A Little Pilgrimage in Italy
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Title: A Little Pilgrimage in Italy
Author: Olave M. Potter
Illustrator: Yoshio Makino
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A LITTLE PILGRIMAGE IN ITALY
[Illustration: PERUGIA: LOOKING TOWARDS ASSISI.]
A LITTLE PILGRIMAGE IN ITALY
by
OLAVE M. POTTER
Author of 'The Colour of Rome.'
With 8 Coloured Plates and Illustrations by Yoshio Markino
Toronto
The Musson Book Company
Limited
First Published November 1911
Cheap Re-Issue 1913
Edinburgh: T. and A. Constable, Printers to His Majesty
FOREWORD
One morning of high summer three pilgrims met together in the City
of Genoa to sally forth in search of sunshine and the Middle Ages.
At least that was what the Poet said, for sunshine and Ancient
Stones were the passions of the Poet's life.
The Philosopher insisted that we went in search of Happiness.
It is no matter. But in fact we did meet one July day of sweltering
sunshine in Genoa, the Western Gate of Italy, which is a city of
grateful shadows, whose narrow streets defy the brilliant sun.
This is a book of simple delights, a chronicle of little pleasures,
so I shall not talk much of Genoa, although to my mind she is the
most Italian of all the great cities of Italy. Nor shall I speak of
Florence, or Naples, or Venice, or Rome. Doubtless, like me, you
have loved them all.
[Illustration: A STREET IN GENOA.]
If you come with me I shall take you away from the great cities
where your feet are bruised on the stony streets and never feel the
soft warm earth beneath their soles, where mountainous walls of
brick limit your vision to smoke-clouded strips of sky, where you
never smell the fragrance of the night. If you come with me I shall
take you to the hills, the deep-bosomed rolling hills, with their
valleys and their plains and with towered cities riding on their
crests. You will lie with me under the olives and stone-pines,
where the warm earth cushions your limbs in luxury, and the
sunlight flickering in the green shadows lights on a wealth of
flowers.
Then, if you will, come back to your haunted streets.
But I am persuaded that if you go there you will find a great
content among the little cities of great memories which stand
knee-deep in flowers upon the hills of Italy, or in those nobler
towns,--Siena, who belongs to the Madonna, and Perugia, whose name
is as a torch to light your feet into the Valleys of Romance. In
their streets you are seldom shut away from the mountains and the
sky; and little gracious weeds and grasses have spread a web among
their stones as though an elfin world sought to entrap a monster
and pull him down to ruin.
Our little pilgrimage took us to many shrines, and haunts of
peace and beauty. We made our discoveries, saw much, learned not
a little philosophy. And, most of all, we caught a glimpse of the
heart of Umbria--Umbria of the saints. We watched the gathering of
the golden maize in the plain below Assisi while we walked with
St. Francis among the vines and olives; we saw the vintage being
brought home with song and thanksgiving at Orvieto and Viterbo.
We dwelt among beautiful simple-hearted men and women, living in
little farms far from the toil of the modern world, who still
worship God in the gladness of their hearts and the spirit of the
ardent thirteenth century; who toil and spin and bear children
and lie down to die, not with the stupidity of animals or the
self-satisfaction of the bourgeoisie, but full of a beautiful
content, moved by a beautiful faith. We dipped into Tuscany too,
into Lombardy, into the March of Ancona, into Lazio, but nowhere
else was the world as perfect, as unspoiled as in Umbria. If you
are travel-stained with life, if the sweat of a work-a-day world
still clings about you, if you have lost your saints and almost
forgotten your Gods, you will cure the sickness of your soul in
Umbria.
[Illustration: GENOA: THE HARBOUR.]
CONTENTS
CHAP. PAGE
FOREWORD v
I. AREZZO 1
II. CORTONA 14
III. PERUGIA 24
IV. TODI 45
V. SIENA AND THE PALIO 58
VI. SAN GIMIGNANO DELLE BELLE TORRI 88
VII. MONTE OLIVETO MAGGIORE 105
VIII. CHIUSI 116
IX. HANNIBAL'S THRASYMENE 129
X. ASSISI 144
XI. GUBBIO 171
XII. ANCONA 188
XIII. LORETO 201
XIV. RAVENNA 216
XV. THE REPUBLIC OF SAN MARINO 234
XVI. URBINO 245
XVII. FOLIGNO 259
XVIII. CLITUMNUS 276
XIX. SPOLETO 280
XX. THE FALLS OF TERNI 296
XXI. NARNI 303
XXII. ORVIETO: THE CITY OF WOE 316
XXIII. VITERBO 333
XXIV. ROME 353
ILLUSTRATIONS
COLOURED PLATES
PERUGIA: LOOKING TOWARDS ASSISI _Frontispiece_
SIENA: TORRE DEL MANGIA _Facing page_ 62
SAN GIMIGNANO " 102
LAKE THRASYMENE " 137
ASSISI: THE LOWER CHURCH OF SAN FRANCESCO " 152
ANCONA: THE FISHING FLEET " 192
SPOLETO: THE AQUEDUCT " 292
THE FALLS OF TERNI " 298
HALF-TONES
GENOA: THE HARBOUR _Facing page_ viii
A STREET IN AREZZO " 8
CORTONA FROM THE PORTA S. MARGHERITA " 20
PERUGIA: PIAZZA DEL MUNICIPIO " 28
PERUGIA: THE RING OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN " 30
PERUGIA: PORTA EBURNEA " 40
PERUGIA: THE TOMB OF THE VOLUMNII " 42
A STREET IN SIENA " 66
SIENA: S. DOMENICO AND THE VIA BENINCASA " 68
SIENA FROM THE CONVENTO DELL'OSSERVANZA " 72
SIENA: THE PALIO " 84
SAN GIMIGNANO: THE WASHING PLACE " 96
CHIUSI: THE PALACE OF THE BISHOP " 126
A STREET IN ASSISI " 148
THE LITTLE CLOISTER IN S. FRANCESCO D'ASSISI " 154
ASSISI: THE PORZIUNCULA " 168
GUBBIO: PIAZZA VITTORIO EMANUELE " 180
GUBBIO: VIA CARMIGNANO " 184
LORETO " 202
SAN MARINO " 236
URBINO: SAN FRANCESCO " 252
FOLIGNO: THE WASHING PLACE " 268
THE TEMPLE OF CLITUMNUS " 278
A STREET IN SPOLETO " 288
THE CATTLE FAIR AT NARNI " 306
A STREET IN ORVIETO " 322
ORVIETO: ETRUSCAN TOMB " 330
VITERBO: MEDIAEVAL HOUSE IN THE PIAZZA S. LORENZO " 336
VITERBO: FROM A WINDOW IN THE PALACE OF THE POPES " 340
VITERBO: VIA DI S. PELLEGRINO " 346
ROME: ST. PETER'S SEEN FROM THE ARCO OSCURO " 354
ROME: A FOUNTAIN IN THE BORGHESE GARDENS " 358
LINE DRAWINGS
A STREET IN GENOA _See page_ vi
AREZZO: THE PRISON " 6
CORTONA FROM THE PIAZZA GARIBALDI " 16
PERUGIA: DETAIL FROM THE CHOIR OF S. PIETRO DE'
CASSINENSI " 24
PERUGIA: ARCO DI AUGUSTO " 27
THE GRIFFON OF PERUGIA " 32
FOUNTAIN IN THE CLOISTER OF S. PIETRO DE' CASSINENSI " 36
DETAILS FROM THE APSE OF THE CATHEDRAL OF TODI " 51
TODI: S. MARIA DELLA CONSOLAZIONE " 54
SIENA: BANNER-HOLDER " 61
SIENA: TORCH-REST " 64
SIENESE YOUTHS IN PALIO DRESS " 77
SEEN AT THE PALIO " 81
THE TOWERS OF SAN GIMIGNANO " 89
CHIUSURE FROM MONTE OLIVETO MAGGIORE " 107
CITTÀ DELLA PIEVE FROM CHIUSI " 118
ETRUSCAN CINERARY URNS " 122
CHIMNEYS AT PASSIGNANO " 133
ASSISI: S. MARIA MADDALENA AT RIVO TORTO " 159
ASSISI: THE CARCERE " 163
GUBBIO: THE LAMPLIGHTER " 173
GUBBIO: SAN FRANCESCO " 177
GUBBIO: THE MEDIAEVAL AQUEDUCT " 183
PEASANTS AT LORETO " 206
PILGRIMS AT LORETO " 211
RAVENNA: THE PINETA " 218
RAVENNA: SANT'AGATA " 221
RAVENNA: THE TOMB OF DANTE " 228
RAVENNA: COLUMN OF GASTON DE FOIX " 232
THE PALACE OF THE DUKES OF URBINO " 247
FOLIGNO: SAN DOMENICO " 263
FOLIGNO: WELL IN THE CASA NOCCHI " 265
SPELLO " 273
SPOLETO: PORTA D'ANNIBALE " 282
SPOLETO: SAN GREGORIO " 285
A FOUNTAIN OF SPOLETO " 290
SPOLETO: SAN PIETRO " 294
THE LOWER FALL OF TERNI " 300
FARMERS AT THE OX " 304
FAIR OF NARNI " 308
NARNI: MARKET PEOPLE " 310
NARNI: THE PONTE D'AUGUSTO " 312
BELOW THE WALLS OF ORVIETO " 318
ORVIETO: THE CLOCK TOWER " 320
ORVIETO: SANT'AGOSTINO " 326
ETRUSCAN NECROPOLIS BELOW THE WALLS OF ORVIETO " 329
OUTSIDE THE WALLS OF VITERBO " 334
VITERBO: THE MOAT OUTSIDE THE PORTA SAN PIETRO " 338
VITERBO: THE STEMMA OF THE CITY " 341
VITERBO: THE PALACE OF THE POPES " 343
VITERBO: FOUNTAIN IN THE PALAZZO MUNICIPIO " 344
VITERBO: THE HOUSE OF THE BELLA GALIANA " 345
ONE OF VITERBO'S MANY FOUNTAINS " 348
THE RUINED THEATRE OF FERENTO " 351
THE ALTAR OF THE UNKNOWN GOD ON THE PALATINE " 356
THE VIA APPIA " 360
AREZZO
We came to Arezzo in the cool of the evening. It had been a
breathless day. Even at Genoa the air hung heavy with the sirocco.
We found Pisa in a mirage, and the white hills of Carrara
glistening like the lime rocks of a desert.
It was good to be in Tuscany again--Tuscany with her grey farms
and lichened roofs, her towered horizons, her blue hills, her
vineyards, and her olive-gardens. We could hear the song of the
cicalas vibrating in the sunshine above the jar of the train; near
at hand the hills swelled up, clothed with the tender mist of
olives or linked with vines; stone-pines floated darkly against the
sky, and cypress spires climbed the hillsides in a long procession
like souls on pilgrimage.
Perhaps it is because Arezzo, little Arezzo, with her ancient
history and her tale of great men, was the earliest of our
hill-cities that we loved her at first sight. Coming from London
and Genoa, with the noise and dust and heat of long train journeys
still hanging about us, she seemed very cool and sweet among her
vineyards and olive-gardens. She has left her hill-top now that
she needs no more the walls which Sangallo built in the fighting
days of the Popes, and has trailed down to the railway in the
valley, leaving behind her wide piazzas which she has filled with
shady trees, and benches, and statues of her great ones. Her paved
streets, steep and clean, climb up the hillside between grey
palaces, green-shuttered, with wide Tuscan eaves, whose fantastic
outlines, seen in échelon against the sky, bring back a score of
memories of other clean-swept Tuscan towns.
Now that we were threading her byways, Arezzo, though she had
looked imposing from the valley, dwindled to a little brown city,
full of memories, and frescoed churches, and ancient houses in
which the labourer dwells in his poverty to-day where the rich
citizens of Arezzo once held great state. Capers and all manner of
pensive creepers grew out of the rough walls; fig-trees, roses,
wistarias, and oleanders in full blossom poured over them, so that
the air was full of fragrance. And there were flowers in the upper
windows of thirteenth-century houses, for your Tuscan is fond
of flowers, and will have his _garofani_ upon his window-ledge.
Through the low-browed gateways we could see women spinning in
arcaded courtyards; and the shoemakers and basket-weavers worked
at their humble trades as they sat on the steps of weather-beaten
Gothic houses.
And often as we wandered through her narrow streets we paused
to look down upon the calm beauty of the Tuscan plain, which
stretched from the vineyards below her walls to the blue mountains
of Chianti. Nor did it require any effort of imagination, while we
were walking in those mediaeval byways between the Borgunto and
the Via di Pellicceria, to people the rich valley with the pageant
which Dante witnessed while he was staying in Arezzo with the elder
Petrarch, both exiles from Florence.
'It hath been heretofore my chance to see
Horsemen with martial order shifting camp,
To onset sallying, or in muster rang'd,
Or in retreat sometimes outstretch'd for flight;
Light-armed squadrons and fleet foragers
Scouring thy plains, Arezzo! have I seen,
And clashing tournaments, and tilting jousts,
Now with the sound of trumpets, now of bells,
Tabors, or signals made from castled heights.'[1]
A common sight enough, heaven knows, in the Middle Ages, when every
little city sought to rule itself, and the populace and the petty
lords alike cloaked their ambitions under the old war-cry of Guelph
and Ghibelline!
There is an air of gaiety in Arezzo, a simple, almost pastoral,
joy. The philosopher felt it at once.
'We are like flowers,' he said, as we sat on a bench outside the
inn after our first breakfast in Tuscany. 'In London our roots
spread in the ground, and they get knotted and twisted in the
darkness. Here we shoot right up into the sun.'
And, indeed, Arezzo is a happy place, whose charm, it may be,
owes its origin to an earlier civilisation, which has left so
many broken fragments of its art scattered on the neighbouring
hillsides. They are garnered to-day in the museum among the
relics of Arezzo's history, of which they are the chief glory now
that the bronze Chimera and the magnificent Etruscan statue of
Minerva have gone to swell the treasures of Florence. There is not
a vase or _patera_ unbroken. The entire collection is composed
of fragments, moulds and casts in low relief. But every piece is
exquisitely beautiful; each one is like a shell cast by the tides
of fantasy upon the shores of a work-a-day world. And though the
streets of Arezzo are nearly always empty and silent, I think the
flutes and lyres and dancing fauns, with which the artists of
Arretium delicately graced their coral-coloured bowls and cups,
are not silenced yet upon this Tuscan hill. Perhaps the spirit of
the slim-limbed girls and youths, and merry little loves, whose
forms are beauty, and whose fragile feet seem scarce to bruise the
ground, dance still to their forgotten songs about the vineyards
of Arretium. It is as though the dream of some Attic poet, for I
cannot think that the heavy-eyed people of Etruria imagined such
gods, lingers on in this little Tuscan town, and the echo of its
ancient music vibrates in the stillness of the museum like the
murmur of waves in a shell. Or perhaps it is a magic in the air,
the subtle air of Tuscany, that poets sing of, which has inspired
more genius than we can find in all the rest of Italy.
For Arezzo, like Florence, has been the mother of great men.
Michelangelo, himself born but a few miles from Arezzo, wrote to
Vasari, 'Giorgio, of myself I have no power. I happened to be born
in the subtle air of your _paese_.'
Poets and artists, sculptors and musicians, have issued from
her walls. All the world knows that she bred Maecenas and
Petrarch, but only those who pause to read her chronicles know
how many of her sons have walked with History in the corridors of
Time--Margheritone, the Spinelli; Leonardo Bruni; Carlo Marsuppini,
and a host of other humanists; the fighting bishop, Guido Tarlati;
Vasari; and Guido Monaco, the Benedictine monk, born in the closing
years of the eleventh century, who was the inventor of our modern
system of musical notation.
Whether Arezzo occupies the site of Arretium, the city of the
Etruscan league, which is unlikely, or whether it rose like a
phoenix from the ashes of its ancient necropolis, or grew from a
Roman colony of that name near the Etruscan settlement, is not for
me to say, since antiquaries are undecided. In any case there is
little of either Etruscan or Roman antiquity outside the museum
to-day.
[Illustration: AREZZO: THE PRISON.]
It is the Middle Ages which have set their crown upon Arezzo.
Knowing her courage, and how it outweighed her strength so that she
dared to offer battle to her great neighbour Florence through many
stormy centuries, it is a marvel that anything of value should be
left. And in fact Arezzo boasts few civic buildings--the palace of
the Podestà or del Governo, now the prison, whose façade is covered
with the _stemme_ of her many rulers, and the Palazzo Comunale or
dei Priori, with its picturesque clock tower, are all that remain
of the mediaeval city, except some streets of fifteenth-century
dwelling-houses. But she has several noble churches--the Gothic
Duomo, majestically simple within and without, which crowns her
hill-top; the Pieve, Santa Maria di Gradi, with its wonderful
Pisan-Romanesque façade, hoary with antiquity; the great bare
church of San Francesco, enriched by Piero della Francesca's Story
of the True Cross; and Santa Maria delle Grazie in the vineyards
outside the walls.
It is the same all over Italy. What little town is there, however
broken, but has ancient churches and palaces to crown its hill and
keep troth through the ages with its vanished greatness? Arezzo is
particularly rich. The most expectant pilgrim to Italy's shrines of
art, even though he come straight from Florence, will be thrilled
by the golden church which soars from the crest of Arezzo's hill
between the gracious old Palazzo Comunale and the public gardens,
gay in July with the flame-coloured pennons of a flowering tree,
which Mr. Markino tells me is called Urushi in Japan. For the
Aretines have lavished wealth upon their cathedral, and the Ark of
San Donato, which is one of the most beautiful mediaeval shrines
in Italy, a rival to Orcagna's masterpiece in Or San Michele, is
alone worth the long hot climb. The exquisitely wrought marble is
yellowing with age; it is as finely carved as Oriental ivories;
the trefoils and the edges of its panels are set with lapis
lazuli. And here we have the reverence of the Trecento, with its
rude handiwork redeemed by its ardent sincerity. For the sculptors
saw nothing strange or irreverent in filling their scenes of the
lives of Madonna and San Donato with all the incongruous details of
their own day, so that we have at the same time jesters and angels,
knights a-horseback and heavy-headed saints, and the queer beasts
of mediaeval imaginings.
Close at hand is the tomb of the splendid old fighting Bishop of
Arezzo, Guido Tarlati, who crowned the Emperor Lewis of Bavaria
with the Iron Crown of Lombardy in defiance of the excommunications
of John XXII., and who led his people to battle against the Pope as
readily as he led their prayers to God. A great man this, who has
a worthy tomb, for Agostino and Agnolo of Siena carved the history
of his stirring life below his recumbent form when he was laid to
rest, and have shown us incidentally the life of the Trecento in
all its vigour and humour. Two angels draw back the curtains of his
bier, revealing him as he lies asleep, with folded hands and an air
of extreme piety and humility, belied by the long recital of his
little wars, and the story of his triumphs, from his Consecration
as a Bishop to the Coronation of Lewis, and his death in 1327.
[Illustration: A STREET IN AREZZO.]
There are many other treasures in the Duomo, besides the column
upon which San Donato had his head cut off, 'without any regard for
the axe,' as the custode explained, pointing out a deep gash in the
marble to remove the lingering doubts of any sceptic; there is an
exquisite relief by Rossellino in the Chapter House, and many Della
Robbias have set their seal of piety and graciousness on altar and
tomb in the Chapel of the Madonna. But it was not any of these
things which claimed our thoughts the first time that we entered
the dim aisles of Margheritone's soaring Gothic church. After the
glare and heat of the piazza, where the sunlight reflected from
the yellow walls of the cathedral dazzled our eyes, we found the
darkness of the nave, illuminated by a solitary altar lamp, and
threaded with shafts of jewelled light filtering through painted
glass, as grateful as the shade of some primeval forest formed by
the interlacing branches of giant trees. For, within, the Cathedral
of Arezzo is like the Gothic churches of the north, and it may
be that the grim Margheritone, whose agonised crucifixions adorn
so many chapels in Tuscany and Umbria, was himself inspired by
northern architecture. He returned to his native town from Florence
in the train of Gregory X., fresh from the Council of Lyons; and
Gregory, who left 30,000 _scudi_ to the Comune for the erection
of the new cathedral, may well have made some suggestions as to
the style of architecture which was to be employed. He died in the
neighbourhood some months later, early in the year 1276, and his
beautiful thirteenth-century tomb by Margheritone is one of the
chief ornaments of the cathedral which he helped to endow.
In Arezzo we were fortunate to find a real country inn; a clean,
cool place, with floors and stairs of red brick, and an alfresco
dining-room in the garden.
I remember how gay we were, how our burdens of care slipped from
our shoulders as we sat to eat below the trees on those first
nights in Tuscany. Were we not on the road again, knowing nothing
of the morrow, forgetful of everything but the joy of yesterday,
dining when we were hungry, sleeping when we were tired, with no
thought but for the beauty of the ways which opened out before us,
no care but that we might pass unwittingly some of the quaint and
lovely fragments of art and architecture with which our path was
strewn?
'Peregrino, quasi mendicando,' said Dante, bitter in his exile, but
we did not want for the luxury which money cannot buy. It is only
Italy of the little towns that can make you forget the work-a-day
world. Nowhere else can you be so content with what is often meagre
fare, so careless of the morrow, so full of the joy of to-day, as
you are in Italy.
