Old Calabria Part 13

You might live here some little time before realizing that this place, which seems to slope gently downhill against a pleasing background of wooded mountains, is capable of being strongly fortified. It lies, like other inland Calabrian (and Etruscan) cities, on ground enclosed by stream-beds, and one of these forms a deep gully above which Rossano towers on a smooth and perpendicular precipice. The upper part of this wall of rock is grey sandstone; the lower a bed of red granitic matter.

From this coloured stone, which crops up everywhere, the town may have drawn its name of Rossano (rosso = red); not a very old settlement, therefore; although certain patriotic philologers insist upon deriving it from "rus sanum," healthy country. Its older names were Roscia, and Ruscianum; it is not marked in Peutinger. Countless jackdaws and kestrels nestle in this cliff, as well as clouds of swifts, both Alpine and common. These swifts are the ornithological phenomenon of Rossano, and I think the citizens have cause to be thankful for their existence; to them I attribute the fact that there are so few flies, mosquitoes, and other aerial plagues here. If only the amiable birds could be induced to extend their attentions to the bedrooms as well!

This shady glen at the back of the city, with its spa.r.s.e tufts of vegetation and monstrous blocks of deep red stone cloven into rifts and ravines by the wild waters, has a charm of its own. There are undeniable suggestions of h.e.l.l about the place. A pathway runs adown this vale of Hinnom, and if you follow it upwards to the junction of the streams you will reach a road that once more ascends to the town, past the old church of Saint Mark, a most interesting building. It has five little cupolas, but the interior, supported by eight columns, has been whitewashed. The structure has now rightly been declared a "national monument." It dates from the ninth or tenth century and, according to Bertaux, has the same plan and the same dimensions as the famous "Cattolica" at Stilo, which the artistic Lear, though he stayed some time at that picturesque place, does not so much as mention. They say that this chapel of Saint Mark was built by Eupra.s.sius, protos-padarius of Calabria, and that in the days of Nilus it was dedicated to Saint Anastasius. Here, at Rossano, we are once more _en plein Byzance._

Rossano was not only a political bulwark, the most formidable citadel of this Byzantine province. It was a great intellectual centre, upon which literature, theology and art converged. Among the many perverse historical notions of which we are now ridding ourselves is this-that Byzantinism in south Italy was a period of decay and torpid dreamings.

It needed, on the contrary, a resourceful activity to wipe out, as did those colonists from the east, every trace of Roman culture and language (Latin rule only revived at Rossano in the fifteenth century). There was no lethargy in their social and political ambitions, in their military achievements, which held the land against overwhelming numbers of Saracens, Lombards and other intruders. And the life of those old monks of Saint Basil, as we now know it, represented a veritable renaissance of art and letters.

Of the ten Basilean convents that grew up in the surroundings of Rossano the most celebrated was that of S. M. del Patir. Together with the others, it succeeded to a period of eremitism of solitary anchorites whose dwellings honeycombed the warm slopes that confront the Ionian....

The lives of some of these Greco-Calabrian hermits are valuable doc.u.ments. In the _Vitae Sanctorum Siculorum_ of O. Caieta.n.u.s (1057) the student will find a Latin translation of the biography of one of them, Saint Elia Junior. He died in 903. It was written by a contemporary monk, who tells us that the holy man performed many miracles, among them that of walking over a river dryshod. And the Bollandists _(Acta Sanctorum,_ 11th September) have reprinted the biography of Saint Elia Spelaeotes-the cave-dweller, as composed in Greek by a disciple. It is yet more interesting. He lived in a "honesta spelunca" which he discovered in 864 by means of a flight of bats issuing therefrom; he suffered persecutions from a woman, exactly after the fas.h.i.+on of Joseph and Potiphar's wife; he grew to be 94 years old; the Saracens vainly tried to burn his dead body, and the water in which this corpse was subsequently washed was useful for curing another holy man's toothache. Yet even these creatures were subject to gleams of common sense. "Virtues," said this one, "are better than miracles."

How are we to account for these rock-hermits and their inelegant habits?

How explain this poisoning of the sources of manly self-respect?

