CHAPTER XX. THE HERNICAN MONASTERIES AND THE GROTTO OF COLLEPARDO. (The best way of reaching these places is from the station of Frosi none on the Naples line; a carriage and two horses may be engaged there for the two days' excursion, and costs about 40 francs, but an exact understanding must be made at the station with the Vetturino as to what is required. There are very tolerable though humble hotels, and with very obliging and honest people, at Alatri and Frosinone.) ON N a beautiful April morning we reached Frosinone by rail from Rome. The country was in its freshest, brightest green. At the station we found plenty of carriages waiting, and were soon leaving the town of Frosinone behind on its high isolated hill, and advancing fast into the mountains, through a rich corn-clad country. On the left, the most conspicuous feature was always Fumone, a knot of castellated buildings and cypresses on a lofty conical hill, where, in a prison, which none who look upon it can help feeling unutterably desolate, the dethroned Coelestine, who had been dragged to the papal throne from his hermitage in the Abruzzi, was forced by his successor Boniface VIII., at the age of 81, to spend the last ten months of his life. "Like the meanest son of the Church, Coelestine fell at the feet of his successor; his only prayer, a prayer urged with tears, was that he might be permitted to return to his desert hermitage. Boniface addressed him in severe language. He was committed to safe custody in the castle of Fumone, watched day and night by soldiers, like a prisoner of state. His treatment is described as more or less harsh, according as the writer is more or less favourable to Boniface. By one account his cell was so narrow that he had not room to move; where his feet stood when he celebrated mass by day, there his head reposed at night. He obtained with difficulty permission for two of his brethren to be with him; but so unwholesome was the place, that they were obliged to resign their charitable office. According to another statement, the narrowness of his cell was his own choice; he was permitted to indulge in this meritorious misery; his brethren were allowed free access to him; he suffered no insult, but was treated with the utmost humanity and respect. Death released him before long from his spontaneous overforced wretchedness. He was seized with a fever, generated perhaps by the unhealthy confinement, accustomed as he had been to the free mountain air. He died May 19, 1296, and was buried with ostentatious publicity, that the world might know that Boniface now reigned without a rival, in the church of Ferentino. Countless miracles were told of his death: a golden cross appeared to the soldiers shining above the door of his cell : his soul was seen by a faithful disciple visibly ascending to heaven. His body became the cause of a fierce quarrel, and of a pious crime. It was stolen from the grave at Ferentino, and carried to Aquila. An insurrection of the people of Ferentino was hardly quelled by the Bishop on the assurance, after the visitation of the tomb, that the heart of the saint had been fortunately left behind. The canonization of Coelestine was granted by Clement V.”—Milman's Hist. of Latin Christianity. Many other villages glittered on the distant hills, and, amongst the most conspicuous of them, Arpino, the birthplace of Cicero, which overlooks the beautiful valley of the Liris. The nearer country now became more stony and desolate, but the road was enlivened by gaily-dressed groups of pilgrims returning from a Madonna-festa at Paliano, who met us with the kindly greeting "Santa Maria e San Giuseppe vi salutano." At length on the edge of a hill, like one of the uplands of Burgundy, we came suddenly in view of the great monastery of Casamari, which is said, with the sole exception of Fossanuova, to be the finest monastic building |