At night we sat at rough trestle tables in the little garden of the
Albergo della Stella with the star-strewn canopy of night above us,
and an electric light hanging like a fire-fly from the branches
of an acacia tree. The level note of night crickets singing in the
ilexes made an accompaniment to the distant clatter of dishes and
the snatches of talk from other tables behind the tall bamboos. The
food was simple--_minestre_, perfectly grilled steaks, fresh fruit,
and generous _fiaschi_ of the good red Tuscan wine, for which the
vineyards of Arretium were praised. And here we lingered, talking
of the wide-eaved Tuscan house in the Via del Orte, where Petrarch,
the first of the great Italian humanists, was born, and Dante came
to visit the elder Petrarch, who had been exiled from Florence
by the same turn of the political wheel as himself; of Vasari,
who filled his niche as a biographer so much better than he ever
filled it as an artist; of Piero della Francesca and the vigorous
young world he pictured on the bare white walls of San Francesco;
and of San Bernardino who, like St. Francis, purged Arezzo of its
devils and laid the foundations of Santa Maria delle Grazie, that
exquisite church outside the city walls which Benedetto da Maiano,
Andrea della Robbia and Parri di Spinello enriched with the sister
arts. For it was San Bernardino who, coming to Arezzo, and finding
that the citizens were in the habit of practising pagan rites for
an oracle, which they imagined dwelt in a wood outside their gates,
preached such a fiery sermon from the pulpit of San Francesco that
they wept before him like little children. But he, insisting that
they should do penance, gave orders that on a certain day a great
wooden cross should be brought to him, and that the people should
come in solemn procession to exorcise the demon. That week the
citizens of Arezzo went about their work with fear and trembling,
and some of them cast doubtful looks down to the valley where the
oracle was hid. But on the appointed day, though I doubt not that
many did absent themselves, a great company followed the saint,
carrying the cross, down to the hateful wood.
It is not hard to picture to-day--the Mystic chanting as he walked
at the head of the procession; the hot and dusty way through the
vineyards below the city walls, for San Bernardino was loth to
start until all the people were met together; and the fear of the
crowd as they drew near and heard the music of the oracle-haunted
spring. But Bernardino, whose heart was ever with the angels,
caused the fountain to be cast down and the trees to be felled,
lest by any chance some evil might yet lurk in the wood. And,
knowing the heart of the people, that where a man has once
worshipped he will worship again, even though it be to other gods,
he built a little chapel to the glory of Our Lady of Mercies, and
he begged Messer Spinello to paint the Virgin for an altarpiece.
But not every one who comes to Arezzo visits this lovely church
down in the vineyards, in spite of the marvellous beauty of Andrea
della Robbia's 'cornice,' which frames Spinello's Madonna delle
Grazie as she stands among the stars, like the Mother of the World,
with strange, sad eyes, and shelters in her cloak the little people
of Arezzo, humbly kneeling in penitence at her feet.
CORTONA
Cortona! Not one of us but thrilled as we drew near her. For few
cities bear so fair a name or seem as full of promise as Cortona.
Although the world has long since passed her by, she loiters on her
hill-top between the valley and the sky like a forgotten goddess
who is loth to quit her great estate. Her towering walls encompass
her about, those mighty walls built for a mighty people which
Virgil sings of in the _Aeneid_; she frowns as though she were
still girt for war, and had forgotten how to smile; her lean grey
castle, stark upon the crest of the hill, points to the heaven like
an avenging sibyl.
No wonder that her history is spare since the days when she and
her great neighbours, Arretium and Clusium, joined the Etruscan
League in 310 B.C.; for even to-day, with excellently engineered
roads scaling her hill, she is difficult of approach, and her stout
walls and impregnable position offered no inducement to invading
armies, who were content with harrying her fertile plain, as they
passed by to Umbria and Rome. We know she was a Roman colony in the
time of the historian Dionysius, but scant mention is made of her
under the Roman Empire; and although she was one of the earliest
Episcopal sees, and is still the seat of a bishop, it was not until
the thirteenth century that the chronicles of Cortona began to take
a place in mediaeval history. She is still withdrawn from the world
upon her mountain; her houses are still huddled together in the
shelter of her great walls, built by the Unknown People; she still
hides her poverty from the eyes of the careless traveller as he
rushes past the foot of her hill on his way to Rome or Florence.
After the motor-omnibus had deposited us in the Piazza Signorelli,
and we had deposited our luggage in a rather dreary-looking inn
whose only claims to notice were its exquisite views over the
Tuscan plain to the inland sea of Thrasymene, we sallied out full
of anticipation to see the legendary birthplace of three such
widely different characters as the mythological Dardanus, founder
of Troy; Brother Elias, the erring and ambitious follower of St.
Francis; and Luca Signorelli, that courtly gentleman and great
painter of the fifteenth century.
But we were disappointed. Cortona, notwithstanding her lovely name
and her ancient and picturesque site, is a dirty little place, with
unsavoury streets and a baroque cathedral. She has treasures, of
course. What little town in Italy has not? Her tumble-down palaces
are built of warm red brick; her churches have some fine pictures;
her Palazzo Pretorio is covered with the escutcheons of the princes
who were her overlords, but she has no charm unless you catch her
unawares before the sleep is shaken from her eyes early on a summer
morning.
[Illustration: CORTONA FROM THE PIAZZA GARIBALDI.]
We found so little to detain us in her dingy, unkempt streets that
we decided to push on the next day to Perugia. We tried our tempers
in the inn, the most lethargic inn that it was our misfortune
to visit, endeavouring to get some lunch, and after waiting an
hour and a half we found the _gnocchi_ stale and the coarse meat
uneatable. So we went out again into the siesta heat, determined
at least to see the great Etruscan lamp which is the pride of
Cortona's museum, and the pictures which Luca Signorelli painted
for her churches.
Cortona was asleep. She was as still as a lizard on a sunny wall;
even the tiresome children who had followed us all the morning,
agape for soldi, had vanished; the air was vibrant with the tremolo
of the cicalas; the sunlight stretched like a shimmering veil
across the valleys. And in a moment all our vexation vanished.
Italy the Beautiful came out to meet us, smoothing away all
disagreeable memories as a cool hand laid on the forehead will
smooth out pain; we forgot the hatefulness which had been piling
itself up all day--the dust, the smells, the too-glaring sun,
the stupid inn with its bad-tempered maid-servant, the screaming
children, the baroque cathedral!
In the cool grey church of San Domenico, which stands in the
flowery public gardens of Cortona, we found not only one of Luca's
great pictures but a pageant of Quattrocento saints and Madonnas
in richly gilt Gothic frames over the three altars which fill
its eastern wall. In the Gesù, a little ancient church which
clings to the hillside close to the cathedral, we discovered an
Annunciation by Fra Angelico, almost as beautiful as that exquisite
picture which he painted on the wall of his monastery-home in
Florence. It is very like the fresco in the corridor of San Marco.
The Madonna is sitting in the same light and airy loggia reading
in some little book, as the Angel Gabriel, with his iridescent
wings still poised for flight, alights at her feet, filling the air
with glory. Outside, the grass is starred with the flowers which
Angelico loved to paint; and far away, silhouetted against the sky,
we see the Angel with a flaming sword driving Man and Woman from
their Garden of Paradise, whose gates not even the coming of Christ
could reopen on earth.
And then, remembering the story of Filippo Brunelleschi, we went
into the Duomo to see the famous sarcophagus which legend claims to
be the tomb of the Consul Flaminius, and which the great architect
of the dome of Florence Cathedral walked sixty miles to see. For
one morning when he was discussing antique sculpture in the Piazza
of Santa Maria del Fiore with Donatello and some other artists,
Brunelleschi heard of a Roman sarcophagus in Cortona. Straightway
he left his companions, and fired by his passion for the works of
antiquity, 'just as he was, in his mantle, hood and sabots, without
saying a word of where he was going,' came to Cortona and made a
drawing of it, returning at last to Florence where he showed it to
the astonished Donatello, who had not been able to guess where his
friend had disappeared.
But it was in the early morning, as I have said, that we discovered
the nameless charm of Cortona--that same charm which we found in
a different guise in all the little towns of Umbria and Tuscany.
Our inn, though it towered more than a thousand feet above
the valley, was at the bottom of the city, for Cortona in the
immemorial Etruscan fashion hangs from the crest of her hill. Even
the ambitious motor-bus could not climb higher than the Piazza
Signorelli, because nearly all the streets above it are so steep
that they are built in shallow steps. And they are so deserted that
in one of them we found rabbits contentedly nibbling the grass
which grew between its paving-stones. So the next morning, very
early, while the day was cool, we climbed up to the great church
of Santa Margherita, which stands with the ruined Fortezza on the
crest of Cortona's mountain.
To me it is always rather strange that this harsh Tuscan citadel
should ignore the name of Brother Elias, that great and restless
spirit who sought to wed Love not to Poverty, as Francis did, but
to Ambition. His name is hardly spoken in Cortona, but the body of
Santa Margherita, whom some call the Magdalen of the Franciscans,
because they love to draw comparisons between the life of Christ
and His humble follower, is enshrined upon the hill-top like
the light that cannot be hid. Her church has been restored, and
there is little of the ancient building left except her beautiful
fourteenth-century tomb, the silver shrine which was the gift of
Piero da Cortona, and the lovely rose-window which is preserved
in the modern façade. In the aisle are the flags and ship-lantern
of some knight of Malta, who prayed to Margherita in the hour of
peril, and was saved by her intercession.
Yet it was not for Santa Margherita that we climbed Cortona's hill
at dawn, but to see the rich plain of Tuscany in its amphitheatre
of blue hills, each with a towered city for its crown--Chiusi,
Città della Pieve, Montepulciano, and a host of others to which
we had not learned to give their names. It was a panorama of
surpassing beauty which opened out before us. Fold on fold the
mountains lifted their heads above the mists of the valley, rising
always towards the mighty crest of Monte Amiata, which was to loom
upon so many of our horizons while we were journeying through the
heart of Italy. And far away the sunshine lightened the opal waters
of Lake Thrasymene, lying like a forgotten sea in the bosom of the
Umbrian hills, with the towers of Castiglione del Lago rosy in the
dawn.
[Illustration: CORTONA FROM THE PORTA S. MARGHERITA.]
Even here the Rocca stood above us on its scarp, the key of the
strong citadel which claims descent from Dardanus of Troy. On
either side of Santa Margherita the mighty walls, including many
courses of Cyclopean masonry, climbed down towards the peaceful
plain. We passed through a gap which had once been a gate, and saw
them plunging down the hillside holding the crumpled brown roofs
of the little shrunken city in their elbow. So was Cortona of the
Unknown People fortified; so was the city of the Etruscans girt
about, and Hannibal and Flaminius have looked upon these walls as
they passed by to battle upon the reedy shore of Thrasymene.
Up on the hillside men and girls were reaping in the shadow of
the ancient wall. 'And the reapers, reaping early,' quoth the poet
softly to himself. Their laughter floated down to us. Every now and
then a girl would straighten her lithe figure, stand upright curved
scythe in hand, and sing, her clear notes soaring like a lark's in
the crystal air. At our feet Cortona nestled in the embrace of her
great wall, and far below, the plain of Tuscany rolled away to the
hills where the sunlight fired the towers of other mountain cities.
So in the dawn we grew to love Cortona, for the fantastic beauty
which is her own, and for her aloofness. As we passed down into
her steep-paved streets we paused a moment in San Francesco, where
Brother Elias lies buried with his hopes and ambitions; where, too,
is kept the ivory case with a fragment of the True Cross which
the Patriarch of Constantinople gave to Elias when he visited
that Court as Nuncio of Frederick II. And we lingered in little
San Niccolò, which, with its loggia and cypress-garden, is the
loveliest of Cortona's churches; and which, for all its poverty,
treasures three pictures by Luca Signorelli, who belonged to its
confraternity.
Down in the Piazza Signorelli we found the motor-omnibus already
waiting to take us to the station. The narrow streets were crowded
with black-browed Tuscan peasants selling fruit and vegetables,
and doing a thriving business in skinned frogs strung on wooden
skewers. These looked particularly unappetising in pails of not too
clean water, and the atmosphere was putrid after the freshness of
the air above. Again we had the sense of stifling heat and odour,
and again the swarms of dirty children who had tracked us yesterday
rose, as it were, out of the earth. We were glad enough to leave
Cortona, but not until we had experienced many vexatious delays.
For when we had fetched our luggage from the inn and settled our
account with the rather difficult landlady, the driver of the
omnibus was not forthcoming. And when at last we persuaded him to
leave the shelter of the cool Palazzo Comunale, a glazier took the
ill-chosen opportunity of mending two of the broken windows in
the omnibus. We had given up all hope of catching our train when
half an hour later we swung out of the town and began our perilous
descent down to the plain.
After all we had some minutes to spare, though I should not care to
make the journey again, for we took more than one corner of that
switchback road on two wheels. But the driver was confident of our
approval. 'Ecco signore, the train has not yet arrived,' he cried
triumphantly. _Facilis descensus Averni!_
[Illustration: PERUGIA: DETAIL FROM THE CHOIR OF S. PIETRO DE'
CASSINENSI.]
PERUGIA
'For bodiless dreams through double gateways go
Of horn and ivory, from night's realm forlorn;
And those that through the ivory gate are borne
Deceive, and what they tell is unfulfilled;
But those that issue through the polished horn
Fulfil themselves for mortals to whose sight
They issue.'
J. W. MACKAIL'S Translation of the _Odyssey_,
xix. 562.
'Look!' said the chronicler, 'there is Perugia. Perugia, whom I
have loved so long for her name alone.'
The poet sighed.
'I could almost envy you because you do not know her. See how her
loggia'd towers frame the heavens, and how she stretches out her
lovely arms to welcome us!'
We came to Perugia from Cortona. In an hour we slipped from that
austere Tuscan citadel into the heart of an enchanted land--Umbria
Mystica--the home of saints, where Beauty and Romance walk in the
valleys with the gentle Gods of Arcady; where brooding peace hangs
in the luminous air, and on whose aerial hills great memories dwell
in the little cities full of dreams that men have built for them.
We skirted the enchanted shores of Thrasymene, the spell-bound
lake which lies like an opal in the bosom of the Umbrian Hills,
and found ourselves among vineyards and olive-gardens, where the
Madonnas of Perugino and Raphael are living their beautiful and
simple lives in the fields, and the great-eyed oxen draw Virgilian
ploughs below the olives, or roll along the dusty roads with
scarlet fillets on their milk-white heads.
Perugia is the queen of this enchanted land, the crown of Umbria.
Think of her name--Perusia Augusta the Romans called her; was there
ever a more lovely name, or one which History enriched with more
poetic legends? For Felice Ciatti, that brilliant scholar of the
seventeenth century, in summing up the Greco-Trojan tradition and
the popular belief that Noah, the Patriarch, was the founder of
the city, thought nothing of addressing the Perugians, in one of
his Lenten sermons, in these stirring words--'No marvel is it if,
to-day, ye Perugians possess the justice of the Armenians, the
wisdom of the Greeks, the prosperity of Augustus, and the sanctity
of Noah, for ye are descended from them all.'
And if these legends leave you cold, think of the Carlovingian
tradition in which such great names as Oliver the Paladin, and
the puissant knight, Count Roland, 'the Falcon of Christendom,'
and the tyrant Orgoglioso, play their parts with the lovely lady
Prossimana. Or, if this does not stir you, would you rather learn
romance from the nomenclature of her ancient gates? Here, long
since vanished, was the Portal of the Sun, the gate through which
blind Homer thought that dreams entered into a city from the east.
It still gives its name to a whole quarter of Perugia--the Rione
della Porta Sole--and though no man can point to the actual Porta
Sole, when the wind blows coolly through any of Perugia's eastern
gates, and you look across the valley at Assisi, it will be strange
if you do not think of Dante's words:
'There hangs
Rich slope of mountain high, whence heat and cold
Are wafted through Perugia's eastern gate:
And Nocera with Gualdo, in its rear
Mourn for their heavy yoke. Upon that side,
Where it doth break its steepness most, arose
A sun upon this world, as duly this
From Ganges doth; therefore let none, who speak
Of that place, say Ascesi; for its name
Were lamely so delivered; but the East,
To call things rightly, be it henceforth styled.'[2]
[Illustration: PERUGIA: ARCO DI AUGUSTO.]
Here, at the end of a winding street of mediaeval houses, is the
Porta Eburnea, the Ivory Gate through which Homer thought that
False Dreams were expelled from a city; and close to Sant'Ercolano
is the Porta Cornea, the Gate of Horn, whence issued all True
Dreams. The Porta Eburnea was, indeed, the gate of False Dreams,
for it was by that way, so Matarazzo tells us, that the Baglioni,
that strange and beautiful and ungodly race who lived and died by
violence, always passed out to battle. Of the others the Porta
Augusta, the greatest of the Etruscan gates, once bore the proud
name Porta Pulchra, because of its beauty even in a beautiful
city; and another was named, and is still named, after the God of
War. Is it not irony that all the rest should bear the names of
saints, for Perugia, a city of turbulent desires, has ever bred
more warriors than saints? Even to-day there are few monks or
nuns in Perugia; it is the military who are in evidence, and not
a few churches and cloisters have been despoiled to house them.
In fact Perugia, notwithstanding her mediaeval monuments, is a
gay and much begarrisoned city, not provincial like Siena, but
really the capital of a state. I have never seen so many smart and
pretty women in any Italian town of the size as I found at Perugia
in high summer, nor so many soldiers. The Corso is full of them,
both morning and evening. They promenade up and down, 'wearing
out the pavements,' in the phrase of the immortal and energetic
Fortebraccio; or they sit at cafés gossiping after their siestas.
At night they become an army. It seems as though the entire
population congregated then in the Corso and the Piazza Vittorio
Emanuele, where there is a band and a mushroom growth of tables and
chairs. On Sundays they promenade in the cathedral in just the same
gay and careless fashion, except that the boys doff their hats, and
that here you see shaggy-haired and devout peasants kneeling among
the beautifully-dressed Perugian ladies.
[Illustration: PERUGIA: PIAZZA DEL MUNICIPIO.]
Perugia is not a religious city. It is true that she furnished the
most ardent disciples of the thirteenth-century Flagellants;[3]
and that Fra Bernadino of Siena, preaching to her from the little
pulpit outside the cathedral of San Lorenzo, brought her to such
a passion of repentance that not only did she burn her vanities
in the piazza before this ardent Flame of God, as the Florentines
were to do later for Savonarola, but she built in his memory that
exquisite oratory covered with reliefs in terra-cotta by Agostino
Duccio, under the shadow of San Francesco. Yet for the rest it
seems as though she has not forgiven the papacy for grinding her
under its heel in the stormy sixteenth century, when Paul III.
built his fortress on the ruined palaces of the Baglioni; although,
on the Feast of the Ring of the Virgin, which, for all her air of
cynicism, she still counts as one of her treasures, we saw the
peasants who had climbed her hillside in the dawn worshipping with
the simple faith of the Middle Ages.
Matarazzo has told the story of this Ring, and how it was
stolen from Chiusi, where it was held in great veneration, in
the thirteenth century by a German priest, and brought by the
intervention of the Holy Virgin to Perugia. It is shown in San
Lorenzo in a finely-wrought casket thrice a year; otherwise it
is kept in an iron chest, whose seven keys are in the custody of
different citizens. We arrived early enough to go into the loft,
where the chest is lodged, above the Altar of the Sacrament, and
see the Ring being put _sans cérémonie_ into its place in the gold
casket before the red silk curtains were drawn back and the holy
relic lowered to the altar. A short mass was said, and the casket
was placed on a table in the centre of the chapel for the people to
pass one by one in front of it.
It was a sacrament, a holy and beautiful thing, to watch them as
they passed, these peasants with their broken dusty hats and rugged
faces, who had come up from the valleys with their Madonna-like
wives. They pressed their lips to the glass, and held up their
rosaries and rings to touch the shrine. All had some special sign
of love and reverence.
[Illustration: PERUGIA: THE RING OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN.]
I watched them till my eyes were filled with tears because of
the beauty and the pathos and the blessedness of it all. One
by one they passed. First, an old woman, her white hair hidden
beneath a gold kerchief, and a smile of rare peace on her gnarled
face, pressed her lips to the casket and handed up her rosary
that it might touch the shrine. She passed down with bent head.
Next came a girl of the splendid Umbrian type, deep-chested and
straight-limbed, her head carried high. She kissed the glass
and lifted up her ring, maybe her wedding ring, then crossed
herself, and passed on with trembling lips. Old men there were who
touched the shrine with shaking fingers, and stumbled away into
the cathedral to pray. Children were lifted up to kiss it. And
there were others besides the kerchiefed women and their peasant
husbands--people of the town, complacent burghers and their stout
wives, and the dainty white-robed girls of Perugia. And nearly all
passed out with uncertain lips as if they had been strangely moved.
Across the nave is the Miraculous Madonna which Giovanni Manni
painted on a column. She is in a gilt frame, set about with silver
hearts, which gleam in the darkness of the aisle like the smiles of
those who have found joy in her. I do not wonder that the people
of Perugia love this Madonna, for she is very beautiful. Her hands
are raised in blessing, but to me her tender eyes are full of
wonder, as though having no belief herself she marvelled at these
worshippers for their faith, and loved them exceedingly because of
it. We always found some poor, rough-headed peasants kneeling in
the great ugly church before her, and ever she blessed them, and
wondered at them, and seemed to give them peace.
