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CASTEI. DI SAXGRO
IN THE ABRUZZI
BY ANNE MACDONELL : WITH
TWELVE ILLUSTRATIONS AFTER
WATER-COLOUR DRAWINGS BY
AMY ATKINSON
NEW YORK
F. A. STOKES COMPANY
PRINTED BY
WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED,
LONDON AND BECCLES.
:-'';:t..
All rights reserved
CONTENTS
PART I
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTORY
PAGE
wild land — The Abruzzi as playground and as romantic back-
ground— Earlier travellers' books — Struggle 'twixtold and new —
The reception of the wandering stranger— A note on topography
— The shepherds of the Abruzzi — The peasants — The Americani
— Women in the Abruzzi — The future
CHAPTER H
THE ABRUZZI IN THE OLD TIMES AND THE NEW
Ancestry of the Abruzzesi — The Samnite Wars — The brilliant Marsi
— Latinizing of the Italians— The Marsic War— Corfinium as
Italica — The peril of Rome — The Italians Roman citizens —
The Abruzzesi in face of the invaders— Changing djmasties —
The isolation of the mountains — In the Risorgimento — The
Carbonari— General Pepe in the Abruzzi — Growing hopelessness
of the Liberals — Bomba's policy : " My people have no need
to think" ... ... ... ••• ••• ••• 26
CHAPTER III
BRIGANDAGE IN THE ABRUZZI
Disappearance of the brigands— Will they ever come back ?— Nature
and causes of brigandage in the Abruzzi— Marco Sciarra — Tasso
and the brigand — Eighteenth-century brigands — Famous bandits
during the French occupation— Paul-Louis Courier's^ journey —
General Manhes— Bourbon encouragement of banditti— Brigand
and guide— Brigands' arrogance— Brigands' songs — 11 Pkhiscito
—Foreigners in the bands— A brigand dandy— A carabiniere_ of
genius— The Venti Seitembre—T\\Q Legge /"/Va— Lingering
memories of brigands ... ... ... ••• •■• 44
2675iG
vi CONTENTS
CHAPTER IV
RELIGION IN THE ABRUZZI
PAGE
The one reality — A home of hermits and mystics — B. Thomas
OF Celano — Earthquakes — St. Peter Celestine — Rienzi in
the Abruzzi — St. John of Capestrano — St. Bernardino of
Siena — The Messiah of the Abruzzi — "Representations" —
Talami — Madonna, heiress of Ceres— Pilgrimages — The hermits
of to-day ... ... ... ... ... ... 70
CHAPTER V
FOLK-LORE AND FOLK TALES
Pagan survivals — Demons — Treasure-hunting — Witches — The
Malocchio — New Year, Easter, May Day, and St. John's Day
celebrations — The Bond of the Commare — The iede pagane —
Evocation of the dead — Folk Tales : (i) The Land where Death
is not; (2) The Creation of the World ; (3) Misery ... ... 95
CHAPTER VI
A NOTE ON ART
No museum cities — Classic remains — Christian architecture — Sculpture
— The lovely lady of Aquila — Present-day aspect of the churches
^The master-craftsmen of the Abruzzi — Modern painters :
F, P. Michetti ... ... ... ... ... ... 116
CHAPTER VII
SINGERS AND IMPROVISATORI
Folk-Song in the Abruzzi — Love-Songs — "The Shepherd's Return "
— Songs of Labour — Songs to Madonna and the Saints — A
literature of improvisation — Serafino Aquilano — The " plough-
man poet " — Gabriele Rossetti — The English Rossettis — A
forgotten romantic — Gabriele D'Annunzio 122
PART II
CHAPTER VIII
tagliacozzo
The Valerian Way — The earliest Tahis Cotium — The body of the
Blessed Thomas — The Orsini and Colonna — The Valerian Way
within tlie town — The Soccorso — The Calvario — The gests of
(jii)rgi — Jose Borjes — A mild scent of brigandage — Benvenuto
Cellini at Tagliacozzo — The Castello — Home from the hills —
The Madonna dell' Oriente — The Battle of Tagliacozzo —
Young CoNRADiN — Santa Mari.i della Vittoria ... ... 14^
CONTENTS vii
CHAPTER IX
ROUND ABOUT FUCINO
PAGE
Ancient FuciNUS — The Claudian experiment— The Claudian pageant
— Success of the modern scheme — High cultivation and vanished
beauty — Mythical origin of the ancient Marsi — Marsi enchanters
and serpent-charmers — Avezzano — The ruins of Albe (Alba
Fucentia) — Santa Maria in Valle ... ... ••• I75
CHAPTER X
CELANO
A splendid ruin — Old disasters— The story of the castle — The Churcn
as hospice — St. Francis in Celano — Our padrona — Deserted
Ovindoli — Roccadi Mezzo — A nightmare of light and of stones —
Wolves — Bettina Serena ... ... ... ... ... 199
CHAPTER XI
SULMONA
Hortus inclusus — Mellow Sulmona — A stormy past — Legend of San
Panfilo— Market-day — The Badia of Pope Celestine — The
Santone in the Abruzzi — San Spirito in Majella — Sant' Onofrio
— RiENZi as hermit — Ovid's villa — OviD as magician — Celestine
and the treasure — Corfinium to-day — Rajano — The iratiuro ... 215
CHAPTER XII
THE VALLEY OF THE SAGITTARIO
A wild glen — Scanno — The beautiful Scannese — The beginning and
the end of life at Scanno— Santa Maria del Lago— The hermits'
Rule — San Domenico di CocuUo, serpent-charmer — Tasso in the
Valley — Anversa and its memories — Italy again ! ... ... 239
CHAPTER XIII
THE ROAD TO CASTEL DI SANGRO
Pacentro and Pettorano— The Caldora and the Cantelmi — Roccaraso
— Pescocostanzo — A weary plain — A village of optimists —
Suspicion of the stranger — Castel di Sangro ... ... 265
viii CONTENTS
CHAPTER XIV
FROM SULMONA TO THE SEA
PAGE
SanClementediCasauria — Chieti — Cast ellamare the sordid — The
pageant of Pescara — Sforza — Gabriele D'Annunzio Pescarese —
Francavilla, the high town— The lovely Sultana — Francavilla-
al-Mare — St. John's morning by the sea ... ... ... 278
Bibliographical Notes ... ... ... ••• ..• 296
Index ... ... ... ... ... ... .•• 299
ILLUSTRATIONS
CASTEL Dl SANGRO ... ... ... ... frontispiece
VILLALAGO ... ... ... ... ... to face p. 5
A SHEPHERDS' VILLAGE ... ... ... „ i6
ROCCARASO ... ... ... ... ... „ 69
A SANCTUARY IN THE ABRUZZI ... ... ,» 94-
PASTORAL ... ... ... ... ... ,, 122
TAGLIACOZZO
147
CELANO ... ... ... ... ... „ 201
IN THE VALLEY OF SULMONA ... ... „ 215
SCANNO ... ... ... ... ... „ 240
PETTORANO ... ... ... ... „ 266
ROCCACINQUEMIGLIA ... ... ... ... „ 275
IX
IN THE ABRUZZI
PART I
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTORY
A wild land— The Abruzzi as playground and as romantic background-
Earlier travellers' books — Struggle 'twixt old and new — The reception
of the wandering stranger— A note on topography— The shepherds of
the Abruzzi— The peasants— The A mericani— Women in the Abruzzi
— The future.
Looking out from Rome due eastward, beyond the
nearer heights that bound the Campagna, vague shapes
rise in the bkie of the distance, cloudHke, part of the
atmosphere that encircles the City that is a world, or, if
the day so decree, clear and defined, like frontier sentinels
on the watch. These masses and peaks are the rough
edges of a wall that shuts in a land, strange, uncouth,
primitive, little distant from Rome in mileage, incal-
culably distant in everything else. To cross its rugged
frontier is to find yourself at but the first of its many
defences against the life of to-day — the life of the plain.
Penetrate but a little way, and from the higher slopes of
triple-peaked Monte Velino you will descry the wonder
and the terror of this land — the range upon range, the
barrier on barrier, shutting off one high-pitched plain
from another, making the folk of the narrow valleys and
the lofty townships strangers each to each. The ranges
and their spurs, snow-capped for more than half the year,
2 IN THE ABRUZZI [pt. i.
with peaks that never lose their crest of white, run
parallel, or meet, or intersect in a mazy net of obstacles
thrown up by Nature in her sudden cataclysms, in her
moods of defiance. Here man has never conquered, but
only clung, with patient, obstinate persistence. Yet this
land of peak and pit, of range and gully, red-brown as
from the fires of a still kindled furnace, full of unquiet
shapes and of great silence, has its surprises for us.
After all, we are in the South ; and, sudden, the wilder-
ness blossoms like a rose, and what seems like a hillside
in the Inferno may prove the wall that guards an
exquisite flowering cloister garden ; or above some
valley of uttermost desolation a cloud lifts, and we
descry the hills of heaven. Many a time do we climb
up and are hurled down ere we stand on the last height,
some crag of the Majella, and look over the narrow strip
of plain to the eastern sea.
This is the wild land of the Abruzzi, set apart from
the rest of Italy by its untamable configuration and the
rigour of its winter climate. Recently it has been opened
up, and is now criss-crossed by a network of excellent
roads, some of them only remade after many intervening
centuries ; while its few railroads are veritable world-
wonders in the way they round the mountains, and scale
the mountains, and burrow the mountains, the trains
seeming to hang on by their eyelids. From Rome to
Pescara on the Adriatic, you need no longer foot a step
of the way, nor trust to the old shaky diligences ; and if
you would see railway enterprise in a sublimely audacious
aspect, travel by the line from Terni to Aquila and
Sulmona, still better from Sulmona to Castel di Sangro,
the latter section being, I believe, one of the highest in
Europe. But in the main, the railroads follow the ancient
traditional routes of communication, and, save for a month
or two in summer, seem only to serve a few market-folks
and for the transport of soldiers. Even the newer roads
CH. I.] INTRODUCTORY 3
leave great regions untouched, their virgin solitudes still
intact. The modern Italian knows less of the Abruzzi than
did the ancient Roman. To-day only the richer Italians
travel ; and to these the far countries call. France,
Switzerland, our own Highlands, promise them more of
the new and the romantic than do the mountains over-
looking their own homes ; and in this they but follow an
instinct none obey more than ourselves. Besides, the
average Italians of the north, or even of the centre,
whether surfeited by beauty or indifferent to it, would
rather see Manchester than the sublimest scenery on the
face of the earth. Moreover, the Abruzzi is to them only
a part of that poverty-stricken and troublesome South,
which presents so many anxious problems to the poli-
tician and the economist. Pay it too much attention,
and it will come knocking at the doors of Rome for a
larger share in the growing heritage of the nation. As
if the claims were not too numerous and too harassing
already !
t>
But it is a little wonderful that the hardy Northerner
in Italy, with time on his hands, should not, after his
fashion, make of this wild land a playground more often
than he does. Hardy he should be, and of a humour to
wander off the main tracks, a good walker, something of
a climber, and of unluxurious habits. Those to whom
travelling resolves itself into collecting comparative
statistics of hotel menus and the getting up of linen
had best keep away. The sincere Alpinist despises the
Apennines. A German, who had done all the usual
Swiss peaks with Teutonic thoroughness, expressed to
us freely his annoyance that the Abruzzi had nothing
big enough to try his mettle ; but mountaineers of a less
professional spirit, to whom eight or nine thousand feet
seem not so trifling, may be content with the Gran Sasso,
the highest peak peninsular Italy can offer him, or Monte
4 IN THE ABRUZZI [pt. i.
Majella, or Monte Velino rising out of the lovely Marsian
land.
Moreover, to the hardy Northerner there is another
attraction. I should have named it first. There is no
art. Switzerland is in the same case, of course ; in fact,
in much better case — or worse, according to the point of
view. But think for a moment. Italy, an Italian sky,
an Italian climate — for summer here on the heights is
divine — and no art ! Italy without art ! Can the honest
Briton, at his honestest, conceive of anything more
delightful .? I see a load fall from his mind at the very
thought. Of course, this is not strictly true, but it is true
for the tourist. In the Abruzzi are the relics of great
art, well worth the travelling for ; but most of them have
to be sought out in unfrequented valleys, in little dead
townships, or on remote mountain-sides. The passer-by
will miss nearly all. There are no concentrated collec-
tions, no centres of this school or of that ; and cultivated
disciples of Mr. Ruskin or Mr. Berenson will here be
guideless and rudderless. The gems — which are mostly
chipped and reset in lamentable fashion — they must find
for themselves or not at all.
