Rossano was not only a political bulwark, the most formidable citadel
of this Byzantine province. It was a great intellectual centre, upon
which literature, theology and art converged. Among the many perverse
historical notions of which we are now ridding ourselves is this—that
Byzantinism in south Italy was a period of decay and torpid dreamings.
It needed, on the contrary, a resourceful activity to wipe out, as did
those colonists from the east, every trace of Roman culture and
language (Latin rule only revived at Rossano in the fifteenth century).
There was no lethargy in their social and political ambitions, in their
military achievements, which held the land against overwhelming numbers
of Saracens, Lombards and other intruders. And the life of those old
monks of Saint Basil, as we now know it, represented a veritable
renaissance of art and letters.
Of the ten Basilean convents that grew up in the surroundings of
Rossano the most celebrated was that of S. M. del Patir. Together with
the others, it succeeded to a period of eremitism
of solitary anchorites whose dwellings honeycombed the warm slopes that
confront the Ionian. . . .
The lives of some of these Greco-Calabrian hermits are valuable
documents. In the _Vitae Sanctorum Siculorum_ of O. Caietanus (1657)
the student will find a Latin translation of the biography of one of
them, Saint Elia Junior. He died in 903. It was written by a
contemporary monk, who tells us that the holy man performed many
miracles, among them that of walking over a river dryshod. And the
Bollandists _(Acta Sanctorum,_ 11th September) have reprinted the
biography of Saint Elia Spelaeotes—the cave-dweller, as composed in
Greek by a disciple. It is yet more
interesting. He lived in a “honesta spelunca” which he discovered in
864 by means of a flight of bats issuing therefrom; he suffered
persecutions from a woman, exactly after the fashion of Joseph and
Potiphar’s wife; he grew to be 94 years old; the Saracens vainly tried
to burn his dead body, and the water in which this corpse was
subsequently washed was useful for curing another holy man’s toothache.
Yet even these creatures were subject to gleams of common sense.
“Virtues,” said this one, “are better than miracles.”
How are we to account for these rock-hermits and their inelegant
habits? How explain this poisoning of the sources of manly
self-respect?
Thus, I think: that under the influence of their creed they reverted
perforce to the more bestial traits of aboriginal humanity. They were
thrust back in their development. They became solitaries, animalesque
and shy—such as we may imagine our hairy progenitors to have been.
Hence their dirt and vermin, their horror of learning, their unkempt
hair, their ferocious independence, their distrust of sunshine and
ordered social life, their foul dieting, their dread of malign spirits,
their cave-dwelling propensities. All bestial characteristics!
This atavistic movement, this retrogression towards primevalism, must
have possessed a certain charm, for it attracted vast multitudes; it
was only hemmed, at last, by a physical obstacle.
The supply of caves ran out.
Not till then were its votaries forced to congregate in those unhealthy
clusters which afterwards grew to be monasteries. Where many of them
were gathered together under one roof there imposed itself a certain
rudimentary discipline and subordination; yet they preserved as much as
they could of their savage traits, cave-like cells and hatred of
cleanliness, terror of demons, matted beards.
[Illustration: Chapel of Saint Mark]
Gradually the social habits of mundane fellow-creatures insinuated
themselves into these hives of squalor and idleness. The inmates began
to wash and to shave; they acquired property, they tilled the ground,
they learnt to read and write, and finally became connaisseurs of books
and pictures and wine and women. They were pleased to forget that the
eunuch and the beggar are the true Christian or Buddhist. In other
words, the allurements of rational life grew too strong for their
convictions; they became reasonable beings in spite of their creed.
This is how coenobitism grew out of eremitism not only in Calabria, but
in every part of the world which has been afflicted with these
eccentrics. Go to Mount Athos, if you wish to see specimens of all the
different stages conveniently arranged upon a small area. . . .
This convent of Patir exercised a great local influence as early as the
tenth century; then, towards the end of the eleventh, it was completely
rebuilt without and reorganized within. The church underwent a thorough
restoration in 1672. But it was shattered, together with the rest of
the edifice, by the earthquake of 1836 which, Madonna Achiropita
notwithstanding, levelled to the ground one-half of the fifteen
thousand houses then standing at Rossano.
