onofrius, Pirgiano (Pyrgos) and so forth. Small wonder, for

these eastern regions were in touch with Constantinople from early

days, and the spirit of Byzance still hovers over them. It was on this

mountain that the archangel Michael, during his first flight to Western

Europe, deigned to appear to a Greek bishop of Sipontum, Laurentius by

name; and ever since that time a certain cavern, sanctified by the

presence of this winged messenger of God, has been the goal of millions

of pilgrims.

The fastness of Sant’ Angelo, metropolis of European angel-worship, has

grown up around this “devout and honourable cave”; on sunny days its

houses are clearly visible from Manfredonia. They who wish to pay their

devotions at the shrine cannot do better than take with them

Gregorovius, as cicerone and mystagogue.

Vainly I waited for a fine day to ascend the heights. At last I

determined to have done with the trip, be the weather what it might. A

coachman was summoned and negotiations entered upon for starting next

morning.

Sixty-five francs, he began by telling me, was the price paid by an

Englishman last year for a day’s visit to the sacred mountain. It may

well be true—foreigners will do anything, in Italy. Or perhaps it was

only said to “encourage” me. But I am rather hard to encourage,

nowadays. I reminded the man that there was a diligence service there

and back for a franc and a half, and even that price seemed rather

extortionate. I had seen so many holy grottos in my life! And who,

after all, was this Saint Michael? The Eternal Father, perchance?

Nothing of the kind: just an ordinary angel! We had dozens of them, in

England. Fortunately, I added, I had already received an offer to join

one of the private parties who drive up, fourteen or fifteen persons

behind

one diminutive pony—and that, as he well knew, would be a matter of

only a few pence. And even then, the threatening sky . . . Yes, on

second thoughts, it was perhaps wisest to postpone the excursion

altogether. Another day, if God wills! Would he accept this cigar as a

recompense for his trouble in coming?

In dizzy leaps and bounds his claims fell to eight francs. It was the

tobacco that worked the wonder; a gentleman who will give _something

for nothing_ (such was his logic)—well, you never know what you may not

get out of him. Agree to his price, and chance it!

He consigned the cigar to his waistcoat pocket to smoke after dinner,

and departed—vanquished, but inwardly beaming with bright anticipation.

A wretched morning was disclosed as I drew open the shutters—gusts of

rain and sleet beating against the window-panes. No matter: the

carriage stood below, and after that customary and hateful apology for

breakfast which suffices to turn the thoughts of the sanest man towards

themes of suicide and murder—when will southerners learn to eat a

proper breakfast at proper hours?—we started on our journey. The sun

came out in visions of tantalizing briefness, only to be swallowed up

again in driving murk, and of the route we traversed I noticed only the

old stony track that cuts across the twenty-one windings of the new

carriage-road here and there. I tried to picture to myself the Norman

princes, the emperors, popes, and other ten thousand pilgrims of

celebrity crawling up these rocky slopes—barefoot—on such a day as

this. It must have tried the patience even of Saint Francis of Assisi,

who pilgrimaged with the rest of them and, according to Pontanus,

performed a little miracle here _en passant,_ as was his wont.

After about three hours’ driving we reached the town of Sant’ Angelo.

It was bitterly cold at this elevation of 800 metres. Acting on the

advice of the coachman, I at once descended into the sanctuary; it

would be warm down there, he thought. The great festival of 8 May was

over, but flocks of worshippers were still arriving, and picturesquely

pagan they looked in grimy, tattered garments—their staves tipped with

pine-branches and a scrip.

In the massive bronze doors of the chapel, that were made at

Constantinople in 1076 for a rich citizen of Amalfi, metal rings are

inserted; these, like a true pilgrim, you must clash furiously, to call

the attention of the Powers within to your visit; and on issuing, you

must once more knock as hard as you can, in order

that the consummation of your act of worship may be duly reported:

judging by the noise made, the deity must be very hard of hearing.

Strangely deaf they are, sometimes.

The twenty-four panels of these doors are naively encrusted with

representations, in enamel, of angel-apparitions of many kinds; some of

them are inscribed, and the following is worthy of note:

“I beg and implore the priests of Saint Michael to cleanse these gates

once a year as I have now shown them, in order that they may be always

bright and shining.” The recommendation has plainly not been carried

out for a good many years past.

Having entered the portal, you climb down a long stairway amid swarms

of pious, foul clustering beggars to a vast cavern, the archangel’s

abode. It is a natural recess in the rock, illuminated by candles. Here

divine service is proceeding to the accompaniment of cheerful operatic

airs from an asthmatic organ; the water drops ceaselessly from the

rocky vault on to the devout heads of kneeling worshippers that cover

the floor, lighted candle in hand, rocking themselves ecstatically and

droning and chanting. A weird scene, in truth. And the coachman was

quite right in his surmise as to the difference in temperature. It is

hot down here, damply hot, as in an orchid-house. But the aroma cannot

be described as a floral emanation: it is the _bouquet,_ rather, of

thirteen centuries of unwashed and perspiring pilgrims. “TERRIBILIS EST

LOCUS ISTE,” says an inscription over the entrance of the shrine. Very

true. In places like this one understands the uses, and possibly the

origin, of incense.

I lingered none the less, and my thoughts went back to the East, whence

these mysterious practices are derived. But an Oriental crowd of

worshippers does not move me like these European masses of fanaticism;

I can never bring myself to regard without a certain amount of

disquietude such passionate pilgrims. Give them their new Messiah, and

all our painfully accumulated art and knowledge, all that reconciles

civilized man to earthly existence, is blown to the winds. Society can

deal with its criminals. Not they, but fond enthusiasts such as these,

are the menace to its stability. Bitter reflections; but then—the drive

upward had chilled my human sympathies, and besides—that so-called

breakfast. . . .

The grovelling herd was left behind. I ascended the stairs and,

profiting by a gleam of sunshine, climbed up to where, above the town,

there stands a proud aerial ruin known as the “Castle of

the Giant.” On one of its stones is inscribed the date 1491—a certain

Queen of Naples, they say, was murdered within those now crumbling

walls. These sovereigns were murdered in so many castles that one

wonders how they ever found time to be alive at all. The structure is a

wreck and its gateway closed up; nor did I feel any great inclination,

in that icy blast of wind, to investigate the roofless interior.

I was able to observe, however, that this “feudal absurdity” bears a

number like any inhabited house of Sant’ Angelo—it is No. 3.

This is the latest pastime of the Italian Government: to re-number

dwellings throughout the kingdom; and not only human habitations, but

walls, old ruins, stables, churches, as well as an occasional door-post

and window. They are having no end of fun over the game, which promises

to keep them amused for any length of time—in fact, until the next

craze is invented. Meanwhile, so long as the fit lasts, half a million

bright-eyed officials, burning with youthful ardour, are employed in

affixing these numerals, briskly entering them into ten times as many

note-books and registering them into thousands of municipal archives,

all over the country, for some inscrutable but hugely important

administrative purposes. “We have the employes,” as a Roman deputy once

told me, “and therefore: they must find some occupation.”

Altogether, the weather this day sadly impaired my appetite for

research and exploration. On the way to the castle I had occasion to

admire the fine tower and to regret that there seemed to exist no coign

of vantage from which it could fairly be viewed; I was struck, also, by

the number of small figures of Saint Michael of an ultra-youthful,

almost infantile, type; and lastly, by certain clean-shaven old men of

the place. These venerable and decorative brigands—for such they would

have been, a few years ago—now stood peacefully at their thresholds,

wearing a most becoming cloak of thick brown wool, shaped like a

burnous. The garment interested me; it may be a legacy from the Arabs

who dominated this region for some little time, despoiling the holy

sanctuary and leaving their memory to be perpetuated by the

neighbouring “Monte Saraceno.” The costume, on the other hand, may have

come over from Greece; it is figured on Tanagra statuettes and worn by

modern Greek shepherds. By Sardinians, too. ... It may well be a

primordial form of clothing with mankind.