Thus, I think: that under the influence of their creed they reverted perforce to the more b.e.s.t.i.a.l traits of aboriginal humanity. They were thrust back in their development. They became solitaries, animalesque and shy--such as we may imagine our hairy progenitors to have been.

Hence their dirt and vermin, their horror of learning, their unkempt hair, their ferocious independence, their distrust of suns.h.i.+ne and ordered social life, their foul dieting, their dread of malign spirits, their cave-dwelling propensities. All b.e.s.t.i.a.l characteristics!

This atavistic movement, this retrogression towards primevalism, must have possessed a certain charm, for it attracted vast mult.i.tudes; it was only hemmed, at last, by a physical obstacle.

The supply of caves ran out.

Not till then were its votaries forced to congregate in those unhealthy cl.u.s.ters which afterwards grew to be monasteries. Where many of them were gathered together under one roof there imposed itself a certain rudimentary discipline and subordination; yet they preserved as much as they could of their savage traits, cave-like cells and hatred of cleanliness, terror of demons, matted beards.

Gradually the social habits of mundane fellow-creatures insinuated themselves into these hives of squalor and idleness. The inmates began to wash and to shave; they acquired property, they tilled the ground, they learnt to read and write, and finally became connaisseurs of books and pictures and wine and women. They were pleased to forget that the eunuch and the beggar are the true Christian or Buddhist. In other words, the allurements of rational life grew too strong for their convictions; they became reasonable beings in spite of their creed. This is how coen.o.bitism grew out of eremitism not only in Calabria, but in every part of the world which has been afflicted with these eccentrics. Go to Mount Athos, if you wish to see specimens of all the different stages conveniently arranged upon a small area. . . .

This convent of Patir exercised a great local influence as early as the tenth century; then, towards the end of the eleventh, it was completely rebuilt without and reorganized within. The church underwent a thorough restoration in 1672. But it was shattered, together with the rest of the edifice, by the earthquake of 1836 which, Madonna Achiropita notwithstanding, levelled to the ground one-half of the fifteen thousand houses then standing at Rossano.

These monastic establishments, as a general rule, were occupied later on by the Benedictines, who ousted the Basileans and were supplanted, in their turn, by popular orders of later days like the Theatines. Those that are conveniently situated have now been turned into post offices, munic.i.p.alities, and other public buildings--such has been the common procedure. But many of them, like this of Patir, are too decayed and remote from the life of man. Fiore, who wrote in 1691, counts up 94 dilapidated Basilean monasteries in Calabria out of a former total of about two hundred; Patir and thirteen others he mentions as having, in his day, their old rites still subsisting. Batiffol has recently gone into the subject with his usual thoroughness.

Nothing is uglier than a modern ruin, and the place would a.s.suredly not be worth the three hours' ride from Rossano were it not for the church, which has been repaired, and for the wondrous view to be obtained from its site. The journey, too, is charming, both by the ordinary track that descends from Rossano and skirts the foot of the hills through olives and pebbly stream-beds, ascending, finally, across an odorous tangle of cistus, rosemary and myrtle to the platform on which the convent stands--or by the alternative and longer route which I took on the homeward way, and which follows the old water conduit built by the monks into a forest of enormous chestnuts, oaks, hollies and Calabrian pines, emerging out of an ocean of glittering bracken.

I was pursued into the church of Patir by a bevy of country wenches who frequented this region for purposes of haymaking. There is a miraculous crucifix in this sanctuary, hidden behind a veil which, with infinite ceremony, these females withdrew for my edification. There it was, sure enough; but what, I wondered, would happen from the presence of these impure creatures in such a place? Things have changed considerably since the days of old, for such was the contamination to be expected from the mere presence of a woman within these walls that even the Mother of G.o.d, while visiting Saint Nilus--the builder, not the great saint--at work upon the foundations, often conversed with him, but never ventured to step within the area of the building itself. And later on it was a well-authenticated phenomenon recorded by Beltrano and others, that if a female entered the church, the heavens immediately became cloudy and sent down thunders and lightnings and such-like signs of celestial disapproval, which never ceased until the offending monster had left the premises.

From this ancient monastery comes, I fancy, the Achiropita image.

