Italy, the Magic Land Part 17

"_Bene scripsisti de me, Thoma; quam ergo mercedem recipies?_"

To which he replied: "_Non aliam nisi te._"

It is in the sacristy in which lie all the Princes of the House of Aragon that the sarcophagi of the Marchese and the Marchesa di Pescara are placed side by side in the high gallery near the ceiling. The altar has a fine Annunciation ascribed to Andrea da Salerno. The ceiling (whose coloring is as fresh and vivid as if painted yesterday) is by Solimena. Around the walls near the ceiling are two balconies or galleries, filled with very large wooden sarcophagi, whose scarlet velvet covers have faded into yellow browns with pink shades, many of which are tattered and are falling to pieces. The casket containing the body of Fernando Francesco d'Avalos, Marchese of Pescara (the husband of Vittoria Colonna), has on it an inscription by Ariosto; and his portrait (showing in profile a young face with blonde hair and a full reddish brown beard) and a banner, also, is suspended above the casket. That containing the body of the Marchesa, his wife (Vittoria Colonna), has an aperture at the top where the wood is worn away and the embalmed form, partly crumbled, may be seen. This seems strange to the verge of fantasy, but it is, apparently, true. The writer of this volume visited the Church of Santa Domenica Maggiore in Naples in December of 1906, and was a.s.sured by the sacristan that this sarcophagus contains the body of the Marchesa. Inquiries were then made of other prelates and of the Archbishop, who gave the same a.s.surance. Later, learned archaeologists in Rome were appealed to, regarding this a.s.sertion made in Naples, and the consensus of opinion obtained declares their a.s.sertion true. Professor Lanciani has himself publicly expressed this conviction. Still, it remains a curious question as to when this sarcophagus was placed in the sacristy, for the date goes back into long-buried centuries.

Adjoining Santa Domenica Maggiore is the monastery in which Thomas Aquinas lived and lectured (in 1272), and the cell of the great doctor of philosophy is now made into a chapel. His lectures called together men of the highest rank and learning and were attended by the king and the members of the royal family. The entire locality of this church is replete with historic a.s.sociation. The most distinguished of the n.o.bility of Naples have, for centuries, held their chapels in this church, and in these are many notable examples of Renaissance sculpture.

The Accademia des Arcades of Rome, founded in the seventeenth century to do honor to lyric art, celebrated the placing of a bust of Vittoria Colonna in a gallery of the Capitoline, in May of 1865, by a resplendent poetic festa. According to the gentle, leisurely customs of the land, where it is always afternoon and time has no value, thirty-two poets read their songs, written in Latin or in Italian, for this occasion, which were published in a sumptuous volume to be preserved in the archives of the Arcadians, who take themselves more seriously than the world outside quite realizes. This bust of Vittoria Colonna was the gift of the Duca and d.u.c.h.essa of Torlonia of that period. It was crowned with laurel, as that of Petrarca had been, and the government took official recognition of the event.

Goethe was made a member of this Accademia that regarded itself as reflecting the glories of the Golden Age of Greece, and which was a century old at the time of his visit to Italy. "No stranger of any consequence was readily permitted to leave Rome without being invited to join this body," he recorded, and he wrote a humorous description of the formalities of his initiation.

Mrs. Horatio Greenough was honored by being made a member of this Accademia in recognition of her musical accomplishments, and the record of it is placed on the memorial marble over her grave in the Protestant cemetery in Rome. Every year, on Ta.s.so's birthday (April 25), the Accademia holds a festa in a little amphitheatre near "Ta.s.so's oak," on the Janiculum, at which his bust is crowned with laurel. The gardens in which the seventeenth-century Arcadians disported themselves are now known among the Romans as _il Bosco Parrasio degli Arcadi_.

Throughout Italy the fame of Vittoria Colonna only deepens with every succeeding century. Her n.o.bility of character, her lofty spirituality of life, fitly crowned and perfected her intellectual force and brilliant gifts. Although from the customs of the time the Marchesa lived much in convents, she never, in any sense, save that of her fervent piety, lived the conventual life. Her n.o.ble gifts linked her always to the larger activities, and her gifts and rank invested her with certain demands and responsibilities that she could not evade. She was one of the messengers of life, and her place as a brilliant and distinguished figure in the contemporary world was one that the line of destiny, which pervades all circ.u.mstances and which, in her case, was so marked, absolutely constrained her to fill. She had that supreme gift of the lofty nature, the power of personal influence. Her exquisite courtesy and graciousness of manner, her simple dignity and unaffected sincerity, her delicacy of divination and her power of tender sympathy and liberal comprehension all combined to make her the ideal companion, counsellor, and friend, as well as the celebrity of letters and lyric art.