The view from this castle must be superb on clear days. Standing there,

I looked inland and remembered all the places I had

intended to see—Vieste, and Lesina with its lakes, and Selva Umbra,

whose very name is suggestive of dewy glades; how remote they were,

under such dispiriting clouds! I shall never see them. Spring hesitates

to smile upon these chill uplands; we are still in the grip of winter—

Aut aquilonibus

Querceti Gargani laborent

Et foliis viduantur orni—

so sang old Horace, of Garganian winds. I scanned the horizon, seeking

for his Mount Vulture, but all that region was enshrouded in a grey

curtain of vapour; only the Stagno Salso—a salt mere wherein Candelaro

forgets his mephitic waters—shone with a steady glow, like a sheet of

polished lead.

Soon the rain fell once more and drove me to seek refuge among the

houses, where I glimpsed the familiar figure of my coachman, sitting

disconsolately under a porch. He looked up and remarked (for want of

something better to say) that he had been searching for me all over the

town, fearing that some mischief might have happened to me. I was

touched by these words; touched, that is, by his child-like simplicity

in imagining that he could bring me to believe a statement of such

radiant improbability; so touched, that I pressed a franc into his

reluctant palm and bade him buy with it something to eat. A whole

franc. . . . _Aha!_ he doubtless thought, _my theory of the gentleman:

it begins to work._

It was barely midday. Yet I was already surfeited with the angelic

metropolis, and my thoughts began to turn in the direction of

Manfredonia once more. At a corner of the street, however, certain

fluent vociferations in English and Italian, which nothing would induce

me to set down here, assailed my ears, coming up—apparently—out of the

bowels of the earth. I stopped to listen, shocked to hear ribald

language in a holy town like this; then, impelled by curiosity,

descended a long flight of steps and found myself in a subterranean

wine-cellar. There was drinking and card-playing going on here among a

party of emigrants—merry souls; a good half of them spoke English and,

despite certain irreverent phrases, they quickly won my heart with a

“Here! You drink _this,_ mister.”

This dim recess was an instructive pendant to the archangel’s cavern. A

new type of pilgrim has been evolved; pilgrims who think no more of

crossing to Pittsburg than of a drive to Manfredonia. But their cave

was permeated with an odour of spilt wine and tobacco-smoke instead of

the subtle _Essence des pèlerins_

_des Abruzzes fleuris,_ and alas, the object of their worship was not

the Chaldean angel, but another and equally ancient eastern shape:

Mammon. They talked much of dollars; and I also heard several

unorthodox allusions to the “angel-business,” which was described as

“played out,” as well as a remark to the effect that “only damn-fools

stay in this country.” In short, these men were at the other end of the

human scale; they were the strong, the energetic; the ruthless,

perhaps; but certainly—the intelligent.

And all the while the cup circled round with genial iteration, and it

was universally agreed that, whatever the other drawbacks of Sant’

Angelo might be, there was nothing to be said against its native

liquor.

It was, indeed, a divine product; a _vino di montagna_ of noble

pedigree. So I thought, as I laboriously scrambled up the stairs once

more, solaced by this incident of the competition-grotto and slightly

giddy, from the tobacco-smoke. And here, leaning against the door-post,

stood the coachman who had divined my whereabouts by some dark masonic

intuition of sympathy. His face expanded into an inept smile, and I

quickly saw that instead of fortifying his constitution with sound

food, he had tried alcoholic methods of defence against the inclement

weather. Just a glass of wine, he explained. “But,” he added, “the

horse is perfectly sober.”

That quadruped was equal to the emergency. Gloriously indifferent to

our fates, we glided down, in a vertiginous but masterly vol-plane,

from the somewhat objectionable mountain-town.

An approving burst of sunshine greeted our arrival on the plain.

IV

CAVE-WORSHIP

Why has the exalted archangel chosen for an abode this reeking cell,

rather than some well-built temple in the sunshine? “As symbolizing a

ray of light that penetrates into the gloom,” so they will tell you. It

is more likely that he entered it as an extirpating warrior, to oust

that heathen shape which Strabo describes as dwelling in its dank

recesses, and to take possession of the cleft in the name of

Christianity. Sant’ Angelo is one of many places where Michael has

performed the duty of Christian Hercules, cleanser of Augean stables.

For the rest, this cave-worship is older than any god or devil. It is

the cult of the feminine principle—a relic of that aboriginal obsession

of mankind to shelter in some Cloven Rock of Ages, in the sacred womb

of Mother Earth who gives us food and receives us after death.

Grotto-apparitions, old and new, are but the popular explanations of

this dim primordial craving, and hierophants of all ages have

understood the commercial value of the holy shudder which penetrates in

these caverns to the heart of worshippers, attuning them to godly

deeds. So here, close beside the altar, the priests are selling

fragments of the so-called “Stone of Saint Michael.” The trade is

brisk.

The statuette of the archangel preserved in this subterranean chapel is

a work of the late Renaissance. Though savouring of that mawkish

elaboration which then began to taint local art and literature and is

bound up with the name of the poet Marino, it is still a passably

virile figure. But those countless others, in churches or over

house-doors—do they indeed portray the dragon-killer, the martial

prince of angels? This amiable child with girlish features—can this be

the Lucifer of Christianity, the Sword of the Almighty? _Quis ut Déus!_

He could hardly hurt a fly.

The hoary winged genius of Chaldea who has absorbed the essence of so

many solemn deities has now, in extreme old age, entered upon a second

childhood and grown altogether too

youthful for his _role,_ undergoing a metamorphosis beyond the

boundaries of legendary probability or common sense; every trace of

divinity and manly strength has been boiled out of him. So young and

earthly fair, he looks, rather, like some pretty boy dressed up for a

game with toy sword and helmet—one wants to have a romp with him. No

warrior this! _C’est beau, mais ce n’est pas la guerre._

The gods, they say, are ever young, and a certain sensuous and fleshly

note is essential to those of Italy if they are to retain the love of

their worshippers. Granted. We do not need a scarred and hirsute

veteran; but we need, at least, a personage capable of wielding the

sword, a figure something like this:—

His starry helm unbuckled show’d his prime

In manhood where youth ended; by his side

As in a glist’ring zodiac hung the sword,

Satan’s dire dread, and in his hand the spear. . . .

There! That is an archangel of the right kind.

And the great dragon, that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan,

has suffered a similar transformation. He is shrunk into a poor little

reptile, the merest worm, hardly worth crushing.

But how should a sublime conception like the apocalyptic hero appeal to

the common herd? These formidable shapes emerge from the dusk,

offspring of momentous epochs; they stand aloof at first, but presently

their luminous grandeur is dulled, their haughty contour sullied and

obliterated by attrition. They are dragged down to the level of their

lowest adorers, for the whole flock adapts its pace to that of the

weakest lamb. No self-respecting deity will endure this treatment—to be

popularized and made intelligible to a crowd. Divinity comprehended of

the masses ceases to be efficacious; the Egyptians and Brahmans

understood that. It is not giving gods a chance to interpret them in an

incongruous and unsportsmanlike fashion. But the vulgar have no idea of

propriety or fair play; they cannot keep at the proper distance; they

are for ever taking liberties. And, in the end, the proudest god is

forced to yield.