Montorio will tell you all about it; he learnt its history in June 1712 from the local archbishop, who had extracted his information out of the episcopal archives. Concerning another of these wonder-working idols--that of S. M. del Patirion--you may read in the ponderous tomes of Ugh.e.l.li.

Whether the celebrated Purple Codex of Rossano ever formed part of the library of Patirion has not yet been determined. This wonderful parchment--now preserved at Rossano--is mentioned for the first time by Cesare Malpica, who wrote some interesting things about the Albanian and Greek colonies in Calabria, but it was only discovered, in the right sense of that word, in March 1879 by Gebhardt and Harnack. They ill.u.s.trated it in their _Evangeliorum Codex Graecus._ Haseloff also described it in 1898 _(Codex Purpureus Rossanensis),_ and pointed out that its iconographical value consists in the fact that it is the only Greek Testament MS. containing pictures of the life of Christ before the eighth-ninth century. These pictures are indeed marvellous--more marvellous than beautiful, like so many Byzantine productions; their value is such that the parchment has now been declared a "national monument." It is sternly guarded, and if it is moved out of Rossano--as happened lately when it was exhibited at Grottaferrata--it travels in the company of armed carbineers.

Still pursued by the flock of women, I took to examining the floor of this church, which contains tesselated marble pavements depicting centaurs, unicorns, lions, stags, and other beasts. But my contemplation of these choice relics was disturbed by irrelevant remarks on the part of the worldly females, who discovered in the head of the stag some subtle peculiarity that stirred their sense of humour.

"Look!" said one of them to her neighbour. "He has horns. Just like your Pasquale."

"Pasquale indeed! And how about Antonio?"

I enquired whether they knew what kind of animals these were.

"Beasts of the ancients. Beasts that n.o.body knows. Beasts that have horns--like certain Christians. . . ."

From the terrace of green sward that fronts this ruined monastery you can see the little town of Corigliano, whose coquettish white houses lie in a fold of the hills. Corigliano--[Greek: xorion __h.e.l.laion] (land of olives): the derivation, if not correct, is at least appropriate, for it lies embowered in a forest of these trees. A gay place it was, in Bourbon times, with a ducal ruler of its own. Here, they say, the remnants of the Sybarites took refuge after the destruction of their city whose desolate plain lies at our feet, backed by the n.o.ble range of Dolcedorme. Swinburne, like a sensible man, takes the Sybarites under his protection; he defends their artificially shaded streets and those other signs of voluptuousness which, to judge by certain modern researches, seem to have been chiefly contrived for combating the demon of malaria. Earthly welfare, the cult of material health and ease--such was _their_ ideal.

In sharpest contrast to these strivings stands the aim of those old monks who scorned the body as a mere enc.u.mbrance, seeking spiritual enlightenment and things not of this earth.

And now, Sybarites and Basileans--alike in ruins!

A man of to-day, asked which of the two civilizations he would wish restored, would not hesitate long in deciding for the h.e.l.lenic one.

Readers of Lenormant will call to mind his glowing pages on the wonders that might be found buried on the site of Sybaris. His plan of excavation sounds feasible enough. But how remote it becomes, when one remembers the case of Herculaneum! Here, to our certain knowledge, many miracles of antique art and literature lie within a few feet of our reach; yet nothing is done. These hidden monuments, which are the heritage of all humanity, are withheld from our eyes by the dog-in-the-manger policy of a country which, even without foreign a.s.sistance, could easily accomplish the work, were it to employ thereon only half the sum now spent in feeding, clothing and supervising a horde of criminals, every one of whom ought to be hanged ten times over.

Meanwhile other nations are forbidden to co-operate; the fair-minded German proposals were scornfully rejected; later on, those of Sir Charles Waldstein.

"What!" says the _Giornale d' Italia_, "are we to have international excavation-committees thrust upon us? Are we to be treated like the Turks?"

That, gentle sirs, is precisely the state of the case.

The object of such committees is to do for the good of mankind what a single nation is powerless or unwilling to do. Your behaviour at Herculaneum is identical with that of the Turks at Nineveh. The system adopted should likewise be the same.

I shall never see that consummation.