[Illustration: THE GRIFFON OF PERUGIA.]
Perugia is a mediaeval paradox. When you stand upon her ramparts
in the clear shining of the morning, and look across the hills
and vales of Umbria, you wonder that the hot breath of war and
the scent of blood should have reached her. For she stands at the
head of two wide plains full of enchanted silence--the Valley of
Spoleto with its many little cities starring the green hills, and
the Valley of the Tiber which sweeps from the gates of Perugia
southwards to Rome. The mountains, which close them in, are clothed
with vines and olives, and swell softly like the many bosoms of
Diana of the Ephesians. The valleys are a garden, and the hills
roll softly to the horizon till they grow aerial in the distance
and hang upon the heavens like fantastic clouds. Little white
cities crown them or clamber up their slopes, and rivers wind down
the valleys, with sunlight glinting on their waters, between the
tall poplars swaying on their banks like girls who gather flowers
by a stream. The high brown shoulder of Subasio, made sacred by its
memories of Umbria's greatest saint, shuts off the bleak and hungry
Appennines which clasp Gubbio and Gualdo and a hundred other little
cities to their barren breasts. But here you have the landscape
of the Quattrocento artists with the clear pale light and blue
aerial hills which are the hall-mark of the Umbrian masters. Nor
can you ever tire of watching it, for every day and every hour some
subtle change sweeps over the face of this immortal loveliness;
and it is always beautiful, whether you look across the sunlit
mists at Assisi in a blue veil of cloud-shadow or see her smiling
and rosy in the sunset, or whether you stand at night under the
scented laurels of Perugia's _passeggiata_, and see the lights of
distant hill-cities riding like ships upon the dim horizon of a
soundless sea. It became a custom, almost an act of worship, to
congregate upon the bulwarks of Perugia before the sun slipped
behind the western hills, to watch the light pouring into the plain
like liquid gold into a bowl of translucent glass, tinted all the
colours of the prism. Even when night had drained this ancient
chalice of the golden wine of the sun, and the lights of lonely
farmsteads were twinkling on the hillsides, we were loth to leave
it.
Yet these fair valleys have been drenched with blood and scorched
by fire; Hannibal and his Gauls and Africans gave battle to
Flaminius, the maker of roads, by the lake of Thrasymene; they
have been devastated by Goths and Lombards; the German Kings of
Rome have harried them, and the history of Perugia itself has been
one long tale of battle and murder. It is as though the Griffin of
Perugia, the strange Etruscan beast which is to this day the device
of the city, has never sheathed its talons in anything but human
flesh.
From the beginning Perugia fought fiercely for her freedom.
Octavius wrestled for seven months outside her gates, and when
he entered them was cheated of everything but honour; because a
citizen, rather than yield his city to the first emperor, set fire
to it, and stabbed himself in the holocaust which followed. Totila
would not rest until he possessed her, and all through the Middle
Ages she fought like a termagant with her neighbours; and the name
of that griffin's brood, the Baglioni, was a terror throughout the
Umbrian vales.[4]
It was Paul III. who brought her to her knees, and forced her to
build his great fortress upon the palaces of her princes, and not
long since she turned and rent it stone from stone, seeking to wipe
out the old insult.
But it is not only in the marvellous and peaceful beauty of her
setting that Perugia is a paradox, for how is it possible to
reconcile the pictures of Perugino and his great pupils--Raphael,
Lo Spagna, Pinturicchio, and Eusebio di San Giorgio--with the
awful deeds of the Oddi and the Baglioni; or the wailing of the
Flagellants with the great soldiers who ruled this turbulent
city--Biordo Michelotto, foully done to death by the wicked Abbot
of Mommaggiore, and Braccio Fortebraccio, the idol of the people?
Paradox again! For the bones of Braccio Fortebraccio, which, to
satisfy the vengeance of Martin V., were buried in unconsecrated
ground, lie in a wooden box in the museum, and sigh to posterity
through their melancholy inscription:
Hospes lege et luge.
Perusiae natum Montonium me exulem excepit,
Mars patriam Umbriam et Capuam mihi subegit.
Roma paruit; Italia theatrum; spectator orbis fuit.
At Aquila cadentem risit quem patria lugens brevi hac urna tegit.
Eheu! Mars extulit, Mors substulit.
Abi.
In the days when Perugino and his pupils were painting their
calm-eyed Madonnas and saints with the blue Umbrian hills as the
background to a world of ineffable peace, Perugia was drenched
with blood daily, and every man carried his life in his hand. Yet
hardly any of the artists of Perugia painted war, though here and
there in their blue distances you see a little band of knights
pricking out on the plain. Bonfigli, the master of Perugino, was
the only one who cared to speak the truth; dear Bonfigli, who loved
Perugia so well, and painted her with such naïve joy upon the
walls of the Palazzo Comunale!
[Illustration: FOUNTAIN IN THE CLOISTER OF S. PIETRO DE'
CASSINENSI.]
Trace Perugia in his frescoes, and you will wonder that it should
be so little changed to-day. There is the slender minaret of San
Pietro de' Cassinensi, and the great Gothic window of San Domenico,
whose cloisters are to-day a barrack, and Sant'Ercolano soaring up
beneath the city walls beside the ancient Porta Marzia. Here you
see the Palazzo Comunale, one of the most sublime Gothic palaces
in Italy, with its curving front and delicate fourteenth-century
windows and majestic portal, and the loggia which Fortebraccio
built by the cathedral. It is all much the same to-day as it was
when Bonfigli painted his primitive wars, except that the citizens
no longer dress in scarlet and fur, and that there are fewer towers
in the city, and none at all on the circuit of the walls.
San Pietro de' Cassinensi is still the gracious church Bonfigli
loved. We walked there one evening towards the hour of sunset. A
little rainstorm, like a petulant burst of weeping, overtook us as
we drew near, and we saw the yellow sunset and the cloud-shadows
in the valley through a web of silver threads woven by the rain
under the acacias. Inside, it was too dark to see the pictures with
which the walls are covered, but we gathered an impression of space
and dignity and richness. In the dim light we marvelled at the
beauty of the choir-stalls, the intarsia, and the carving in which
Stefano of Bergamo, and some say Raphael himself, gave free rein to
fancy, and dreamed of delightful mythical beasts, and sphinxes with
lovely faces, and a wealth of flowers and fruit and joyful little
children. A mad world!
Then the old monk, glad that we loved his treasures, opened
the doors of the choir, so that we might see their exquisite
workmanship in the fading light; and we looked down upon the
incomparable Valley of Spoleto, with Assisi and her sister city,
little Spello, on the skirts of Monte Subasio, and Foligno and
Trevi rising out of rosy sunset mists. There is a small round hill
below San Pietro, just such a little hill as Pinturicchio loved,
encircled by a winding white road, and shadowed with slender trees.
We almost looked to see his gay horsemen in red and blue and
shining steel pricking down into the plain. There were still storms
abroad, and the clouds drifted like great birds across the heavens,
casting their shadows on the valley.
'This is the work of a great artist,' said the philosopher, with a
little sigh of complete content. And indeed it was a worthy picture
to be framed in those exquisite doors.
Night overtook us before we reached Sant'Ercolano, which looked
more like a mosque than ever with its soaring arches in the
twilight. We climbed up the steps beside it, and passed into the
city through the Gate of True Dreams. At night Perugia of the
Middle Ages awakes. As we wandered in her dark and silent streets,
ill-lit and bridged with gloomy arches, our ears were tuned to
catch the voices of the past.
We divided our evenings. Sometimes we took our coffee and vermouth
in the Piazza Vittorio Emanuele, where there was a band or music of
sorts. At other times the poet had his way, and we visited a humble
café opposite the Palazzo Comunale, and afterwards plunged into the
dark and mysterious alleys of the mediaeval city. These were the
evenings that I loved the most. In the distance we could hear the
faint beat of music, and up and down the Corso flowed the gay tide
of promenaders, which always turned before it reached us. Above us
loomed the great Palazzo, which is justly Perugia's pride. In the
gloom its brown and bulging walls would have been as forbidding as
a fortress's but for the delicate tracery of its windows and its
fantastic Gothic door, with the Griffin of the City gazing down
hungrily into the night. The lovely fountain on which the Pisani
and Arnolfo di Cambio lavished their genius was nothing but a
beautiful silhouette against the loggia which Braccio Fortebraccio
put up to shield his beloved citizens from the sun; and on the
steps of the gaunt cathedral the statue of Papa Giulio III., with
raised hand, blessed his careless people.
For Perugia is careless, beautifully and graciously careless. She
has forgotten her woes, she has almost forgotten her old enemies;
she has certainly forgotten to finish her cathedral. And yet
when we sat at night in this romantic spot, where the art of
four hundred years is garnered, we noticed a little yellow lamp
flickering unsteadily above the cathedral door, no brighter than
a glow-worm in comparison with the flare of electric light close
at hand. The passers-by told us its history: how the people of
Perugia, feeling the iron hand of the Farnese Pope, turned for help
to Ridolfo, the last of the great Baglioni Princes. How Ridolfo
failed them, and how in their extremity they turned to Christ,
and besought Him with cries and sobs, tearing their garments and
beating themselves like the Flagellants of the thirteenth century,
to defend them against the terrible Paul III. They placed the
crucifix above the door of San Lorenzo, where the light shines
every night, and laid the keys of the city below the tortured
feet of the Saviour. We know that their prayers were of no avail,
yet every night in Perugia, that city of beautiful and romantic
memories, they still light the little lantern over the cathedral
door, where the crucifix was placed, when they crept with fear
and trembling to the feet of Christ to ask for help against his
Vicar, because Ridolfo Baglione, forsooth! had failed them in their
necessity.
[Illustration: PERUGIA: PORTA EBURNEA.]
A step from here and we found ourselves in the dark and
memory-laden streets of the old town, with their vaulted passages
and their blocked-up Doors of the Dead--those pitiful defences
against the Common Enemy, in which Japan as well as Italy put
faith.[5] Of them all I loved the Via Vecchia best, with its air of
mystery and its many arches linking the grim old palaces together.
At night it was so gloomy there that we could barely find our way
past the ancient Canonica in which so many of the Popes snatched
a holiday from Rome; and as we went down the hill, always between
great palaces, the darkness closed round us. Here and there a
feeble light illuminated the steep path, but for the rest there was
only the starlight to guide us until we came to the great Porta
Augusta, which spanned the road majestically, full of the dignity
of dead Etruria. Seen thus against the stars, with its graceful
fifteenth-century loggia faintly illumined by a yellow light
within, it was as impressive as the pylon of an Egyptian Temple.
Or, if our steps took us another way, we passed the grim towers
of mediaeval mansions, and presently found ourselves at the
Baglioni's Gate of Dreams, or the Porta Mandola, as the Etruscan
gate is called. Here, of a certainty, we would hear music, for
whenever I have passed through that ancient gate at night, the
silence has been broken by gay songs. Sometimes I have sat there
far into the night, dreaming of the Baglioni and listening to the
careless music of I knew not what laughter-loving house. For no
one can live long in Perugia without being fired by the memory of
those strange men whose strength and beauty was famous throughout
Italy, and whose lovely names alone fit them to be the heroes of
romance--Grifonetto, Astorre, Gismondo, Sermonetto, Morgante. If
we believe their adoring chronicler, who though he traced their
downfall could not speak of them without the stately prefix 'High
and Mighty Lords,' their beauty was the beauty of the ancient Gods
of Greece, and their courage was the courage of the Heroes. And who
of us but has wept over the Great Betrayal, and the passing of the
beautiful Grifonetto, forgiven at the last by Atalanta? And who has
not loved the young Astorre in his Cloth of Gold bringing his fair
young bride back to his home; and thrilled to read of the Homeric
death of Sermonetto, 'so strong and gallant while he lived that
tongue of man cannot tell the worth of him. One, in very truth, who
never in all his days knew what fear was, and till the last word
died on his lips ever showed himself the greater-hearted, as though
he were not vanquished, but victor of his foe.'
* * * * *
[Illustration: PERUGIA: THE TOMB OF THE VOLUMNII.]
Early one hot and cloudless August morning, while the farmers
with many cries of 'per la Madonna!' were urging their oxen up
the hill to market in the shadow of the old grey University of
Perugia, we drove down into the Valley of the Tiber to see the
wonderful Etruscan tomb close to Ponte San Giovanni, which was
the burial-place of the Volumnii. It is of special interest not
only for its excellent preservation, but because it belongs to the
Roman-Etruscan period, and forms the connecting link between the
old Etruscan tombs and the famous Roman sepulchres a mile or two
outside Rome on the Latin Way.
A short descent took us into the subterranean vault at whose
portal, cut out of the tufa rock, lay the ancient stone door,
set aside now for a modern gate of iron. As we passed into the
dark antechamber the chill damp air was cold as death after
the cicala-haunted sunshine of the fields above. But while we
strained our eyes to pierce the gloom the custode turned on an
electric light hidden behind the cornice, and straightway we
forgot everything in the wonder of the scene before us. In an
inner chamber, resting upon their carved sarcophagi, we saw the
inmates of the tomb grouped round the urn on which reposed the head
of the house above two finely sculptured furies. On the coffered
ceiling a gorgon's head, very terrible, with knotted snakes on its
temples and horror in its face, stared down upon the dead. And
as our eyes became accustomed to the dim light we discovered the
strange symbolism of Etruria all round us. From the ceiling of
the ante-chamber, on whose benches the relatives of the deceased
reclined, to feast or watch beside their dead, little genii,
exquisitely beautiful and light as butterflies, were hanging by the
leaden chains by which they were suspended more than two thousand
years ago. Over the doorway was a sun-disk, springing from the
waves--fit emblem of the immortality of these Etruscans, springing
from the waves of oblivion which for so many centuries washed over
them. But there was none of the colour which makes beautiful the
Tombs of Egypt, and there was hardly the same air of eternity. In
the long corridors of the Royal Tombs of the Pharaohs there is an
archaic defiance as of a life long since forgotten and lost in
the dust of centuries. Here the life is of yesterday; we could
almost hear the heart of Greece and Rome beating gaily in a young
world, and the languid tread of the effete Etruscans, whose curious
symbolism at once repels and mystifies, with its red lascivious
serpents, its demons and furies, its beautiful and reluctant
Medusas, and its solemn mockery of the feasting dead.
TODI
When I think of Todi the first things that I remember are the
golden tassels of the corn against the sky, and the blue chicory
which starred the dusty roadside as we drove to her from Perugia
across the young Tiber. For little Todi, enthroned on her steep
hill, has no railway within thirty-three miles of her gates; and if
you do not wish to ravish the leagues which separate her from the
world by motor, you can only reach her after many hours spent in
the exquisite and touching beauty of the Umbrian Vale. She is one
of those forgotten cities which are still to be found on the hills
of Italy. The years have trampled lightly within her ancient walls;
she has no trains, no jangling trams, very few motors except the
grey automobile from Perugia which bursts noisily into the heart
of her every day. She is a charmed city, whose name is painted on
a signboard outside the gates lest the traveller should pass her
by unwittingly. Within her walls we shook the dust of a work-a-day
world from our feet, and forgot its turmoil in the music of her
bells, which tell the passing hours with the loving persistence of
those grown old in labour.
To many people Todi is a mere horizon of towers on the crest of a
distant hill. To me she is the dwelling-place of happiness. And
because I am a little jealous for Todi, and would have you love
her as I loved her, having watched her grow in beauty as the miles
decreased between us, I beg your patience while we thread the plain
between Perugia and Tuder of the Umbrians.
It was a day of sun and shadow, an ideal morning for an expedition
into Arcady, and we found the beauty of a young world down in the
Valley of the Tiber. The jangle of harness-bells called us early
from our breakfast, and the air was like wine cooled with snow as
we drove down Perugia's four-mile hill, past her great churches,
and on to the long white road where the vines are linked together
for miles in festoons of archaic grace. The only people that we
met were peasants toiling barefoot in the sun. Their olive skins
were deepened to pomegranate; they had lithe figures; their finely
moulded heads were set on long, slender necks; and when we saw them
working under the olives, or coming towards us along the dusty
road from some village fair, leading the milk-white oxen whose
horns were bound with scarlet fillets, we knew that these were the
ideal shepherds among whom the Gods of Greece were content to
dwell. Their white homesteads rose from fields of maize and corn,
and among the vineyards and olive-gardens were crops of tomatoes
and hemp and pumpkins, and always figs and mulberries, for Umbria
is the land of plenty, the home of Maia, and of Hermes,[6] her
light-hearted son. The vines which linked the mountains to the
plain had the beauty of a classic frieze, and when our eyes turned
from the dappled hills we saw flowers weaving a multi-coloured web
on the loom of dusty grass by the roadside--purple loosestrife and
scabious, blue chicory, sugamele and rare borage, poppies and pink
veronica, yellow spanocchi, dandelions, and golden broom. All the
dyes of the East were woven there; and brambles and blossoming
clematis stretched out long swaying arms towards the little shrines
with which the fields were strewn, or twined a crown of flowers
and thorns about the rust-worn symbols of the Passion on a lonely
crucifix.
Little cities which had been hidden in the folds of the valley
grew into our horizon--Torgiano, towering on our left, Deruta and
Ripa Bianca. Our road, which had run in a straight line across
the plain from the foot of Perugia's hill, crossed the Tiber on a
bridge with a fifteenth-century gate-tower, and turned along the
banks of the river. Tall Lombard poplars lingered on its brink, and
peasant women in gay kerchiefs were washing linen in its green
water. Across the valley we could see Perugia, most beautiful of
all hill-cities, smiling in the sunshine, already far away; and
in front across a sea of lesser hills rose Todi, perched on her
mountain like a city in a fairy-tale, which surely could be reached
by no other way than on the wings of a genie!
We rested our horses at Deruta, and clambered up into its
precipitous streets. It is a mere hamlet, though a great deal of
majolica has been made here for the last three hundred years, and
it is extremely picturesque, perched high over the Tiber. Deruta is
like a piece of its own pottery. It is built of gray stone, much
the same colour as the unglazed plates which we saw drying on the
walls, and its people dress in bright colours like the pigments on
the finished ware. Every one goes barefoot here, and the old women
toil up the steep stair-streets with their sandals slung over their
arms, and huge bundles of sticks or fodder on their backs. And
apart from its picturesqueness Deruta is well worth a visit for the
sake of a beautiful fresco by Caporale in Sant'Antonio Abbate.
After Deruta the Umbrian Valley was all vineyards and olive-groves
and fig-trees and acacias. Sometimes the Tiber was close beside us
like a blue ribbon dividing us from the plain as we jangled through
the cicala-haunted woods on the hillside; at others we could
only trace it among the vineyards by the tall reedy poplars which
followed its winding course.
The day grew hotter; the song of the cicalas swelled up like an
anthem, and the butterflies drowsed upon the flowers. Presently we
came to a wayside fountain, where a lovely girl with a jar of water
poised on her head was talking to a young herdsman, beautiful as an
Apollo, who was watering his oxen. There was a garden of ancient
olives on the hillside above, and a welcome shade for our horses
in the road. And because we had seen Todi on her hill, and that she
was beautiful, we ate our lunch and took our siesta there under
the olives in the scented air. Near at hand a boy was singing like
a lover at his work; there were flowers at our feet, and cicalas
fluting in the silver foliage overhead. The great white oxen were
still drinking at the fountain, and their bells made pleasant
music; sometimes a woman with a water-jar on her head came from
the village, or a peasant rode by on his mule. It was a magic day.
We had had so many hours of joy, so many hours of sun and wind and
beautiful primitive things, that we had left care behind us. As we
lay there on the soft earth and watched the cloud-shadows sweeping
over the hills, we forgot the toil of life; we no longer heard the
world throbbing its soul away in its great cities. The voice of
the wind mingled with the shimmering music of summer--the insects,
the song of the boy at work, and the bells of the oxen, in a paean
of joy. For Umbria is like that garden in which Siddârtha dwelt
with Yasôdara, shut off from all ugly and painful things. If you
look deep enough you will assuredly find death, even as Siddârtha
did--the hawk preying upon the small bird, the small bird upon the
gnat, and you will see the sweat upon the oxen as they strain in
the sun. You may find the world as sad a place, as full of pain and
toil as he did, or you may find it just such a mirror of God's Love
as did Francis, the chief of Umbrian saints. Here the butterflies
seem to dance more gayly than they do elsewhere, the trees grow
free, the flowers stretch upwards to the sun; no questions vex you
when you see a wayside shrine. In the garden of Umbria there are
only God and Nature, the Soul of Things is at ease.