We see this same fatality in the very word Cherub. How different an

image does this plump and futile infant evoke to the stately Minister

of the Lord, girt with a sword of flame! We see it in the Italian

Madonna of whom, whatever her mental acquirements may have been, a

certain gravity of demeanour is to be presupposed, and who, none the

less, grows more childishly

smirking every day; in her Son who—hereabouts at least—has doffed all

the serious attributes of manhood and dwindled into something not much

better than a doll. It was the same in days of old. Apollo (whom Saint

Michael has supplanted), and Eros, and Aphrodite—they all go through a

process of saccharine deterioration. Our fairest creatures, once they

have passed their meridian vigour, are liable to be assailed and

undermined by an insidious diabetic tendency.

It is this coddling instinct of mankind which has reduced Saint Michael

to his present state. And an extraneous influence has worked in the

same direction—the gradual softening of manners within historical

times, that demasculinization which is an inevitable concomitant of

increasing social security. Divinity reflects its human creators and

their environment; grandiose or warlike gods become superfluous, and

finally incomprehensible, in humdrum days of peace. In order to

survive, our deities (like the rest of us) must have a certain

plasticity. If recalcitrant, they are quietly relieved of their

functions, and forgotten. This is what has happened in Italy to God the

Father and the Holy Ghost, who have vanished from the vulgar Olympus;

whereas the devil, thanks to that unprincipled versatility for which he

is famous, remains ever young and popular.

The art-notions of the Cinque-Cento are also to blame; indeed, so far

as the angelic shapes of south Italy are concerned, the influence of

the Renaissance has been wholly malefic. Aliens to the soil, they were

at first quite unknown—not one is pictured in the Neapolitan catacombs.

Next came the brief period of their artistic glory; then the syncretism

of the Renaissance, when these winged messengers were amalgamated with

pagan _amoretti_ and began to flutter in foolish baroque fashion about

the Queen of Heaven, after the pattern of the disreputable little genii

attendant upon a Venus of a bad school. That same instinct which

degraded a youthful Eros into the childish Cupid was the death-stroke

to the pristine dignity and holiness of angels. Nowadays, we see the

perversity of it all; we have come to our senses and can appraise the

much-belauded revival at its true worth; and our modern sculptors will

rear you a respectable angel, a grave adolescent, according to the best

canons of taste—should you still possess the faith that once

requisitioned such works of art.

We travellers acquaint ourselves with the lineage of this celestial

Messenger, but it can hardly be supposed that the worshippers now

swarming at his shrine know much of these things. How

shall one discover their real feelings in regard to this great

cave-saint and his life and deeds?

Well, some idea of this may be gathered from the literature sold on the

spot. I purchased three of these modern tracts printed respectively at

Bitonto, Molfetta and Naples. The “Popular Song in honour of St.

Michael” contains this verse:

Nell’ ora della morte

Ci salvi dall’ inferno

E a Regno Sempiterno

Ci guidi per pietà.

_Ci guidi per pietà. . . ._ This is the Mercury-heritage. Next, the

“History and Miracles of St. Michael” opens with a rollicking dialogue

in verse between the archangel and the devil concerning a soul; it ends

with a goodly list, in twenty-five verses, of the miracles performed by

the angel, such as helping women in childbirth, curing the blind, and

other wonders that differ nothing from those wrought by humbler earthly

saints. Lastly, the “Novena in Onore di S. Michele Arcangelo,” printed

in 1910 (third edition) with ecclesiastical approval, has the following

noteworthy paragraph on the

“DEVOTION FOR THE SACRED STONES OF THE GROTTO OF ST. MICHAEL.

“It is very salutary to hold in esteem the STONES which are taken from

the sacred cavern, partly because from immemorial times they have

always been held in veneration by the faithful and also because they

have been placed as relics of sepulchres and altars. Furthermore, it is

known that during the plague which afflicted the kingdom of Naples in

the year 1656, Monsignor G. A. Puccini, archbishop of Manfredonia,

recommended every one to carry devoutly on his person a fragment of the

sacred STONE, whereby the majority were saved from the pestilence, and

this augmented the devotion bestowed on them.”

The cholera is on the increase, and this may account for the rapid sale

of the STONES at this moment.

This pamphlet also contains a litany in which the titles of the

archangel are enumerated. He is, among other things, Secretary of God,

Liberator from Infernal Chains, Defender in the Hour of Death,

Custodian of the Pope, Spirit of Light, Wisest of Magistrates, Terror

of Demons, Commander-in-Chief of the Armies of the Lord, Lash of

Heresies, Adorer of the Word

Incarnate, Guide of Pilgrims, Conductor of Mortals: Mars, Mercury,

Hercules, Apollo, Mithra—what nobler ancestry can angel desire? And

yet, as if these complicated and responsible functions did not suffice

for his energies, he has twenty others, among them being that of

“Custodian of the Holy Family “—who apparently need a protector, a

Monsieur Paoli, like any mortal royalties.

“Blasphemous rubbish!” I can hear some Methodist exclaiming. And one

may well be tempted to sneer at those pilgrims for the more enlightened

of whom such literature is printed. For they are unquestionably a

repulsive crowd: travel-stained old women, under-studies for the Witch

of Endor; dishevelled, anaemic and dazed-looking girls; boys, too weak

to handle a spade at home, pathetically uncouth, with mouths agape and

eyes expressing every grade of uncontrolled emotion—from wildest joy to

downright idiotcy. How one realizes, down in this cavern, the effect

upon some cultured ancient like Rutilius Namatianus of the

catacomb-worship among those early Christian converts, those _men who

shun the light,_ drawn as they were from the same social classes

towards the same dark underground rites! One can neither love nor

respect such people; and to affect pity for them would be more

consonant with their religion than with my own.

But it is perfectly easy to understand them. For thirteen centuries

this pilgrim-movement has been going on. Thirteen centuries? No. This

site was an oracle in heathen days, and we know that such were

frequented by men not a whit less barbarous and bigoted than their

modern representatives—nothing is a greater mistake than to suppose

that the crowds of old Rome and Athens were more refined than our own

(“Demosthenes, sir, was talking to an assembly of brutes”). For thirty

centuries then, let us say, a deity has attracted the faithful to his

shrine—Sant’ Angelo has become a vacuum, as it were, which must be

periodically filled up from the surrounding country. These pilgrimages

are in the blood of the people: infants, they are carried there;

adults, they carry their own offspring; grey-beards, their tottering

steps are still supported by kindly and sturdier fellow-wanderers.

Popes and emperors no longer scramble up these slopes; the spirit of

piety has abated among the great ones of the earth; so much is certain.

But the rays of light that strike the topmost branches have not yet

penetrated to the rank and seething undergrowth. And then—what else can

one offer to these Abruzzi

mountain-folk? Their life is one of miserable, revolting destitution.

They have no games or sports, no local racing, clubs, cattle-shows,

fox-hunting, politics, rat-catching, or any of those other joys that

diversify the lives of our peasantry. No touch of humanity reaches

them, no kindly dames send them jellies or blankets, no cheery doctor

enquires for their children; they read no newspapers or books, and lack

even the mild excitements of church _versus_ chapel, or the vicar’s

daughter’s love-affair, or the squire’s latest row with his

lady—nothing! Their existence is almost bestial in its blankness. I

know them—I have lived among them. For four months in the year they are

cooped up in damp dens, not to be called chambers, where an Englishman

would deem it infamous to keep a dog—cooped up amid squalor that must

be seen to be believed; for the rest of the time they struggle, in the

sweat of their brow, to wrest a few blades of corn from the ungrateful

limestone. Their visits to the archangel—these vernal and autumnal

picnics—are their sole form of amusement.