If the treasures of art are thus scattered and broken,
by war, and earthquakes, and neglect, and restoration at
diabolic hands, the picturesque is everywhere, and to an
extravagant degree. Were we back in the romantic
period, we might be finding half the backgrounds for our
novels and dramas and epics here in this region, where
Nature in her convulsions does shuddering things, where
man is very much alone with his own soul or his passions,
a shivering pigmy beneath towering rocks, or very proud
because he moves ever in the companionship of great
hills. And when she conspires with him, his slightest
efforts at building a shelter for his hearthstone are
crowned with beauty. Of his hill-towns, rude and
sublime, Nature more than man has been the architect.
3 ' J 3 !> 5
VILLALAGO
^>r'.; '"
CH. I.] INTRODUCTORY 5
Move under them, looking up at their airy, craggy heights,
where tower and rock are one ; and when next you read
of fairy castle or knightly keep of the old fighting days,
you will say, " Yes ; I saw the place. It was Taglia-
cozzo" — or," It was Roccacasale " — or, " It was Villalago."
English travellers used to come here in less con-
venient days — in days when it was necessary to have an
armed escort through the country. Then inns were not,
or they were impossible ; but the houses of the hospitable
native nobility were opened eagerly to the stranger.
Among those who set down their impressions of the
country were Henry Swinburne, whose " Travels in the
Two Sicilies" appeared in 1783-85; Sir Richard Colt
Hoare, whose " Classical Tour through Italy and Sicily,"
1 8 19, was designed as a continuation of Eustace ; and
the genial Edward Lear, who, besides his famous rhyme
on the
" old man of th' Abruzzi,
So blind that he couldn't his foot see,"
wrote a delightful account of his wanderings in the
province in his " Illustrated Excursions in Italy," in
1846. But my prime favourite among them all is the
Hon. Keppel Craven. A traveller of industrious ob-
servation, seventy years ago — his " Excursions in the
Abruzzi" appeared in 1838 — he is also a perfect specimen
of the gentlemanly English tourist of former days, who
turned a haughty eyeglass on the barbaric human
creatures with whom he was brought in contact, and
found them mostly beneath his approbation. He saw a
great deal ; and if he did not altogether understand the
mountaineers, at least he painted Mr. Keppel Craven to
perfection.
Leading a life apart for countless generations — save
when hustled by invaders — the people of these provinces
6 IN THE ABRUZZI [ft. i.
have resisted the inroads of the modern world longer
than anywhere else in Italy. They resist them still.
The shepherds of the Abruzzi are nearly as primitive as
the shepherds of Thibet. The cultivation of the soil is
carried on by the methods and the implements described
in the Georgics. Paganism is still a hardy plant ; and
the Christian faith has a wild fervour that has never
been tamed and pruned by Church councils, and would
surprise the Vatican. Ancient beliefs, banned by the
modern world, lurk here with secret potency. With a
primitive health and vigour the peasants defy hardships
never greater than they are now. Ancient songs and
melodies echo along the hillsides. Legend and song,
indeed, are still the sole culture of the old. The
traditional dress has by no means disappeared, nor have
the manners and the courtesies of a more formal age.
But alongside these, you may watch the sproutings of a
new cynicism among the bourgeoisie, the first-fruits here
of the worship of the new goddess Prosperity ; the inroads
of utter banality — for new things, ugly and undesired, are
pressing in on the wreck of the old ; the clumsy imitation
of a free-and-easy bearing imported from America, which
sits ill on a people of naturally grave and formal habit.
These contrasts will sorely wound an jesthete in manners
or art ; but they render the land curiously interesting to
a student of humanity. Every year the old retreats
farther and farther to the inaccessible places. Some of
it had best die as soon as possible ; but the new as yet
offered in its place is here an alien thing. It cannot
flourish on this soil, which nevertheless it can turn sour.
What the future has in store for a people of hardihood
and vigour, but limited ambitions, who can prophesy .-*
Young Italy stands in the magnificent valley of the
Sagittario, his scornful back turned on the sentimentalist
rapt in the wonder of the towering crags, of the human
aeries, of the snowy horizon. But Young Italy's eyes
CH. I.] INTRODUCTORY 7
are glowing, too, as he calculates the tonnage of the
roaring torrent that rushes down the cliff. He hears the
smiting of many mighty hammers and the whirr of giant
machines, and dreams of a time when the shepherds will
come down from their pastures and the peasants from
their fields, and make a bonfire of their crooks and
wooden ploughs, and when all of them will be " hands "
to feed a mammoth engine for the enrichment of some
captain of industry from Milan.
Or is the Abruzzo to grow into a vast region of
health resorts ? Is the wild, pure air, the dazzling,
whirling light that makes the blood dance in the veins,
that casts out fog and taint from the spirit, to be
transmuted into gold ? There is talk of it now and then,
and some hope ; though only at Roccaraso is there any
serious beginning. Outside enterprise may do some-
thing ; but the Abruzzesi will be much less easily turned
into a nation of hotel-keepers than the Swiss,
Whatever the future may be, as yet the shepherds
keep their flocks as of old, and the peasants till their
mountain fields as of old. Or they cross the ocean, and
recross it with a little pocketful of American money to
keep the old home going. They have no far expecta-
tions. A little more bread, a little less ; a fuller flask
one year, an emptier the next. So has it ever been. In
the meanwhile they lead safer, quieter lives than they
were wont to do, if their stomachs are rather worse than
better filled. But it is not the contadini in the Abruzzi
who are the unhappiest. I have never anywhere seen
people with such a look of waiting in their faces as the
bourgeois. They who longed and strove for the new
time, now that it has come look on it with a quiet, half-
despairing cynicism. Not the child of their dreams, this
world that rushes past. What will the next hour bring ?
The inquiring stranger desiring to know something
of the Abruzzi below the surface will often be baulked.
8 IN THE ABRUZZI [pt. i.
This mountain people, courteous and dignified, have none
of the expansiveness we are wont to think of as ItaHan.
They are proud and diffident, not given to explaining
themselves, and not at all ready to believe that a stranger
can be interested in them. They are more curious about
you than they can possibly conceive you to be about
them — though their curiosity is mainly limited to one
point, namely. What have you come for ? Your presence
in their midst is a perpetual surprise. Courteous they
are, but such wonder as theirs must have an outlet ; and
this it finds among the middle classes only through the
eyes. The long, slow stare of the Abruzzesi is an
experience to remember. It is without impertinence ;
but it is frank, direct, prolonged, unflinching ; and in
smiling, sunny Sulmona it was very formidable indeed to
the " milordies " — so were we called there. Among the
peasants the curiosity finds vent in questions. " Where
have you come from } " England and London are but
names. " Cosa c'^, Londra } " said our hostess at Rocca
di Mezzo. They know of America. It is the place
letters and postal orders come from. If, tired of prosaic
reality, you suggest Constantinople, they will receive it
with little incredulity. London, Milan, Constantinople,
— are all places beyond their utmost fancying. But they
forestall your answer at times, and, towards the centre and
in the east, will give you Naples for your home. Nearer
the western frontier they will put you down as Romans ;
and your faulty Italian, which at least is not theirs, will
be attributed to your distinguished and favoured birth.
Rome, too, is far away. But the question of questions
is, " What have you come for } " To see their country ?
Che, che ! Their little paese ! They look at each other
and smile, and do not believe. Their village is a
little village, and broken down at that. And the
country } There are only hills — and hills — and hills
again. No, no ; there must be other reasons. It is
CH. I.] INTRODUCTORY 9
further complicated, too, if you are women, by your
beino- on foot. " Dove la carrozza ? Dove il marito ? "
The Abruzzi women are hardy of the hardiest, and we
mention their own powers. Ah, but signore ! And now
you realize what you sometimes forget in these regions,
that you are in the South, where signore never walk.
But what have you come for } There are only three
reasons that will generally be accepted as satisfactory.
Perhaps you have something to sell. For signore to sell
things would be an eccentricity, but an eccentricity with
some reason in it. And, after all, these walking women
may not be signore. In Rajano, on market-day, the
artist's satchel was the talk of the piazza ; and she roused
some animosity in one person, whose dress betokened a
much better worldly station than a peasant's, because
she could produce nothing purchasable from it. Wasn't
their market good enough, then t To go on pilgrimage
is also a highly respectable occupation, and one with which
they have complete sympathy. They have their famous
local shrines — the Madonna dell' Oriente, the Madonna
del Lago, and the Sorrowful Lady of Castellamare. It
would be to insult these to doubt the possibility of
pilgrims to them from London or from Constantinople.
But most general satisfaction is given by the common-
place statement that you have come to take the air.
Disparage all their other birthrights and possessions if
you will, but good air they have, and good water. They
modestly claim nothing else. " Per pigliar I'aria," then !
So you pay your toll. You are accounted for, labelled,
docketed, pronounced almost safe. " They have come to
take the air. These signore have come to take the air."
The word is echoed from one to the other up and down the
hill, and in their next smile to you there is some relief.
They are no vaguer as to the whereabouts of London
than are we about their country, unless we happen to
have travelled there ; and so a word concerning its
lo IN THE ABRUZZI [pt. i.
position is perhaps not superfluous. The Abruzzi pro-
vinces form a rough oblong lying diagonally north-west
and south-east. On one of the long sides, towards Rome,
are the Sabine and Hernican mountains, and the other
is the Adriatic coast-line. Umbria and the Marches lie
to the north, and to the south the Terra di Lavoro and
the Molise, or province of Campobasso, which, admini-
stratively, is counted along with them, and which, ethno-
logically and historically, is very much akin. The
greater portion of the country consists of a lofty plateau,
traversed, mainly from north-west to south-east, by
chains of the Central Apennines. In the eastern branch
rises Monte Corno, 9673 ft., belonging to the group of
the Gran Sasso, the highest point in peninsular Italy.
There are no great rivers. The longest, the Aterno,
rising in Monte Capo-Cancelli, known beyond Popoli as
the Pescara, falls into the Adriatic at the port of that
name, after a course of less than a hundred miles. Nor
are there any great lakes. The picturesque Lago di
Scanno, a few miles in extent, is the largest. Lake Filcino,
or the Lake of Celano, once the greatest in Southern
Italy, is now drained, and its bed highly cultivated.
In modern times the province has been divided into
three departments. Abruzzo Ulteriore Primo extends
to the Adriatic seaboard on the east, and has the range
of the Gran Sasso for a western boundary. Its chief
towns are Teramo and Penne. The Pescara river divides
it from Abruzzo Citeriore, lying likewise along the
Adriatic, the principal towns of which are Chieti, Lanciano,
and Vasto. West of both lies the largest, the most
mountainous, and most picturesque of the three, the
inland department of Abmzzo Ulteriore Secondo. Here
is Aquila, the capital of the province, lying under the
Gran Sasso ; and here, too, is Sulmona, in the shelter of
Monte Morrone and Monte Majella.
The mountainous nature of the country, and the fact
CH. I.] INTRODUCTORY ii
that along its ninety miles of coast there is not one good
harbour — Pescara only sheltering a few fishing-boats,
while Ortona and Vasto would need immense capital
for their development — have meant that commerce, out-
side the wool industry, has never engaged the energies of
the people. Traces of iron-working are to be found in
the Majella and elsewhere ; but the mineral wealth was
probably soon exhausted. If there is to be an industrial
future it will be brought about by the abundance of
" white coal " ; and already the mountain torrents serve
as power to light with electricity the remotest villages,
which shine upon the mountain-side like wonderful new
constellations in the night. On the high levels there is
excellent pasture, and so destiny has made the Abruzzesi
shepherds. v,^
The shepherds of the Abruzzi, who form a large part
of the population, crave special notice. They are entirely
apart from the peasants. The contadini despise them ;
and this scorn is amply repaid. I am not speaking here
of the keepers of the little stationary flocks and herds
you meet on the plains or the lower slopes : old men
these, or boys and girls. Such flocks are for home use
during the winter, and in most places hardly suffice for
that. Often as late as the beginning of June — if the
past winter has been long — you can get no butter in the
mountains, if you refuse the kind made months before
and preserved in skins. Winter sets in early, and the
great flocks are all gone by the beginning of October —
earlier than that sometimes. Says the song —
" La luna de settembre ha ju cierchie tunne
A revederce, bella, tra maggie e giugno."