These monastic establishments, as a general rule, were occupied later
on by the Benedictines, who ousted the Basileans and were supplanted,
in their turn, by popular orders of later days like the Theatines.
Those that are conveniently situated have now been turned into post
offices, municipalities, and other public buildings—such has been the
common procedure. But many of them, like this of Patir, are too decayed
and remote from the life of man. Fiore, who wrote in 1691, counts up 94
dilapidated Basilean monasteries in Calabria out of a former total of
about two hundred; Patir and thirteen others he mentions as having, in
his day, their old rites still subsisting. Batiffol has recently gone
into the subject with his usual thoroughness.
Nothing is uglier than a modern ruin, and the place would assuredly not
be worth the three hours’ ride from Rossano were it not for the church,
which has been repaired, and for the wondrous view to be obtained from
its site. The journey, too, is charming, both by the ordinary track
that descends from Rossano and skirts the foot of the hills through
olives and pebbly stream-beds, ascending, finally, across an odorous
tangle of cistus, rosemary and myrtle to the platform on which the
convent stands—or by the alternative and longer route which I took on
the homeward way, and which follows the old water conduit built by the
monks into a forest of enormous chestnuts, oaks, hollies and Calabrian
pines, emerging out of an ocean of glittering bracken.
I was pursued into the church of Patir by a bevy of country wenches who
frequented this region for purposes of haymaking. There is a miraculous
crucifix in this sanctuary, hidden behind a veil which, with infinite
ceremony, these females withdrew for my edification. There it was, sure
enough; but what, I wondered, would happen from the presence of these
impure creatures in such a place? Things have changed considerably
since the days of old, for such was the contamination to be expected
from the mere
presence of a woman within these walls that even the Mother of God,
while visiting Saint Nilus—the builder, not the great saint—at work
upon the foundations, often conversed with him, but never ventured to
step within the area of the building itself. And later on it was a
well-authenticated phenomenon recorded by Beltrano and others, that if
a female entered the church, the heavens immediately became cloudy and
sent down thunders and lightnings and such-like signs of celestial
disapproval, which never ceased until the offending monster had left
the premises.
From this ancient monastery comes, I fancy, the Achiropita image.
Montorio will tell you all about it; he learnt its history in June 1712
from the local archbishop, who had extracted his information out of the
episcopal archives. Concerning another of these wonder-working
idols—that of S. M. del Patirion—you may read in the ponderous tomes of
Ughelli.
Whether the celebrated Purple Codex of Rossano ever formed part of the
library of Patirion has not yet been determined. This wonderful
parchment—now preserved at Rossano—is mentioned for the first time by
Cesare Malpica, who wrote some interesting things about the Albanian
and Greek colonies in Calabria, but it was only discovered, in the
right sense of that word, in March 1879 by Gebhardt and Harnack. They
illustrated it in their _Evangeliorum Codex Graecus._ Haseloff also
described it in 1898 _(Codex Purpureus Rossanensis),_ and pointed out
that its iconographical value consists in the fact that it is the only
Greek Testament MS. containing pictures of the life of Christ before
the eighth-ninth century. These pictures are indeed marvellous—more
marvellous than beautiful, like so many Byzantine productions; their
value is such that the parchment has now been declared a “national
monument.” It is sternly guarded, and if it is moved out of Rossano—as
happened lately when it was exhibited at Grottaferrata—it travels in
the company of armed carbineers.
Still pursued by the flock of women, I took to examining the floor of
this church, which contains tesselated marble pavements depicting
centaurs, unicorns, lions, stags, and other beasts. But my
contemplation of these choice relics was disturbed by irrelevant
remarks on the part of the worldly females, who discovered in the head
of the stag some subtle peculiarity that stirred their sense of humour.
“Look!” said one of them to her neighbour. “He has horns. Just like
your Pasquale.”
“Pasquale indeed! And how about Antonio?”