The movement is said to have diminished since the early nineties, when

thirty thousand of them used to come here annually. It may well be the

case; but I imagine that this is due not so much to increasing

enlightenment as to the depopulation caused by America; many villages

have recently been reduced to half their former number of inhabitants.

And here they kneel, candle in hand, on the wet flags of this foetid

and malodorous cave, gazing in rapture upon the blandly beaming idol,

their sensibilities tickled by resplendent priests reciting

full-mouthed Latin phrases, while the organ overhead plays wheezy

extracts from “La Forza del Destino” or the Waltz out of Boito’s

“Mefistofele”... for sure, it must be a foretaste of Heaven! And likely

enough, these are “the poor in heart” for whom that kingdom is

reserved.

One may call this a debased form of Christianity. Whether it would have

been distasteful to the feelings of the founder of that cult is another

question, and, debased or not, it is at least alive and palpitating,

which is more than can be said of certain other varieties. But the

archangel, as was inevitable, has suffered a sad change. His fairest

attribute of Light-bringer, of Apollo, is no longer his own; it has

been claimed and appropriated by the “Light of the World,” his new

master. One by one, his functions have been stripped from him, all save

in name, as happens to men and angels alike, when they take service

under “jealous” lords.

What is now left of Saint Michael, the glittering hierarch? Can he

still endure the light of sun? Or has he not shrivelled into a spectral

Hermes, a grisly psychopomp, bowing his head in minished glory, and

leading men’s souls no longer aloft but downwards—down to the pale

regions of things that have been? And will it be long ere he, too, is

thrust by some flaming Demogorgon into these same realms of Minos, into

that shadowy underworld where dwell Saturn, and Kronos, and other

cracked and shivered ideals?

So I mused that afternoon, driving down the slopes from Sant’ Angelo

comfortably sheltered against the storm, while the generous mountain

wine sped through my veins, warming my fancy. Then, at last, the sun

came out in a sudden burst of light, opening a rift in the vapours and

revealing the whole chain of the Apennines, together with the peaked

crater of Mount Vulture.

The spectacle cheered me, and led me to think that such a day might

worthily be rounded off by a visit to Sipontum, which lies a few miles

beyond Manfredonia on the Foggia road. But I approached the subject

cautiously, fearing that the coachman might demur at this extra work.

Far from it. I had gained his affection, and he would conduct me

whithersoever I liked. Only to Sipontum? Why not to Foggia, to Naples,

to the ends of the earth? As for the horse, he was none the worse for

the trip, not a bit the worse; he liked nothing better than running in

front of a carriage; besides, _è suo dovere—_it was his duty.

Sipontum is so ancient that it was founded, they say, by that legendary

Diomed who acted in the same capacity for Beneven-tum, Arpi, and other

cities. But this record does not satisfy Monsignor Sarnelli, its

historian, according to whom it was already a flourishing town when

Shem, first son of Noah, became its king. He reigned about the year

1770 of the creation of the world. Two years after the deluge he was

100 years old, and at that age begat a son Arfaxad, after whose birth

he lived yet another five hundred years. The second king of Sipontum

was Appulus, who ruled in the year 2213. . . . Later on, Saint Peter

sojourned here, and baptized a few people.

Of Sipontum nothing is left; nothing save a church, and even that built

only yesterday—in the eleventh century; a far-famed church, in the

Pisan style, with wrought marble columns reposing on lions, sculptured

diamond ornaments, and other crafty stonework that gladdens the eye. It

used to be the seat

of an archbishopric, and its fine episcopal chairs are now preserved at

Sant’ Angelo; and you may still do homage to the authentic Byzantine

Madonna painted on wood by Saint Luke, brown-complexioned, long-nosed,

with staring eyes, and holding the Infant on her left arm. Earthquakes

and Saracen incursions ruined the town, which became wholly abandoned

when Manfredonia was built with its stones.

Of pagan antiquity there are a few capitals lying about, as well as

granite columns in the curious old crypt. A pillar stands all forlorn

in a field; and quite close to the church are erected two others—the

larger of cipollino, beautified by a patina of golden lichen; a marble

well-head, worn half through with usage of ropes, may be found buried

in the rank grass. The plain whereon stood the great city of Sipus is

covered, now, with bristly herbage. The sea has retired from its old

beach, and half-wild cattle browse on the site of those lordly quays

and palaces. Not a stone is left. Malaria and desolation reign supreme.

It is a profoundly melancholy spot. Yet I was glad of the brief vision.

I shall have fond and enduring memories of that sanctuary—the

travertine of its artfully carven fabric glowing orange-tawny in the

sunset; of the forsaken plain beyond, full of ghostly phantoms of the

past.

As for Manfredonia—it is a sad little place, when the south wind moans

and mountains are veiled in mists.

[Illustration: At Sipontum]

V

LAND OF HORACE

Venosa, nowadays, lies off the beaten track. There are only three

trains a day from the little junction of Rocchetta, and they take over

an hour to traverse the thirty odd kilometres of sparsely inhabited

land. It is an uphill journey, for Venosa lies at a good elevation.

They say that German professors, bent on Horatian studies, occasionally

descend from those worn-out old railway carriages; but the ordinary

travellers are either peasant-folk or commercial gentlemen from north

Italy. Worse than malaria or brigandage, against both of which a man

may protect himself, there is no escaping from the companionship of

these last-named—these pathologically inquisitive, empty-headed, and

altogether dreadful people. They are the terror of the south. And it

stands to reason that only the most incapable and most disagreeable of

their kind are sent to out-of-the-way places like Venosa.

One asks oneself whether this town has greatly changed since Roman

times. To be sure it has; domestic calamities and earthquakes (such as

the terrible one of 1456) have altered it beyond recognition. The

amphitheatre that seated ten thousand spectators is merged into the

earth, and of all the buildings of Roman date nothing is left save a

pile of masonry designated as the tomb of the Marcellus who was killed

here by Hannibal’s soldiery, and a few reticulated walls of the second

century or thereabouts known as the “House of Horace”—as genuine as

that of Juliet in Verona or the Mansion of Loreto. Yet the tradition is

an old one, and the builder of the house, whoever he was, certainly

displayed some poetic taste in his selection of a fine view across the

valley. There is an indifferent statue of Horace in the marketplace. A

previous one, also described as Horace, was found to be the effigy of

somebody else. Thus much I learn from Lupoli’s “Iter Venusinum.”

But there are ancient inscriptions galore, worked into the masonry of

buildings or lying about at random. Mommsen has collected numbers of

them in his _Corpus,_ and since that time some sixty new ones have been

discovered. And then—the

stone lions of Roman days, couched forlornly at street corners, in

courtyards and at fountains, in every stage of decrepitude, with broken

jaws and noses, missing legs and tails! Venosa is a veritable infirmary

for mutilated antiques of this species. Now the lion is doubtless a

nobly decorative beast, but—_toujours perdrix!_ Why not a few griffons

or other ornaments? The Romans were not an imaginative race.