So, with our hearts attuned to her simplicity, we came to Todi
on the top of her hill, with her towers and walls, and her winds
and clouds. We caught her asleep in the siesta hour. There was no
one astir when we drove into her beautiful golden piazza, where
the Middle Ages have never been forgotten: even to-day it is full
of mediaeval grace, with its two great palaces and its exquisite
cathedral. But if we had come to her in the busy morning stir of
the market we could still have found the Middle Ages there, for the
peasants ride in on the old leather saddles picked out in brass
and scarlet that we see in fifteenth-century frescoes; the asses
bear on panniers barrels, or huge bundles of rough wood; the mules
are harnessed with bells and tassels, three abreast, so that they
straggle across the narrow road as they strain up the hill, and
all the women carry their marketing on their heads. The cathedral
of Todi is one of the gems of Umbrian architecture. It is a great
golden church with beautiful and very ancient doors, and an ornate
rose window; it soars above the piazza on a wide flight of steps
which not even a gigantic cinematograph advertisement can rob of
dignity. Below its southern wall is a row of shabby little shops
where the people sit at work in their doorways, but the northern
side has flying buttresses and a cornice of fantastic heads of men
and birds and beasts; and there is a pleasing baroque arch with
shallow, grass-grown steps leading down to the piazza.
[Illustration: DETAILS FROM THE APSE OF THE CATHEDRAL OF TODI.]
Like her cathedral Todi is full of quaint and beautiful things.
She is an artist's city, solitary and beautiful, unexpectedly rich
and frankly poor. Once away from her stately piazza with its three
great buildings, which are like three jewels in the crown of King
Cophetua's Beggar Maid, we found her humble and out of elbows.
Her old brown houses bulged out over the steep little streets, or
towered like lean fortresses on her city wall, with all manner of
green things, even fig-trees, growing out of them. From below they
seemed to be piled up one on the top of the other like children's
bricks. The vineyards and olive-gardens, which swept up the
hillside, forced entrances at every point; and on the crest of
the hill among her palaces was one slender cypress spire, soaring
up as though Nature herself must climb through this clear air to
heaven. She had long avenues of acacias and flowering laurels, and
ancient gateways like the Porta Aurea, through which we had a vista
of mediaeval towers, and a Perugino landscape of green valleys
with a river winding away to the amphitheatre of blue hills. Here
and there in her walls were courses of splendid masonry, Umbrian
perhaps, and on the eastern side of the town were four gigantic
niches of a Roman basilica. But as in most Umbrian cities, it was
the Middle Ages that left Todi her chief treasures, her stately
palaces and her cathedral; and further down the hillside, on a
flight of earthquake-riven steps, San Fortunato, which was the home
of the Antipope Nicholas v. in the days when rebellious little Todi
was a thorn in the side of the papacy, and Lewis of Bavaria made
her his headquarters. Fra Jacopone of Todi, the author of _Stabat
Mater Dolorosa_, is said to be buried in this church, but though we
looked for it we could not find his tomb.
All these things count as nothing in the eyes of the Todesi, for
Todi boasts a pilgrimage church; and a pilgrimage church, albeit
of the sixteenth century, is an acquisition not to be despised
by any city however ancient and picturesque. But in truth Santa
Maria della Consolazione is a lovely church, a _capolavoro_ of
architecture, and it soars up like a great golden gourd ripened
to perfection on the green hillside. We came to it through the
Porta Aurea along an avenue of flowering laurels, and its fair
proportions gave us a complete sense of satisfaction. As we drew
near, its clustered domes dwarfed the amphitheatre of hills.
Inside it was airy and gracious, a bubble of light; but its
sixteenth-century paganism, which is always the paganism of secular
buildings rather than of temples, and its overgrown apostles in
the niches that were meant for gods, spoilt its appeal, to the
Protestant mind at any rate, as a house of prayer. What is it,
I wonder, that makes it easy for the Protestant to worship in
Gothic or Romanesque churches, and to respond to the appeal of
basilicas like Santa Maria Maggiore or San Clemente in Rome, while
sixteenth-century churches still remain the ideal ecclesiastical
building to the majority of Roman Catholics? Is it that they all
bear the image of St. Peter's and the Vatican in their minds? They
argue that at least under the spacious cupolas of the renaissance
they have light and space. And it is logic, for Gothic cathedrals
are dim and full of shadows. But I could say my prayers more easily
in the baths of Caracalla, where the sun slanting over the broken
walls has a trick of making mist like floods of incense, and the
birds chant all day long, than in St. Peter's, for all its fragrant
services. And I doubt if any Catholics could be moved to such an
ecstasy of worship in the dusk of Milan Cathedral, when the organ
throbs through the aisles at Vespers, as we have seen them in many
of the late pilgrimage churches of Italy, like Santa Maria of Todi
or the great basilica of the Casa Santa at Loreto.
[Illustration: TODI: S. MARIA DELLA CONSOLAZIONE.]
Like all the hill-cities of Umbria, one of Todi's chief charms
is the beauty of her views. Below my bedroom window in the Hotel
Risorgimento the old brown roofs of Todi clambered so eagerly down
the slope that each one was at least two stories below the one
above. Here and there were little gardens full of tamarisks and
oleanders and morning glories. To the left rose San Fortunato, high
on its broken flight of steps, like a grim fortress; and below it
was the bastion of the public garden, with its round acacia trees
which were always vibrant with the song of cicalas. In the deep
valley were grey-towered farms with loggias and outside stairways,
and a great fortified convent with the stations of the Cross
climbing up to its gates in a cypress avenue. Through the midst the
Tiber wound very slowly like a ribbon, and now the sunlight caught
it, and we could see the blue water, and now we could only trace
it by its tall Lombard poplars. But always it turned towards the
distant hills which rose the one behind the other, fold on fold,
and full of changing lights, towards Rome. At night it was still
and mysterious. The steep hillside was wrapped in darkness. There
was no moon, and though the sky was powdered thickly with stars
they gave no light to see the valley by. Far below I could hear
the humming of the night crickets; they sounded sleepy too. And up
above, San Fortunato loomed almost transparently in the heavens,
and the Milky Way shone like a mist of stars.
We found Arcady again down in the valleys as we drove back to
Perugia across the Umbrian plain. There had been a fair at some
neighbouring village, and the road was full of peasants coming back
with cortèges of white oxen and calves, which had bells on their
throats, and collars of scarlet and brass, and crimson fillets.
Perugia lay before us all the way, with her towers and majestic
walls and the slim campanile of San Pietro, which looks like an
obelisk from the plain. As we drove along the straight white road
we saw the cities of the Valley of Spoleto rising like stars upon
their hills. At each turn fresh mountains were disclosed with fresh
cities on their skirts, pink in the evening sun. We were tired
after the heat of the day, and silent. The harness-bells and the
clipping sound of hoofs made an agreeable accompaniment to our
thoughts. We climbed up slowly through the sunset, looking now at
the hills, now at the olive-gardens that stretched away from the
road, their leaves as silver as a flight of butterflies in the
sunlight; now idly watching the long-legged shadows of the horses
on the flowery bank. And all the way the cicalas were singing by
the roadside, and we bore the memory of fragrant sunlit hours
in our hearts. Half unconsciously, and like a message from the
eternal hills, St. Paul's words came into my mind: 'Whatsoever
thing is good, whatsoever thing is pure, whatsoever thing is
lovely, whatsoever thing is of good report, if there be any virtue
or if there be any truth, think on these things.' They were like
an answer to the riddle which all men ask of Fate. But indeed in
this Umbrian garden they are the text of everyday life, for in its
byways it is easy to catch the spirit of St. Francis as he passed,
barefoot and meanly clad, singing the praise of God and all His
creatures.
As we drove up the last steep incline the plain was filled with
light. Overhead the clouds were growing rosy. Assisi was a city of
gold. And to the horizon rolled the Umbrian hills, purple and blue,
and very far away like jade, airy and transparent, in the luminous
space which Perugino loved to paint.
SIENA AND THE PALIO
It was the poet who persuaded us to go to Siena to see the Palio
run in honour of Our Lady of Mid-August. We were still in Perugia
enjoying the languid Umbrian summer, when he announced his
intention of leaving the next day for Siena.
'What _is_ the Palio?' asked the philosopher. 'August will be very
hot in Siena, and nothing could be more beautiful than this'--he
waved his hand towards the white walls of Assisi, and the great
dome of Santa Maria degli Angeli, floating like a lotus bud above
the morning mists, which filled the valley between Perugia and
Monte Subasio.
'It is so difficult to define,' said the poet. 'When you say, "What
is the Palio?" you give me the wherewithal to write a book. If I
told you that it was a race in honour of the Virgin Mary, ridden
bareback round the chief piazza of Siena, by jockeys in mediaeval
costume, who try to club each other off the course, you would
probably prefer to stay here in Perugia. If I told you that it was
a pageant you would be sure to say that you have seen better at
Olympia.'
He was silent for a moment.
'But it is more than that. Imagine a city of Gothic palaces,
a little flushed hill-city, sleeping among vineyards and
olive-gardens, sleeping and sleeping like a girl bewitched. And
then imagine the soul of her awaking for a few hours--a day
perhaps--in the summer of the year. That is Siena, dear gay Siena,
with her indomitable spirit and her fickle careless heart, with
her pageants and her saints, and her allegiance to Madonna. For
first and foremost Siena is the city of the Virgin Mary. There
they think of her not only as the Mother of God, but as their own
liege sovereign; even the Standard of the City, the black and white
Balzana, is emblematic "of the purity and humility of the Virgin,
or of those joyful and sorrowful mysteries whereby, as she told St.
Bridget, her life was ever divided between happiness and grief."
'As for the Palio, if you would appreciate it you must understand
something of the religion of the Middle Ages, which was at its best
an inspiration, capable of producing St. Francis and St. Catherine,
and at its worst a creed of superstitions which found vent in
wild orgies of penance, and countenanced the crusade against the
Albigenses. You must have thrilled to stories of wild games, like
the Florentine Giuoco del Calcio or Perugia's Battaglia de' Sassi,
in which the players lost their limbs and not infrequently their
lives. And lastly, you must appreciate the intense patriotism
which the men of Siena feel for their _contrade_, or divisions
of the city, which I can best describe as parishes; though it is
difficult to say whether, in the first place, the boundaries were
parochial or military.
'It is not merely a pageant, though as a pageant it is superlative;
it is the last flicker of the spirit of the Middle Ages. And for
my part I love it, because the Sienese are still so mediaeval
at heart. And that is why there is no city in Italy more fitted
to be illumined by the torch of the Middle Ages than Siena. For
Siena, notwithstanding the fact that she bred some of the greatest
Renaissance popes, was comparatively untouched by the wave of
paganism which swept over Italy in the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries. She still has whole streets of Gothic palaces; her
saints are still reverenced with the almost child-like simplicity
of the Middle Ages; she still boasts the special protection of
the Blessed Virgin; and in the midst of all her fervour she still
nurses her old feuds, not only with her ancient enemies, the
Florentines, but between her own _contrade_.'
* * * * *
It was dark and the heavens were full of stars when we bade
good-bye to our kind host of the Perugian inn, and boarded the
electric tram that was to take us down to the station. We had
chosen an early train so as to avoid travelling in the heat of the
day, but we found the car already full of thrifty Italians bent on
making hay before the sun shone.
[Illustration: SIENA: BANNER-HOLDER.]
We left at dawn, in the clear pale light which floods the Umbrian
plain when the world is yet a little grey, and Perugia is nothing
but a lovely outline on the crest of her hill. This is the light
that Perugino loved, the shadowless herald of the day, full of
the mystery of the morning. The world woke slowly from her pale
slumber in the arms of night; the sky deepened from beryl to gold.
We found Thrasymene illumined with rosy morning fires, her hills
empurpled, and the towers of her little cities aflame with sunrise.
It seemed as though immortal memories, great desires, and burnt-out
passions struggled for utterance there. How Hannibal's tired eyes
must have ached to possess so fair a land! Yet it is likely that he
never saw the passionate dawn wooing the lake with plumes of rose
and gold, as we did; for we know that on the fateful day when he
waited to give battle to Flaminius by the shore of Thrasymene, the
mists which did him such signal service filled up the hollow like a
curtain hung from one range of mountains to the other.
So we came through Tuscany to Siena, and found her all agog with
excitement for the Palio, with pennons flying and music echoing
down her streets, and her inns already full to overflowing.
Ah, Siena, with your gaunt red palaces and your lily tower, and
your ineffectual walls which thread the vineyards like old men
dreaming life away in memories, it is you who are the heart of
Tuscany! You are not pale and beautiful like Florence, not such a
great lady; nor have you the silent grace of Pisa, but how lovable,
how intimate you are! Their dignity would ill become you with your
stormy and undignified past, of which De Commines said: 'La Ville
est de tout temps en partialité, et se gouverne plus follement
qu'aucune Ville d'Italie.'
[Illustration: SIENA: TORRE DEL MANGIA.]
But in no other place is the traveller welcomed with such song and
laughter as in Siena, when she holds high festival. I, who have
only seen her in her Palio days, cannot think that life is ever
dull or languid in her streets and _piazze_. I have peopled her
with mediaeval ghosts since that day in mid-August when I woke and
found them in possession. At every sound of music I look round
for silken banners, and pretty boys in doublet and hose escorting
steel-clad warriors, or the gay spendthrifts of whom Folgore of
San Gimignano sang. For on that day I caught a glimpse of the
Middle Ages, with their knights and pages and their companies of
men-at-arms. I heard the brave music of their drums, and saw the
old Siena, ruddy and black-browed, clamouring loud-voiced in the
Piazza del Campo--a happy child one moment, and the next a bundle
of conflicting passions, remembering century-old grievances, and
raking up dead feuds to make a Tuscan holiday.
[Illustration: SIENA: TORCH-REST.]
It was in the Piazza del Campo, or to give it its modern name which
does not please me half as much, the Piazza Vittorio Emanuele,
that I grew to know Siena best. Here she was the city of the
Quattrocento, of which I love to dream, fantastic and beautiful,
with untold possibilities lurking behind the walls of her tall red
palaces. The Campo lies in the hollow where the three hills of
Siena meet, and its shape is an irregular semi-circle. I can best
describe it by saying that it is like an enormous cockle, slightly
concave--rose-coloured, for it is paved with red brick--and with
ribs or flutings of grey stone which converge towards the deepest
hollow in front of the Palazzo Pubblico. Encircle this by a wide,
flagged roadway, and ring it round with noble palaces, many of
them of great beauty, with Gothic arch and lancet window. At the
deepest hollow of the shell build up a palace for the rulers of
the most unruly republic in the whole peninsula. Fashion it of
exceeding beauty with a façade which follows the curve of the
piazza. Build it of Siena's red brick; break its long lines with
Gothic windows cloven by slender columns; grace it with magnificent
arched doors; decorate it with scutcheons and crests; and high on
its wall place the golden monogram of Holy Flame which Bernardino,
Siena's gentlest saint, identified with his life. At its side
build an arcaded chapel of white marble, stained by time, filled
with the faded frescoes of Il Sodoma; and from this chapel picture
yourself a tower, not like the tower of any city out of Tuscany,
which springs up into the heavens with the natural grace of growing
things, so that you do not think of it as brick or stone, but as
some beautiful and splendid flower which grew up in one mediaeval
night while Siena slept, and has blossomed ever since.
Even Florence cannot show the like of this. It is so beautiful and
characteristic that it is worthy of mention beside the Piazzetta
of St. Mark's at Venice. And at night it is a revelation of the
Middle Ages to pass from the Via Cavour, with its lighted shops and
its gay streams of men and women, into the dim and romantic Campo.
Night covers the passing of time. The song and laughter of modern
Sienese life, flowing down to the Lizza to promenade, comes like an
echo across the years. It is very still in the Campo at night, and
empty except perhaps for Beppo, the seller of water-melons, whose
guttering candle suffices to show his pink and succulent wares. But
one evening while we stood in the shadow of the Palazzo Comunale we
heard some stray musicians singing an old choir-chant in the Via
del Casato. It was as though the ghosts of pilgrims were toiling
up the Via dei Pellegrini, just as they used to do, past the great
ruined palace of Il Magnifico, to lay their troubles at the feet
of the Queen of Sorrows. Overhead the Torre del Mangia, released
from the shadows of the battlemented court, soared up to the
stars more like a lily than ever with the moonlight silvering its
machicolations. And we remembered that in the morning we had seen
it with its head in the drifting clouds, and the sunlight below.
But it was not only for its mediaeval beauty that we loved the
Campo. This is Siena's heart. Here she has fought and loved and
hated and rejoiced, ay, and died too. And if her stones have been
too often stained with blood in civil warfare she has gentler
memories--here Provenzano Salvani, the victor of Monte Aperto,
cast all dignity aside 'when at his glory's topmost height,' and
begged for alms to ransom a friend who languished in some foreign
prison; here Bernardino preached so eloquently of Divine Love that
he almost moved the unregenerate young Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini,
afterwards Pius II., to repentance. And here, while the armies of
Spain were beleaguering their city, and they were faint for food,
the youths of Siena came to play their games till they were called
back to guard the city walls, to the joy and amazement of Blaise
de Montluc, the French Governor, who never tired of praising the
Sienese for their chivalry and the courage and beauty of their
women.
Here, too, in a few days' time, came Siena and all the strangers
that were within her gates to see the Palio!
[Illustration: A STREET IN SIENA.]
The _Prove_ were run first. Early in the week a sandtrack was
prepared, and as if by magic an amphitheatre of seats sprang
up round the piazza. There are six of these _prove_, or trial
races, for the selection of horses for the Palio; and they are
run on the evening of the 13th, the morning and evening of the
two following days, and the morning of the 16th of August.[7] The
Palio festivities really begin on the 13th of August, for although
the Sienese do not attend the _prove_ in great numbers there are
generally some thousand spectators who shout themselves hoarse with
excitement; and feeling sometimes runs high when there is rivalry
between ancient enemies like the _contrade_ of the Oca and the
Torre.
On that morning, too, the streets are full of peasants driving
their white oxen in pairs before them to the annual fair, which
is still held outside the Porta Camollia in honour of our Lady
of Mid-August. It has dwindled considerably from the seven days'
_fiera_ which marked the occasion in the Middle Ages, but it is
still a picturesque sight. The peasants drive standing up, like
Roman charioteers, behind their milk-white steers, whose heads are
bound with scarlet fillets, and their soft dewlaps girdled by
a bell. The sellers of water-melons do a thriving business with
the thirsty drovers, and the piazza is a sea of tossing horns and
smooth white backs from the battlemented city wall to the column
which marks the spot where Leonora of Portugal met her betrothed,
the Emperor Frederick III.
On Sunday Siena was comparatively quiet, although there were
_prove_ in the Piazza del Campo both morning and evening, and a
general air of merriment throughout the city. We heard mass in the
cathedral where the banners of the various _contrade_ hung from
the piers of the nave; and the wonderful graffito pavement which,
according to a seventeenth-century custom, is covered with boards
for the rest of the year to preserve it from injury, was laid bare.
And then we went down to Fontebranda to see how the _Contrada_ of
the Oca, Saint Catherine's _contrada_, was preparing for the Palio.
We found it delightfully confident of victory. The sacristan of
Saint Catherine's house took us into the chapel which was once her
father's workshop, and would not let us go until we had heard the
history of the many Palii which the victorious Oca had won in past
years--assisted no doubt by the prayers of Santa Caterina in heaven
to the holy Mother of God.
[Illustration: SIENA: S. DOMENICO AND THE VIA BENINCASA.]
The philosopher loves Fontebranda. To him it is the most romantic
spot in Siena. It is certainly one of the most picturesque, whether
you stand at the head of the steep Via Benincasa and see San
Domenico's gaunt red walls towering above its houses, or whether
you look towards the city from the church. A winding road leads up
through gardens from the Valley of Fontebranda to the city gate.
Above the wall tall, green-shuttered palaces rise tier on tier to
the cathedral, whose delicately arcaded dome and tower crown the
hill. To the right the loggia'd houses of the tanners sweep down
the Via Benincasa to Fontebranda's mediaeval fountain; and the
keen, unpleasant smell of the tanneries, which was one of the first
things we noticed in Siena, is everywhere. Fontebranda is changed
but little since the days when Saint Catherine lived there with
her parents. Then as now it was full of tanneries, then as now the
men worked half in their dark windowless shops and half out in the
street: in her day the loggia'd houses were here; the yellow skins
were drying in the road; and San Domenico, up whose hill she toiled
to prayer, was the same grim fortress-church as now.
But I do not love Saint Catherine, her warlike spirit
notwithstanding; nor do I love Sodoma's frescoes of her in the
great church on the hill. And the Sienese themselves, though they
give her great honour, do not seem to love her as they love the
simple Bernardino. Splendid as her chapel is, magnificent as are
her festas, she seems to be less in the imagination of Siena than
Saint Bernardino, whose gentle life followed closely on hers as
though the _genius loci_ dared not trust her unruly people through
that stormy century without a guiding spirit. See on how many
houses is his seal of holy Flame! And how brightly it burns on the
Palazzo Pubblico, especially towards nightfall, when the setting
sun gilds the façade and fires the sacred monogram.
'Respect is what we owe, love what we give.' And so I would leave
the philosopher to St. Catherine and his Fontebranda, and come to
San Francesco and the little chapel beside it where San Bernardino
prayed. The Sienese have lavished lovely things upon this oratory
of the ardent boy, who forsook all and followed Francis in the
love of Christ. Sodoma, Pacchia and Beccafumi have glorified it,
and peopled its walls with the beautiful and mystic-eyed women of
the Renaissance. But though they have enriched it, I am glad that
circumstance has kept St. Francis' great church as it was first
conceived--a bare and solemn building--a church for the followers
of the man who loved poverty and simplicity, because through them
he saw the way to God. Even now I would have it cleared of its
black and white Sienese stripings; but its wide empty nave, the
noble chapels of its transepts, its ruined islands of fresco, its
stillness and its great simplicity, make it beautiful.