["The September moon is round. Adieu, fair one, till 'tween May
and June."]
The sheep and cattle are driven down from their
mountain pastures by the real shepherds, the shepherds
12 IN THE ABRUZZI [pt. i.
de race, and make their slow way by pass and glen to
the coast, along which lie their main roads, the grassy
trattiiri, and thence to the plains all about Foggia in
Apulia. The journey is three weeks or a month long,
and thousands and thousands of sheep, with their several
mandriani, fare thus to their winter quarters. From the
north of the province, and from the Marsica, they go
mainly to the Roman Campagna, but in fewer numbers.
At one time as many as two million sheep alone were
transported every year. This number is now greatly
reduced since the invasion of the Apulian plain by
cereals.
Tradition says it was King Alfonso of Aragon who
first granted this plain for pasturage, and framed the
laws that governed the flocks and herds ; but long
before Alfonso's day — indeed, from a dateless period that
backs into a mist — the sheep have come there from the
mountains. What Alfonso did was to re-establish good
breeds and the ancient oviary system and laws, and to
fix a tribunal at Foggia, which became a department of
Government. From time to time war menaced and
ruined the shepherds' polity. It had fallen low when
Charles of Bourbon restored it to its antique vigour.
The Apulian plain forms a great amphitheatre with its
front open to the Adriatic, and the rest of it enclosed by
Monte Gargano and a spur of the Apennines, which
protect it from the worst cold. It goes by the name of
the Tavoliere (i.e. the chess-board), from its arrangement
in squares for cultivation and pasture. These lands were
crranted to the Apulians on condition of their being let
out in winter to the shepherds and herdsmen of the
Abruzzi. In , course of time, however, the Apulians
turned shepherds too, and demanded the right of
summer pasture in the Abruzzi mountains. In the
arrangement that followed, the Government, which de-
rived a huge revenue from wool, favoured the Abruzzesi,
CH. I.] INTRODUCTORY 13
recognizing that their mountains were only fit for pasture,
while the Apulians had land that could be profitably
cultivated. Also, further to protect the revenue from
wool, distinct limitations were placed on the cultivation
of the Tavoliere. These restrictions, however, were
removed gradually, and chiefly under the French occu-
pation ; and this, along with the general demoralization
of all trades and industries during the wars, towards the
end of the eighteenth century, brought about the ruin of
the Abruzzi. Ferdinand I. made some efforts to restore
the old condition of things, but in vain ; and less and
less capital has been put into the pastoral trade. Great
fortunes are no longer made, and the condition of the
shepherds has probably never been worse.
To Apulia, however, they still resort from November
till the end of May, and live there mainly in patriarchal
fashion, as of old. A traveller, writing in 1833, describes a
night spent with them, and how he found them courteous
and hospitable. The fireplace was in the middle of the
large hut. There was no chimney, and the smoke swayed
about the great dim place. They supped on Indian meal
and bread and onions, with a little wine ; but better fare
was found for him. After supper the patriarch read the
prayers and said the Ave Maria. A boy, carrying a large
brass lamp, said, " Good night, all the company. It is the
hour for sleep." There were bunks against the wall with
sheep-skins for the privileged, himself amongst them ;
and by the head man's berth hung firearms. All the rest
slept on skins on the floor, and the huge dogs with their
faces to the fire. What a picture was there for a painter
of chiaroscuro ! In the morning, when he left, he would
have paid for his lodging, but they would take nothing
from a guest.
In May, just after the close of the great fair at Foggia,
begins the homeward journey. There are many halts,
for cheese- and butter-making ; and in hot weather they
14 IN THE ABRUZZI [pt. i.
travel a good deal by night. This is the traditional order
of march : A shepherd, in his sheep-skin coat, and with
his crook, heads each division of cattle. He is followed
by the vmnso, an old ram with a bell {jnanso means
''the instructor"). After each flock come the dogs — the
huge, beautiful, shaggy white things, so docile to their
masters, and to them alone ! Next come the goats. The
cows and the mares travel in separate bodies. Afattore,
on horseback and armed, has charge of the flocks and
herds of each proprietor. Behind follow the mules laden
with the baggage, the milking utensils, etc. Mr. Keppel
Craven, the gentlemanly traveller, had his lofty nil
admirari mood broken into by the sight. " I own," he
says — note that it cost him an effort — " I own that I
never beheld one of these numerous animal congregations
plodding across the flats of Capitanata, or the valleys of
the Abruzzo, as far as the eye can reach, without expe-
riencing a sensation of a novel and exciting kind, nearly
allied to that of enjoyment^ but which I shall not attempt
to account for." Neither shall I attempt to account for
the eerie thrill as one lay and listened to the ceaseless
patter-patter through the night, and to the strange, low
calls in the darkness ; but neither need one apologize for
it. Some echo of an earlier world was in the sound ;
and Man, the Wanderer, was passing to his restless
destiny.
There is one short and joyous festa when fathers and
husbands and children come back to their villages ; and
then off" they set again up to the mountain pastures. In
the shepherd's year there is no summer ; and sheep-skin
is his wear nearly the whole year round. Even when he
is near home he comes down but once a fortnight for a
night or two. Then what a serenading of wives and
sweethearts ! The sindaco, good man, turns in his bed,
wakened by the sound of " The Shepherd's Return," sung
in various keys up and down \\\q paese, at an hour when
CH. I.] INTRODUCTORY 15
an orderly village should be quiet and at rest. But there
— " Povera gente ! " he mutters, and turns to sleep again.
These peciirai, nomads, virtually homeless, are naturally
a race apart. That they are wild-looking and uncouth
is not surprising. For company they have their sheep,
their fellow-nomads, the wolves, and their dogs, hardly
less fierce. They have been called by every bad name.
The peasant laughs at them for their ignorance, their
uncouthness, their paganism. The scornful songs about
the shepherds are many. Says one —
" Ru pecurare, quanne va a la messa,
Dice a ru sacrestane : ' Qual e Cristo ? '
Quanne ce arriva 'mbaccia a I'acqua sanda :
'Che belle coppa pe magna' lu latte ! '
Quanne ce arriva 'mbaccia a gli altare :
' Che bella preta pe pesa' lu sale ! '
Quanne ce arriva dent' a la sacrastia:
'Che belle capemandre che sarria ! ' "
[" When the shepherd goes to Mass, he says to the sacristan, ' Which is
Christ ? ' When he is in front of the holy water, says he, ' What a fine
bowl for milk ! ' When he is before the altar, he says, * What a fine stone
for weighing salt ! ' When he goes into the sacristry, ' What a fine stable
this would make ! ' "]
And of civilization, as our world knows it, they have
little chance of knowledge, for there are no School Board
officers to drive them as children to school, to do even
their meagre three classes. Many acts of vandalism are
put down to their count — ruin of classic remains in the
mountains, and of the sanctuary of San Spirito on
Majella. Does one expect nomads to protect the arts,
and show an interest in archaeology .'' They are not
always ingratiating in manner ; and in former days they
were suspected, and sometimes not unjustly, of complicity
with the brigands. Truly their condition is hard, and as
hard now as ever ; but theirs is not the most demoralizing
life in the world, in spite of the groans uttered over them.
" La pastorizia errante e una delle piaghe piu verminose
i6 IN THE ABRUZZI [pt. i.
e altrettanto nocive che vergognose pe' popoli civili."
The writers of that style of thing do not know the " black
countries " of richer lands. They are the oldest of all the
communities, and have inherited a code not quite degene-
rate yet, which demands the exercise of some fine ancient
virtues — hardihood, courage, faithfulness. The shepherds
of the Abruzzi made magnificent cavalry soldiers, Murat
found. But they do not like soldiering. It is none of
their business, and they would always be back to their
sheep. Now and again, excited by some fanatic mission-
aries, they have rushed down from their mountains to
burn and ravage, in the name of a king who was nothing
to them but a name, or the dim representative of some-
thing stable in that strange outside world, which was ever
shuffling and changing, or the guardian of the Faith.
Their life turns them to churls or poets. And there have
always been shepherd-poets in the Abruzzo. Benedetto
de' Virgilii, the favourite of the Jesuit fathers and of the
Pope, was neither the first, nor the last, nor the best. The
themes of the poems which they set down in writing, aided
in their style by Tasso and the Bible, are mainly God, the
Madonna, and the saints. But they have been the makers,
too, of much of that love-poetry that wanders about the
hills and dales, owned by all, owned by none, songs with
infinite regrets in their burdens, for parting, for lonely
distance. There are special regions where the shepherd-
poets grow. Barrea is one of these, and Leonessa is
another.
Some of the modern shepherds' poetry came, about
fifty years ago, into the hands of a certain good Dr. Bruni,
who was interested in the lot of the ^oor pecurai. It had
been jotted down in dialect ; but dialect was not in vogue
then, and Bruni, whose heart was better than his style,
turned it into rather sophisticated and stiff Italian. So
these Canti del iMandriano ha\-e wandered far from their
, J ) ) ) )
J J -^ •> , •> ;
5 '' ^ ?•'>•''? ^,''\
'■> t o '
^
w
o
<
C/3
0-
•J5
CH. I.] INTRODUCTORY 17
native simplicity. They are all dolorous. Parting, home-
sickness, the love of the absent one, horror of " the
desolate plain " of Apulia, are their only themes — though
the good doctor may have selected those that illustrated
his theory that the shepherds' life is always wretched.
" Dost thou drink there of the silvern water of the
Abruzzo ? Dost hear the echo from the homesteads of
thy native valleys, the sweet melodies of the shepherd's
pipe, lonely and sad, the rare bark of the faithful dog,
mingled with the keen sound of ringing bells, and the
meek bleat of the woolly people, fast in their fold, and
all the songs in which we are wont to speak our love .''
Nay, there [in Apulia] the music is silent. Not there
does the shepherd make his songs."
And here, too, among the mountains the pipes are
being put aside ; and perhaps one day the shepherds may
come to think of singing as we do, not as the breath of
life, but as an entertainment, and thus absurd amid
strenuous occupation and hardship.
The sheep-dogs of the Abruzzi are very formidable —
huge, white, shaggy creatures that look as if they had in
them equal parts of bear and wolf, unmatched for strength
and ferocity too. As they rise slowly on the path, their
eyes gleam red, and their ominous growl sends one's
heart into one's mouth. Lucky if the master be near to
call them off, though if they are not on guard they are
generally harmless — but never ingratiating. On the road
to Pettorano we were suddenly surrounded by six of the
great creatures. One or two showed their teeth, and six
pairs of red eyes glowed like coals. But slowly the circle
they made relaxed, and they went their ways. Their
flocks were not by, else perhaps, as suspicious strangers,
we should have received closer attentions than a mere
warning. They are trained to fierceness from the first,
and by cruel methods. Says De Nino : " A lui si
C
i8 IN THE ABRUZZI [pt. i.
tagliano gli orecchi, e dopo che si son bene abbrustolite,
si danno per pasto al sanguinante animale, che deve cosi
diventare piu feroce."
Life is not to be play to them. Round their necks
they wear a wide collar, with sharp spikes as long as
your finger. In the winter plains, as in the high pastures
of the summer, wolves are the constant enemy. If they
can be kept off his throat, the great white beast may be
a match for two or three.
Quite apart from the shepherds are the peasants
tilling an ungrateful soil. There are favoured spots, of
course. Certain portions of the Adriatic seaboard have
a vegetation almost tropical, and everywhere along the
coast the olive and the vine flourish luxuriantly. There
are rich and fruitful inland places too. The winter snows
keep warm the roots in the pleasant valley of Sulmona,
and spring comes with a great bursting of bonds, hangs
garlands on myriads of orchard trees, and works in-
numerable flower fantasies all about the vineyards. And
within the last thirty years the space that once was
Fucino has been subjected to scientific and intensive
culture by the aid of Roman capital. But outside these
favoured spots the peasant's life is a desperate struggle
to win bread from barren rock, frost and snow-bound for
more than half the year. The Irish peasant's and the
Highland crofter's lots, for at least seven months out of
the twelve, are light by comparison. " The land is going
out of cultivation," groaned a Scanno man to us. We
pointed to tilled patches at an altitude and on a slope
fitter for the feet of goats than labourers with their tools.