No poet has more exquisitely touched the friendship between Vittoria Colonna and Michael Angelo than has Margaret J. Preston, in a poem supposed to be addressed to the sculptor by Vittoria, in which occur the lines:--

"We twain--one lingering on the violet verge, And one with eyes raised to the twilight peaks-- Shall meet in the morn again.

... Supremest truth I gave; Quick comprehension of thine unsaid thought, Reverence, whose crystal sheen was never blurred By faintest film of over-breathing doubt; ... helpfulness Such as thou hadst not known of womanly hands; And sympathies so urgent, they made bold To press their way where never mortal yet Entrance had gained,--even to thy soul."

This is the _Page de Conti_ that one reads in the air as he sails past Ischia on the violet sea; and the _chant d'amour_ of the sirens catches the echo of lines far down the centuries:--

"I understood not, when the angel stooped, Whispering, 'Live on! for yet one joyless soul, Void of true faith in human happiness, Waits to be won by thee, from unbelief.'

"Now, all is clear. For _thy_ sake I am glad I waited. Not that some far age may say,-- '_G.o.d's benison on her, since she was the friend Of Michael Angelo!_'"

_So sometimes comes to soul and sense The feeling which is evidence That very near about us lies The realm of spiritual mysteries.

The sphere of the supernal powers Impinges on this world of ours.

The low and dark horizon lifts, To light the scenic terror shifts; The breath of a diviner air Blows down the answer of a prayer:-- That all our sorrow, pain, and doubt A great compa.s.sion clasps about, And law and goodness, love and force, Are wedded fast beyond divorce.

Then duty leaves to love its task, The beggar Self forgets to ask; With smile of trust and folded hands, The pa.s.sive soul in waiting stands To feel, as flowers the sun and dew, The One true Life its own renew._

WHITTIER.

"_For Thou only art holy. Thou only art the Lord. Thou only, O Christ, with the Holy Ghost, art most high in the Glory of G.o.d the Father._"

_Sometimes in heaven-sent dreams I do behold A city with its turrets high in air, Its gates that gleam with jewels strange and rare, And streets that glow with burning of red gold; And happy souls, through blessedness grown bold, Thrill with their praises all the radiant air, And G.o.d himself is light, and shineth there On glories tongue of man hath never told._

_And in my dreams I thither march, nor stay To heed earth's voices, howsoe'er they call, Or proffers of the joys of this brief day, On which so soon the sunset shadows fall; I see the Gleaming Gates, and toward them press-- What though my path lead through the Wilderness?_

LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON.

V

VOICES OF ST. FRANCIS OF a.s.sISI

Oh, Italy! thy strength, thy power, thy crown Lie in the life that in a.s.sisi stirs The heart, with impulse of self-sacrifice; Where still St. Francis gathers weary souls In his great love, which reaches out to all.

... His blessing falls In clear sweet tones: "_Benedicat tibi Convertat vultum suum ad te et Det Pacem!_" Hushed and holy silence breathes About the wanderer who lifts his heart To catch the echo of that voice of love.

CELIA RICHMOND.

The mystic pilgrimage to a.s.sisi, the "Seraphic City," prefigures itself almost as a journey to the Mount of Vision. "Any line of truth that leads us above materialism," says Dr. Wilberforce, Venerable Archdeacon of Westminster Abbey, "that forces us to think, that encourages the imagination to pierce the world's cobwebs, that forces us to remember that we are enwrapped by the supernatural, is helpful and stimulating. A human life lived only in the seen and felt, with no sense of the invisible, is a fatally impoverished life, a poor, blind, wingless life, but to believe that ever around us is a whole world full of spiritual beings; that this life, with its burdens, is but the shadow which precedes the reality; that here we are but G.o.d's children at school, is an invigorating conviction, full of hope, productive of patience and fruitful in self-control."

To an age imprisoned in the fear of G.o.d the "sweet saint," Francis, brought the message of the love of G.o.d. To an age crushed under the abuses of religion as an organization of feudal bishops and ecclesiastics, St. Francis brought the message of hope and of joy. He revealed to his age the absolute reality of the spiritual world that surrounds us. He was born into a time when there existed on the one hand, poverty and misery; on the other, selfish and debasing self-indulgence of wealth and its corresponding oppression of the poor.

The Church itself was a power for conquest and greed. Its kingdom was of this world. St. Bernard and others had n.o.bly aimed to effect a reform and had ill.u.s.trated by their own lives the beautiful example of simplicity and unselfishness, but their work failed in effectiveness and permanent impress.

"Oh, beauty of holiness!

Of self-forgetfulness, of lowliness."

Not only in beauty, but in power does it stand. St. Francis brought to the sad and problematic conditions of his time that resistless energy of infinite patience, of a self-control based on insight into the divine relationships of life, and of unfailing fidelity to his high purpose.

