網頁圖片
PDF
ePub 版

hanging down behind, and sandals. The men in pointed hats, with red jackets, and a girdle round the waist, twisted of bright ribbon.

'Pilgrims from Pontecorvo! The women in dark red dresses beautifully ornamented; with a red head-dress; beautiful and majestic.

'Pilgrims from Filettino: black velvet bodices, a most simple dress, quiet and graceful.

'Ciociari! The men and women of the sandal land! Perhaps from some place near Ferentino, or farther away, from the Neapolitan boundaries of the Liris and the Melfa. It is a land of beautiful and wild mountains, which extends from Ferentino far into the Neapolitan territory. There the people wear the Ciocie, a very simple covering for the foot, from which the country is called Ciociaria. I found this covering for the foot in use near Anagni. One more primitive certainly cannot be found, perhaps one might also say there is none more comfortable. It certainly made me envy the Ciociari. The shoe is simply formed of a square piece of ass or horse skin. Holes are made in this skin, through which a string is passed, and this parchment is so tied round the foot that it forms itself to the shape of the foot. The leg is swathed up to the knee with coarse grey linen, bound round many times with string or thread. Thus the Ciociaro moves freely and comfortably across the fields, and over the rocks, whenever he goes to dig the ground (" zappar la terra"), or drives his sheep or goats as a shepherd with bagpipes, dressed in a short grey cloak or clothed in skins. These sandals are classical, and Diogenes would have worn them if he had not gone barefoot; and Chrysippus or Epictetus might have praised them in a treatise on the few needs of wise men. If these shoes are well arranged, and the linen leggings new, they look well, but very bad and beggarly when they are old and ragged; and as this is generally the case, it has given the sandal folk a character of ragged poverty, and their name is despised and even used as a word of reproach. One day, when a man of San Vito was showing me the beautiful panorama of the Campagna, he said to me, "See, sir, there lies the Ciociaria!" and he smiled with a look of lofty contempt.

The Ciociari wear bright red vests, and pointed black felt hats, which seldom lack a gay feather, a bow, or a flower. I found among them, especially in the Campagna of Rome, a remarkable number of men with fair hair and blue eyes; they wear their hair cut short behind, like the Prussian Landwehr, but let it hang down in long locks from the temples. Hang a ragged grey waterproof cloak or a black or white sheepskin on the Ciociaro, and we have our sandal man complete; but we will not give him a gun in his hand, or he will fall upon us as a robber in the pass of Ceprano, crying out, "Faccia in terra!" and will empty our pockets with astonishing agility. The women also wear the sandals, a short gay skirt, a bright striped apron, a white or a red woollen kerchief on the head, and lastly the busto, the principal article of female dress throughout the whole of Latium. This is the bodice of stiffly-quilted linen, hard as a saddle, broad and high, with epaulets resting on the shoulders. It forms a support to the breast: it seems like a bulwark to shield virtue; like a firm breastplate it surrounds the bosom; yet it is loose, and stands out, so that it serves at the same time as a pocket.' Gregorovius.

The town of Genazzano (Albergo Raganelli) was a fortress of the Colonnesi as far back as 1053; and was the place where Stefano Colonna was murdered in 1433. The only pope given by the family to Rome was born at Genazzano. This was Oddone Colonna, elected at Constance in 1417 as Martin V. while two other popes were still alive. As sovereign he continued to be devoted to his native place, where he built churches and enlarged the palace of his family, which, now neglected, is fast falling into decay. In its decline it is very picturesque, and is supplied with water by a half-ruined aqueduct, along which there is a walk leading to the deserted convent of S. Pio. One wing of it was built by Cesare Borgia. Here and there is a Gothic window. The whole population

is occupied in the cultivation of the hill-side vineyards, fruit, and cereals.

"Take six of the most party-coloured dreams, break them in pieces, put them into a fancy kaleidoscope, and when you look through it you will see something that for strangeness, vividness, and mutability looked like the little piazza of Genazzano seen from the church-porch.'-J. R. Lowell.

Continuing our way along the valley, and crossing the Ponte Orsino, we see a hill-top in front of us occupied by a little town, surrounded with sixteenth-century fortifications. That is Paliano (1560 ft.), another important stronghold of the Colonna, and their Mausoleum. Prospero Colonna defended it against Sixtus IV. In 1556 Paul IV. took it away from the family, and gave it to his own nephew Giovanni Caraffa, for whom it was raised into a principality. 'Declaring that the Colonna, "those incorrigible rebels against God and the Church," however frequently deprived of their castles, had always managed to regain them, Paul IV. resolved that this should be amended; he would give those fortresses to vassals who would know how to hold them. Thereupon he divided the possessions of the house of Colonna among his nephews, making the elder Duke of Paliano, and the younger Marquis of Montebello. The cardinals remained silent when he announced these purposes in the assembly; they bent down their heads and fixed their eyes to the earth.'-Ranke, 'History of the Popes.'