" Ah, but once," he said, " it reached much beyond " ; and
his eye went up, up, till it seemed that eagles must have
dropped the seeds that were reaped there.
The poorest have always been driven out. The
son of the shepherd nomad is not immovable. The
cii. I.] INTRODUCTORY 19
Abruzzesi have been among the most patient and
enduring enlisters in the gangs of the Campagna and
the Pontine Marshes. Down from the pure air of their
mountains they have gone, and for a pittance to take
back to wife and children in the highlands, have sucked
in the poison of the Maremma. Many have died. Many
have taken back such maladies as their own good air
could never cure. The Veronese poet Aleardi, wander-
ing one day in the Pontine Marshes, near Terracina,
heard a passer-by say to one of the labourers, " ' Come si
vive costi .'' ' A cui I'Abruzzese : ' Signore, si muore.' "
[' How does one live in such a place .-' ' ' Sir, one dies.']
And Aleardi, haunted by the sight of the sick reapers,
sang in his Monte Circello of those —
" Che vanno
Dolorosi air esiglio
£>'
consoled by —
" Niuna canzone dei natali Al^ruzzi
Le patetiche bande. Taciturni
Falcian le messi di signori ignoti,
E quando la sudata opra e compita,
Riedono taciturni, e sol talora
La passione dei ritorni addoppia
Col domestico suon la cornamusa.
Ah ! ma non riedon tutti."
[" No song of their native Abruzzi consoles the piteous bands. Silent
they reap the harvests of unknown lords : and when, by the sweat of their
brows, their task is done, silent they go back. Only from time to time
does the bagpipe with its home sound double the passion of the return.
Ah, but not all return ! "]
They still join the gangs. But there is another outlet
now — America. From the towns and villages that I
know best almost every young man of health and vigour,
belonging to the artisan or peasant class, has crossed the
ocean. They cross and recross — the steamship com-
panies make it easy ; and the commonest decoration of
an Abruzzo village is the emigration advertisement of the
20 IN THE ABRUZZI [pt. i.
Transatlantic liners. They come back saying America
is " a very fine place," " a place made of money," " oh,
a very good place," and grumbling a little over home
conditions. But they come back — with a little pocketful
of money which goes into the rocky farm and keeps
the household going ; and perhaps they cross again
till the boys are grown and ready to adventure out on
their own account. But in spite of their stock phrase
— " a fine place," " ver' fine place " — I believe most of
them hate it. " A goddam dirty hole ! " was the mildest
comment of an intelligent young tailor on a great city
of the West, which I will not name. " Yes ; there is
some money there ; but I get the same price for a coat
here which I make on my own account as my master
gave me there. There are more coats wanted there.
But here — I breathe clean." On the long broad track of
greensward — the trattojo — that runs from Rajano to
Sulmona, I saw a young peasant, gallant and brave, with
a feather in his hat, and mounted on a sorry old mule,
which he was urging to the pace of a fiery steed. As he
rode he was singing out his heart aloud in joy, and the
theme of his song was his happy return, its burden, " All'
America maladetta non ritorneremo piu." Nowadays we
are wont to applaud lustily a peasant's love of country.
None the less do we shove him out to love it elsewhere.
As yet very rarely do the women go ; and when they
begin to go in great numbers it is all over with the
Abruzzo, for they are the sap of its life. You have
always to take the woman into account. One gathers
from old tales and old records of the country that she
has ever been prominent as chief organizer and coun-
sellor. To-day, however, a great deal more of the bread-
winning falls to her share. You may say, indeed, that
all the careers are open to her — especially the hard
ones. As a rule, she is better developed physically
than her men-folk, and handsomer, too, which is rare
CH. I.] INTRODUCTORY 21
among a poor and laborious population. There are
places where one is hardly aware of the men. Woman
fills the picture. Household work and child-bearing
form only a part of her life. She gathers the winter
fuel — a formidable task that lasts the summer through ;
she bakes the bread ; she spins the wool and the
flax ; she dyes the cloth ; she makes the clothes ; she
keeps the home-flock ; she builds the houses even —
or does the most arduous part of the masonry ; she is
an astonishing porter, and, with majestic gait, will carry
anything you like on her head, from your heaviest luggage
to a plough or an iron bedstead. As yet I have seen no
woman blacksmith, but should not be surprised to hear
there were many. In certain villages she is still an
accomplished lacemaker. And she is reputed wise. If
ever her sex is lightly spoken of, it will be by some one
who has learnt his scorn away from home among aliens.
It is not only her present capability that has won her
this position, but the tradition of past valour in the time
of war, and inspiration in the time of peace. The woman
warrior, the woman saint, the woman prophetess, the
woman brigand, have all been familiar in the Abruzzi.
They have been almost too sufficient for their men-folk,
who have depended on them overmuch, and perhaps lost
some of their adventuresomeness thereby. Here is a
significant story out of old time.
In 1557, the French, under the Duke of Guise, laid
siege to Civitella del Tronto, a little town already terribly
damaged in the war. Many of the fighting men were
dead or incapacitated, and it was ill guarding walls so
broken with a handful of starving men. Then the women
volunteered for the defence. In the night-time they went
down to the trenches, gathered stones and beams and
faggots and mud, and with these they mended the gaps
in the walls. When day came, they donned the helmets
of the dead or the wounded and armed themselves, and
22 IN THE ABRUZZI [pt. i.
what they lacked in force they more than made up for
by their power of acting ; for they moved about constantly,
now here, now there, and made the enemy believe the
place was still full of busy, strong defenders. When a
ball knocked one down, the next took the vacant place,
yet contrived to defend her old one. They kept the
enemy at bay, and Alva, after the retreat of the French,
rewarded the heroines, exempting their husbands, or those
who should be their husbands in time to come, from
tribute.
Ever since, in the Abruzzi, woman has been repairing
breaches in broken walls, and making herself into a
multitude. To hear the children talk of their homes,
you might believe that matriarchy existed. Their intro-
duction of themselves to you is never complete till they
have given full information as to the Christian name and
cognomen of their mother, sometimes even of their
grandmother. The father may be quite creditable and
even useful ; he may have paid for the boots on the little
feet ; more often he is the man who sends strange
/' postage stamps from across the sea. But the mother is
to be obeyed. She rules at the hearth, and shapes the
young lives. She is the guardian of the faith, and of the
old lore that will long compete with the newer science of
the schoolmaster.
So the emigrant comes home for a wife, and if he goes
out again there are the little ones to draw him back.
" Yes, I was in Chicago," said the saintly-faced sacristan
of P to us. " Ma pensava sempre alia famiglia."
Not the stuff to make a colonist of, perhaps, but the man
was a good possession for his own home. " If you liked
America so much, why did you come back .'' " we asked
of a labourer in a stony waste one day. " I had one
leetle boy," was all his answer.
But the emigration has been so universal, and so
incomplete — resolving itself into a series of trips to and
cii. I.] INTRODUCTORY 23
fro — that the language of the younger male inhabitants
is English, or rather, American, not uncommonly with an
Irish accent.
We have craned our necks to look at craggy villages,
so high-pitched and so silent that we have thought of
them as tombs of some ancient people long since vanished.
But did we venture up the toilsome mule-path that led
there, then hardly had we passed the gate into the
mouldering place than we were greeted by the " Ameri-
cani " — so are they always called, the returned exiles —
in a language that was approximately our own. In that
we did not hail from New York or Boston we were dis-
appointing.
Only when we had crossed into the Terra di Lavoro,
at Sora, did we find London to be a place of fame.
One acquaintance there wished to treat us to drinks
without limit, because he had made his fortune selling
ice-cream to little London urchins. His fortune, ;^40,
he brought back to Sora, where he swaggered like a
millionaire. But do not credit the Abruzzesi with poison-
ing the youth of London. They are all for the West —
for the brickfields and the mines and the factories.
Then back to their hills again. The emigration com-
mittees are now speaking of Australia as a field for them.
That will be a longer exile, with fewer returns. Has
Italy no work yet for these hardy, frugal peasants to do —
Italy that is growing rich, and that breeds the best
scientists of Europe ? Will the North, that has had
the lion's share of the national resources, stand back
awhile and give a chance to the troublesome South — the
neglected South, rather, that needs the generous expendi-
ture of genius and of capital in the organization of its
labour and its instruction, if ever it is to cease from
troubling ?
There may be a better hour dawning ; but save in
the matter of public safety — and there the benefit has
24 IN THE ABRUZZI [pt. i.
been immense — even enthusiasts for Italian unity cannot
say that these provinces have gained very much. They
have got some roads and some railways, a means of
leaving a country that cannot support them. They have
got secular education, but it is in a backward condition,
and it is not rigidly enforced. Materially, they are worse
off. The people eat less well, and are not so well clad.
They are ground by taxes, as elsewhere in Italy, but
here they get much less in return. The damning fact is
that the Abruzzi, which is beyond all suspicion of malaria,
— if you except a spot or two on the coast — which has
air as pure and as exhilarating as any part of Switzerland,
has the highest death-rate, for its population, in Italy.
Ignorance and poverty are the causes. Were it not for
the money made in America, the people could not live.
Again and again in the books of travellers written during
the Bourbon regime, I have met passages describing a
prosperous condition of things in places which to-day are
ruined and dead. Modern life has killed the home crafts,
and given nothing in their stead. Native capitalists
hardly exist. Encouragement in industries must come
from without, and it delays too long. Yet there might be
good returns among a people of traditional skill in handi-
crafts. There may not yet be enough money in Italy to
go round all the time, but the North has taken the lion's
share of the booty. It takes it still, and then calls out
on the South because it is backward and recalcitrant.
In the moral benefit of a settled government there is
some compensation, of course. But man cannot live by
political theory, nor even by political liberty, alone — as
is being found out all over Europe. And here especially
is this the case. As the economist Signor Nitti says,
" Southern Italy is neither conservative, nor liberal, nor
radical. It has no politics at all." Why should it have .-*
It has had no political education, save the worst — that
of frequently changing tyrannies. In these particular
CH. L] INTRODUCTORY 25
provinces the present regime excites little enthusiasm
and little active antagonism. The uniform of the
carabinieri is its most commonly known symbol ; and
police, however efficient and upright, are poor repre-
sentatives of the beneficence of a government. Among
the middle-aged there is a vague, hopeless air of waiting
for they know not what. Definite opinion exists only
among the very young men who have had schooling ;
and among them it is distinctly socialistic, I should say.
At all events, it is not reactionary. They have learnt to
love liberty ; but in its name they will soon be asking
for the liberty to live in their native country.
CHAPTER II
THE ABRUZZI IN THE OLD TIMES AND THE NEW
Ancestry of the Abruzzesi — The Samnite Wars — The brilliant Marsi —
Latinizing of the Italians — The Social, or Marsic, War — Corfinium
as Italica — The peril of Rome — The Italians Roman citizens— The
Abruzzesi in face of the invaders— Changing dynasties — The isolation
of the mountains — In the Risorgimento — The Carbonari — General
Pepe in the Abruzzi — Growing hopelessness of the Liberals — Bomba's
policy : " My people have no need to think,"
Who are these people, and what has been their
history ?
They had a glorious past, but it is far, far back.
Taking no account for the moment of later admixtures,
they are of the true ancient Italian stock, of the non-
Latin branch of it. Of their kindred are the Umbrians,
the Sabines, the Oscans, and the Samnites. There is a
legend— and back here we move in a mist of legend —
that their forefathers, pressed by the Umbrians in a
season of famine and stress, vowed a ver sacniin, about
the time the kings were reigning in Rome. That is,
they vowed to send all their sons, born in a year of war,
without their boundaries. Forth then they went to the
fate the gods had in store for them, their guide an animal
sacred to Mars. Thus the Samnites, led by the bull,
journeyed south, and settled first in the highlands above
the valley of the Sangro, and later along the eastern
side of the Matese chain. Their earliest colonies were
to the south-east of the present Abruzzo, in what is now
the province of Molise. But these, the most warlike and
26
CH. II.] OLD TIMES AND NEW 27
the most brilliant of all the peoples of Southern Italy,
were destined to spread much farther and to richer lands.
A second band, led by the woodpecker of Mars — and
so, according to the legend, named the Piceni — settled in
the Marches of Ancona, Ascoli Piceni, on the northern
frontier of the Abruzzi, being one of their chief towns.