San Francesco stands on the southern spur of the city, and from
the ancient Porta Ovile in the valley below, a country road
leads through gardens and cypress-woods to the Convent of the
Osservanza, in which Pandolfo Petrucci the Magnificent, one of
Siena's great failures, lies buried. The brother who took us over
the church showed us the cell of Bernardino with its ancient wooden
door nibbled almost to destruction by ardent pilgrims. And from a
window in the old monastery we looked across the valley of pines
and cypresses to Siena, painted against a glowing sunset sky.
Seen thus across the fruitful Tuscan vale she was still the City
Beautiful which inspired San Bernardino to a passion of eloquence
on that long-distant summer day, early in the fifteenth century,
when he climbed up into a tree and addressed the astonished
multitudes 'in words so inflamed with divine love, that while many
wept, there were some that deemed him mad.' Then as now her towers,
though there were many more in Bernardino's city, were like the
hands of suppliants held up to heaven; then as now the great dome
and Campanile of Santa Maria Assunta set the seal of Madonna over
her troubled people.
We looked long. In the church overhead the monks were intoning, and
the song of the cicalas floated up from the fragrant cypress-woods
as though they too were praising God. The sun went down, and little
white wraiths of mist rose from the valley. The air blew chill.
When we departed the monks had long ago ceased chanting, and the
insects had folded their wings. But as we hastened through the
vineyards where the mists fled from us like pale ghosts, the lights
of the city twinkled a welcome to us through the gathering dusk.
And so we came again into the warm heart of Siena.
* * * * *
Boom! Boom! Boom!
It was different from any other sound. At first I thought it was a
part of my dreams, for it vibrated over the city like an orchestra
of bells.
Boom! Boom! Boom!
Then I remembered, and sprang out of bed. It was the 16th of
August, the day of the Palio, and that deep music whose echoes were
throbbing round the countryside was the voice of Siena waking from
her long slumber. It was the first time that I had heard it, and
my heart beat faster, for the tocsin of La Mangia is nearly always
silent now, although it played such a great part in the mediaeval
history of Siena when it used to call her citizens to arms in the
name of God and the Virgin Mary!
My window looked down on a silent street winding between tall
shuttered palaces. As a rule it was empty except for the milk-woman
going from door to door in her big straw hat, and a worn-out
Comacine lion which grinned sardonically at me from an ancient
tower opposite. But to-day peasants were pouring up the hill--the
men in their black wide-awakes and Sunday clothes, and the women,
old and young alike, in their silly Tuscan hats which frivol with
every breath of wind, and are never as becoming as the lovely
head-kerchiefs of the Umbrians. They are worn on the backs of the
heads; the soft brims, which are not wired, form an aureole of
pale-coloured straw, and present a deliciously incongruous effect
when they frame withered faces wrinkled like walnut-shells. I love
the bent old women of Siena who look as if they had forgotten to be
old with their ribbons and flowers and their coquettish young hats!
[Illustration: SIENA FROM THE CONVENTO DELL' OSSERVANZA.]
Yes, Siena was awaking from her slumber. I even fancied that there
was a glint of suppressed laughter in the eye (he had only one eye,
the other was filled with lichen) of my Comacine friend across
the street. Already the city was like a hive, and the sound of a
distant crowd was like the humming of many insects. Every inn had
been full for days, and the people were still pouring in from all
directions.
At nine o'clock we went to see the last of the _prove_ from the
balcony which we had hired from that very agreeable haberdasher,
Signor Tizzi, who has a shop almost opposite the Palazzo Comunale.
It was hot, and the people down in the piazza were crowded together
in the shade of the Torre del Mangia, which lay across the square
like the shadow on a sundial. The whole scene was more like a
dream than a real happening. In the dark cortile of the Palazzo
Pubblico we could see the jockeys in fantastic parti-coloured
suits, waiting for gun-fire; and the fierce white sunlight beat on
the piazza, empty except for the chattering, gesticulating belt of
humanity in the shadow of the Mangia.
Bang! went the gun. And with a rattle of drums the _fantini_
(jockeys) came out to run their mad race, to the accompaniment of
the thunder of iron hoofs on baked sand, and the ceaseless shouting
of the good Sienese.
After the excitement had subsided somewhat we pushed our way
through the crowded streets to the cathedral. It was empty to-day,
although yesterday, on the Festival of the Assumption, it had been
full of glorious living colour. Then the Palio was hanging from
the arch of the transept, and a great throng filled the aisle.
Then, too, the miraculous Madonna delle Grazie, she to whom the
distracted Sienese dedicated their city on the eve of Monte Aperto,
was shown to the people; and the peasants, ever the last to lose
faith, knelt at her shrine all day. As a rule I do not love the
cathedral of Siena, notwithstanding its glorious pavement, and rich
carving, and the Pisani's exquisite pulpit whose equal is not to be
found in Italy. The great church's black and white stripings within
and without make the eyes ache, and the over-elaborated façade is
only beautiful by moonlight. But when High Mass is being celebrated
with mediaeval splendour within its walls, and a great press
throngs the aisles, it is bewilderingly rich. And we found it easy
to forgive even the zebra stripings when we saw the poor people of
the campagna praying to their miraculous Madonna behind the veil of
sunlight which poured down from the clerestory and made a Holy of
Holies of the Cappella del Voto.
That morning we paid another visit to the famous Library of the
Duomo, which Francesco Piccolomini commissioned Pinturicchio to
paint in honour of his uncle Aeneas Sylvius, for we could think of
no better preparation for the Palio than studying this Quattrocento
pageantry. We are told that in his contract Cardinal Francesco
inserted a special clause, insisting that the Umbrian artist
should use a certain quantity of gold and ultramarine and crimson
in his decorations. And truly Pinturicchio has lavished colour on
this splendid monument to the glories of the Humanist Pope, who
was a typical expression of his age in everything, except in his
great revival of the Middle Ages, when he tried to lead a crusade
against the Turks. The room is full of sunlight and the sheen of
gold and precious stones, and Pinturicchio seems to have caught the
world in its morning, with gay youths and maidens walking on the
flower-starred grass, and swift wild-geese high on the wing through
the clear blue heavens. But except in the exquisite panel where
the young Emperor meets his beautiful betrothed outside the Porta
Camollia, he is not such a poet here as he is in the Appartamenti
Borgia at Rome, though he is much gayer. All the more suited to
Siena, whose art was summed up by Lanzi as 'lieta scuola fra lieto
popolo'; forgetting, so it seems, the many Massacres of the Infants
scattered by Matteo di Giovanni through the Sienese churches, which
are revolting in their cruelty and ugliness!
By noon-time Siena was in a state of wild excitement. We had been
warned that the Porcupine had a good chance of winning the race
because its _contrada_ had drawn the horse which won the July
Palio. So after lunch we drove down to Santa Maria dell'Istrice,
which is a tiny church with a picturesque Renaissance belfry in the
Via Camollia. There were flags in the Via Cavour, and the great
Palazzo Salimbeni was hung with banners, and had velvet cloths
embroidered with the crest of the Montone hanging from its Gothic
windows. The torch-rests and banner-holders in the public squares
each carried the proud silken banners of their _contrade_, and
the whole city masqueraded under their different emblems--now the
Giraffe, scarlet and white; further on the Caterpillar, green and
yellow and blue; then the Dragon and the Wolf; and, at last, the
Porcupine.
[Illustration: SIENESE YOUTHS IN PALIO DRESS]
In the chapel we found three men at arms and two _alfieri_ in
parti-coloured hose and jerkins of magenta velvet, slashed with
black and white. Orestes, the _fantino_, was padding his helmet in
the little cupboard of a sacristy. He was a tall, blue-eyed man,
and looked superb in his bravery of velvet and satin and lace, with
long-toed velvet boots and shining helmet. He showed us the heavy
wooden jockey cap with painted colours which he was to wear in the
race, to protect his head from the blows of the other _fantini_;
and, as he told us with a shrug, he expected some, because, thanks
to Saint Anthony, his horse was undoubtedly the best, and every one
expected him to win.
The poor Captain who was to head the cortège was in a wretched
plight. He was being girded into his armour, and it was not a
dignified process. The day was hot, and the chain mail would not
meet. Eventually some one lent him a boot-lace or a piece of
string, I forget which, and we left him, to see the _alfieri_[8]
tossing their banners out in the street.
After a long delay the knight appeared, looking as dignified and
composed as if he had been wrestling in the spirit rather than in
the flesh before the altar of his chapel. And while the procession
was forming up we drove on to San Pietro della Magione, where
the Horse of the Porcupine is always blessed. The Via Camollia,
although it is one of the main streets of Siena, is so narrow here
that we had perforce to drive past La Magione to the city gates,
where it widens out into a piazza, before we could turn and so
drive back again.
La Magione has a flight of steps leading up to a terrace. It is a
very ancient church, brown and shabby, and many a Templar's horse
has champed at the foot of these same steps while his master prayed
within; and, it may be, shared his blessing before they started out
on the crusade.
With a rattle of drums our friends of the Porcupine came up the
narrow street. Everything was done with such natural grace and
pomp. First the tossing of banners round the ancient well-head
before the presbytery, and then the little service which ended in
the Blessing of the Horse. The animal was led to the foot of the
steps, and the old priest after saying a prayer sprinkled him with
Holy Water. He was a dear, intelligent beast, and behaved to the
manner born. He pricked his ears at the prayer, and though he tried
to walk up the steps, and sniffed inquisitively at the censer, he
did not even sneeze while lie was being sprinkled. Indeed I have
seen the part played worse by many a Christian.
Then the cavalcade formed up again, the drummer and the _alfieri_
leading, the knight on foot with his five pages, the _fantino_ on
horseback, and behind him a man leading the noble beast[9] he was
to ride in the Palio. With a rattle of drums they went off to toss
their banners in another piazza.
By this time Siena was alive with mediaeval processions, and the
music of their drums was borne in upon our ears from every side.
On our way to the Piazza del Duomo, which was the rendezvous
of all the _contrade_, we met many a gay company coming up the
dark alleys; or heard the stirring music of their drums as they
paused to fling their banners below the decorated windows of
fifteenth-century palaces. But the Piazza del Duomo was the
culminating point. The air was thick with silken banners, and at
every moment some fresh _contrada_ came up the hill, till it seemed
as though the square could hold no more. Was it by chance, or to
spite the other by diminishing his glory, that the Oca swaggered up
at the same moment as his ancient enemy the Torre? The _alfieri_
flung their silken banners high into the air, catching them as they
fell, and made them flutter like a carpet round their feet, or
between their legs, or about their necks, in honour of the Virgin.
And, in faith, how could she be otherwise than pleased to see these
pretty boys with beating drums and fluttering banners doing her
honour so merrily in the sunshine before her house!
[Illustration: SEEN AT THE PALIO.]
From the Gothic windows of the Bishop's Palace the Cardinal, who
yesterday had blessed the people in the cathedral, looked down upon
the scene. Once, when the _alfieri_ of the Wave tossed their blue
and white flags thirty feet into the air and caught them again, he
clapped his jewelled hands. The press thickened, but always the
silken banners clove the sunshine, and the drums sounded merrily,
now in the narrow street leading up between the vescovado and the
ancient hospital, now from the Via del Capitano. We saw knights
on horseback mingling with the crowd, and little children of the
Quattrocento, and Pinturicchio townsmen in scarlet and green and
orange and blue with fur-edged tunics and peaked caps. It was
the Pinturicchio of the library come to life again; or rather it
was the old light-hearted Siena who, even in the horrors of the
Spanish siege, would have her games, though she had no bread. The
gay drummers of the different _contrade_ seemed to have caught the
rhythm of her joyous heart-beats.
When we reached our seats the police were already clearing the
course, and the centre of the piazza was a seething crowd, with
fans which fluttered like butterflies over a field of wheat. What
a gay scene it was! The sunlight gilded La Mangia, and flamed from
Bernardino's monogram on the Palazzo Pubblico. The amphitheatre of
seats all round the course was filled, and every window and balcony
was peopled, and hung with scarlet and crimson cloths. Up the steep
Via Casato we could see the massed banners of the _contrade_, and
hear their impatient drumming as they waited for the signal to
enter. The voice of the people was like the roar of waves on a
distant shore.
At last every one seemed to have been driven behind the barrier
except a few sellers of beer and lemonade. A patrol of horse
carabinieri galloped round the course. Bang! went the gun. La
Mangia gave voice. To the fanfare of trumpets and the dull roar of
the people mediaeval Siena swept into the piazza.
Slowly and stately they came on. First a horseman in scarlet and
blue bearing the great Comunal Banner of the city, followed by
trumpeters in the livery of the Palazzo, and then the companies
of the ten _contrade_ who were to compete for the Palio. As each
one entered the piazza the whole procession paused for them to
toss their banners. Then with a blare of trumpets they passed
on--knights in burnished armour with drawn swords, pages in silk
and velvet with flowing cloaks and waving plumes, _alfieri_ with
proud banners, _fantini_ riding slowly with their racers led behind.
Victorious Montone, the winner of the July Palio, came first,
waving and tossing its red and yellow banners; then came the
gay Giraffe, scarlet and white; and then the Snail, who looked
depressed because he had drawn a sorry white nag more fit for
tilting at windmills than racing. The Tortoise followed him, yellow
and blue and red; and then the Wave, in pale blue slashed with
white; and next the stately Goose, St. Catherine's _contrada_,
wearing the red and white and green of United Italy. Behind them
marched our friends the Porcupine in their brave purple velvet and
shining armour, and the splendid Golden Eagle and the Blue Men of
the Nicchio, and the _Contrada_ of the Wolf. Still they came on,
with many pauses while the _alfieri_ waved and tossed the silken
banners, now carpeting the ground with the fluttering folds, now
whirling them round necks and under arms and legs, or tossing
them up before the Casa Nobile, till the course was like a bed of
flowers. And still the Mangia's deep voice acclaimed, and still the
trumpets blared and the drums rolled, till the procession stretched
all round the Campo, and the great banner of Siena at its head was
furled before the Palazzo Comunale.
Then came the Palio itself, borne on the great _carroccio_
decorated with the banners of Siena and her _contrade_. How the
people yelled as the enormous waggon, so splendidly mediaeval
with its poles and banners and its four heraldic horses, rumbled
round the square. Before it went two rows of children, little
Quattrocento children in striped jerkin and hose, scarlet and green
and black, linked together with long festoons of laurel. And round
the car rode knights in jousting helmets, clad in velvet and cloth
of gold, on richly caparisoned steeds with jewelled reins. Just so
did the victorious and exultant Sienese bring back the _carroccio_
of the Florentines which they had captured in the bloody fight of
Monte Aperto when they trampled the lilies of Florence into the
dust. And there, below the black and white oriflamme of Siena,
was a great banner of crimson velvet and gold--the colours of the
famous banner of the Florentines, which was brought back to Siena
more than six hundred and fifty years ago!
[Illustration: SIENA: THE PALIO.]
Although the tiers of seats erected for knights and pages below the
Palazzo Comunale already looked like a bed of tropical flowers,
more banners came fluttering down the Via Casato--the _comparse_
of the seven other _contrade_ who were not to take a part in the
race. They fluttered round the course to gay mediaeval music, and
joined the parterre of colour below the Palazzo beside the great
_carroccio_.
And now everything was ready. Two ropes were stretched across the
course at the starting-point--one the whole width of the track, the
other leaving a gap through which the horses could pass into line
so as to get as fair a start as possible; though every one knows,
and the _fantino_ as much as any one, that the start has little to
do with the race. His great object is to try and place himself out
of reach of the _nerbate_ of his special enemies, but even this
is hopeless if two or three have come to an arrangement to hold a
mutual enemy back until some outsider has carried off the prize.
Down in the crowded square the man who was to give the signal of
gun-fire had his fuse already lighted. In the dark courtyard of
the Palazzo we could see the _fantini_, no longer in their bravery
of velvet and silk and burnished steel, but clad in the colours of
their _contrade_, and wearing on their heads painted wooden caps to
guard their skulls from the blows of the _nerbi_.
Bang! There was a rattle of drums. Out came the _fantini_. They
moved slowly to the starting-point, and a great shout rent the air
as Siena with one voice acclaimed them. In the crowded square,
on the housetops, from the windows and the balconies, men waved
their hats, and women their scarves and handkerchiefs. Even little
children forgot their toy balloons, clapping their hands and
shouting while their erstwhile treasures floated away unnoticed.
They edged their horses between the ropes. Some blows were
exchanged; a horse reared, and one _fantino_ almost lost his seat.
Bang! went the _mortaletto_. Down went the ropes.
They were off!
From the start the Oca never had a chance. As for the Snail,
the whole field passed it before it had completed one round.
The Porcupine made a good effort, but the impetuous and dashing
_fantino_ of the Nicchio headed him off at the difficult turning
of San Martino. As they came up the hill for the last time it was
a race between the Tortoise and the Nicchio. The Tortoise was
leading, but the Nicchio overhauled him as they mounted towards
the Via del Casato, and as they came into the straight they were
neck and neck.
How the people yelled! How they called upon the Virgin and St.
Antony to come to the assistance of their _contrada_!
There was an indescribable confusion.
Bang! They had passed the post.
It was the Tortoise won the race!
In a flash the crowd had burst through the barriers and flooded
round the horses. The carabinieri came at a double to the rescue of
the Victorious Tartuca, for the men of the Oca were attempting to
mob him. The horse had already been spirited away lest it should
come to harm. The great mass of people swayed and roared.
Rattle-tap-tap; rattle-tap-tap. Through the crowd, with an escort
of stalwart troopers, came the waving banners of Tartuca with the
Palio in their midst, and away they marched with it to get the
blessing of Madonna.
It was all over, though the Mangia was still ringing overhead, and
the people were still shouting themselves hoarse.
'Or fù giammai
Gente si vana com'è la sanese?'[10]
SAN GIMIGNANO DELLE BELLE TORRI
'And far to the fair south-westward lightens,
Girdled and sandalled and plumed with flowers,
At sunset over the love-lit land,
The hillside's crown where the wild hill brightens
Saint Fina's town of the Beautiful towers,
Hailing the sun with a hundred hands.'
SWINBURNE.
We left Siena to her merry-making, and stole away early in the
morning to San Gimignano delle Belle Torri. From Poggibonsi we
drove right into the heart of Faery-land. Were we not bound for
Tuscany's most mediaeval city, which is still caught in the web
of beautiful thoughts spun round her towers by poets from Messer
Folgore, the thirteenth-century San Gimignanese, to our own
Swinburne? Our way lay through the rich Val d'Elsa, 'smiling in the
sweet air made gladsome by the sun.' Little hills ringed round with
the slender conventional pine-trees which Gozzoli loved to plant in
his Gardens of Paradise rose from the billowing plain. The vines
were linked from tree to tree in great festoons, heavy with grapes;
the plumy tassels of the maize were taller than a man; the roadside
was full of flowers--bright pink cloves, crimson wild peas,
chicory and Canterbury Bells. Indeed it was a veritable Paradise,
a Promised Land, not flowing with milk and honey, for milk is
sometimes very difficult to obtain in Tuscany where there are no
pasture grounds, but heavy with wine and corn, and the manifold
fruits of the earth.
[Illustration: THE TOWERS OF SAN GIMIGNANO.]
Long before we reached San Gimignano we saw her towers rising up
above the festooned vines like those Giants in Dante's _Inferno_,
which from a distance he took to be a city of many towers. He must
have been thinking of San Gimignano as he had seen it more than
once when he rode across the Tuscan vales from Florence, for it
looks ridiculously like a city of giants striding among miniature
houses. Its thirteen square towers of uneven heights massed on
the top of its little hill make the most fantastic sky-line in
Italy, and if the chroniclers speak truth the city to which Dante
came as Ambassador in the year of grace 1300 boasted no fewer than
seventy-six of these ambitious towers.
San Gimignano is like the Enchanted Princess in our childhood's
fairy tales. I think she must have fallen asleep one summer day,
wearied with waiting on her little hill for the Prince who was to
wed her. Perhaps she watched them jousting in the plain, those
petty princelings who tried to win her hand and always proved
themselves unworthy of her beauty and her ancient lineage, and I
know she sickened to hear their battle-cries as they issued by
night from their towers to plunder and slay. No laughing Tuscan
princess this, but a grave-eyed dreamy girl who loved to think of
saints although she blushed and trembled at a poet's tale, and
dreamt of queening it over the valleys which rippled from her
old brown walls to Volterra, or the fair city of Certaldo where
Boccaccio was born. She fell asleep in the fourteenth century when
she yielded up her keys to Florence, tired of waiting for the
prince who never came; and she dreams on among her flowers, very
beautiful, and happy at last with her poets and her saints, wearing
the threadbare garments of her ancient glory as befits a queen, and
at rest now that the faithless Salvucci and the unhappy Ardinghelli
no longer wage their useless warfare under her towers.
San Gimignano is a city where one could dream the world away, and
count its loss as nothing compared to the fragrant memories in
which she dwells. I think the people of San Gimignano do really
dream. They are very gentle and grave, and occupied with simple
tasks--the men working in the vineyards, and the women sitting at
their spinning-wheels outside their fourteenth-century palaces,
or plying their distaffs on the steps of the ancient well in the
Piazza del Pozzo, whose wall is worn into grooves, the width of my
hand, by the ropes of seven hundred years.