The country around must have looked different in olden days. Horace

describes it as covered with forests, and from a manuscript of the

early seventeenth century which has lately been printed one learns that

the surrounding regions were full of “hares, rabbits, foxes, roe deer,

wild boars, martens, porcupines, hedgehogs, tortoises and

wolves”—wood-loving creatures which have now, for the most part,

deserted Venosa. Still, there are left some stretches of oak at the

back of the town, and the main lines of the land cannot change. Yonder

lies the Horatian Forense and “Acherontia’s nest”; further on, the

glades of Bantia (the modern Banzi); the long-drawn Garganian Mount, on

which the poet’s eye must often have rested, emerges above the plain of

Apulia like an island (and such it is: an island of Austrian stone,

stranded upon the beach of Italy). Monte Vulture still dominates the

landscape, although at this nearness the crater loses its shapely

conical outline and assumes a serrated edge. On its summit I perceive a

gigantic cross—one of a number of such symbols which were erected by

the clericals at the time of the recent rationalist congress in Rome.

From this chronicler I learn another interesting fact: that Venosa was

not malarious in the author’s day. He calls it healthy, and says that

the only complaint from which the inhabitants suffered was “ponture”

(pleurisy). It is now within the infected zone. I dare say the

deforestation of the country, which prevented the downflow of the

rivers—choking up their beds with detritus and producing stagnant pools

favourable to the breeding of the mosquito—has helped to spread the

plague in many parts of Italy. In Horace’s days Venosa was immune,

although Rome and certain rural districts were already malarious.

Ancient votive tablets to the fever-goddess Mephitis (malaria) have

been found not far from here, in the plain below the present city of

Potenza.

A good deal of old Roman blood and spirit seems to survive here. After

the noise of the Neapolitan provinces, where chattering takes the place

of thinking, it is a relief to find oneself in the company of these

grave self-respecting folks, who really

converse, like the Scotch, in disinterested and impersonal fashion.

Their attitude towards religious matters strikes me as peculiarly

Horatian; it is not active scepticism, but rather a bland tolerance or

what one of them described as “indifferentismo”—submission to acts of

worship and all other usages (whatever they may be) consecrated by

time: the _pietàs—_the conservative, law-abiding Roman spirit. And if

you walk towards sunset along any of the roads leading into the

country, you will meet the peasants riding home from their field

labours accompanied by their dogs, pigs and goats; and among them you

will recognize many types of Roman physiognomies—faces of orators and

statesmen—familiar from old coins. About a third of the population are

of the dark-fair complexion, with blue or green eyes. But the women are

not handsome, although the town derives its name from Benoth (Venus).

Some genuine Roman families have continued to exist to this day, such

as that of Cenna (Cinna). One of them was the author of the chronicle

above referred to; and there is an antique bas-relief worked into the

walls of the Trinità abbey, depicting some earlier members of this

local family.

One is astonished how large a literature has grown up around this small

place—but indeed, the number of monographs dealing with every one of

these little Italian towns is a ceaseless source of surprise. Look

below the surface and you will find, in all of them, an undercurrent of

keen spirituality—a nucleus of half a dozen widely read and thoughtful

men, who foster the best traditions of the mind. You will not find them

in the town council or at the café. No newspapers commend their

labours, no millionaires or learned societies come to their assistance,

and though typography is cheap in this country, they often stint

themselves of the necessities of life in order to produce these

treatises of calm research. There is a deep gulf, here, between the

mundane and the intellectual life. These men are retiring in their

habits; and one cannot but revere their scholarly and almost ascetic

spirit that survives like a green oasis amid the desert of “politics,”

roguery and municipal corruption.

The City Fathers of Venosa are reputed rich beyond the dreams of

avarice. Yet their town is by no means a clean place—it is twice as

dirty as Lucera: a reposeful dirtiness, not vulgar or chaotic, but

testifying to time-honoured neglect, to a feudal contempt of

cleanliness. You crawl through narrow, ill-paved streets, looking down

into subterranean family bedrooms that must be insufferably damp in

winter, and filled, during the hot months, with an odour hard to

conceive. There is electric lighting,

of course—a paternal government having made the price of petroleum so

prohibitive that the use of electricity for street-lighting became

quite common in the lowliest places; but the crude glare only serves to

show up the general squalor. One reason for this state of affairs is

that there are no quarries for decent paving-stones in the

neighbourhood. And another, that Venosa possesses no large citizen

class, properly so called. The inhabitants are mostly peasant

proprietors and field labourers, who leave the town in the morning and

return home at night with their beasts, having learned by bitter

experience to take up their domiciles in the towns rather than in the

country-side, which was infested with brigandage and in an unsettled

state up to a short time ago. The Cincinnatus note dominates here, and

with an agricultural population no city can be kept clean.

But Venosa has one inestimable advantage over Lucera and most Italian

towns: there is no octroi.

Would it be believed that Naples is surrounded by a towering Chinese

wall, miles upon miles of it, crowned with a complicated apparatus of

alarm-bells and patrolled night and day by a horde of _doganieri_ armed

to the teeth—lest some peasant should throw a bundle of onions into the

sacred precincts of the town without paying the duty of half a

farthing? No nation with any sense of humour would endure this sort of

thing. Every one resents the airs of this army of official loafers who

infest the land, and would be far better employed themselves in

planting onions upon the many miles of Italy which now lie fallow; the

results of the system have been shown to be inadequate, “but,” as my

friend the Roman deputy once asked me, “if we dismiss these fellows

from their job, how are we to employ them?”

“Nothing is simpler,” I replied. “Enrol them into the Town Council of

Naples. It already contains more _employes_ than all the government

offices of London put together; a few more will surely make no

difference?”

“By Bacchus,” he cried, “you foreigners have ideas! We could dispose of

ten or fifteen thousand of them, at least, in the way you suggest. I’ll

make a note of that, for our next session.”

And so he did.

But the _Municipio_ of Naples, though extensive, is a purely local

charity, and I question whether its inmates will hear of any one save

their own cousins and brothers-in-law figuring as colleagues in office.

Every attempt at innovation in agriculture, as in industry,

is forthwith discouraged by new and subtle impositions, which lie in

wait for the enterprising Italian and punish him for his ideas. There

is, of course, a prohibitive duty on every article or implement

manufactured abroad; there is the octroi, a relic of medisevalism, the

most unscientific, futile, and vexatious of taxes; there are municipal

dues to be paid on animals bought and animals sold, on animals kept and

animals killed, on milk and vine-props and bricks, on timber for

scaffolding and lead and tiles and wine—on every conceivable object

which the peasant produces or requires for his existence. And one

should see the faces of the municipal _employes_ who extort these

tributes. God alone knows from what classes of the populace they are

recruited; certain it is that their physiognomy reflects their

miserable calling. One can endure the militarism of Germany and the

bureaucracy of Austria; but it is revolting to see decent Italian

countryfolk at the mercy of these uncouth savages, veritable cave-men,

whose only intelligible expression is one of malice striving to break

through a crust of congenital cretinism.

We hear much of the great artists and speculative philosophers of old

Italy. The artists of modern Italy are her bureaucrats who design and

elaborate the taxes; her philosophers, the peasants who pay them.

In point of method, at least, there is nothing to choose between the

exactions of the municipal and governmental ruffians. I once saw an old

woman fined fifty francs for having in her possession a pound of

sea-salt. By what logic will you make it clear to ignorant people that

it is wrong to take salt out of the sea, whence every one takes fish

which are more valuable? The waste of time employed over red tape alone

on these occasions would lead to a revolution anywhere save among men

inured by long abuses to this particular form of tyranny. No wonder the

women of the country-side, rather than waste three precious hours in

arguments about a few cheeses, will smuggle them past the authorities

under the device of being _enceintes;_ no wonder their wisest old men

regard the paternal government as a successfully organized swindle,

which it is the citizen’s bounden duty to frustrate whenever possible.