Other tribes branched off this way and that among the
mountains of the Central Apennines. The Vestini took
possession of the region of the Gran Sasso, under which
Aquila was built in later times. The Marrucini went to
the south of the river Pescara and east of the Majella
range ; the Frentani, seaward of these, from the mouth of
the Pescara to the river Trigno ; and the Peligni to the
western spurs and valleys of Majella. Separated from
the Peligni by the Mte. Grande range, were the Marsi,
who settled about the Fucine lake ; the last, with their
neighbours, the Aequi, coming into contact with the
Volscians and the Latins. There are famous names
among these ; and the Samnites, the Marsi, and the
Peligni, came near to annihilating Rome. But one small
kindred tribe, which history hardly mentions at all, the
Pretutii, that fixed itself near where Teramo is to-day,
was destined, for some never-explained reason, to give
its name to all this mountainous region. Abruzzo is still
in the peasant's tongue Apruzzo. Its old name, Aprutium
means the country of the Pretutii.
The Samnites, the most ambitious colonizers among
them, spread to the south where they came in contact
with the quickening Hellenic civilization, and westward
where they won riches and degenerated from their
ancient hardihood. But they felt their kinship with the
mountaineers they had left in the north, and in its name
called to the Marsi, the Peligni, the Marrucini for help
in the great struggle against treaty-breaking Rome.
These mountaineers had settled to the life they have led
28 IN THE ABRUZZI [ft. i.
for the most part ever since, to the keeping of flocks and
herds, to the cultivation of the lower slopes of the hills
and the sheltered valleys. A hardy race, they prospered
in their mountains with that austere and limited prosperity
possible in their climate ; and lived long in their rocky
fastnesses, undisturbed by Etruscans or Latins or Greeks.
Town life was little developed among them, but for
purposes of defence they built some citadels, round about
which clustered their clan villages. There were loose
confederations among them, and the scattered tribes
acknowledged their kinship on great occasions. Had
these confederations been faster, had the tribes sought
each other's continuous friendship, they might have
changed the story of Italy and of the world. But the
idea of local independence, so strong in all the Italian
peoples, was already a rooted instinct with them. Climate
and the configuration of the country helped towards this ;
and so local feuds and high mountains kept them apart
till the great Sabellian fiery cross went round. Shut up
in their lofty solitudes, they kept their hardihood and
frugality ; but, after their famous struggle, exercised little
or no influence on the rest of Italy. In their isolation
was no germ of political training — and hence the long
tragedy of their later history.
It was the Samnites who earliest resisted the aggres-
sive policy of Rome, and the struggle began in the valley
of the Liris. They looked all round for allies, but at
first they were unsupported save by their kindred of the
mountain tribes. True, the Etruscans joined, but soon
gave ia. The Marsi, the Peligni, Frentani, Vestini, Piceni,
were the true brothers-in-arms of the Samnites, of the
same hardy, fiery, indomitable stock. But Rome was
strong enough then to recover from the defeat of the
Caudine Forks ; and in the determined march of the
Roman soldiers through to the Adriatic, one tribe after
the other had to surrender. Even the Samnites at last
CH. II.] OLD TIMES AND NEW 29
sued for peace. The victory of Rome seemed complete
in the year B.C. 303. The Aequi, on the western borders
of the allied tribes — their territory mostly inside our
province— were still up in arms ; but their rebellion was
ruthlessly put down, and all the Equine and ^quiculine
territory, save the strip now known as Cicolano, passed
into the power of Rome. It was now, B.C. 302, that the
Romans refortified Alba — Alba Fucensis— on the Fucine
lake, and sent there a colony of six thousand men to
form a bulwark against the valiant Marsi ; while two
years later was built the Roman colony of Carsioli, the
^Equine inhabitants of the earlier town having been
scattered to right and left. Near the modern Carsoli
to-day you enter the Abruzzi from the west ; but the
Roman town is now only a heap of stones and a
memory.
From this time, and for long, the Romans had no
braver or more brilliant allies than the Marsi, a people
of great gifts in war and peace — so valiant in war that
the saying ran, "Who can triumph over the Marsi, or
without them } " — and famous, too, for their skill in art,
their mystic wisdom, and their magic powers.
But the Samnites, though beaten, had not given in.
Men sprang out of the dust in their territories to defy
Rome ; and if only Tarantum had helped, they would
have wrung the rights and privileges they demanded
from her, or extended their territory, till a death-struggle
had ensued between genius and discipline. But Southern
Italy did not rise at their call ; and Samnium had fought
with a few intervals for nearly fifty years when peace
was made in B.C. 290. Rome multiplied her colonies in
the disaffected districts. The strong fortress of Atria
was built in B.C. 282 as the keystone of the mighty
wedge separating North and South Italy. This is Atri
Piceno — if not the birthplace of Hadrian, at least the
cradle of his race — from which, and not from Atria
30 IN THE ABRUZZI [pt. i.
Veneta, the Abruzzesi will have it the Adriatic took its
name.
Now set in a deliberate Latinizing of these provinces
by military means. The mountaineers were largely
drawn on for soldiers, the Celtic invasions giving a
pretext for this. They were bidden feel what a privilege
it was to belong to the togati. But Rome, in its passion
for discipline and unity, very nearly over-reached itself.
The Latinization was never more than skin-deep ; and
Rome, striving after a political unity — without equality,
moreover — only contrived to create a national unity
deeply hostile to itself. The name of Italian given to
these peoples by the Greeks of the South began to have a
cohesive meaning for them. It would soon be a war-cry.
It is significant of their character, and prophetic of
their history, that in the Punic War they were not eager
to fight on either side. They had far less aggressiveness
than their Samnite kinsmen ; and, indeed, they have
never fought willingly save for one thing — to be let alone.
But Hannibal had some allies amongst them ; and Rome
felt the general coldness to its interests, and revenged it.
After the defeat of Hannibal the help of the mountain-
eers was not immediately necessary. Any defections on
their part were punished. The waverers' lands were
confiscated. Suspect persons were banished. New
Roman colonies were formed, into which strangers were
brought, and they alone were favoured. The judgment
on the tribes after the Samnite War had been milder
than now, when there was no general revolt. In fact,
settlement in Latin colonies was the only road to peace
and comfort, and that became daily more and more
impossible. The end of the Punic War had let loose
bands of lawless, desperate men, who found in the
mountains a shelter. Slave labour grew the most profit-
able to the few large landowners left ; and slave herds-
men and shepherds soon outnumbered the free labourers.
CH. II.] OLD TIMES AND NEW 31
Things righted themselves to some extent among a
hardy and industrious people ; and the farmers of the
Abruzzi maintained a sturdy front. But the political
conditions were intolerable, and martial law reigned
perpetually. Yet, on the surface, there was peace for
nearly two hundred years.
But the voice of Caius Gracchus penetrated into the
mountains. And Drusus had friends there — Marsi and
Peligni — in secret league with him. Rome was full of
tumults and revolts, and at variance with herself This
was the opportunity of the tribes, and especially of the
Marsi — for Rome had tired out her best allies. The
Social War, which now was to shake Rome to its founda-
tions, was called the Marsic War. The fiery cross went
out again to the old confederation. Arming went on in
secret ; and the great Marsian chief and hero of the
war, O. Pompidius Silo, a friend of Drusus, had it in his
mind to march to the city at the head of his men and
seize it. Nevertheless, the first fire was not kindled
among the Marsi, but among the Piceni at Ascoli. The
Roman praetor, Gaius Servilius, learning that Ascoli was
in league with neighbouring towns, went there with a
small escort, determined to browbeat the people and
stifle any resistance by prompt executions. In the
theatre he harangued them, scolding, threatening, his
lictors standing by with their axes. The multitude rose
like one man, killed the praetor and his underlings then
and there, and, closing the gates, left not a living Roman
in the town.
The fire was kindled. The Marsi were ready. So
were the Peligni, the Vestini, the Frentani, all the
mountaineers. And the Samnites joined ; till, in Central
and Southern Italy, only Etruria and Umbria stood by
Rome, which woke up to recognize its peril. It still
kept the officials in the disaffected regions ; but all the
32 IN THE ABRUZZI [pt. i.
farmers, all the substantial middle-class, were in revolt.
And not even the colonies, Alba, Carsioli, Atria, Aesernia,
were safe. But the impulsiveness of the Ascolani was
not imitated. Envoys were sent with messages to the
effect that the confederates would lay down their arms in
return for Roman citizenship. The messengers sued in
vain.
Then they defied Rome, B.C. 90. They would have
their own Rome, a centre of the new national unity.
For this they chose Corfinium of the Peligni. (Look
for its meagre ruins to-day near little Pentima, about
eight miles from Sulmona.) Citizenship on a Roman
model was granted to all the burgesses, drawn from
many tribes, and to all the insurgents. Strong walls
were thrown up. A senate house was built. A senate
of five hundred members was elected, and supreme
authority in peace and war was given to two consuls and
twelve praetors. The old Samnite language, then spoken
by all save the Piceni and the Marsi, was officially
recognized, and money was coined. Slow of incubation,
the movement was now whole - hearted, essentially
national. It was no mere question any longer of winning
a political franchise they were debating. They re-
nounced Rome. They were a separate state — Italia.
Corfinium was Italica.
Rome knew its danger at last ; tried to set its house
in order, mended its walls, and sought everywhere for
recruits, near home and far off, among Celts, among
Numidians ; and collected a fleet from the cities of
Greece and Asia Minor. It was able to put about ten
thousand men in the field. The Italians gathered as
many. The Roman Rutilius Lupus and Lucius Julius
Caisar were great generals. But Ouintus Silo, the
Marsian, was a leader of consummate genius, and Gaius
Papius Mutilus, of the Samnites, hardly less so.
The insurrection spread, and the first events were
CH. II.] OLD TIMES AND NEW 33
disastrous to the Roman arms. Silo was throwing him-
self on the colony of Alba, and Mutilus- on yEsernia,
which, after a desperate struggle, capitulated to the
Italians. All Campania, except Nuceria, was lost to
Rome ; and the strangers in the Roman army were won
over. The Numidians deserted to the insurgents when
they saw Oxyntas, Jugurtha's son, clad in purple among
the Samnites, There were ups and downs ; but, on the
whole, success was with the Italians. Caesar was routed
by the Samnites and Marsi under P. Vettius Scato.
Strabo, with a great force, was sent to Picenum, but the
main part of the Roman troops remained under Lupus
on the Marsian border, to guard the passage to the
capital. Here a great battle was fought, Scato again
the victor. The river Turano ran red with Roman
blood, and Lupus met his death. Marius hastily came
to the rescue and saved a remnant of the legion.
What were they like, those mighty warriors that
defied Rome .'' Here is a portrait by Silius Italicus of a
Vestino : " Tall, handsome, strong of body, with long
flowing locks, his face covered with thick black hair.
Over his great broad shoulders he wears a rough bear's
skin. He is armed with a light, crooked spear, and with
a sling to bring down birds on the wing."
Fortune wavered. Now the Peligni were cut down
by Servius Sulpicius ; now the Marsi and Vestini, under
Silo, had their revenge. Marius, the wily, pla}'ed with
Silo, egging him on, yet refusing battle till he could
administer a terrific defeat — when the chief of the
Marrucini fell — and following this up by a rout of the
Marsi. But the Roman forces were taxed beyond their
strength ; and the supply of Italians seemed inex-
haustible. The contentions within the city were so
many and bitter, that, had the enemy knocked at the
door, they might have bestowed the name of Italica on
Rome itself. In desperation, the Senate offered terms at
D
34 IN THE ABRUZZI [pt. i.
last, but terms which satisfied nobody ; and the war
continued, Lucius Porcius Cato succeeding Marius in his
command, and Strabo still endeavouring to hold the
Picenian territory for Rome. A determined movement
to divert the Roman attack from the Abruzzi by sending
fifteen thousand Marsi to Etruria, was defeated by Strabo.
Few ever came back ; but Cato, hoping to take advantage
of the drain of men from the Fucine territory, advancing,
there met his death ; and now on Strabo fell the full
burden.
The turning-point may be said to have come at
Ascoli (taken and retaken many times), where the
Italian chief, Judacilius, forced to surrender, died by his
own hand. The surrender of Theate of the Marrucini
(Chieti) to Servius Sulpicius was not long delayed. Bit
by bit Rome won round the Fucine lake and in the
country of the Peligni ; till at last Italica was no longer
Italica, but Corfinium once again. From an empty
Senate house that mocked them, the remnant of senators
fled to the south, whither Silo had gone to hearten the
Samnites. From Samnium the flame might still have
spread, had not Silo fallen at Bovianum, B.C. 88. That
was the end. Roman arms had prevailed at last ; but
the old Rome had been beaten. Internally weak, and
the Mithridatic War begun, she needed allies ; and the
Italians had proved superabundantly their worth. Resist-
ance to their demands had cost her dear, at one time
nearly her existence. Their demands were granted.