Flowers and grasses grow from her ancient towers, and white doves
nest in the narrow windows whence men-at-arms kept watch upon the
streets. It is as though the spirit of gentle Saint Fina lingers
still in the old grey town which gave her birth. The sweet-smelling
flowers 'called of Saint Fina' run riot on its walls and towers,
and her name is ever on the children's lips when they meet the
traveller at their city gates.
Let us go then to her chapel, for they will not let us rest till we
have seen it: they can find no beauty in their ragged palaces, and
no appeal in their gaunt grey towers or their lovely broken walls.
And we soon found that we must pay our respects to Fina first if we
would have peace to look elsewhere.
It was Domenico Ghirlandaio, in his way as great a poet as
Botticelli, whom the San Gimignanesi commissioned to paint the
story of their beloved Santa Fina; and in no other picture, save
his great 'Nativity' in the Accademia of Florence, did he reach
such a high poetic standard. He has chosen only two scenes from the
life of the little girl saint of San Gimignano--her vision of St.
Gregory, who appeared to her some days before her death and warned
her of her approaching end, and the miracle of the healing of her
old nurse Beldia as she lay in state awaiting burial.
With what simplicity and charm has he depicted the apparition of
St. Gregory! The Blessed Fina lies on her wooden plank in a little
white room which is empty of ornament or furniture--except for
a long, low settle bearing a plate, and a dish of pomegranates,
and a flask of wine covered with a napkin of fine linen. The door
and window both stand open to the sun and wind, and through the
casement we see the Tuscan landscape, soft with the green of early
spring, with a towered city crowning a hill, and little white
clouds on the clear blue sky. Two women in wimples sit beside her,
the old nurse Beldia supporting the child's head on her hand, for
the chronicler tells us that, notwithstanding, 'the strength of her
body lessened and waned even to swooning, yet, withal, she suffered
exceedingly from within her head.' The other woman, obviously a
neighbour who has looked in to see the sick child, sits on a chair
beside them. Her hand is raised and her head turned towards the
open door, as if she has been startled in the midst of speaking,
or is listening to some unwonted sound. But Saint Gregory in cope
and mitre, in a glory of cherubs, has floated in at the door and is
speaking to the saint, who listens with rapt attention and hands
folded in the attitude of prayer.
There is no reference to the horrible corruption of the Holy Fina's
fair body which her hagiographers insist upon. 'She was palsied all
over, and in no wise could she rise from her couch, nor yet move
hand or foot. And as God willed that she should be thus afflicted
she would not that her body rest upon any soft and yielding thing,
rather laid she herself down to sleep upon a plank of wood; and
because one side of her body was afflicted with the sickness and
wearied her greatly, she slept upon the other; and during the space
of five years she did so lie upon that side, neither would she
allow any one to move her or yet change her raiment. For so many
a long day lay this holy virgin upon her one side only, that the
flesh became corrupted and the plank begat vermin which devoured
her flesh. Moreover, because of the corruption of these things, the
rats gathered together and devoured her flesh.'
Ghirlandaio could read no poetry into this perverted moral. He
forgot the rats and vermin and the sore corruption, thinking of her
only as the fair maiden, so goodly to human eyes, whose claim to
saintship rested on her holiness and chastity and patience. Listen
once more to the words of Fra Giovanni her chronicler. 'Whilst
yet a little maiden she withdrew herself from all converse that
could imperil her soul, forswearing those pleasures in which her
like often indulged; such as to gambol and frolic, and such-like
frivolities and pleasantries, and the setting fast of their hearts
and minds on fine raiment and worldly joys.... She avoided all
frivolous comings and goings as being harmful to her peace of mind,
and if peradventure she walked abroad, she first made treaty with
her eyes that they should look always upon her feet; lest by their
vain outward glance they should tempt her guileless spirit. And
whilst it pleased God that she should possess a fair countenance,
be of tall stature, and all things in her were goodly proportioned;
yet in no fashion would she adorn her face, willing only to please
God and not to gratify the sight of worldly men.... And she worked
unremittingly with her hands in the calling of women folk; but all
these acts she would perform, not for the great need she were in,
but to eschew idleness, which the Holy Scripture saith is a snare
for the feet of the Lord's servants. Likewise, when not in prayer,
she laboured steadfastly, following thus in the footsteps of our
Mother the Virgin Mary: as of her it is spoken in the Epistles
of St. Jerome, that she earned each day the wherewithal for the
sustenance of her body.'
Nor does the artist give us any hint of the miraculous fragrance
which pervaded her chamber and her person, and of the flowers
which blossomed from the board on which she lay. Unless he meant to
represent them by the sweet spring sunshine and fresh air, scented
by the breath of flowers grown without, which fills her white room.
On the other wall we see her lying in state on a bier of gold
brocade, clad in fine silk, her poor fair head at rest on a rich
cushion. Round her stand the bishop and the choristers with candles
and banners, and behind them are the stolid citizens who, in the
usual manner of Quattrocento burghers in frescoes, pay no attention
to the little ceremony. A small, tearful child is kissing the
dead saint's feet. It is the moment of the healing of Beldia, who
stands grief-stricken beside the bier; and Santa Fina, 'lifting her
arm as though she were yet quick,' has taken the afflicted hand
in her slender fingers. The artist has forgotten nothing--in the
background he has painted the towers of San Gimignano whose bells,
'each one and severally, not being pulled by hands of mortal men,
were set to ring with sweetest unison and melody.' Even the little
angel who set them ringing is there, flying in haste from tower to
tower with the sunlight gilding his wings.
It is small wonder that the people of San Gimignano are proud
of their Cappella della Beata Fina, for besides the frescoes of
Ghirlandaio it contains the exquisite shrine which Benedetto da
Maiano wrought of white marble, finely gilt, to hold the bones of
the saint.
San Gimignano was the home of saints, and it is to them that she
turns now in her poverty and simplicity, glad of their ancient
sanctity which has survived the years, and has not vanished in
memories like her dreams of glory. From the beginning she was
beloved of saints. Is not her very name an echo of the legend of
St. Geminianus, the Martyr of Modena, who appeared before her walls
during a siege and routed the barbarians of Attila? Until that day
the city had borne the enchanted name Castello della Selva--the
Castle of the Wood--because of the great oak forests which clothed
the hillside and the plain, where now the olive sheds its silvered
shade. But when Attila, who, like Totila and the other invading
barbarians, was often defrauded of legitimate victory by patriotic
saints, retreated from the citadel, the people changed its name to
San Gimignano in memory of the martyred Bishop's timely appearance.
Putting aside this legend she had four saints: the Holy Fina; the
Blessed Bartolo, whose life was spent in humble service, and who
for twenty years was a victim of leprosy which he caught from the
plague-stricken people to whom he devoted his life; the hermit
San Vivaldo; and Saint Peter, who was one of the first in the
brotherhood of St. Francis to suffer martyrdom.
[Illustration: SAN GIMIGNANO: THE WASHING PLACE.]
After Saint Fina it is the Blessed Bartolo, 'the Angel of Peace,'
whom the San Gimignanesi venerate most. Like Santa Fina he has a
noble shrine by Benedetto de Maiano; and he lies, as we are told he
wished to do, in Sant'Agostino, the great bare friar's church on
the hillside, which is a treasure-house of mediaeval art.
If all the towers of San Gimignano were chimneys belching smoke,
and all her mediaeval palaces were ugly modern houses, the world
would still visit her to see Gozzoli's inimitable frescoes of
the life of Saint Augustine. They are so fresh and unspoiled, so
stately and human, so full of quaint imaginings. For he was a great
humorist this pageant-painter of the Renaissance, and his naïve
pictures are the ideal illustrations to the naïve Confessions of
that very human saint, Augustine!
Gozzoli came to Sant'Agostino from his work in the Riccardi
Chapel at Florence. There he had slipped beyond the monastic
conventionalities of his master, Fra Angelico, and adventured
into the gay Florentine life of the fifteenth century with its
sports and pageantry. Here he has wandered further from his gentle
instructor, and does not hesitate to reproduce with genial wit the
humour as well as the pageantry of the age in which he lived. For
it goes without saying that his Augustine is transplanted to the
Quattrocento, and his life pictured in Gothic cities where Gozzoli
himself and his gay compatriots all play their parts. From the
beginning, if we except perhaps the first of the series in which
the saint is being spanked by his schoolmaster for some small
misbehaviour, Augustine is a charming and dignified figure, whether
we see him a thoughtful youth setting out in state for Milan
through a typical Gozzoli landscape, or he wanders disconsolately
in the monastic habit upon the shore, and is rebuked by the
little child making mud-pies there, in the immemorial fashion of
childhood, for trying to probe into the mysteries of the Trinity.
This great church has many other treasures, frescoes and tombs,
such as Gozzoli's San Sebastiano or the effigy of the Augustan
brother who fell asleep in the worn pavement so many years ago;
or, best of all, the tomb of Fra Domenico Strambi, the grand old
monk who commissioned Benozzo Gozzoli to paint his choir, and who
lies below a fresco which Mr. Gardner aptly calls 'a masterpiece of
municipal sentiment.'
San Gimignano is extremely rich in frescoes, considering that she
had no native school of painting, but drew her artists first from
Siena and later from Florence, when she had yielded her freedom
to that city. The Pieve or Collegiata is like an ancient missal
full of illustrations. Besides the frescoes of Ghirlandaio in the
Cappella della Beata Fina, and his Annunciation in the Oratory of
St. John,[11] the walls of the nave are covered with the quaint
and primitive frescoes of Taddeo di Bartolo and Bartolo di Fredi;
and many other painters besides Piero Pollaiolo and Benozzo Gozzoli
have added their quota to this ancient scroll of art. The choir
of Sant'Agostino, as I have remarked above, is a masterpiece by
Gozzoli; and the museum in the Palazzo Comunale boasts a fine
collection which includes two beautiful pictures by Pinturicchio
and Filippino Lippi.
Of all the Palazzi Comunali of vanished republics San Gimignano's
is the most forlorn. It seems to have fallen asleep like the
rest of the city, and forgotten to do anything but flower and be
beautiful. Its faded fourteenth-century courtyard has an outside
stairway leading to a raftered loggia; grass grows in its brick
pavement; and tall grey towers, fringed with flowers, rise above
its walls. Without the Tuscan sunshine to beautify its stones it
would be a little desolate, all faded fresco and broken plaster.
And this, mark you, although it is the _nuovo_ palace of the
Podestà. The _antico_ Palazzo, facing the Pieve, so picturesque
with its loggia and tower and municipal clock under its wide Tuscan
eaves, is older and more ruinous still. It is not battlemented
like its neighbour, and it has no processional staircase; nor is
its tower, which 'marked the limit to which noble citizens might
build their private towers,' as lofty as the Torre del Comune, for
this bestrides a street and is the giant of the city, a monument
to the vanity of the San Gimignanesi, being built with the money
contributed by magistrates who wished their arms to be fixed to it
when they went out of office.
We went up the steps which have seen so many municipal pageants
to try and learn the history of San Gimignano from the threadbare
splendour of her garments. How like they all are to each other,
these little cities of United Italy, with their smug municipal
dignity sitting in the midst of tatterdemalion glory! Here, in this
very chamber where to-day Lippo Memmi's great fresco of the Virgin
and Child, enthroned among the angels, looks down on office chairs
and ink-stained tables covered with American cloth, came Dante
in the year of the first jubilee, 1300, in all the splendour of
Florentine embassy! Here he spake to the lords of San Gimignano,
and invited them to send representatives to the election of a
captain to lead the Ghibelline League of Tuscany. Here, where
all the petty business of a little town is ratified, the men of
San Gimignano were wont to deal with their affairs of state, to
settle wars, and speak of popes and emperors. We read the story
of it round the walls--Memmi's fresco with its proud baldachin of
armorial bearings surmounted by the Ghibelline eagle has effaced
the greater part of it, but under the timber roof are the arms
of the noble families of San Gimignano; and below them jousting
knights tilt at invisible combatants, long ago lost in plaster;
and huntsmen chase their vanished prey; and the Guelphs and
Ghibellines fight out their everlasting warfare in dim distemper.
The sunset was gilding the towers of San Gimignano when we came
out again, and all the bells were ringing for evensong. Already
the streets were bound in shadows, so we wandered out among the
olive-trees to the little ruined church of the Templars. From here
we passed out of the city by an ancient gate, and down the hill
to the Gothic washing-pool, where the women of San Gimignano wash
and wring their linen in the cool of the evening. The delicate
afterglow of Tuscany filled the sky, and the tall poplars whispered
and shivered in the sunset wind. Up and down that steep and
stony hill under the old Gothic gate went the women, with their
snowy linen piled in baskets on their heads. The sound of their
voices and laughter floated back to us, mingled with the music of
bells from the city above. In the hollow below the road a little
waterfall babbled to the stones as it leapt over them to the plain.
Between the whispering poplars a white road wound up the hill like
the roads up which Benozzo Gozzoli's stately young men rode to
their Gothic cities. And below, stretching far away to the east
where it was lost in rose and purple mists, billowed the vast Val
d'Elsa.
Seen through the magic of a summer evening--when the poplars were
making music in the breeze, and the shadows were sweeping across
the Tuscan plain; when the women, having folded their linen under
the silver olives and piled it on their heads, climbed the steep
hill into their tower-girt home--the world and all its doings were
as beautiful as a sacrament. Here, at least, in these dim forgotten
_paesi_, 'glory and loveliness have not passed away.'
But, after all, it is at night that San Gimignano is most
beautiful. Then she is a city bewitched, unspeakably lovely and
romantic. Her silent streets are thronged with memories; her
shuttered palaces are given back to ghosts; her proud old towers
loom up against the star-lit sky like mediaeval giants.
A silver moon was riding low in the heavens when we left the
doorway of the Leon Bianco and passed through the Arco de' Becci,
the great gateway of the ancient circuit of walls, which leads at
once into the heart of San Gimignano. It was velvet-black under
its ghostly tower, and the Gothic palaces of the Castello Vecchio
within seemed to be holding their breath as they watched the
shadows creeping over the pale stones of the piazza. How silent and
deserted it was! The lovely grave-eyed children, who had been our
guides all day, had vanished with their gentle mothers, whom we had
seen spinning in their doorways through the sunny hours. Where had
they gone? There were no lights in any of these silent palaces, and
the narrow streets were empty except for the shadows of the towers,
grim as bloodstains.
[Illustration: SAN GIMIGNANO.]
A white owl, soundless of wing, sank on to the parapet of an
ancient palace. Imagination plays strange tricks in this city of
ghosts, in whose streets an August moon, more than five hundred
years ago, bore witness to the greatest tragedy in the vendetta of
the Ardinghelli and the Salvucci. Was it a bird, or did I see a
scrap of paper flutter from the window of that dark tower? No. It
was only a piece of broken glass glittering among the stones--fit
emblem of the broken hopes of those two hapless boys whom Benedetto
Strozzi so foully did to death by the persuasion of the treacherous
Salvucci. Their letter went astray, thrown from the prison tower,
in the hope that a friendly breeze would carry it to the feet of
an adherent of the Ardinghelli. And very soon afterwards they met
their death, by the steps of the Palazzo Comunale, early on a
summer morning, hurriedly, because Strozzi and the Salvucci knew
that the messenger who was riding from Florence with their pardon
would be delayed only a few hours by the rising of the Elsa. He
came too late, as he was meant to do. The Salvucci had already
reaped their bloody harvest--the heads of Primerano and Rossellino,
the flowers of the noble house of Ardinghelli, had fallen to the
sickle.
It was late, and the sleepy porter of the White Lion yawned
reproachfully as we passed him on our way to the Porta San
Giovanni, whither we were bound to view the city and rid ourselves
of shadows. If tragedy lurked within the narrow streets and
byways of San Gimignano, we found nothing but beauty without. The
moonlight, flooding her broken walls and picturesque old gates,
transformed her into a city of pale jade, crowning a gloom-dark
hill. Her diadem of ghostly towers seemed enamoured of the sky, and
soared towards the heaven like young Endymion, stretching out his
arms to his enchantress. Down the hillside poured her palaces,
white as marble, rising in terraces from their dark gardens, and
far away we could hear the plaintive cry of the city watchmen as
they went their solitary rounds. At our feet a sheer cliff, filled
to the level of the road with trees, fell into the night. From
its mysterious depths ascended the fragrance of wet earth and the
bell-like chant of frogs. And beyond, and all round, lay the broad
fields of Tuscany, filled with a sea of moonlit mists, from which
the fantastic outlines of little hills rolled up, like shadowy
waves, with towered farms and slim black cypresses upon their
crests.
MONTE OLIVETO MAGGIORE
Austere and terrible, barren as the Valley of the Shadow of Death,
is the desert of Accona, where Bernardo Tolomei founded the
monastery of Monte Oliveto Maggiore.
At Asciano we left behind us the fruitful gardens of Tuscany,
rippling with vines, and rich with maize and olives, and embarked
upon a sea of pallid hills. It was as though a blight had fallen.
The naked earth was parched and rent with gaping fissures; the
tamarisks and spurges and the drab grass which fringed the roadside
were old and dry. The smiling valleys fled to the north and the
south as from a land accursed, 'and lo, the fruitful place was a
wilderness.'
Our way lay along a bleached white road which seared the grey
hillside and writhed among volcanic mounds and precipices. Here
and there the drab monotony was broken by the clustered spires of
cypresses round scattered farms; but their black foliage, like
funeral plumes, only added a deeper note of melancholy. It was
hot too. The August sun beat down upon us from a brazen sky, and
the glare of the road made our eyes ache for cool green shadows.
But when we reached the plateau a vision of surpassing beauty
burst upon us. It was as though, after sojourning for many hours
in the wilderness, we looked from Pisgah on the promised land. To
our right, across miles of pale clay gorges and volcanic mounds,
Siena lay rosy and smiling in her vineyards; on the other hand a
wide valley full of precipices rolled away to the purple hills of
Umbria, which hung like a mirage between earth and sky, with Monte
Amiata lifting her proud head above them all. And presently, after
we had passed through Chiusure, a shrunken little town in the heart
of a green oasis, we caught our first glimpse of Monte Oliveto.
Below the road the hill fell away in a deep ravine, whose tortured
sides were torn and scarred by torrents, as though the pallid
earth had bared an ancient wound. And in the midst of the grey
desolation, with towering cliffs above, and wild precipices
leaping down into the valley below, stood the Abbey of the Blessed
Bernardo. Grim and forbidding as a fortress were its bare red
walls, devoid of ornament, only redeemed from positive ugliness by
their austerity and rugged strength. And yet, as we approached the
monastery through the fragrant shade of cypress avenues, the scent
of pine needles and the song of cicalas rose together like the
voice of the wilderness and the solitary place which has been made
glad.
[Illustration: CHIUSURE FROM MONTE OLIVETO MAGGIORE.]
For, indeed, S. Bernardo and his companions laboured to make this
wilderness blossom like a rose. Early in the fourteenth century
he put aside the vanities of life. At the height of his glory,
when all Siena was ringing with his brilliance and prodigality,
he left the city, fleeing, like Shelley, from the awful spectre
of his veiled self, asking 'Are you satisfied?' And coming into
the desert of Accona he dwelt here in poverty and simplicity,
building a little chapel to Santa Scolastica, the sister of St.
Benedict, and leading a life of prayer and meditation. We read
that a great number of followers, many of them noble, came to him,
and lived upon the hillside, striving by the sweat of their brows
to transform the Tuscan desert into a garden. But in that day of
Guelph and Ghibelline disorders the rulers of Siena feared that
he was sowing the seeds of a rebellion; and, if we believe his
legend, tried to poison him. It is certain that he was accused of
heresy, and forced to make the long journey to the Papal Court of
Avignon with Ambrogio Piccolomini, one of his earliest companions,
and a scion of the noble house of Piccolomini. Nothing more is
said of the charge of heresy. The Pope, John XXII., received
them with favour and gave them letters to Guido Tarlati, the
splendid old warrior-bishop of Arezzo, in which he asked that most
unconventional of prelates to furnish them with a monastic rule.
Here again the legend adds a picturesque touch, for it tells us
that Tarlati had a miraculous vision, in which the Blessed Virgin
appeared to him and commanded him to give the rule of Benedict to
'the pious solitaries' of Accona, to clothe them in spotless white,
the symbol of her purity, and to give their hermitage the name of
St. Mary of Mount Olivet.
So with their own hands Bernardo and his companions, no longer
clad in the garb of penitents, began to build their church and
convent on the spot where he had his vision of a celestial ladder
stretching up to heaven, with angels leading his companions to the
throne of Christ. But their work was stopped by news of the great
plague which was spreading desolation throughout the country.
Going himself to Siena, Bernardo sent out the brothers two by two
to tend the people, bidding them depart with good courage, saying
that they should all meet together in Siena for the Festival of the
Assumption. He never saw his cloistered home again; he died in the
stricken city with nearly all his companions, and other hands took
up the building of his monastery; and, later, beautified it with
frescoes by Luca Signorelli and Il Sodoma, and rare intarsia by Fra
Giovanni of Verona.