Have _you_ ever tried to convey—in legal fashion—a bottle of wine from

one town into another; or to import, by means of a sailing-boat, an old

frying-pan into some village by the sea? It is a fine art, only to be

learnt by years of apprenticeship. The regulations on these subjects,

though ineffably childish, look simple enough on paper; they take no

account of that “personal element” which is everything

in the south, of the ruffled tempers of those gorgeous but inert

creatures who, disturbed in their siestas or mandolin-strummings, may

keep you waiting half a day while they fumble ominously over some

dirty-looking scrap of paper. For on such occasions they are liable to

provoking fits of conscientiousness. This is all very well, my dear

sir, but—Ha! Where, where is that certificate of origin, that stamp,

that _lascia-passare?_

And all for one single sou!

No wonder even Englishmen discover that law-breaking, in Italy, becomes

a necessity, a rule of life.

And, soon enough, much more than a mere necessity. . . .

For even as the traveller new to Borneo, when they offer him a

durian-fruit, is instantly brought to vomiting-point by its odour, but

after a few mouthfuls declares it to be the very apple of Paradise, and

marvels how he could have survived so long in the benighted lands where

such ambrosial fare is not; even as the true connaisseur who, beholding

some rare scarlet idol from the Tingo-Tango forests, at first casts it

aside and then, light dawning as he ponders over those monstrous

complexities, begins to realize that they, and they alone, contain the

quintessential formulae of all the fervent dreamings of Scopas and

Michelangelo; even as he who first, upon a peak in Darien, gazed

awestruck upon the grand Pacific slumbering at his feet, till presently

his senses reeled at the blissful prospect of fresh regions unrolling

themselves, boundless, past the fulfilment of his fondest hopes———

Even so, in Italy, the domesticated Englishman is amazed to find that

he possesses a sense hitherto unrevealed, opening up a new horizon, a

new zest in life—the sense of law-breaking. At first, being an honest

man, he is shocked at the thought of such a thing; next, like a

sensible person, reconciled to the inevitable; lastly, as befits his

virile race, he learns to play the game so well that the horrified

officials grudgingly admit (and it is their highest praise):

Inglese italianizzato—

Diavolo incarnato.

Yes; slowly the charm of law-breaking grows upon the Italianated Saxon;

slowly, but surely. There is a neo-barbarism not only in matters of

art.

VI

AT VENOSA

There has always, no doubt, been a castle at Venosa. Frederick

Barbarossa lived here oftener than in Sicily; from these regions he

could look over to his beloved East, and the security of this

particular keep induced him to store his treasures therein. The

indefatigable Huillard Bréholles has excavated some account of them

from the Hohenstaufen records. Thus we learn that here, at Venosa, the

Emperor deposited that marvel, that _tentorium,_ I mean, _mirifica arte

constructum, in quo imagines solis et lunæ artificialiter motæ, cursum

suum certis et debitis spatiis peragrant, et horas diei et noctis

infallibiliter indicant. Cuius tentorii valor viginti millium marcarum

pretium dicitur transcendisse._ It was given him by the Sultan of

Babylonia. Always the glowing Oriental background!

The present castle, a picturesque block with moat and corner towers,

was built in 1470 by the redoubtable Pierro del Balzo. A church used to

occupy the site, but the warrior, recognizing its strategic advantages,

transplanted the holy edifice to some other part of the town. It is now

a ruin, the inhabitable portions of which have been converted into

cheap lodgings for sundry poor folk—a monetary speculation of some

local magnate, who paid 30,000 francs for the whole structure. You can

climb up into one of the shattered towers whereon reposes an old cannon

amid a wind-sown garden of shrubs and weeds. Here the jackdaws

congregate at nightfall, flying swiftly and noiselessly to their

resting-place. Odd, how quiet Italian jackdaws are, compared with those

of England; they have discarded their voices, which is the best thing

they could have done in a land where every one persecutes them. There

is also a dungeon at this castle, an underground recess with cunningly

contrived projections in its walls to prevent prisoners from climbing

upwards; and other horrors.

The cathedral of Venosa contains a chapel with an unusually fine portal

of Renaissance work, but the chief architectural beauty of the town is

the decayed Benedictine abbey of La Trinità. The building is roofless;

it was never completed, and the ravages

of time and of man have not spared it; earthquakes, too, have played

sad tricks with its arches and columns, particularly that of 1851,

which destroyed the neighbouring town of Melfi. It stands beyond the

more modern settlement on what is now a grassy plain, and attached to

it is a Norman chapel containing the bones of Alberada, mother of

Boemund, and others of her race. Little of the original structure of

this church is left, though its walls are still adorned, in patches,

with frescoes of genuine angels—attractive creatures, as far removed

from those bloodless Byzantine anatomies as from the plethoric and

insipid females of the _settecento._ There is also a queenly portrait

declared to represent Catherine of Siena. I would prefer to follow

those who think it is meant for Sigilgaita.

Small as it is, this place—the church and the abbey—is not one for a

casual visit. Lenormant calls the Trinità a “_Musée épigraphique”—_so

many are the Latin inscriptions which the monks have worked into its

masonry. They have encrusted the walls with them; and many antiquities

of other kinds have been deposited here since those days. The ruin is

strewn with columns and capitals of fantastic devices; the inevitable

lions, too, repose upon its grassy floor, as well as a pagan

altar-stone that once adorned the neighbouring amphitheatre. One thinks

of the labour expended in raising those prodigious blocks and fitting

them together without mortar in their present positions—they, also,

came from the amphitheatre, and the sturdy letterings engraved on some

of them formed, once upon a time, a sentence that ran round that

building, recording the names of its founders.

[Illustration: Ruin of Trinità: East front]

Besides the Latin inscriptions, there are Hebrew funereal stones of

great interest, for a colony of Jews was established here between the

years 400 and 800; poor folks, for the most part; no one knows whence

they came or whither they went. One is apt to forget that south Italy

was swarming with Jews for centuries. The catacombs of Venosa were

discovered in 1853. Their entrance lies under a hill-side not far from

the modern railway station, and Professor Mueller, a lover of Venosa,

has been engaged for the last twenty-five years in writing a ponderous

tome on the subject. Unfortunately (so they say) there is not much

chance of its ever seeing the light, for just as he is on the verge of

publication, some new Jewish catacombs are discovered in another part

of the world which cause the Professor to revise all his previous

theories. The work must be written anew and brought up to date, and

hardly is this accomplished when

fresh catacombs are found elsewhere, necessitating a further revision.

The Professor once more rewrites the whole. . . .

You will find accounts of the Trinità in Bertaux, Schulz and other

writers. Italian ones tell us what sounds rather surprising, namely,

that the abbey was built after a Lombard model, and not a French one.

Be that as it may—and they certainly show good grounds for their

contention—the ruin is a place of rare charm. Not easily can one see

relics of Roman, Hebrew and Norman life crushed into so small a space,

welded together by the massive yet fair architecture of the

Benedictines, and interpenetrated, at the same time, with a

Mephistophelian spirit of modern indifference. Of cynical

_insouciance;_ for although this is a “national monument,” nothing

whatever is done in the way of repairs. Never a month passes without

some richly carven block of stonework toppling down into the weeds,[1]

and were it not for the zeal of a private citizen, the interior of the

building would long ago have become an impassable chaos of stones and

shrubbery. The Trinità cannot be _restored_ without enormous outlay;

nobody dreams of such a thing. A yearly expenditure of ten pounds,

however, would go far towards arresting its fall. But where shall the

money be found? This enthusiastic nation, so enamoured of all that is

exquisite in art, will spend sixty million francs on a new Ministry of

Justice which, barely completed, is already showing signs of

disrupture; it will cheerfully vote _(vide_ daily press) the small item

of eighty thousand francs to supply that institution with pens and

ink—lucky contractor!—while this and a hundred other buildings of

singular beauty are allowed to crumble to pieces, day by day.