All Italians were made Roman citizens.
On the Romans the Social, or the Marsic, War
made a profound impression. Latin writers are eloquent
on the fiery bravery, the splendid qualities of these
rebels, who had proved themselves the equals of their l
best forces. The " embattled farmers " had shaken the
ancient world. The old ideal of Italian unity, the dream
of every age, so hard to realize, so constantly defeated.
CH. II.] OLD TIMES AND NEW 35
was made for a brief moment a reality by these moun-
taineers.
From such heroic tribes, then, come the main stock
of the Abruzzi people. They have not forgotten the
glorious pages in their history. The Marsic land is
Marsica still. Italians ? Yes. Abruzzesi } Yes. But
Marsi first of all are the people there. The strip of wild
country behind the Sabine mountains, where the ^quiculi
held out so obstinately in the Samnite War, is still Cicolano.
Little Pentima in the Sulmona Valley will not let you
pass through its sorry streets, each called after one of the
confederated tribes, without directing you to the spot
where rise the meagre ruins of Corfinium. On the
neighbouring railway station you read not Pratola, but
Pratola Peligna.
Rome, no longer the mistress but the capital of Italy^
yet did its best to Romanize the provinces, with limited
success. The tribal characteristics still remained strong
as ever. Only to the aristocracy did the City set the
fashion. Of course, there was give and take. Rome
made new roads. The Romans built summer villas in
the high pure air ; and the country was much better
known than it is to-day. Something was done to make
up for all that had been destroyed in the Samnite Wars.
Roman culture penetrated ; and in return, to Roman
literature Amiterno — the vanished Amiterno of the
Vestini — gave Sallust, and Sulmona Ovid. Nor did the
Marsian and Pelignian valour fail, but helped to give
Rome the dominion of the world. Their aid, however,
was exercised with a good deal of independence, and
some caprice, especially in Roman civil strife.
They never became infected with Roman aggressive-
ness ; never identified themselves with Rome, as they
never did with the invaders that succeeded. They had
fought for their political rights and dignity. That gained,
they laid down their arms and went back to their sheep
36 IN THE ABRUZZI [pt. i.
and their cornfields. And that has been their history
ever since. They have loved their country, and have
desired to be let alone in it. They have not been let
alone in it, for they have shared the common fate of
Italy. One invader after another has come to their land,
the gate — say, rather, the stairway — into Southern Italy ;
and, since there has been little to share, has taken of the
best. Goths and Lombards, Franks and Swabians,
Spaniards and French and Austrians, have come. The
Abruzzesi have sometimes resisted, and then let the
stranger pass. And the moral of their political experience
has been — Plus cela cha?ige,pl2is c'est la mcme chose. Per-
haps something colder and more apathetic came from an
infusion of Northern blood into their veins to temper
their fiery valour ; and their poverty under every dynasty
has bred political cynicism in them. They early shrank
into themselves, pursued their own arts, learned their own
lore, practised their own austere virtues. Christianity
found a welcome in a land that had always been a great
religious centre ; but it had to consent to live alongside
the older faiths ; and so it lives still.
Under the Swabian rule, especially under the great
Frederic II., the Abruzzo had its best chance of a
generous development. Northerner and Southerner in
one as he was, he was well fitted to understand and to
use this race, at once so reserved and so fiery. And if
disaffection he treated drastically, as at Celano, yet his
policy was, in the main, munificent and far-seeing. He
had a clear motive in strengthening a province which
could be a natural defence against the states of his arch-
enemy, the Pope. It was Frederic who founded Aquila,
and his son made it into a strong citadel. And it was in
the Abruzzi that his grandson, the gallant young Conradin,
dared his fortune, and challenged the Angevin Charles to
deadly combat, seeking the heritage of his fathers. Near
Tagliacozzo was the battle fought which Conradin so
CH. II.] OLD TIMES AND NEW 37
nearly won. When the boy was beheaded at Naples,
there died a good hope of the Abruzzi. From the
pietistic Charles the province got nothing save some
ecclesiastical foundations. He flooded it with his French
nobles, who got all the fat land there was. For one
hundred and seventy- five years the Angevins ruled
execrably. The kingdom knew no unity. Naples was
continually disturbed. The mountains had only neglect,
and were trodden under the heel of alien barons. Then
came the Aragonese dynasty, five kings in less than
sixty years, and the kingdom sank to the condition of a
province. After the struggle between the Aragonese
Frederic with the Crown of Spain, it fell to Ferdinand the
Catholic ; and Naples was now only the seat of a vice-
royalty. The vice-royal Government, which lasted two
hundred and thirty years, was one only fit for slaves, and
it bred many. Need one describe the rule of the
Bourbons ? Think, then, of the lamentable history of the
kingdom of Naples ; modify it, or intensify it, by neglect,
and you have the story of the Abruzzi.
That story is but an aggravation of the history of
every mountain people that love their mountains, and
are not aggressive, or greedy for the riches of the plain.
There have flourished the hardy virtues and the love of
local independence. Tradition has been a great power.
The home arts have flourished. The strong religious
instinct has given the Church a special hold. Feudalism
had an easy growth and died hard. Isolation forced
their culture to be largely home-made ; and civilization,
save as the Church brought it, penetrated very slowly.
This is not an altogether unhappy picture. The
frugal, self-contained community, forced to labour in the
open air, and with aptitude for the manual arts, is per-
haps the happiest the world has ever known. And so
far as this primitive happiness depended on themselves
the Abruzzesi long enjoyed it. But that instinctive
38 IN THE ABRUZZI [pt. i.
craving for local independence, that dislike of the
meddling stranger, which they have shared with every
mountain people, has been continually frustrated and
defied. And especially in later ages has their fate been
hard, when only neglect has alternated with the inter-
ference of the worst government outside Russia that
modern Europe has ever known.
And the Abruzzi in the Risorgimento ? Here we
have a very divided story. There are chapters full of
fiery heroism, others of long apathy, others of ineffectual
struggle, of furious reaction. The province has been
called the La Vendee of new Italy ; but that is only one
side of the tale. The pity that there should have been
two sides, and these irreconcilable ! but that is just what
the Bourbons succeeded excellently in producing. " La
vergogna di essere ultimi mentre fummo i Precursor!,"
cried the patriot Poerio. And so they were, the pre-
cursors, those quick-witted, quick-blooded Neapolitans.
The victorious North has had its meed of praise. The
South has rarely had its due — the South that should have
been all servile and degraded from the policy of its rulers,
and yet bred a great crop of heroes.
The ideas of liberty came in with the echoes of the
French Revolution ; and if the French invaders were
hated, they spread free opinions, nevertheless, and
developed them. Then came Carbonarism, and its birth-
place was the Neapolitan kingdom. It was the Carbonari
who first denounced the foreign yoke — all foreign yokes
— on Italian necks. The movement spread through the
kingdom like wildfire, and the Abruzzese Gabriele
Rossetti gave it effective voice. All over the Abruzzi it
took deep root. An intellectual movement at first ; outside
its native boundaries, in Romagna, where Byron joined
it, it grew fiercer. Save liberty and independence, it had
no other binding watchwords, was not specially republi-
can, nor did it specially seek the unity of Italy.
CH. II.] OLD TIMES AND NEW 39
Yet an Abruzzese was among the first to speak of
Italy as one — Melchiorre Delfico, who sent from Turin,
in 1 8 14, a message to Napoleon in Elba, offering him in
the name of the " Congresso constituente dell' impero
romano," the " rinascente impero corona " in return for his
sword. He should reign, but over a free people. " Che
Cesare sia grande," ran the message, " ma che Roma si a
libera. L'ltalia, Sire, ha bisogno di voi ... la natura
vi fece italiano. Dite come Dio alia luce ; si faccia ITtalia
e l'ltalia si fara."
It was on the Carbonari of the Abruzzi that General
Pepe counted for resistance of the Austrian invasion.
His campaign in the province began with high hopes.
Everywhere he was received with enthusiasm, and at
Chieti forty thousand people came out to meet him, the
youths bearing olive branches and garlands. But for all
the olive branches they were full of fighting spirit. Just
when he was preparing to turn this fervour to military
ends he was recalled. Had he been left he would have
been fighting against tremendous odds, for in such a state
of neglect was the country, and so ridiculous were the
fortifications, that Tagliacozzo and Popoli would have
been impossible to defend. The artillery had not shot
enough for a single fight. It was Christmas-time, deep
snow lay on the ground, and the men had neither coats
nor shoes. The next time he went, in 1820, the Austrians
were preparing to throw their whole force into the king-
dom, and were on the Abruzzi frontier. To Pepe the
moment had come for effective resistance, and he counted
on the mountaineers to aid him — not in vain. He made
his way to Aquila through deep snow, his men falling
and groping all the way, without food, without coats,
without provisions ; and no appeals could rouse the
authorities at Naples out of their apathy and incapacity,
though it was well known that the whole of the Austrian
troops were at the gates. His men had come so far by
40 IN THE ABRUZZI [pt. i.
a miracle of constancy and endurance ; but they knew
the game was up, and Pepe knew it too, when he found
the Neapolitan generals under him in secret treaty with
the enemy. Naturally, the soldiers began to desert, and
with those he had left he determined to give battle at
Rieti. It was a hopeless attempt, for he was out-
numbered many times. With a sinking heart for a
frustrate chance, he gave in ; and the Austrians poured
over the frontier.
There were many readers of Gioberti and followers of
Mazzini in the Abruzzi, and a constant propaganda, open
and secret, was carried on. But they were too much
isolated from each other and from the rest of the world.
There were many valiant attempts at revolution — at
Aquila, Penne, and elsewhere. Each was put down with
an iron hand, and each had its martyrs. But by 1848
the spirit had died out of the lovers of liberty. It was not
so much the rebuffs from the Government, nor the perse-
cutions of the /«/^«<^^//// — some of them ancient brigands ;
but a cynical scepticism now bound their minds. The
ideas of the Revolution and of Carbonarism were irreal-
izable. They had known so many kinds of government
since the name of liberty began to be whispered — the
Parthenopeian Republic, and Joseph Bonaparte's and
Murat's, and reaction, and a constitution, and reaction
again. Nothing availed. But the chief cause of the dis-
couragement was the plain fact that the revolutionary
leaders could not speak in the name of the people. The
Bourbons had seen to that.
Their policy, and especially that of Ferdinand II., was
to harry and torment the middle-classes and such of the
aristocracy as displayed any independence, and to favour
the people. This favour did not extend very far, no
farther, indeed, than in levying few or no taxes on them,
and ensuring that in any dispute between them and their
cir. II.] OLD TIMES AND NEW" 41
social superiors they should have the preference. The
governors' instructions were clear on that point ; and it
was their business, as well as that of the priests, to teach
the doctrine that there was none above the people but
the king. Not that the priests were invariably sub-
servient to the Bourbons. There were patriots among
them, and many a Franciscan friar was a missionary of
liberty. Nothing was done for the development of the
country ; but if a peasant went to church he was not
meddled with, and what he made was his own. A brigand
who wore an amulet and cast up his eyes at the name of
the Virgin was counted a better citizen than any middle-
class man not enrolled definitely among the defenders of
Church and Throne. There was a time when a citizen
of standing and repute might not leave his home without
the consent of his wife and parish priest. Had he not
been regular at mass, as likely as not the priest would
refuse it. He might not send his sons from home to be
educated ; and the local education was just what the
clergy allowed it to be. He might receive no journals
save the official gazette, which the police had edited.
He might not dress as he liked, nor wear his hair as
he liked. A little busybody of Chieti, Don Placido
Picerone, a ridiculous personage, but well seen of the
authorities, used to watch for citizens with an unorthodox
cut of beard, and drag them to the barber forthwith !