But I was not thinking of the Blessed Bernardo or of his
white-robed Olivetans as we drew near the monastery. Some touch
of faery lingered in that cypress grove. We had come out to see
a convent. And lo! a battlemented gateway rose before us, with
drawbridge and portcullis, as warlike as a castle of the Sforzas.
It was as though we had ridden like princes of eld across the grey
inferno of Childe Roland, where the grass 'grew scant as hair in
leprosy,' only to wind our horns before the gate of an enchanted
city.
And the fancy grew. We passed without challenge under the
portcullis, with a smiling Godspeed from its Della Robbia Madonna,
into one of those enchanted woods of Italy, where stone-pines make
a frieze against the sky, and cicalas sing their little hearts
away in rapture. Two paths led through the flickering shadows. We
hesitated which to take, and glanced behind us, half expecting some
warden to issue from that ancient gate to ask our pleasure and
direct our steps. No one was there. But, just as St. Mary welcomed
us without, so from his niche above the arch St. Benedict, clad
in the spotless robes of Oliveto, gave us his blessing. We went
forward then, past a huge brick jebbia full of green water and down
to the stables where we dismounted by a well, as Aeneas Sylvius and
his brilliant suite of knights and choristers dismounted when they
rode here from Siena and marvelled to find so fair a garden in that
barren land.
Still no one came, and still the enchanted silence of the woods
prevailed. We wandered round the old red walls, seeking to find
an entrance, and since there was no one to say us nay, we went
into the cool white monastery. How still and desolate it was! Our
footsteps ringing on the flags dismayed us, and when we pealed the
bell it echoed like derisive laughter down the empty corridor.
Truly the spirit of the place has taken flight, now that the
white-robed brethren no longer dwell in their inheritance. Not more
than three monks live here to-day; and these, they told us rather
sadly, as _custodes_ only, for their order is suppressed nearly
everywhere, and the state has made a national monument of their
treasures. So the ancient law that to him that hath shall be given,
and from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which
he hath, is fulfilled. And I will confess at once that from the
sentimental point of view my sympathies are all with the monks, for
they are one of our most picturesque links with the past, and it
was with their own hands that they sowed this harvest which another
reaps.[12]
So there are only ghosts to people the deserted cells and chapels
and refectories of Mount Olivet to-day. Time and the hand of man
have robbed this sanctuary. Everywhere the eye sees frescoes
fading from the walls; and Napoleon, who never saw any harm in
robbing Peter to pay Paul, stole some of the exquisite intarsia
stalls of the convent church to enrich the cathedral of Siena.
Only in the great cloister, where Signorelli and Sodoma painted
the life and miracles of St. Benedict, is the imagination fired.
What does it matter that the story has been often told? That we
have conned it in a hundred other frescoes? It is like the magic
stories of our youth, which gained an added joy by repetition,
because no two people ever told them quite the same. Here we could
find inhabitants for all those empty cells; here we could fill
the pleasant groves with white-cowled monks who knelt in prayer
below the cypresses, or paced the shady avenues in meditation;
here we could picture Bernardo himself, building his abbey, and
see him sitting in the old refectory with Patrizi, and Ambrogio
Piccolomini, and the other nobles who followed him into the
wilderness. 'The series forms, in fact, a painted _novella_
of monastic life; its petty jealousies, its petty trials, its
tribulations and temptations, and its indescribably petty
miracles.'[13]
And then, because it was long after mezzogiorno, and we were to
sleep at Chiusi that night, we went back to the magic cypress-woods
to eat our lunch and rest before we drove to Asciano. Our coachmen
had prepared a place for us, which they explained was _molto
arioso_ for so warm a day, on a terraced slope in the wide avenue
of cypresses leading from the monastery church to the little chapel
which contains the cell of Bernardo. The bank was carpeted with
pine-needles, and the air was fragrant with the scent of crushed
thyme. We lunched excellently well off wine and bread, figs and
peaches; and our smiling drivers brought us a great _fiasco_ of
sparkling ice-cold water--an acceptable addition to the meal, for
we were thirsty, and good spring water is not found everywhere in
Italy. And then we pillowed our heads on the soft bank, and lay in
silence, entangled in a flickering web of sun and shadow.
Surely it was an enchanted wood of cypresses that summer afternoon!
As I drowsed I dreamt that I saw a boy come idly through the trees
singing to his lute. His eyes were heavy-lidded, and long black
love-locks lay on his shoulders. He was dressed fantastically in
scarlet stockings, a silken cap, and a gay cloak, which evidently
pleased him well, for at times he plucked at it and pulled it
closely round him to admire its folds. A monkey with a gilded chain
was on his shoulder, and a badger walked solemnly at his heels.
Who could he be? I wondered. He was too gay and worldly to have
thoughts of entering the Brotherhood, and as he drew nearer I could
hear that his song was in the praise of love. Some poet of the
Renaissance, perhaps, whose lord was resting in the monastery.
He drew nearer still, till I thought he must have seen me; and
then, as though he was a little weary of his song, he dropped his
lute and pillowed his gracious young head upon the flowery bank and
drifted into sleep, lulled by the fragrance of the warm pine-woods.
It seemed to me as if he dreamed, for he stirred, and turned his
face away.
Was it I who dreamt the rest?
I saw a lady moving towards him across the flowers as lightly as a
butterfly upon the wing. Fair of face and form was she, fashioned
very lightly, full of airy grace; with child-like laughter on her
lips and a half-defiant, wholly-alluring challenge in her tender
eyes. Her dress was blue and of so light a texture that it rippled
from her rosy limbs like water, and scarce bruised the flowers. As
she ventured near she laughed, and wantoned with some golden fruit.
The sunshine and the breeze, greatly daring, played in her filmy
yellow hair and fashioned the tender blue of her robe into little
wings. Half a child was she, and half a woman, full of the joy of
living and the joy of beautiful things; the very spirit of an azure
butterfly who flutters through a summer day, dancing from sheer
delight.
Who could have dreamt that I should find her here, on this bleak
hillside, in this austere old house? These baked clay cliffs and
desolations should have driven her away to gay Siena long ago, even
if she outstayed the bitter winds which thrash the stone-pines
round the forsaken monastery in winter.
She was standing by the poet now, and smiling down at him, pouting
a little because he did not wake. Who could resist her, this happy
butterfly fashioned so beautifully for love on a golden summer day?
A pine-cone fell into my lap and startled me. I moved. And in a
flash the spell was broken. They had vanished, the beauteous lady
and the sleeping boy whose dreams had conjured her. The yellow
sunlight was slanting in between the cypresses, and from the
stables came the sound of horses being harnessed. It was already
time to go.
And yet they say that Benedict sent her away with harsh words and
admonitions.
And the youth who dreamed was not a poet but a painter; his name
was Sodoma. You may see her picture in the cloister, and his own
as well, in the gay clothes of which he was so proud, for they
were part-payment for his work, and had belonged to a gentleman of
Lombardy who took the monastic habit.
But it is still a miracle to me that I should have met her on this
bare hillside.
CHIUSI
Night had fallen when we reached Chiusi Junction. A full-blown
harvest moon hung over the station-yard like a yellow lamp. It
was late, and the lights of Chiusi were a twinkling bunch of
fire-flies on a distant hill. We dined at the excellent station
buffet, resolved not to spoil the propitious hour by arriving in
an unknown city tired and hungry; and afterwards we climbed up to
our mysterious destination at leisure, in the glory of a late moon,
with the night insects singing by the dusky roadside.
They are among the little joys of Italy these late arrivals, on
breathless summer nights, at hill-towns whose features you have
only glimpsed heretofore from the windows of a flying train. A fig
for the discomforts that you risk! They add a touch of salt to
the adventure. The inn you stumble on may be the worst of all bad
inns; the dinner will of course be long-delayed; and if you have
inadvertently walked in upon a festa it may be difficult to find
a place whereon to lay your head. But reckon against these things
the charm of mystery--the complete sense of satisfaction with which
you watch the ruby tail-lights of your train slipping away into
the night, and hear the lessening roar of its engine till your
last link with the familiar world is severed, and you are face to
face with the unknown. And lastly, remember the joy with which you
discover a new world in the morning.
We started in a vettura which was never meant to carry passengers
as well as luggage, but before long we slipped out one by one, for
we were only going at a snail's pace up the long hill which leads
from Chiusi station to Chiusi town, and we could see nothing of
the magic of the night, half-buried in boxes, and with the stars
shut out by tarpaulin. The driver did not notice, but the horses
quickened their pace with the lightened burden, and soon we were
left to find our own way up the hillside. It was not difficult.
The bright moonlight, which flooded the plain below, turned the
road into a band of silver, whose whiteness was barred by the
shadows of giant cypresses towering black against the night. The
chanting of the frogs and the song of the night cricket almost
drowned the jangling bells of our vettura, and high above us we
could see Chiusi, no longer a bunch of fire-flies, but a ghostly
grey hill-city already wrapt in slumber, with a frowning rocca, and
grim old walls. Its silence was a little desolate as we drew near,
and it was a relief to see the hospitable yellow lights of the Leon
d'Oro outside the Porta Romana, giving us a homely welcome into the
mysterious moonlit town.
[Illustration: CITTÀ DELLA PIEVE FROM CHIUSI.]
I woke early in the morning. It needed but a glance to tell me that
I was back in Umbria. Nowhere else are the dimpled valleys so full
of beauty, or the blue hills so softly moulded; and nowhere else
is that pellucid sky, or that strange clarity of atmosphere which
inspired the landscapes of the Umbrian Quattrocento artists. It was
as though I looked straight into the heart of one of Perugino's
sacred pictures. There was the soft green valley melting in the
distance into the azure folds of mountains; there were the slender
trees cleaving the luminous air; there were the towered cities
crowning the hills; there was the clear pale sky, the spaciousness,
the holiness which Perugino and his school immortalised. But, after
all, this rich plain, from which the waters of an inland sea have
long ago receded, is peculiarly the land of Perugino. Is not that
rose-red city on the crest of the wooded hill which bounds the
southern horizon of Chiusi, Città della Pieve, the town which gave
him birth? I half expected to see a band of saints walking in the
vineyards, or to find Madonna sitting by the roadside with the
Infant Christ. But another artist had usurped the landscape. Below
my window was a peasant ploughing in his olive-garden. He sang as
he bent forward to throw his weight on the wooden shaft, and his
clothes were as blue as the heavens at mid-day. Two milk-white oxen
moved slowly before him under the tender grey of the olives, and as
they passed they left behind them shining furrows of freshly-turned
earth. It was a poem of labour, as delicate in colour as a
tone-etching, an inspiration for Millet with the poetry of life in
his veins, or for the subtle Corot.
Chiusi, the Clusium of Lars Porsena, the great Etruscan Prince who
championed the Tarquinii after they were expelled from Rome, is a
little self-contained city with an affectation of placing cypresses
at becoming angles. She is rather a coquette this old town. She
is not unconscious of the picturesqueness of her position as she
rises above the shimmering olives which veil her hillsides; she
knows the value of cypress spires when they soar above the bastions
of ancient walls; she deliberately sets herself out to charm the
stranger by filling the gardens of her _trattorie_ with flowering
gourds and purple morning-glories. Her picturesque old cathedral
has been so cleverly redecorated throughout with painted mosaics,
that when we first stepped down into the cool dark nave we were
deceived, and gasped to see such jewels outside Ravenna; and she
has built herself a delightful museum, in the form of a classic
temple, to house her Etruscan treasures.
I think she has never ceased to congratulate herself upon giving
the lie to Dante's ill-omened prophecy, when he quoted her as an
example of a city falling into decay--
'Mark Luni, Urbisaglia mark,
How they are gone, and after them how go
Chiusi and Sinigaglia; and 't will seem
No longer new or strange to thee to hear,
That families fail when cities have their end.'[14]
She may well have seemed a city doomed to him as he rode in haste
through the pestilent marshes of the Val di Chiana, and saw her
desolate towers above him stark against the evening sky, as he
hurried from Rome to Siena to meet his fellow exiles and learn the
story of his fall.
For eight centuries or more Chiusi was a plague spot, and the
vapours of the maremma were more powerful to guard her from
invaders than the strongest walls. So she has fewer mediaeval
palaces, and fewer towers than other hill-cities, and these were
long ago given to neighbouring churches to hang their bells in,
and the ancient Rocca is a garden with a farm-house in its keep.
I have a tender spot in my heart for Chiusi. She is a happy town.
In herself she is not very picturesque: her houses are the plain,
white-washed, green-shuttered homes of modern Italy; there are
few traces of her ancient greatness to be seen except the scanty
Etruscan foundations of her mediaeval fortifications, a quantity of
_cippi_ and reliefs built into walls, and the labyrinth of ancient
sewers which honey-combs the hill.[15] And in comparison with the
other cities of Umbria she contains nothing of the Middle Ages,
certainly nothing Gothic, if we except the exquisite illuminated
missals and psalters by Bindo Fiorentino and Girolamo da Cremona,
which are kept in the sacristy of the cathedral, and which came
originally from the monastery of Monte Oliveto. To the antiquary
she is of the highest interest, for she marks the site of Clusium,
one of the five Etruscan towns which combined against the first of
the Tarquins, and of the earlier Camars, which may have been a city
of the more ancient Umbrians. Her history shows her to have been
one of the oldest and most powerful cities of the Etruscan League;
and the country for miles round her walls has yielded, and still
yields, a rich harvest of antiquities from scattered tombs. There
is a slope to the east of the city which is called 'The Field of
the Jewellers,' because so many _scarabaei_ have been discovered
there by the chance furrow of a plough.
[Illustration: ETRUSCAN CINERARY URNS.]
But I am no antiquary. It is not for me to discuss the possible
site of that improbable mausoleum of Lars Porsena with its
labyrinth and pyramids and windbells, which Varro described
as glibly as Herodotus did the marvels of the labyrinth of
Crocodilopolis. I have not seen the great necropolis of Poggio
Gajella on the hill to the north of Chiusi, which Dennis tells us
is a hive of tombs. To me the charm of Chiusi does not lie in her
antiquity, though like every one else who visits her I have spent
happy hours in her sunny museum, poring over inscriptions and
sarcophagi, and cinerary urns and household implements, and all the
strange paraphernalia of a vanished race which have been garnered
from the fields of Clusium. Nor are the painted tombs of Etruria
as much to me as the wonderful beauty of the olive-gardens through
which we walked to find them, in the golden sunset or the clear
cool dawn.
There are many tombs scattered round the hill of Chiusi. Some of
them empty caves hollowed out of the rock, half full of water,
abandoned to moths and bats; and others which have been opened
and closed up again because the damp and thieves have robbed them
of all interest. A few of the best are kept under lock and key to
preserve them from wanton destruction, but even these are slipping
reluctantly back to oblivion.
Such an one is the Tombe del Colle Casuccini, which is to be found
in an olive-grove to the south-east of the town. It is hollowed in
the rock, and is approached by a levelled path cut in the slope
of the hill. The earth around is full of iris plumes and slender
field flowers; there is a weather-beaten cippus over the lintel,
and a solitary stone-pine which stretches out its branches as
though Nature sought to render homage to the dead by yielding them
a royal canopy. We had lingered so long in the silver olive-gardens
that it was almost the hour of sunset when we reached the tomb. A
melancholy evening wind moaned in the branches of the pine-tree,
and rustled in the flowering yews which guarded the entrance of the
passage.
Up and down the hillside we could see the peasants returning from
their work in the fields, and the whole world was caught in the
sudden glory of the setting sun. A woman came towards us with the
key of the tomb; she had a baby in her arms, and on her head a
great mottled pitcher, green and gold, full of spring water. The
sunlight wove a halo round her till she seemed as radiant as one of
Pinturicchio's Madonnas.
The great doors of travertine groaned as they swung slowly open
on their stone pivots, and a scorpion fled from the light. Dennis
says, 'There can be no doubt of the antiquity of these doors; it is
manifest in their very arrangement; for the lintel is a huge mass
of rock buried beneath a weight of superincumbent earth, and must
have been laid _after_ the slabs were in their place.'
This sepulchre, like most Etruscan tombs of importance, is divided
into several chambers. Its roof is curiously coffered, and was
at one time painted red and black. But it is the wall paintings
which are of supreme interest here. Unlike the other tombs of
Chiusi the sandstone walls have been whitened, and even so the
figures are hardly distinguishable. But look close. It is worth
the trouble, for as your candlelight drives the shadows back, the
story of an ancient world unfolds itself. Here, to the right, three
charioteers urge their archaic steeds to the winning-post; here
are the wrestlers; here the musicians with their doublepipes and
lutes, and here a dancing girl. On the other wall you can trace
the progress of a banquet, and see the languid youths of Etruria
reclining on couches, toying with wreaths and flowers, and holding
out their _paterae_ for the hurrying slaves to fill with wine.
But they are very faded. They are a world of shadows; they
vanish with the months. Another generation will look for them in
vain; then the athletes will no longer run their silent races to
eternity, the music will be hushed, and the feet of the dancers
stilled. And then, I suppose, the wonderful old doors will be taken
away, and the angry scorpions will be left in possession. If you
would see these ghosts, come soon. For if you come ten years after,
perchance you will find nothing on the cold stone walls; their
pictures will have gone the way of all the other antique graces
which have been lost in Time's devouring maw!
In Italy, especially in the small cities, you have to bow to local
convention. In Chiusi it takes the form of Etruscan tombs. Every
one from tiny children to the oldest inhabitant volunteers to be
your guide. A stranger would say that the Tomb of the Monkey or
the Deposito del Gran Duca were topics of burning interest in the
town, for the people will not rest until they are assured that he
has visited them. It was for this reason that the sunrise next
morning found us on our way to the Tomba della Scimmia, which lies
a mile or so to the north-east of Chiusi. At first we followed
the highroad where the gay painted ox-carts of Clusium, with their
picturesque high-curved shafts, were already rolling up the hill.
But our way soon turned off into a rough path which dipped down
into the chilly sweetness of the olive-gardens. The sun had not
yet risen high enough to penetrate these dewy hollows, but as we
re-emerged from them and breasted the little oak-clad hills beyond,
it slanted between the branches and made a halo round some young
peasant girls, barefoot and with uncovered heads, who were carrying
great pitchers of water to their cottages from an Artesian well.
We dipped into more valleys and circled other hills, plucking the
ripe blackberries as we passed, and gathering the flowers which
made a tangle round our feet. The only people that we met were
peasants at work below their olives, and every one of them gave us
a smiling _buon giorno a loro_ as we passed. Presently we came out
upon a wooded cliff and saw Chiusi, with her fair white houses and
her grey ivied rocca, across the valley to our right, and on our
left the little lakes of Montepulciano and Chiusi, like opals in
the dawn. Umbria again! The flowers at our feet, the glint of water
in the wide green valley, the purple hills, the soft blue sky, the
breadth and depth, the holiness and peace of mystic Umbria.
[Illustration: CHIUSI: THE PALACE OF THE BISHOP.]
The Tomb of the Monkey owes its name to the painted monkey chained
to a tree in the midst of the athletes who wrestle and ride and box
and perform their Pyrrhic dances round the walls. It is approached
by a deep cut in the tufa, in the style of the mummy shafts of
Egypt, but the steps which lead down to the door, and the door
itself, are modern. By the help of our guttering candles we were
able to decipher the solitary spectator who sits, like Nefertari
in her rock-hewn tomb of Thebes, with foot on stool and umbrella
over head, gazing into eternity. But we did not stay there long. It
was too cold. The damp had eaten almost everything away. Down in
the chill dark of the tomb we knew that the wrestlers, their naked
red bodies fading into the tufa, wrestled continuously, and the
chariots drove silently into the shadows before the solemn audience
of one.
But up above we could hear the bells of Chiusi on the warm,
scented air. And there were the wind, the limpid sunlight, the
song of birds, the wooded hills and valleys, the yellow earth
with its flowers and its trails of bramble covered with shining
fruits--everything of warmth and sweetness and pleasure to the
eye and ear. In the plain below we could see the little blue lake
of Chiusi, called lovingly of the people, the 'chiaro di Chiusi,'
which in the olden days was yearly espoused with a ring by the
chief magistrate of the town, in the same manner as the Doge of
Venice wedded the Adriatic. And beside it the towers of Béccati
Questo and Béccati Quest'altro, which were put up in the fifteenth
century by the rival provinces of Siena and Perugia, still shout
defiance to each other across the valley.
After all, it was for her old-world charm that we loved Chiusi--the
simple pastoral beauty of her _contado_, her forges glowing at
night in deep caverns below her walls, her Bishop's palace with
its ancient _cippi_, and its flowering agaves and cypresses. And
most of all we loved the lichen-covered boy in the fountain of the
Piazza del Duomo. For he was like the spirit of eternal youth,
keeping the soul of things alive in this city of tombs. There
were gold fish in the green shallows round his feet, the water
spouted from his forehead, his arms were outstretched and his face
upturned, as though he sang in rapture to the sun.
For it was in such little things as these that we found the
hidden secret of Italy's charm. These little towns like Chiusi,
perched each one on its hill, are sometimes commonplace enough
in themselves, even though their foundations are inscribed by
the years that have passed; but they look across valleys of
unimaginable beauty to the mountains; they have genii singing in
their springs; and the lives of their people have the classic
simplicity of an older, unspoilt world.