Only fifteen years after, however, upon the victory of Marc Antonio Colonna over the Turks at Lepanto, Paliano was restored to its original owners, and has since given the title of Duca di Paliano to the head of their house. Marc Antonio is buried here in the family mausoleum.

It

A long ascent now brings us to Olevano (Olibanum), 1875 ft., of the beauty of which one has no idea till one really arrives, but it is perhaps the most picturesque place of this wonderful district. stands on a spur of M. del Corso. Passing from the rough stone houses with their crumbling staircases of rock, and from the stony ways full of pigs and children, a gate admits us to a high olive garden, full of beans and corn, where a winding path leads to a large farmhouse, with an outside loggia and staircase, at the top of the hill. This has long been the well-known inn of Olevano, the Albergo degli Artisti. [The Roma is outside the town and wellspoken of.] It used to be an artist's paradise. Its rooms are homely, and all debouch from a common sitting-room, surrounded by queer portraits and with a grand old chair, which may have been that of Cardinal Scipione Borghese, whose picture hangs over the fireplace. We found the pleasant mistress, Pepina Baldi, with her husband Nino, charming specimens of respectable well-to-do Italians of the lower orders, full of simple kindnesses and courtesies. Their handsome boys and girls have served as voluntary models to half the artists in Rome when they have been staying here; and many sketches of the family by well-known hands, hang upon the walls, where they have been left as thank-offerings with the mother. For the entertainment of guests, too, the inn has a collection of albums, which any sovereign might envy, and than which few possess any more valuable; for every artist who has stayed there

has left his portrait, by his own hand or that of a friend. It forms a collection reminiscent of every country in Europe, from the delicate pencil of Leighton to that of the least-known student of the Via Margutta. But the greatest charm of Casa Baldi is the view. Before it, travels the whole of the Hernican range, tossed about into every variety of peak, and clothed on its lower slopes with corn and fruit-trees, olives and cypresses, from which Anagni and Ferentino and Frosinone look across the valley to the Volscians, also sprinkled with rock-throned villages. In the middle distance Paliano watches the valley from a steep ridge. Deep below rises the town of Olevano, with yellow-roofed houses, weather-stained, machicolated, arch-adorned, rising from rocks overhung with ivy and flowers, and leading up to the jagged walls and tower of a ruined castle. East of the town will be found remains of the Villa Magna. Behind the town are the wild mountains of Sabina, with Civitella, Bellegra, Capranica, S. Vito, and Rocca di Cave perched upon different heights, and on the furthest of all the curious sanctuary and the Polish convent of Mentorella, while round the turn of this range we catch a glimpse of the Alban hills throned above the purple Campagna.

There are many places on the sunny heights, or in the dark recesses of the mountains; castles, monasteries, and towns, rising in the clear air-all seems to rest in a romantic quietude. The outlines of the mountains are cut with enchanting clearness and sharpness upon the pure blue of the sky; one longs to cross over, to wander amongst the shining crags and soft plains in the freshness of that high and heavenly region. Above the hollows of the Serra, rises, here and there, a snow-capped mountain, violet-tinted, out of the wilds of the Abruzzi, suggesting still another distance; in the background mountain-peaks rise further and further out of the silvery mists, shadowy, many-formed, obelisk-like, dome-like, beckouing the spirit onwards into the unknown regions of the sandal-land, or to the shore of the lovely Liris.'Gregorovius.

The name of Olevano carries us back pleasantly into mediaeval times, when, according to some, it was compelled to pay a tax called Olibanum, for purchasing incense for the churches of the province. [It is, however, more likely that it takes its name from the Gens Olybria.] In those days the Frangipani resided in its fortress. From them it passed by exchange to the Benedictine monks of Subiaco, its earlier owners, by whom it was sold in the thirteenth century to the Colonna, who built the present castle and held it through weal and woe for four hundred years, when it was purchased by the Borghese. The church of S. Pietro has been lately rebuilt.

The favourite excursion from Olevano is that to Guadagnolo, a rock 4000 feet high, with a village wedged in between high rocks, which surround and conceal it on every side, as with a natural wall. A mile and a half N.E. below the town, are the hermitage and church of La Mentorella, on the edge of the white precipice, thrusting out a spur over the valley of the Girano. Here, in the sixth century, before he went to Subiaco, S. Benedict lived in a cave at the foot of the rock. A tradition of far earlier date (during the

reign of the Emperor Trajan) represents the crag of La Mentorella as the spot where the vision of a white stag, with a crucifix between his antlers, led to the conversion of S. Eustace.