Spies were everywhere. Spying was the only industry,
besides brigandage, that the later Bourbons encouraged
and paid for in these provinces. According to Queen
Caroline, the Austrian wife of Ferdinand I., it was
incumbent on priests " to honour spies ; they should
make use both of the pulpit and the confessional to keep
the people in check." But spies were by no means all
clerical; and lay informers grew so dangerous to the
liberty of reputable citizens, that neighbours practically
gave up all social intercourse, and shut themselves fast
42 IN THE ABRUZZI [pt. i.
in the little circle of their families. And the father might
not even read the newspaper in the cafe !
We can conceive of Ferdinand II. as a "bon petit roi
d'Yvetot," if Yvetot had never learned to read and write.
The fantastic imagination of the Abruzzi peasants was
perhaps not all out of sympathy with him when he
appointed Ignatius Loyola a marshal in his army, with
a salary ! In his early days it was his ambition to reign
over a docile and happy people. He desired to be the
most benevolent of autocrats ; but his benevolence was
frustrated by wicked persons who would have opinions of
their own — and he became Bomba. No need to remind
English readers what his prisons were like. The fortress
of Pescara, in the Abruzzi, was never empty of chained
victims. Not that a large number of his subjects were
actually put to death during the troubles. His advisers
feared the outcries of the Neapolitan exiles whose voices
sounded through Europe, especially the exiles in London.
But the number will never be counted of those who
suffered in dungeons, or by constant persecutions outside,
for their refusal to be the Bourbon's creatures' creatures.
Perhaps no kings have ever so deliberately waged
war with human intelligence as Bomba and his venal
son. " Mon peuple n'a pas besoin de penser," said the
former. The history of the censorship in the kingdom
of the Two Sicilies reads to us like a farce ; but the jest
was a sorry one near at hand. The censor's corrections
were those of an illiterate pedant. A work on galvinism
was rejected, the author being reminded Calvin was
among those whom no decent writer would name ! A
grammar " for the use of Italians " was passed, with the
title changed. The word " Italian " was revolutionary !
Of course the censorship was often fooled and defied.
An attack on Ferdinand himself passed under the title
of " II Cuore Trafitto," and Lammenais's " Paroles d'un
Croyant " under that of " De imviacniato beaUe Virgiiiis
CH. II.] OLD TIMES AND NEW 43
Maries conceptu." There were clandestine presses, and
the name of Brussels or some other foreign city appeared
on the title-page instead of Naples. Students of the
history of the Abruzzi, or, indeed, of any of the Neapolitan
provinces in the early nineteenth century, cannot over-
look one nauseous proof of the censorship. Not only
are the dedications to the reigning prince of a servility
rarely equalled before, but into the text are interpolated
solid chunks of fulsome flattery, having no reference at
all to the subject in hand. This was a recognized means
of gaining an impriniaULr.
Notwithstanding all this, in the poor, almost roadless
Abruzzi, where difficulties of education were greater than
elsewhere, where books were difficult to procure, even
apart from the censorship, they read and thought and
printed. Chieti was a fiery centre of propaganda. When
one newspaper was suppressed, two sprang up in its place
with lightning speed, though editors, writers, and readers
went to prison. The peasants who could not read were
for the Bourbons ; so far was the Abruzzi the La Vendee
of new Italy. But outside the circle of officials — and the
Government multiplied offices great and little — nearly all
the educated persons were liberals. There was the
tragedy : the long-drawn struggle, the want of cohesion
that made it so fruitless, and gave them so poor a share
in the triumph of the end.
But from these words on the Abruzzi in the Risorgi-
mento one dark feature has been omitted, and that is
Brigandage.
CHAPTER III
BRIGANDAGE IN THE ABRUZZI
Disappearance of the brigands — Will they ever come back ? — Nature and
causes of brigandage in the Abruzzi — Alarco Sciarra — Tasso and the
brigand — Eighteenth-century brigands — Famous bandits during the
French occupation — Paul-Louis Courier's journey — General ]\Ianhes —
Bourbon encouragement of banditti — Brigand and guide — Brigands'
arrogance — Brigands' songs — 11 Plebiscito — Foreigners in the bands —
A brigand dandy — A carabiniere of genius — The Venti Scttcmbrc —
The Legge Pica — Lingering memories of brigands.
We were warned on all sides before starting not to risk
our precious lives in the wild solitudes of the Abruzzi,
the " home of brigands." I am sorry to have to break
it to the young and adventurous that there are no
brigands left ; that while Sicily can provide some, and
Sardinia still boasts a few, that while in recent years a
Musolino has ruffled it in Calabria, and Ruffolone round
about Viterbo, you may wander now by night or day in
the Abruzzi and never be asked for purse or life. The
young and adventurous must be content with chance
meetings of wolves, and these only on the higher levels.
The carabinieri ride the mountains, ubiquitous, vigilant,
efficient ; and were they less so, there is little likelihood
of the old bandit plague cropping up again. In the
Abruzzi the people condoled with us for living in so
dangerous a place as London ; and when we came to
think of it we owned (to ourselves) they were right.
London is so much more perilous to life and limb. But
this safety is a very recent thing ; and the middle-aged
44
CH. III.] BRIGANDAGE IN THE ABRUZZI 45
can tell you, if they will, of a very different state of
affairs. They do not pour out these reminiscences to
the first comer by any means. Rather will they give
him the impression that they hear of brigands for the
first time from his lips. They are not proud of that
chapter of their history which ended almost entirely in
1870. Till that date there had always been more or less
brigandage in the Abruzzi, and generally more rather
than less.
To look at the country is to see that it seems destined
by nature to be a land of outlaws. Even now, when it is
cut up by excellent roads and railways, and when most
of its forests have been cleared, it could still afford
endless shelter for raiding bands. On its heights, in its
hollows, its trackless wastes, its rocky recesses, a Dold
captain and his men might defy the soldiers as of old,
and dispersed, as they would be, spring up again and yet
again. As the train toils painfully up the tremendous
heights, say, near Campo di Giove, or Rocca di Corno, it
should not be difficult for a spirited gang to board it and
have their will of the spoil. I hasten to add that no such
attempts are made ; and the spoil would often consist of
but a few old market-women's baskets. Yet I cannot
help informing the youth of the world, kicking over the
traces of a tame civilization, that here still in Italy, but a
short and easy journey from the Rome of the tourists, is
a wild land made for wild exploits, where they could at
least give the police many a pretty chase before the fun
was over.
And since of old the harassed and unhappy in the
Abruzzi were always wont to take to the hills, and plan
and work reprisals from there, one wonders will the
discontent, which smoulders here as elsewhere in patient
Italy, but here with special justification, ever use the wild
opportunities at its doors as a lever to force some relief,
some encouragement, some sustenance for energy and
46 IN THE ABRUZZI [pt. i.
industry, out of the middle-class, lawyer-ridden Govern-
ment that rules at Rome, and manifests itself in the
southern provinces mainly in the pretty and well-kept
uniform of the carabinieri ? I repeat again, there is no
obvious sign of this ; only one cannot forget the history of
this land when wandering through its tameless solitudes.
Calm-minded judges, both native and outsiders, are
generally agreed that the Abruzzesi are a frugal, hard-
working, honest, patient race, neither predatory nor
rebellious by nature, far more disciplinable than the
Calabrians. Yet the three provinces of the Abruzzi
have till recently never been free from brigandage ; and
the chronicle of the bandits' exploits is appalling in its
length and extent. Every mountainous country has had,
of course, its robber bands. There have been special
reasons why in this one they should have had longer
power than elsewhere. Age upon age passed, and all
the rulers of this wild land were strangers to the people.
They came and went, Romans and Goths, Lombards
and Franks and Germans, Spaniards and French, each
with their own laws, which were set up and disappeared,
all of them arbitrary and accidental in the eyes of the
natives. The poor land had little to give the invader ;
but what it possessed it was despoiled of pretty equally
by all. Isolated in their mountains, the people learnt
in the course of ages a resignation strongly tinged with
cynicism, content to keep their sheep, to pursue their
own little town and village life, glad when none meddled.
There were princes and powers they could realize,
strangers, too, for the most part, but naturalized — the
Caldora, the Cantelmi, the lords of Sangro, and near the
Roman frontier, the Colonna and the Orsini ; and
the local wars of these princes were a fine school for
bandits. So when the Grand Companies roamed the
land, the people saw brigandage legitimized and re-
warded. Sforza and Braccio and Piccinino were but
CH. III.] BRIGANDAGE IN THE ABRUZZI 47
brigands of wider range, with king or pope at their back
to urge and recompense them. Even when order ruled
in the townships there were ahvays the hills in sight,
where the wild life could be lived, after which the heart
of man hungereth world without end. Moreover, not a
few of the population were nomadic — as they are to this
day — and practically homeless. Down in the Apulian
plains in winter they were far from their own hearths
and the taming influences of wife and babes ; and in
summer, camped up in the high pastures, they were but
rare visitors to their homes in the towns below. For
lack of proper means of communication the Neapolitan
Government enlisted the Abruzzesi rarely in their
regular armies, and thus they missed not only an
obvious means of discipline, but also of identification
with the central government. Personally brave even to
recklessness, hardy and frugal, of the stuff the best rough
cavalry soldiers are made of, born in the saddle, so to
speak, they have known remarkably little military train-
ing, and, remembering their glorious early history, have
shown themselves peculiarly little belligerent. They
have not notably withstood the invaders who menaced the
kingdom from their frontier. " Only another stranger,"
they said ; and let him pass. In their mountains they
would be little better off, little worse. Hardly have
they ever been given anything of their own to fight for.
Only when the priests preached a holy war, and cried
that the Faith was in danger at the hands of the Gari-
baldians, did they join with the Bourbon bandits to
fight for what was indeed real to them and very dear.
One thing more they have loved, though with an in-
effectual passion — their independence. They let the
stranger pass, but they never owned him in their hearts.
Neglect gave them a measure of autonomy which
strengthened their proud isolation. And some of the
sporadic brigandage through the ages may be regarded
48 IN THE ABRUZZI [pt. i.
as a negation of, and its toleration on the part of the
orderly population as a half-conscious protest against,
the central power. The Abruzzesi have never identified
themselves with any of their Governments save the
Bourbons', even with that very partially and loosely, and
in the main from religious motives. And it was pre-
cisely the Bourbons, at a time when brigandage had else-
where become an outrage to public sentiment, who used
it, fomented it, paid for it, gave it the sanction of the
Crown and the Faith. Not all the later brigandage was
political, of course ; but it existed under cover of political
disturbance. Moreover, the brigands were by no means
all native-born, were never so at any epoch, and especially
was this the case in recent times, when the Bourbon
Government over and over again emptied the galleys of
Southern Europe, and poured malefactors into the
country during the struggle for independence, to excite
disturbance, to strengthen the party of " law and order,"
and, after their fall, to embarrass the Savoy rule. Then
it was that the disbanded royalists of all countries joined
with desperadoes, with wild shepherds and ignorant
contadini, and, under the name of Abruzzesi, made the
last stand for Francis II.
The most famous brigand of old days was Marco
Sciarra. He has two traditional reputations. According
to one of these, his name was of such terror that mothers
hushed rebellious children by whispering it in their ear.
According to another, he enjoyed a wide and genial
popularity, hardly less than our Robin Hood ; and his
title, " King of the Country," was more real than
that of the Viceroy who ruled at Naples. Without
any doubt, Sciarra was a great captain, and that he
was a brigand chief and not a condottiere honoured by
kings, the founder of a noble house, was not so much
an accident of fortune as due to a personal preference
cii. III.] BRIGANDAGE IN THE ABRUZZI 49
for independence — which leaves the greater romance
with him.
This is how Sciarra took to the hills. When a young
man, his sweetheart, Camilla Riccio, gave her affections
to a rival, Matteo de Lellis. Marco surprised Matteo
singing under her window, Camilla listening, and heard
the appointment, " A domani." The morrow never came
for them. Marco, in his blind fury, slew them both with
his knife. He laid their heads together on the same
pillow, says the story, and wrote on the wall above
them, "Thus does Marco Sciarra to those who betray
him."
Now for the hills. The outlaw was handsome, quick-
witted, and of boundless energy — a born leader. A band
gathered about him, daring and skilful depredators from
the first. In 1584 the governor of Chieti took severe
measures to repress them. He ordered all the horses of
private persons to be placed at the disposition of the
authorities, under heavy penalties. All the property of
the bandits' kindred was sequestered, and their families
banished to Salerno if at the end of eight days they
had not prevailed on the outlaws to surrender. Such of
the band as were caught were tortured or hanged. But
always and everywhere Marco went scot free — re della
canipagna in real truth. When the soldiers came on him
they got the worst of it, till the Spanish troops of the
Viceroy trembled at his name ; and the great captain.