HANNIBAL'S THRASYMENE
'Yea! sometimes on the instant all seems plain,
The simple sun could tell us, or the rain,
The world caught dreaming with a look of heaven
Seems on a sudden tip-toe to explain.'
'THE RUBAIYAT,' Le Gallienne's translation.
We came to Passignano from Chiusi, because we could not resist the
beauty of Thrasymene. Most travellers in Italy only view it with
passing admiration as they fly by in the express which takes them
from Florence to Rome and Naples. It is to them merely another
lovely incident in their journey through a landscape of surpassing
beauty. Perchance they refer to their Baedekers, and find that it
was the scene of Hannibal's great victory over Flaminius, and in a
few minutes more their train is in Chiusi Junction, and the lake
is lost behind the Umbrian hills. Others, who visit Perugia and
Assisi, see more of its beauties, for when they leave the main line
at Chiusi they have to make a semi-circular tour of the lake; and
even from Terontola, the junction for Florence and Perugia, the
line runs for miles along the lake-side, and crosses the actual
site of Hannibal's battle-field.
Twice already, in the last month, we had traversed it, on the
journey from Cortona to Perugia, and again on our way to Siena.
Coming back we could no more resist it. Our intention had been to
go straight from Chiusi to Assisi, but at Terontola the little
philosopher put in a special plea for Thrasymene. He has a passion
for lakes and rivers; no landscape is complete for him without them.
'Let us go down to Thrasymene,' he said. 'Not for the sake of
Hannibal, but for the pleasure of its beauty. For I am sick of the
petty wars of hill-towns, and am wearied for the moment of Etruscan
tombs and Gothic palaces and churches. Let us go forth into the
field; let us lodge in the villages. Let us get up early to the
vineyards; let us see if the vine flourish, whether the tender
grape appear and the pomegranates bud forth!'
So we came to Thrasymene and Passignano, which is a mere handful
of brown houses pushed into the water at the foot of a rocky hill.
Passignano has a flavour of its own. To begin with, its inn is
different from any other albergo in Italy. It has an old-fashioned
kitchen with a cowl chimney and rows of shining brass saucepans,
and it opens on to the village street, where the people sit to
gossip while the evening meal is cooking. Its low cottage windows
look over the wide expanse of water to towered Castiglione, and
the wooded islands of Thrasymene; but it is built so close into
the hillside at the back that you can stretch your hand from an
upper room and pluck the creepers which pour in a green cascade
over the rocks. It is extremely primitive: the menu consists of
soup, macaroni, eggs, fresh fish from the lake, and very lean
chickens, supplemented by rough country bread, plenty of honey and
fresh fruit, and cheese if the proprietor has lately been to market
in Perugia. Meat there is none, at any rate in August, nor tea.
But the rooms are spotlessly clean, with snowy beds, dainty white
valances, curtains edged with hand-made lace, and the finest of
linen towels; the daughter of the buxom landlady is as charming as
she is elegant, and the serving girl is a beautiful Murillo.
Passignano is full of beautiful women; they form two-thirds of the
population of this little lake-side town. There are hardly any men
in it except the old fishermen, and a few young lads, apprentices
to bootmakers and saddlers. All the rest have drifted away to the
towns, or have farms out in the _paese_. And the women, from the
pretty French wife of Signor Arturo of the Albergo Balducci, with
her freshly laundered cotton dresses, to the little bareheaded
girls whose mothers call to them at night, bidding them bathe their
dusty feet in the lake before they come to bed, are all lovely.
They are noted for it.
The only other visitor in Passignano that August was a young
Apollo--so beautifully dressed in pale grey riding-clothes that he
looked as if he must have slipped out of a George Edwards musical
comedy. He was, according to the landlady, a student from the
University of Perugia, spending his vacation in Passignano because
the girls were so beautiful! Oh, young Italy! How natural and
unaffected you are! I loved to see him strolling down the village
street with a lordly air of indifference, running the gauntlet
of eyes as the pretty girls, linked in groups like bouquets of
flowers, passed him demurely; while their mothers, sitting on the
doorsteps of their cottages, scanned the handsome boy with kindly
humour.
Everybody lives out of doors in Passignano. The women are always
sitting outside their houses; and their children, half-naked in the
summer heat, with halos of sunburned curls, pillow their heads on
the rough cobbles of the hilly streets, and sleep after their play,
as baby angels might sleep in paradise, tired out with singing.
The stables and bakeries and workshops are open to the road, and
above them the shabby brown houses clamber up the hillside to the
Fortezza, which rears its shaggy head above the highest of their
pagoda-like chimneys.
'If we stay here we shall prolong our lives for always,' cried the
philosopher. 'Already I have forgotten the world!'
And he fell to imitating the song of the cicalas.
Indeed for us the world was standing still. We were caught in a
mesh of beauty as in a summer daydream. The waves of Time seemed
to retreat, leaving us like swimmers resting on a golden shore
after struggle and turmoil. It might have been Lethe whose waters
sang to the stones at our feet: for we forgot the world: its voice
became a dream; we found ourselves content to watch the changing
lights as the hours drifted away.
[Illustration: CHIMNEYS AT PASSIGNANO.]
We ate our meals in the unfinished dining-room which Signor
Balducci is building out over the lake--a mere shell of white
plaster with empty doors and windows through which the little
breezes strayed. There were flowers on the cloth beside our plates,
and a great bowl of oleanders, geraniums and white asters on the
table. We breakfasted off golden bread and honey, and the pretty
waiting girl brought tuberoses with our coffee. Outside, the lake
was a tender morning blue; its surface rippled to the cool breath
of the mountains, and sparkled in the sunlight. The bent and
twisted sticks of the fishermen cast fantastic reflections in the
water, and were beautified, as all humble and work-a-day things are
beautified in Italy, by the magic of the sun. Further out two men
in a rickety sampan were hauling in their nets.
It was a scene of infinite romance. The towers of Castiglione shone
like ivory out of the violet mists, and many of the hills which
rose above them bore turreted towns upon their crests. Behind them
we knew lay Siena, Montepulciano and Chiusi, and to the right
Cortona and Arezzo, and there Perugia, and Assisi there. History
swept down upon us too. Thrasymene and its vine-clad slopes are
full of memories of Hannibal, the stormy petrel who beat his wings
round Rome in vain. Nor does it lack for gentler associations,
for Saint Francis of Assisi, who had been preaching in one of the
lake-side towns, was inspired, according to the author of the
_Fioretti_, to spend Lent on an island in its midst. Which he
did, in solitary prayer and meditation, eating only the half of
one small loaf of bread, 'from reverence for the fast of Christ
the blessed one, Who fasted forty days and forty nights without
partaking any earthly food; but in this manner, with that half a
loaf, chased far the venom of vain glory from him.'
Towards the hour of sunset, when the shadowed hills grew blue and
misty, and the lake was a mirror of pale gold, we walked along the
reedy shore of Thrasymene. The wind rustled in the silken leaves
of the maize, and made a music like far-off singing in the emerald
reeds. We went down to the edge of the water where the gardens
sloped to the lake, and we found flowers there and herbs--mint and
thyme and rosemary that scented the air, and purple vetches and
clover, and the beautiful cow-parsley whose blossoms float like
butterflies over every hedge and waste ground. And there we waited
while the sky glowed from gold to rose, and Thrasymene seemed
aflame with Hannibal's desire for Rome.
We dined in our alfresco dining-room, and afterwards we walked
again by the still waters, where the frogs were shrilling a chorus
to the night-crickets, whose song in the grass is like the sound of
a curb-chain being rubbed in the hand. Except for these the world
was still. There were no lights along that mysterious country road
except the stars, and rarely have I seen them brighter, even in
Africa.
'In a town we never see such stars as these,' said the philosopher.
We never do. The Milky Way stretched like a girdle across the
heavens, and was reflected in the lake like a pale moon. We stayed
to watch it, and to listen to the voices of the night.
A train glared out of the tunnel which pierces the hill below
Passignano, and tore along in the darkness beside the road,
lightening our starlit gloom for a moment before its meteoric tail
of windows was swallowed up by the night. Then we saw a glow-worm
in a hole below the wall, and because in Italy you are pleased
with little things, we stopped to look at it, and watch it turn
round like a light-house lamp, now glowing clear as a star, now an
indistinguishable mass of phosphorescence. And all the time the sky
was growing lighter, and the mountains darker in the east.
It was the moon.
Slowly it rose. The Milky Way grew pale in the lake, and one great
star which had twinkled like a will-o'-the-wisp among the reeds
went out. The light grew and gathered behind the hills, and at last
the miracle of moonrise came to us as we waited in the scented
darkness of Thrasymene's shore, as it came to the young world on
the eve of its creation. First the rim, and then the pulsing globe
leaping from the shadows. For a moment it hung upon the hillside
while two fantastic stone-pines, a fraction of an inch in height,
swayed within its circle like neophytes bowing before Diana; then
it rose into the heavens,--a stately ship steering among the
stars.
[Illustration: LAKE THRASYMENE.]
A miracle no less because our darkness has been lightened thus
since the beginning of the world. There are so many miracles
every day, if we but knew them,--the scent of flowers, the webs
of spiders, the subtle fragrance of the earth, a wayside weed,
and, most beautiful of all, the sunrise and the moon. For sunsets,
though they may fill a grey world with rose and gold, and though
they are always so magnificent that words are pallid pictures and
artists' colours impotent, never have the beauty of the dawn. A
sunset may turn our joy to melancholy, so tender is it, so pregnant
with regret for the vanished day, so full of splendours. But we are
always happy in the dawn. What of the night? It is over and gone. A
new world lies at our feet; a new beauty fills our eyes; the breath
of the morning in our nostrils is as a flower after rain. For in
the dawn we step from the valley of the Shadow of Death on to the
rosy mountains of Hope.
And because you are in Italy you have time to notice these miracles
of every day, time to be happy, time to watch things grow. The
hours do not matter, for to-morrow is as yesterday, and to-day is
but a little minute in a garden. If it should rain the butterflies
will only seek their shelter, the cicalas will be still, and the
pores of the thirsty earth will open. To-morrow the sun will shine
again. Or the day after that.
Nor is Passignano devoid of interest for the sightseer whose
pleasure is not to be found in green pastures or beside still
waters. Magione, with its three mediaeval castles and its memory of
the Baglioni, is within a drive. Picturesque Castiglione del Lago
is well worth a visit. There is the island of St. Francis, with
its ruined convent, now the villeggiatura of an Italian nobleman,
and its exquisite views of Montepulciano. And lastly, there is
the battle-field where Hannibal, the 'furious youth' of Publius
Cornelius Scipio, defeated Flaminius, the maker of roads.
We did not go to Magione, but we let two old men of Passignano row
us to St. Francis' Island in their weather-beaten fishing-boats. In
an acacia grove down by the water's edge they showed us the block
of stone whose surface was worn into two hollows by the knees of
St. Francis. So they would have us believe. '_Ma, è vero!_' they
exclaimed, as though they feared that we should doubt them; and we
could but smile as they told us an old legend of the saint sailing
miraculously across Thrasymene on his mantle, bearing a lighted
candle in his hand, because the boatmen dared not put out in the
tramontana which was lashing the waters to fury.
We almost missed seeing the battle-field of Hannibal, because we
had left it to our last afternoon, and discovered too late that the
only carriage in Passignano had been already commandeered.
It was Fortunato Rosso who came to our rescue, dear old man, with
his dilapidated vehicle, which was no larger than a riksha, and so
broken down that we expected the back to fall away every minute.
The step did break when we tried to use it, and the axle bar was
tied up with string. Fortunato Rosso is one of the characters of
Passignano. He is a veteran of the Venti Settembre. As he has lost
his teeth his conversation is difficult to follow, though he is an
intelligent guide, having a soldier's eye for the possibilities of
the land: his clothes are almost as dilapidated as his carriage,
but he has a string of medal ribbons sewn across his scrupulously
clean white waistcoat. The medals themselves are kept in a dirty
scrap of paper in his pocket. He persisted in showing them to
us before we started, and the villagers stood round and laughed
indulgently. While he was eagerly pulling them out a cheap crucifix
fell to the ground. A small boy picked it up, and pressed it to his
lips as he handed it back, and Rosso himself gave it a resounding
kiss before he put it into his pocket.
The spot where Hannibal entrapped the Roman army is as distinct
as stage scenery. There is a semi-circle of mountains coming down
to the lake at each end. Passignano clambers into the water at
the southern extremity; and on the northern spur, close to the
lake, there is an ancient road climbing between bluffs in an
olive-garden. It is below the modern strada; and Fortunato Rosso,
who takes a delight in propounding the stratagems of Hannibal,
insists that Flaminius must have entered the plain through this
pass. Half-way between the semi-circle and the lake is the hill of
Tuoro, on which Hannibal's centre was conspicuously drawn up.
For the Punic general with his genius for guerilla warfare no
better place for an ambuscade could be imagined. The Consul
Flaminius lay at Arretium some miles to the north; and Hannibal,
knowing his impetuous temper, determined to draw him out by
laying waste the countryside from Cortona to Thrasymene under the
very eyes of the Roman legions. As he anticipated, Flaminius,
exasperated beyond endurance, left Arezzo and marched down to
Thrasymene, paying no heed to the ill-omens which attended his
setting forth. As a consequence his army had no enthusiasm. The
name of Hannibal had turned even the heart of Rome to water, so
that she spent her days in making sacrifices to the gods and
consulting the oracles, but the fiery Flaminius would not allow his
legions to make propitiation. 'Nay, rather,' said he with bitter
sarcasm, 'let us lie before the walls of Arretium, for here is our
country, here our household gods. Let Hannibal, slipping through
our fingers, waste Italy through and through; and, ravaging and
burning everything, let him arrive at the walls of Rome; nor let
us move hence till the fathers shall have summoned Flaminius from
Arretium, as they did Camillus of old from Veii.'[16]
Everything befell as Hannibal desired. Flaminius entered the pass.
Seeing the Carthaginian army on the hill of Tuoro he advanced to
give battle, not noticing the Baliares and light troops posted
round the mountains, and unconscious of the fact that the Numidian
cavalry had blocked his retreat by holding the pass when the last
detachment of his army had come through. To add to his discomfiture
a mist rose up from the lake and enveloped the lowlands, while the
hills were in the sunlight above, and the enemy could watch for the
preconcerted signal of attack.
It was given, and they poured down upon the Romans from all sides,
taking them by surprise, and terrifying them by the unexpectedness
of the assault. Even so the day might not have been lost if
Flaminius had not fallen early in the engagement. After that it was
a slaughter. There was no order. Each man fought for his own life,
and when the legions attempted to escape by water, the only way
left open to them, they were either drowned, or cut to pieces by
the Carthaginian cavalry which followed them into the shallows. A
band of some six thousand did indeed force their way to the hills,
where they waited for the mist to rise, not being able to see how
the day was going. And when at last the sun pierced through to the
plain, and they could view the slaughter, they fled, taking their
standards with them, only to fall prisoners on 'the following day
when, Maharbal, who had followed them during the night with the
whole body of cavalry, pledging his honour that he would let them
depart with single garments if they would deliver up their arms,
they surrendered themselves: which promise was kept by Hannibal
with Punic fidelity, and he threw them all into chains' (Livy,
xxii. 6).
So much for the battle, but the old tragedy that was enacted on
these vine-clad plains has been forgotten. Many of the peasants
have not even heard of the name of Hannibal, nor dream that where
they gather their purple vintage to-day the earth was reddened
once by Roman blood. The broad smooth road led us between ancient
olives. White oxen yoked to clumsy wooden tumbrils rolled on and
on towards us in a mist of sunlit dust; peasants in gay kerchiefs
and skirts were working in the bearded corn which rose higher than
their heads, so that we looked at them through a veil of stalks; a
herd of black swine were nosing the yellow earth under the olives,
with a little girl-child to keep them. And when we reached the
summit of the pass above the turquoise lake we could see the road
to Arezzo in a gap of the mountains, across a sea of vines. There
was nothing to disturb the air of peace; the mediaeval towers and
castles which crowned the hills were farms; and the Sanguinetto,
whose sinister name is the one memento of that day of slaughter,
was a river of stones agape for the September rains.
'Far other scene is Thrasymene now;
Her lake a sheet of silver, and her plain
Rent by no ravage save the gentle plough;
Her aged trees rise thick as once the slain
Lay where their roots are; but a brook hath ta'en--
A little rill of scanty stream and bed--
A name of blood from that day's sanguine rain;
And Sanguinetto tells you where the dead
Made the earth wet, and turn'd the unwilling waters red.'
CHILDE HAROLD.
ASSISI
Almost the first thing we noticed in Assisi was the Biblical
simplicity of life. This little city, rose and white, upon the
lower slopes of Subasio would be like a picture out of the Bible
if it were not so Gothic. Its steep and rough-paved streets have
grasses growing in between their stones; its grim and silent
houses, built of Subasian rock, are as unresponsive as the East;
at their barred gates stand mules and asses tethered, with
clumsy wooden saddles on their backs, or sacks of grain thrown
pannier-wise. It is not only Francis and his companions that you
might see walking in this poor and humble town, but Jesus of
Nazareth.
For Assisi still wears the thread-bare garment of her poverty,
notwithstanding the great basilica on the hillside, which is rich
out of all comparison with the poor little city of St. Francis.
Long, long ago in the thirteenth century she dedicated her life to
him, giving up her worldly vanities and espousing Lady Poverty,
'that Dame to whom none openeth pleasure's gate.' So that the story
of the splendid young men of Assisi, whose magnificent equipages
drew the eyes of Rome in the seventeenth century, comes as an echo
of another place. I think she loved him from the first, when he
was still gay Cecco of the midnight revels, Lord of Love, the boon
companion of her merry youths. She listened to his songs--the soft
Provençal songs which he had learnt from the lips of Madonna Pica,
his mother--and smiled at his caprices, pleading his youth when
others shook their heads. Later, when the world made a jest of the
penitent, and his friends scorned him, and the hand of the people
was against him, she wept for him, and gazed with wistful eyes down
to the valleys where he ministered to her outcasts, and garnered in
his soul that Peace of the Lord which passeth all understanding.
She is like the bride of whom the poet of the Israelites sang,
looking and listening for the voice of her beloved.
'The voice of my beloved! Behold he cometh, leaping upon the
mountains, skipping upon the hills.
My beloved is like the roe or a young hart: behold, he standeth
behind our wall, he looketh forth at the windows, showing himself
through the lattice.
My beloved spake, and said unto me, Rise up, my love, my fair
one, and come away.
For lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone;
The flowers appear on the earth; the time of the singing of birds
is come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land;
The fig-tree putteth forth her green figs, and the vines with the
tender grape give a good smell. Arise, my love, my fair one, and
come away.'
But if there had been no Saint Francis to raise her to the
foremost rank of shrines, and sanctify her with a special crown
of holiness, Assisi would still be one of the most lovely cities
in the garden of Umbria. She has grown like a fair white flower
upon the brown slope of Monte Subasio, whose shoulder is a bulwark
between the ragged Appennines and the soft valleys of Umbria.
It is a sudden revelation, as though the landscape foreshadowed
the history of Assisi, to stand on the windy height of her Rocca,
and first to look down on the rolling Umbrian hills, clothed with
the tender green of vines and olives, which have gentle streams
meandering at their feet, and then to turn to the eastern slope of
Subasio and see the brown and barren mountains ravening away to the
horizon, like an angry sea, now towering into broken peaks, now
falling back with steep, scarred sides, red as wounds where the
ruddy limestone has been torn from them. On the one hand there is
that Peace of God which St. Francis scattered through the turbulent
thirteenth century, and which has lingered in the grass-grown
streets of his native city; and, on the other, the bloody wars and
revolutions which racked Assisi from the day that Rome first put
its yoke upon her, to the sixteenth century, when she surrendered
a second time to the Imperial city, and yielded up her keys to
Paul III. For her history is one long tale of disasters. She fell
a victim to so many conquerors--Totila, Charlemagne, Frederick
Barbarossa, and the condottieri of her enemy Perugia--Biordo
Michelotti, Braccio Fortebraccio, and Niccolò Piccinino. And
from the sack of the terrible little man, Niccolò, Assisi never
recovered: to this day there is a spacious olive-garden between the
Rocca and the town itself, on which the disheartened Assisans had
not the spirit to rebuild their ravished homes.
Assisi is full of forgotten charms. No other city in Umbria, except
proud Spoleto, can boast as many traces of her Roman greatness.
Though her amphitheatre has vanished underground, its lines are
clearly preserved by the houses which are built above it; there is
a wonderful Roman cistern below the cathedral; there are fragments
of a theatre, and a drain of excellent masonry in the Canon's
garden; and in the Piazza Vittore Emanuele is the exquisite portico
of the Temple of Minerva, which, legend says, was built by Dardanus
of Troy. Be that as it may, this temple of the Goddess of Wisdom,
which was long ago dedicated to the Mother of Christ, and on whose
steps St. Francis often stood to preach, is one of the most perfect
Roman temple-façades extant, notwithstanding the mass of mediaeval
buildings which crowd in upon it, or the foreshortening of its
pronaos, half sunk below the pavement of the piazza.
It would be difficult to find a more completely Gothic place
than Assisi. Except for the great hotels near San Francesco, the
sixteenth-century church of Santa Maria degli Angeli, and the
palaces of the Via Superba, in which the spendthrift noble
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