Through good report or through evil report he kept the faith, and pressed onward to the high calling of G.o.d. The twelfth and the thirteenth centuries had been a period of religious unrest and chaos. As Archdeacon Wilberforce has so impressively said in the words quoted from him, a life lived with no sense of the invisible is blind and impoverished. The movement initiated by St. Francis proclaimed anew the divine grace and love.

"Tokens are dead if the things live not. The light everlasting Unto the blind is not, but is born of the eye that has vision."

Something not unlike this trend of thought must drift through the mind of every one who journeys through the lovely Umbrian country to a.s.sisi, one of those picturesquely beautiful hill towns of Italy whose romantic situation impresses the visitor. Seen from a little distance, one could hardly imagine how it could be reached unless he were the fortunate possessor of an airship. The entire region is most picturesque in character. Journeying from Rome to a.s.sisi there is a constant ascent from the Campagna to the Apennines, and the road pa.s.ses through wild defile and valley with amethyst peaks shining fair against the sky, with precipitous rocks, and the dense growth of oak and pine trees. In some places the valley is so narrow that the hills, on either side, rise almost within touch of the hand from the car window. The hill towns are frequent, and the apex of these towns is invariably crowned with a castle, a cathedral, or a ruin, and around it, circling in terraces, is built the town. The charm largely vanishes when fairly in these circling roads, for on either side are high walls, so that one's view is completely bounded by them; but from the summit and from the upper floors of the houses the most beautiful views are obtained. The Umbrian region, in which are located Perugia, a.s.sisi, Spello, Foligno, Spoleto, Terni, Narni, and others, is simply the gem region of all Italy. The Umbrians are the most ancient of the Italian people, and a.s.sisi claims to have been founded eight hundred and sixty-five years before the founding of Rome. It was the scene of constant warfare, and the streets are all underlaid by subterranean pa.s.sages, in which the inhabitants could disappear from their enemies.

To this ancient Umbrian city, from which went out the life and light that carried wonderful currents of vitality and illumination to all Italy and into almost all parts of the world, one comes as to a special and a sacred pilgrimage. For this mediaeval town, perched on the top of a rocky hill, is the birthplace of St. Francis, the founder of the Franciscan order; in it were the scenes of his early life, and here, in 1226, at the age of forty-four years, he died. The convent-church of San Francesco, built to his memory in 1230; the lower church, completed at that date, while the upper was finished in 1253; the magnificent Cathedral of Santa Maria Degli Angeli, completed in 1640; the Church of Santa Chiara and the Duomo, are the points of interest.

[Ill.u.s.tration: SAN FRANCESCAN CONVENT-CHURCH, a.s.sISI _Page 346_]

The purple Apennines, on one spur of which a.s.sisi is built, are a picturesque feature of lovely Umbria. The old houses of a.s.sisi rise white in the sunshine. The ancient walls still surround the city, and its towers stand as they stood before the eyes of St. Francis, almost seven centuries ago. The peak of Mt. Subasio, a neighboring peak of the Apennines, looms above the colossal rock that crowns the hill around whose top a.s.sisi cl.u.s.ters in winding terraces. The ma.s.sive pile of the Francescan church and monastery--the two churches, one above the other--forms an architectural group whose imposing aspect arrests the eye of every traveller for miles around. The pointed arches of the cloisters and the square campanile contrast rather than blend in an effective and harmonious manner and resemble military fortifications rather than an edifice of the church. The old walls still surround a.s.sisi, and the houses all rise white under the blue Italian sky. The narrow streets, hardly wide enough for one carriage to pa.s.s another, are so intricate in their curves as they climb the steep hill, that it requires a faith hardly less than the traditional degree said to move mountains to lead the visitor to suppose that he will ever emerge from one that he has entered. Many of the houses along these curious thoroughfares have no windows, the only light and air coming through the open door. The bells from the campanile of the Francescan convent-church, from the Duomo and from the Church of Santa Chiara ring every quarter of an hour; and this constant clash of bells is almost the only sound that breaks the silence of the mediaeval town, which lends itself to visions and to dreams. On the very air is stamped the impress of St. Francis. His personality, his teachings, his faith pervaded the atmosphere in a way that no one could believe until he had himself entered into the experience. In narration it cannot but seem like a pleasing and half-poetic fancy; but the lingerer in this shrine of religion and art will realize that the actual personality of the man who trod these streets nearly seven hundred years ago is strangely before him. Canon Knox Little, in a series of lectures on St. Francis of a.s.sisi delivered in the Ladye Chapel of Worcester Cathedral a few years since, says of the panorama of the town:--

"The scene which from a.s.sisi presented itself daily to his youthful eyes must have had, did have, as we know, a lasting effect upon his mind. From thence the eye surveys a n.o.ble coronet of stately mountains. You look from Radicofani, above Trena, to Monte Catria, famous as the scene of some of Dante's saddest times of solitude, and ever is the eye satisfied with the grace and grandeur of the curves of mountain outline, and the changing hues of an incomparable sky. There are rivers and cities and lakes,--from Thrasymene, just hidden by a line of crests, to the Paglia and Tiber beneath, where Orvieto crowns its severe and lonely rock.