[1] The process of decay can be seen by comparing my photograph of the

east front with that taken to illustrate Giuseppe de Lorenzo’s

monograph “Venosa e la Regione del Vulture” (Bergamo, 1906).

Not far from the abbey there stands a church dedicated to Saint Roque.

Go within, if you wish to see the difference between Benedictine

dignity and the buffoonery which subsequently tainted the Catholicism

of the youth. On its gable sits a strange emblem: a large stone dog,

gazing amiably at the landscape. The saint, during his earthly career,

was always accompanied by a dog, and now likes to have him on the roof

of his sanctuary.

The Norman church attached to the Trinità lies at a lower level than

that building, having been constructed, says Lupoli, on the foundations

of a temple to Hymenæus. It may be so; but one distrusts Lupoli. A

remarkable Norman capital, now wrought into a font, is preserved here,

and I was interested in

watching the behaviour of a procession of female pilgrims in regard to

it. Trembling with emotion, they perambulated the sacred stone, kissing

every one of its corners; then they dipped their hands into its basin,

and kissed them devoutly. An old hag, the mistress of the ceremonies,

muttered: “tutti santi—tutti santi!” at each osculation. Next, they

prostrated themselves on the floor and licked the cold stones, and

after wallowing there awhile, rose up and began to kiss a small fissure

in the masonry of the wall, the old woman whispering, “Santissimo!” A

familiar spectacle, no doubt; but one which never fails of its effect.

This anti-hygienic crack in the wall, with its suggestions of

yoni-worship, attracted me so strongly that I begged a priest to

explain to me its mystical signification. But he only said, with a

touch of mediæval contempt:

“_Sono femine!_”

He showed me, later on, a round Roman pillar near the entrance of the

church worn smooth by the bodies of females who press themselves

between it and the wall, in order to become mothers. The notion caused

him some amusement—he evidently thought this practice a speciality of

Venosa.

In my country, I said, pillars with a contrary effect would be more

popular among the fair sex.

Lear gives another account of this phallic emblem. He says that

perambulating it hand in hand with another person, the two are sure to

remain friends for life.

This is pre-eminently a “Victorian” version.

[Illustration: Roman Altar-stone]

VII

THE BANDUSIAN FOUNT

The traveller in these parts is everlastingly half-starved. Here, at

Venosa, the wine is good—excellent, in fact; but the food monotonous

and insufficient. This improper dieting is responsible for much

mischief; it induces a state of chronic exacerbation. Nobody would

believe how nobly I struggle, day and night, against its evil

suggestions. A man’s worst enemy is his own empty stomach. None knew it

better than Horace.

And yet he declared that lettuces and such-like stuff sufficed him. No

doubt, no doubt. “Olives nourish me.” Just so! One does not grow up in

the school of Maecenas without learning the subtle delights of the

simple life. But I would wager that after a week of such feeding as I

have now undergone at his native place, he would quickly have

remembered some urgent business to be transacted in the capital—Caesar

Augustus, me-thinks, would have desired his company. And even so, I

have suddenly woke up to the fact that Taranto, my next resting-place,

besides possessing an agreeably warm climate, has some passable

restaurants. I will pack without delay. Mount Vulture must wait. The

wind alone, the Vulturnus or south-easterly wind, is quite enough to

make one despair of climbing hills. It has blown with objectionable

persistency ever since my arrival at Venosa.

To escape from its attentions, I have been wandering about the secluded

valleys that seam this region. Streamlets meander here amid rustling

canes and a luxuriant growth of mares’ tails and creepers; their banks

are shaded by elms and poplars—Horatian trees; the thickets are loud

with songs of nightingale, black-cap and oriole. These humid dells are

a different country from the uplands, wind-swept and thriftily

cultivated.

It was here, yesterday, that I came upon an unexpected sight—an army of

workmen engaged in burrowing furiously into the bowels of Mother Earth.

They told me that this tunnel would presently become one of the

arteries of that vast system, the

Apulian Aqueduct. The discovery accorded with my Roman mood, for the

conception and execution alike of this grandiose project are worthy of

the Romans. Three provinces where, in years of drought, wine is cheaper

than water, are being irrigated—in the teeth of great difficulties of

engineering and finance. Among other things, there are 213 kilometres

of subterranean tunnellings to be built; eleven thousand workmen are

employed; the cost is estimated at 125 million francs. The Italian

government is erecting to its glory a monument more durable than brass.

This is their heritage from the Romans—this talent for dealing with

rocks and waters; for bridling a destructive environment and making it

subservient to purposes of human intercourse. It is a part of that

practical Roman genius for “pacification.” Wild nature, to the Latin,

ever remains an obstacle to be overcome—an enemy.

Such was Horace’s point of view. The fruitful fields and their hardy

brood of tillers appealed to him;[1] the ocean and snowy Alps were

beyond the range of his affections. His love of nature was heartfelt,

but his nature was not ours; it was nature as we see it in those Roman

landscapes at Pompeii; nature ancillary to human needs, in her

benignant and comfortable moods. Virgil’s _lachrymae rerum_ hints at

mystic and extra-human yearnings; to the troubadours nature was

conventionally stereotyped—a scenic decoration to set off sentiments

more or less sincere; the romanticists wallow in her rugged aspects.

Horace never allowed phantasy to outrun intelligence; he kept his feet

on earth; man was the measure of his universe, and a sober mind his

highest attribute. Nature must be kept “in her place.” Her

extravagances are not to be admired. This anthropocentric spirit has

made him what he is—the ideal anti-sentimentalist and anti-vulgarian.

For excess of sentiment, like all other intemperance, is the mark of

that unsober and unsteady beast—the crowd.

[1] See next chapter.

Things have changed since those days; in proportion as the world has

grown narrower and the element of fear and mystery diluted, our

sympathies have broadened; the Goth, in particular, has learnt the

knack of detecting natural charm where the Latin, to this day, beholds

nothing but confusion and strife.

[Illustration: Norman Capital at Venosa]

On the spot, I observe, one is liable to return to the antique outlook;

to see the beauty of fields and rivers, yet only when subsidiary to

man’s personal convenience; to appreciate a fair landscape—with a

shrewd worldly sense of its potential uses. “The garden that I love,”

said an Italian once to me, “contains

good vegetables.” This utilitarian flavour of the south has become very

intelligible to me during the last few days. I, too, am thinking less

of calceolarias than of cauliflowers.

A pilgrimage to the Bandusian Fount (if such it be) is no great

undertaking—a morning’s trip. The village of San Gervasio is the next

station to Venosa, lying on an eminence only thirteen kilometres from

there.

Here once ran a fountain which was known as late as the twelfth century

as the Fons Bandusinus, and Ughelli, in his “Italia Sacra,” cites a

deed of the year 1103 speaking of a church “at the Bandusian Fount near

Venosa.” Church and fountain have now disappeared; but the site of the

former, they say, is known, and close to it there once issued a copious

spring called “Fontana Grande.” This is probably the Horatian one; and

is also, I doubt not, that referred to in Cenna’s chronicle of Venosa:

“At Torre San Gervasio are the ruins of a castle and an abundant spring

of water colder than all the waters of Venosa,” _Frigus amabile. . . ._

I could discover no one in the place to show me where this now vanished

church stood. I rather think it occupied the site of the present church

of Saint Anthony, the oldest in San Gervasio.