'S. Eustace was a Roman soldier, and captain of the guard to the Emperor Trajan. His name before his conversion was Placidus, and he had a beautiful wife and two sons, and lived with great magnificence, practising all the heathen virtues, particularly those of loyalty to his sovereign and charity to the poor. He was also a great lover of the chase, spending much of his time in that noble diversion.

'One day while hunting in the forest, he saw before him a white stag, of marvellous beauty, and he pursued it eagerly, and the stag fled before him, and ascended a high rock. Then Placidus, looking up, beheld, between the horns of the stag, a cross of radiant light, and on it the image of the crucified Redeemer and being astonished and dazzled by this vision, he fell on his knees, and a voice which seemed to come from the crucifix cried to him, and said, "Placidus! why dost thou pursue me? I am Christ, whom thou hast hitherto served without knowing me. Dost thou now believe?" and Placidus fell with his face to the earth, and said, "Lord, I believe!" and the voice answered, saying, "Thou shalt suffer many tribulations for my sake, and shalt be tried by many temptations; but be strong and of good courage, and I will not forsake thee." To which Placidus replied, "Lord, I am content. Do thou give me patience to suffer!" And when he looked up again the wondrous vision had departed. Then he arose and returned to his house, and the next day he and his wife and his two sons were baptized, and he took the name of Eustace.'-Jameson, Legendary Art.'

A flight of stairs, which troops of pilgrims devoutly ascend upon their knees on the festa of September 29, leads to the campanile, which is surmounted by a pair of antlers, like those of the portico of the church of S. Eustachio at Rome, commemorating his conversion. The festa of La Mentorella is one of the most romantic in Italy. The peasants come by the steep mountain-paths chaunting litanies, and each carrying a stone which they add to a great commemorative pile. They spend the night in groups, sleeping round fires lighted on these wild white crags, and those who have been present describe the scene as quite unrivalled in its weird picturesqueness-the brilliant costumes illuminated by the firelight and backed by the savage precipices which overhang the Girano and Siciliano, and the rude chaunts echoing amid the rocks under the starlit sky. The name of Mentorella is a corruption of Montorella. The Gothic chapel is of the tenth century, but a church certainly existed here as early as A.D. 594, when it was bestowed upon the abbot of Subiaco by Gregory I., whose family possession it was. In A.D. 958, the mountain with its church, dedicated to S. Maria, belonged to S. Gregorio in Rome, but the building appears to have been deserted in the fourteenth century, though it was restored by the Emperor Leopold I. in 1660, owing to the advice of Father Kircher, S.J. It contains a remarkable relief carved in wood, representing the consecration of the Church, and dating as far back as the thirteenth century. A fine silver processional cross is likewise shown. The convent now belongs to Polish monks of 'The Resurrection.'

[ocr errors]

CHAPTER XIX

SUBIACO

Subiaco is twenty-six miles from Tivoli. Station: Cineto Romano, whence the new tramway to Subiaco. There is a tolerable inn, La Pernice-pension, five lire a day-but passing travellers must arrange their prices beforehand. Inquire in Rome for convent-lodgings there

Trattoria Cavour.

THE

HE road from Olevano to Subiaco, below the Serpentara, passes through a dismal bare rocky district, but presents a fine example of Italian engineering, being one of the many excellent mountain-roads, constructed under Pius IX. For good walkers the route via Bellegra and Rocca di S. Stefano is far more interesting, occupying the best part of six hours. Still another way, but longer, lies by Rojate and Affile (2245 feet), where took place the first of S. Benedict's miracles. Here was a Roman Colonia.' A few miles before reaching Subiaco, we skirt a lake, which is probably one of the Simbriviae Aquae.

'Quique Anienis habent ripas, gelidoque rigantur
Simbrivio, rastrisque domant Aequicula rura.'

-Sil. Ital. viii. 370.

The three pools called Simbrivii Lacus are believed to have been made by Nero by damming the Anio. Here he fished for trout with a golden net, and here he built his mountain-villa to which he gave the name of Sublaqueum-under the lake-which still exists in Subiaco.

While Nero was residing here the conspiracies were forming which led to his overthrow, and here he was warned of his fate by a portent most terrible in those days of omens, when, whilst he was seated, lightning destroyed all the food on the banqueting-table, a presage which seized upon his mind with appalling effect. He had bathed in the aqueduct of the Aqua Marcia, that all his people might enjoy the privilege of drinking water that had been thus defiled. The choice of his villa amid the Aequian mountains shows that, in spite of his monstrosities, Nero must have been as great a connoisseur of the beauties of nature as of art, and for centuries the gorge through which the Anio foams far-down beneath its ruins,

« 上一頁繼續 »