But I shall not forget a certain article in an American paper--"The New York Times," I fancy--which gave me fresh food for thought, here at Patirion, in the sight of that old h.e.l.lenic colony, and with the light chatter of those women still ringing in my ears. Its writer, with whom not all of us will agree, declared that first in importance of all the antiquities buried in Italian soil come the lost poems of Sappho. The lost poems of Sappho--a singular choice! In corroboration whereof he quoted the extravagant praise of J. A. Symonds upon that amiable and ambiguous young person. And he might have added Algernon Swinburne, who calls her "the greatest poet who ever was at all."

Sappho and these two Victorians, I said to myself. . . . Why just these two? How keen is the cry of elective affinity athwart the ages! _The soul,_ says Plato, _divines that which it seeks, and traces obscurely the footsteps of its obscure desire._

The footsteps of its obscure desire----

So one stumbles, inadvertently, upon problems of the day concerning which our sages profess to know nothing. And yet I do perceive a certain Writing upon the Wall setting forth, in clearest language, that 1 + 1 = 3; a legend which it behoves them not to expunge, but to expound. For it refuses to be expunged; and we do not need a German lady to tell us how much the "synthetic" s.e.x, the hornless but not brainless s.e.x, has done for the life of the spirit while those other two were reclaiming the waste places of earth, and procreating, and fighting--as befits their horned anatomy.

XVI

REPOSING AT CASTROVILLARI

I remember asking my friend the Roman deputy of whom I have already spoken, and whom I regard as a fountain of wisdom on matters Italian, how it came about that the railway stations in his country were apt to be so far distant from the towns they serve. Rocca Bernarda, I was saying, lies 33 kilometres from its station; and even some of the largest towns in the kingdom are inconveniently and unnecessarily remote from the line.

"True," he replied. "Very true! Inconveniently . . . but perhaps not unnecessarily. . . ." He nodded his head, as he often does, when revolving some deep problem in his mind.

"Well, sir?"

"Inasmuch as everything has its reasons, be they geographical, sociological, or otherwise . . ." and he mused again. "Let me tell you what I think as regards our respective English and Italian points of view," he said at last. "And to begin with--a few generalities! We may hold that success in modern life consists in correctly appreciating the principles which underlie our experiences--in what may be called the scientific att.i.tude towards things in general. Now, do the English cultivate this att.i.tude? Not sufficiently. They are in the stage of those mediaeval scholars who contentedly alleged separate primary causes for each phenomenon, instead of seeking, by the investigation of secondary ones, for the inevitable interdependence of the whole. In other words, they do not subordinate facts; they co-ordinate them. Your politicians and all your public men are guided by impulse--by expediency, as they prefer to call it; they are empirical; they never attempt to codify their conduct; they despise it as theorizing. What happens? This old-fas.h.i.+oned hand-to-mouth system of theirs invariably breaks down here and there. And then f Then they trust to some divine interposition, some accident, to put things to rights again. The success of the English is largely built up on such accidents--on the mistakes of other people. Provi dence has favoured them so far, on the whole; but one day it may leave them in the lurch, as it did the anti-scientific Russians in their war with the j.a.panese. One day other people will forget to make these pleasant mistakes."

He paused, and I forbore to interrupt his eloquence.

"To come now to the practical application--to this particular instance.

Tell me, does your English system testify to any constructive forethought? In London, I am a.s.sured, the railway companies have built stations at enormous expense in the very heart of the town. What will be the consequence of this hand-to-mouth policy? This, that in fifty years such structures will have become obsolete--stranded in slums at the back of new quarters yet undreamed of. New depots will have to be built.

Whereas in Italy the now distant city will in fifty years have grown to reach its station and, in another half-century, will have encircled it.

Thanks to our sagacity, the station will then be in its proper place, in the centre of the town. Our progeny will be grateful; and that again, you will admit, is a worthy aim for our politicians. Besides, what would happen to our coachmen if n.o.body needed their services on arriving at his destination? The poor men must not be allowed to starve! Cold head and warm heart, you know; humanitarian considerations cannot be thrust aside by a community that prides itself on being truly civilized. I trust I have made myself intelligible?"

"You always do. But why should I incommode myself to please your progeny, or even my own? And I don't like the kind of warm heart that subordinates my concerns to those of a cab-driver. You don't altogether convince me, dear sir."