As to the fountain—there are now two of them, at some considerable

distance from each other. Both of them are copious, and both lie near

the foot of the hill on which the village now stands. Capmartin de

Chaupy has reasons for believing that in former times San Gervasio did

not occupy its present exalted position (vol. iii, p. 538).

One of them gushes out on the plain near the railway station, and has

been rebuilt within recent times. It goes by the name of “Fontana

rotta.” The other, the “Fontana del Fico,” lies on the high road to

Spinazzola; the water spouts out of seven mouths, and near at hand is a

plantation of young sycamores. The basin of this fount was also rebuilt

about ten years ago at no little expense, and has now a thoroughly

modern and businesslike aspect. But I was told that a complicated

network of subterranean pipes and passages, leading to “God knows

where,” was unearthed during the process of reconstruction. It was

magnificent masonry, said my informant, who was an eye-witness of the

excavations but could tell me nothing more of interest.

The problem how far either of these fountains fulfils the conditions

postulated in the last verse of Horace’s ode may be solved by every one

according as he pleases. In fact, there is

no other way of solving it. In my professorial mood, I should cite the

cavern and the “downward leaping” waters against the hypothesis that

the Bandusian Fount stood on either of these modern sites; in favour of

it, one might argue that the conventional rhetoric of all Roman art may

have added these embellishing touches, and cite, in confirmation

thereof, the last two lines of the previous verse, mentioning animals

that could hardly have slaked their thirst with any convenience at a

cavernous spring such as he describes. Caverns, moreover, are not

always near the summits of hills; they may be at the foot of them; and

water, even the Thames at London Bridge, always leaps downhill—more or

less. Of more importance is old Chaupy’s discovery of the northerly

aspect of one of these springs—“thee the fierce season of the blazing

dog-star cannot touch.” There may have been a cave at the back of the

“Fontana del Fico”; the “Fontana rotta” is hopelessly uncavernous.

For the rest, there is no reason why the fountain should not have

changed its position since ancient days. On the contrary, several

things might incline one to think that it has been forced to abandon

the high grounds and seek its present lower level. To begin with, the

hill on which the village stands is honeycombed by hives of caves which

the inhabitants have carved out of the loose conglomerate (which, by

the way, hardly corresponds with the poet’s _saxum);_ and it may well

be that a considerable collapse of these earth-dwellings obstructed the

original source of the waters and obliged them to seek a vent lower

down.

Next, there are the notorious effects of deforestation. An old man told

me that in his early days the hill was covered with timber—indeed, this

whole land, now a stretch of rolling grassy downs, was decently wooded

up to a short time ago. I observed that the roof of the oldest of the

three churches, that of Saint Anthony, is formed of wooden rafters (a

rare material hereabouts). Deforestation would also cause the waters to

issue at a lower level.

Lastly, and chiefly—the possible shatterings of earthquakes.

Catastrophes such as those which have damaged Venosa in days past may

have played havoc with the water-courses of this place by choking up

their old channels. My acquaintance with the habits of Apulian

earthquakes, with the science of hydrodynamics and the geological

formation of San Gervasio is not sufficiently extensive to allow me to

express a mature opinion. I will content myself with presenting to

future investigators the plausible theory—plausible because

conveniently difficult to refute—that

some terrestrial upheaval in past days is responsible for the present

state of things.

But these are merely three hypotheses. I proceed to mention three facts

which point in the same direction; i.e. that the water used to issue at

a higher level. Firstly, there is that significant name “Fontana

rotta”—“the broken fountain.” . . . Does not this suggest that its flow

may have been interrupted, or intercepted, in former times?

Next, if you climb up from this “Fontana rotta” to the village by the

footpath, you will observe, on your right hand as you ascend the slope,

at about a hundred yards below the Church of Saint Anthony, an old well

standing in a field of corn and shaded by three walnuts and an oak.

This well is still running, and was described to me as “molto antico.”

Therefore an underground stream—in diminished volume, no doubt—still

descends from the heights.

Thirdly, in the village you will notice an alley leading out of the

Corso Manfredi (one rejoices to find the name of Manfred surviving in

these lands)—an alley which is entitled “Vico Sirene.” The name arrests

your attention, for what have the Sirens to do in these inland regions?

Nothing whatever, unless they existed as ornamental statuary: statuary

such as frequently gives names to streets in Italy, witness the “Street

of the Faun” in Ouida’s novel, or that of the “Giant” in Naples (which

has now been re-christened). It strikes me as a humble but quite

scholarly speculation to infer that, the chief decorative uses of

Sirens being that of fountain deities, this obscure roadway keeps alive

the tradition of the old “Fontana Grande”—ornamented, we may suppose,

with marble Sirens—whose site is now forgotten, and whose very name has

faded from the memory of the countryfolk.

What, then, does my ramble of two hours at San Gervasio amount to? It

shows that there is a possibility, at least, of a now vanished fountain

having existed on the heights where it might fulfil more accurately the

conditions of Horace’s ode. If Ughelli’s church “at the Bandusian

Fount” stood on this eminence—well, I shall be glad to corroborate, for

once in the way, old Ughelli, whose book contains a deal of dire

nonsense. And if the Abbe Chaupy’s suggestion that the village lay at

the foot of the hill should ever prove to be wrong—well, his amiable

ghost may be pleased to think that even this does not necessitate the

sacrifice of his Venosa theory in favour of that of the scholiast

Akron; there is still a way out of the difficulty.

But whether this at San Gervasio is the actual fountain hymned by

Horace—ah, that is quite another affair! Few poets, to be sure, have

clung more tenaciously to the memories of their childhood than did he

and Virgil. And yet, the whole scene may be a figment of his

imagination—the very word Bandusia may have been coined by him. Who can

tell? Then there is the Digentia hypothesis. I know it, I know it! I

have read some of its defenders, and consider _(entre nous)_ that they

have made out a pretty strong case. But I am not in the mood for

discussing their proposition—not just now.

Here at San Gervasio I prefer to think only of the Roman singer, so

sanely jovial, and of these waters as they flowed, limpid and cool, in

the days when they fired his boyish fancy. Deliberately I refuse to

hear the charmer Boissier. Deliberately, moreover, I shut my eyes to

the present condition of affairs; to the herd of squabbling laundresses

and those other incongruities that spoil the antique scene. Why not?

The timid alone are scared by microscopic discords of time and place.

The sage can invest this prosaic water-trough with all its pristine

dignity and romance by an unfailing expedient. He closes an eye. It is

an art he learns early in life; a simple art, and one that greatly

conduces to happiness. The ever alert, the conscientiously wakeful—how

many fine things they fail to see! Horace knew the wisdom of being

genially unwise; of closing betimes an eye, or an ear; or both.

_Desipere in loco. . . ._

VIII

TILLERS OF THE SOIL

I remember watching an old man stubbornly digging a field by himself.

He toiled through the flaming hours, and what he lacked in strength was

made up in the craftiness, _malizia,_ born of long love of the soil.

The ground was baked hard; but there was still a chance of rain, and

the peasants were anxious not to miss it. Knowing this kind of labour,

I looked on from my vine-wreathed arbour with admiration, but without

envy.