With the changing lights and shadows always beautiful in the vivid spring or burning summer, tender-tinted autumn or clear and sparkling winter, with the bright and pure and buoyant atmosphere always giving life and vigor, what spot on earth more fitted as the birthplace of the saint who was, above all things, bright and tender and strong?"

a.s.sisi was an important town in the twelfth century when Francis, the son of Pietro Bernardone di Mercanti, wandered over its hills, and after severe fasting and prayer communed with G.o.d. Born in the midst of the constant warfare between a.s.sisi and Perugia, he was first a soldier. He was captured and thrown into prison, and it was a remarkable dream, or vision, that came to him before he was set free, that determined his life of consecration. Tradition invested his birth with legends, one of which is, that in his infancy an aged man came to the door and begged to be permitted to take the child in his arms, prophesying that he was destined to accomplish a great work. Pietro Bernardone was a wealthy merchant of a.s.sisi. Pica, the mother of Francis, is said to have been of n.o.ble origin and of a deeply religious nature. The early youth of Francis was given to games, festivals, and pleasures that degenerated into dissipation, but the mother continually affirmed her a.s.surance that, if it pleased G.o.d, her son would become a Christian. In this atmosphere was nurtured "the sweet-souled saint of mediaeval Italy," who is described as a figure of magical power, whose ardent temperament and mystic loveliness attracted to him all men.

There is also a legend that Pica went to pray at the Portiuncula and that, for seven years, she prayed for a son. Her prayer was answered in the coming of the infant who was to be the great saint of all the ages.

Francis, in his childhood, also knelt and prayed at this shrine. In the year 1211, when Francis was twenty-nine years of age and had entered on his ministry, this chapel was given to him, "and no sooner had they come to live here," it is said, "than the Lord multiplied their number from day to day." At one time he had gone to his devotions in great depression of spirits, "when, suddenly, an unspeakable ecstasy filled his breast. 'Be comforted, my dearest,' he said, 'and rejoice in the Lord, and let us not be sad that we are few; for it has been shown to me by G.o.d that you shall increase to a great mult.i.tude and shall go on increasing to the end of the world. I see a mult.i.tude of men coming to me from every quarter--French, Spaniards, Germans, English--each in their different tongues encouraging the others.'"

At a distance of perhaps a mile and a half from a.s.sisi, down in the valley near the railroad station, four holy pilgrims founded a shrine in the fourth century. Later, on this site, St. Benedict erected a tiny chapel, called "St. Maria della Portiuncula" (St. Mary of the Little Patron), and once, when praying in the chapel, Benedict had a vision of a vast crowd of people kneeling in ecstasy, chanting hymns of praise, while outside greater mult.i.tudes waited to kneel before the shrine, and he took this to mean that a great saint would one day be honored there.

So the legends, still conversationally told in a.s.sisi, run on and are locally current. Undoubtedly the dwellers in this curious old town, whose streets have hardly one level spot but climb up and down the steep hillside, realize that their saint is their t.i.tle to fame and their revenue as well; yet through all the tales there breathes a certain sincerity and simplicity of worship. The little dark primitive shops teem with relics, which make, it is true, a great draft on imagination, and by what miracle modern photography has contrived to present the saint of a.s.sisi in various impressive att.i.tudes and groups it would be as well not to inquire too closely. It is a part of the philosophy of travel to take the goods the G.o.ds provide, and the blending of amused tolerance and unsuspected depths of reverential devotion by which the visitor will find himself moved, while in a.s.sisi, can hardly be described. For, surely, here

"... there trod The whitest of the saints of G.o.d,"

and Catholic or Protestant, one equally enters into the beauty of his memory. The double and triple arches of the convent church enclose cloistered walls continually filled with visitors. No shrine in Italy holds such mysterious power. Simplicity and joy were the two keynotes of the life taught by St. Francis. "Poverty," he a.s.serted, "is the happy state of life in which men are set free from the trammels of conventionalism, and can breathe the pure air of G.o.d's love. The richest inward life is enjoyed when life is poorest outwardly. Be poor," he continued, "try a new principle; be careless of having and getting; try _being_, for a change. Our life in the world ought to be such that any one on meeting us should be constrained to praise the heavenly Father.