Carlo Spinelli, sent by the Viceroy with four thousand
men, owed his life to the magnanimity of the brigand
chief, who ordered his band to let him go.
Cruel and gallant, infinitely audacious, he scoured the
Abruzzi and Molise, at once the terror and the pride of
the country. Tradition says he respected the honour
of women, and restrained his men rather than urged
them to violence. To his terrible gests there are pretty
interludes. One day at Ripattone, near Teramo, he met
E
50 IN THE ABRUZZI [pt. i.
a young bride going with some companions home to her
bridegroom's house. Sciarra invited her to the dance,
his men invited her comrades ; and then, cap in hand, he
begged through his band for money to dower the bride,
tie had one ally of exalted rank, Alfonso Piccolomini,
Duke of Monte Marciano, who had fallen out with the
powers that were, notably with the Grand Duke of
Tuscany. Piccolomini and Sciarra rivalled each other
in audacity ; but it was Sciarra who dared to go as far as
the walls of Rome and skirmish there with the troops of
da Monte and Virginio Orsini ; while one of his lieu-
tenants, Prete Guerino, coined money with the sublimely
insolent device, " A sacco Roma." Indeed, he was for some
years virtually master of the Campagna, the Abruzzi,
and the Capitanata — which was very annoying to the
other, to the legitimized, brigands. Sciarra went on his
merry way, the soldiers shyer and shyer of meeting him
and his men, declaring that there was " little honour and
less profit in warring against a band so brave and so
desperate." But in time he met reverses. In 1591,
Piccolomini was caught at Cesenatico, and hanged at
Florence ; and a price of four thousand ducats was set
on Sciarra's head. It was never enough to tempt a
shepherd of the Abruzzo to betray his hiding-place.
Pursued, however, with relentless persistence, he yielded
to the flattering offer of the Venetian Republic, and
in 1592 entered its service, with all his men, to fight
against the Uscocchi. Careers were open to the talents
in those days ! The future, with wealth and power, was
his, and greater spoil than he would ever be likely to
find in the old life. But Marco was of the true breed.
He missed his mountains. He missed his freedom. He
had no quarrel with the Uscocchi. Let those who had
fight them. Even the short time he remained in the
service of the Republic he was still at his old game
on the frontiers of the Neapolitan Kingdom and the
CH. III.] BRIGANDAGE IN THE ABRUZZI 51
Pontifical States. It was then that Tasso crossed his
path, and even wished to cross swords with him. The
poet was on his way from Naples to Ferrara. When he
reached Mola di Gaeta, Sciarra and his men lay there,
near them the Viceroy's troops under Acquaviva, Count
of Conversano, and another contingent under Aldobran-
dini, sent by his uncle Clement VIII. The two generals
were waiting for the bandit's attack, and Sciarra was
letting them wait. For private travellers the way was
blocked. Manso, Tasso's Boswell, says that the brigand,
hearing that the poet was in the neighbourhood, wrote
to him offering not only a free pass and safe conduct
along his route, but whatever he might think to demand,
he and his band being Tasso's most humble servitors.
" For which Torquato rendered his thanks, but preferred
not to accept the invitation, peradventure because he
judged it unbecoming to accept it, as also because he
would not have conceded the same to him. Where-
upon Sciarra, perceiving this, sent to him saying that for
honour of him he was willing to retire — which he did."
This may be all romance, a mere imitation of Ariosto's
veritable adventure with the brigands of the Garfagnana.
Solerti, Tasso's modern, painstaking, and prosaic editor,
laughs at the story, as he does at most of Manso's tales.
But the imitation may have been on Sciarra's part. He
was no uncultivated savage, and he loved to play, and
knew well how to play, the beaiL rule. However, it must
be confessed that Tasso does not speak of the brigand's
courtesy in the letter which he wrote to Feltro at the
time. Indeed, he mentions only his own desire for
prowess. Amid the delays and skirmishes he grew
impatient and angry. " I wished to go out and flesh the
sword given me by your lordship." And at this, too,
Solerti laughs, determined to strip Tasso of all romance,
and deny him all instincts of manhood.
Resolved, then, to quit the Venetian service, Sciarra
52 IN THE ABRUZZI [pt. i.
left five hundred of his men behind, who were sent to
Candia on regular soldiering business, and with a small
band he set off back again to the Abruzzi. But in the
band was a Judas, Batistello by name, between whom
and Aldobrandini, the Pope's nephew, there was a
treacherous understanding. Ere ever they reached their
own mountains, on their way through the Marches,
Batistello killed the chief, and by favour of Aldobrandini
lived an " honest man " ever after.
There has never been another Marco Sciarra. But
in the long line of Abruzzi brigands, among the cut-
throats, the savages, the gallows-birds, the legitimist and
religious fanatics, the poor harassed wretches in trouble
with local magnates or the police, and forced to the
mountains, — among all these, native and foreign, there
have been formidable persons, and some men of great
talent and resource. Brigandage was always there, a
menace and an opportunity ; but on a great scale it
came in waves. Of political disturbance it was both
symptom and result. At the time of the Revolution,
and of the French occupation, the noxious plant sprang
up strong and hearty in the kingdom of Naples. These
were the days of Fra Diavolo, Mammone, Proni, Sciarpi,
de Cesari.
Hear Paul-Louis Courier's account of his journey
through the country in 1805. He was on his way to
Barletta, where he was to command the horse artillery.
"After passing through Lore to I reached, on the 19th
of October, Guilia-Nova, the first village of the kingdom
of Naples. ... I was very well lodged and fed there by
the Franciscans, whose convent is the only habitable
house in the place. Everywhere I have been treated in
the same way throughout the kingdom — always lodged
in the best house and served with the best the place
could furnish. The whole county is full of brigands,
which is the fault of the Government, who use them to
CH. III.] BRIGANDAGE IN THE ABRUZZI 53
vex and pillage their own subjects. I have come across
ever so many ; but, as they had no desire to pick a
quarrel with the French army, they let me pass. Imagine,
in all this kingdom, a carriage cannot venture into the
open country without an escort of fifty armed men, who
are often robbers themselves. I arrived at Pescara on
the 20th. It passes for the strongest of this portion of
the kingdom of Naples, yet the fortification is very poor.
The house where I lodged had been sacked, with all the
rest of the town, after the retreat of the French, five years
ago. Those who distinguished themselves as bandits on
that occasion are now the favourites of the Government,
which employs them to levy contributions. The mob is
for the king ; and every proprietor is a Jacobin : it is
the haro of this country. On the 22nd I was lodged at
Ortona, in the house of Count Berardi, who told me that
the governor of the province was a certain Carbone, once
a mason, then a convict, later a friend of the king, after
the retreat of the French — and to-day, pacJia. This Car-
bone sent him, a few days before I came, an order to pay
12,000 ducats — about 50,000 francs. He got off for half.
So is this country governed. It is the Queen who orders
it in this fashion, for she flaunts her hate and contempt
for the nation she governs.
" On the 24th, at Lanciano, I found a French light
cavalry regiment. One of the officers sold me for ten
louis a pair of pistols, which I judged prudent to add to
my equipment. The colonel gave me a guide to show
me the way to Vasto ; but the guide lost the track, and we
just escaped being killed in a village, where the peasants,
stirred up by their priests as they came out of mass, would
fain have performed the pious act of assassinating us.
It was well for me I understood the language, and did
not dismount." *
Nor did his adventures end at the Abruzzi frontier,
* P.-L, Courier, (Eitvrcs^ vol. iii. p. 37,
54 IN THE ABRUZZI [pt. i.
Among the brigands were all sorts — from the hustlers
of poor peasants to the hired ruffians armed by the great
for the embarrassment of the other side. In the Abruzzi
the province of Chieti was their chief hunting-ground ;
but from their lairs in the forests and the mountains they
rushed out and terrorized both the seaboard provinces.
For one taken, a hundred remained at liberty to laugh
and spoil again. Starved in their mountains they could
hardly be, for the terrified contadini refused them food
at their peril. Where severity failed, sometimes treaties
were attempted ; but the brigands were the more cautious
of the two parties, for they had learnt by old experience
that the police now would keep their pact and now would
break it. Under the reigns of Joseph Bonaparte and
Murat, brigandage was fomented by Bourbon influence,
and for a time it raged like a very plague. Apart from
spoil, there were regular salaries to be earned, and pen-
sions too, for good service. Among the famous bandit
leaders were Antonelli, Fulvio Ouici, and Basso-Tomeo.
Antonelli, a native of Fossasecca, near Lanciano, was the
most formidable, and every expedition against him failed
ignominiously. His insolence and his daring were equal,
and the messages he sent down to the emissaries of the
French Government were couched in language of royal
arrogance. For a time it was doubtful in the province
of Chieti who was king — the Bonaparte or Antonelli.
The bandit refused to treat with subordinates, and Joseph
Bonaparte made overtures to him with as much ceremony
as to a brother sovereign. He sent plenipotentiaries to
him — one a distinguished Frenchman, General Merlin ;
the other a local magnate, Baron Nolli, of a noble family
still of importance in Chieti. Before agreeing to the
meeting, the brigand demanded that he should receive
military rank — that of colonel, at least. It was accorded
to him, and even the uniform and epaulettes were sent.
The meeting took place several miles from Chieti, and
CH. III.] BRIGANDAGE IN THE ABRUZZI 55
after the pact was made, the three entered the town,
Antonelli sharing the military honours at the gate.
Judge of the amazement of the people ! This is a fair
specimen of the political education which has been given
to the Abruzzi. The brigand remained quiet for a time,
pardoned, flattered, and pensioned. But during Murat's
reign he began his raids once more, and threatened to
put the country to fire and sword. This time other
measures were meted unto him. His past immunity
may have rendered him foolhardy, for he was captured.
One more entry he made into Chieti — seated on an ass,
his face to the tail, which was his bridle, and a placard
on his back for all to read : *' Behold the assassin Anto-
nelli ! " He was taken to his native Fossasecca and
hanged.
Stamped out in one place it rose in another. Basso-
Tomeo, who held out in the thick woods of Pedacciata,
near the Trigno, was a merciless brute, one of whose
proudest exploits was to fire a gendarmes' barracks when
the men were absent and only women and children within.
But the enraged Lancianesi made an end of him by the
hands of the civic guards.
Meanwhile Manh^s had undertaken the suppression
of brigandage. The historian Colletta, who did not love
him, said, " I should not like to have been General
Manhes, but neither should I like General Manh^s not
to have been in the kingdom in 1809 and 18 10." At
that time the French held securely only a few fortresses
in the Abruzzi. The citizens in the towns ordered their
own lives as best they could in the divided state of public
opinion — some favourable to whatever French influence
reached them, which was liberal and enlightened in the
main, others sceptical, mistrustful, and hopeless. Else-
where the bandits ruled. Manhes, a French officer of
great distinction, a native of Aurillac, who had served in
56 IN THE ABRUZZI [pt. i.
the armies of France and Spain against the English, as
well as in Sicily against the brigands, came to our pro-
vinces in 1809 with full powers. It is not easy to judge
quite fairly of this famous man of action amidst the
streams of eulogy and the torrents of abuse that encom-
pass his name. One biographer calls him suave. Execu-
tioners have often been suave. There is no doubt of his
unflinching bravery, his iron will, his perfect uprightness.
Over his men — his " brave Cossacks," he called them —
he had absolute power, and they followed him with dash
into the very jaws of death. He "treated with" no one,
and he would not have condoned complicity even on the
part of the highest in the land. He had been sent to
suppress brigandage, and he turned himself into an engine
for that sole purpose, regardless of danger, of difficulty,
of the claims of mercy, and of his own reputation.
It was in Calabria, the year after, that he won the
greatest execration. He is thought to have found his
work in the Abruzzi comparatively easy, the ordinary
population being less implicated ; indeed, his task was
finished ere three months were over. But even here he
used the methods that raised an outcry from all the
philanthropists of Europe. The brigands' deeds were
often terrible. It was no time for kid-gloved measures ;
and Manhes was cruel of set purpose, and summary
beyond description. He never admitted a doubt while
there was a shot in his pouch or a halter within reach.
To starve the brigands out, he ordered that no peasant
might carry food out of doors ; and a woman who had
never heard a rumour of such an edict was shot while
carrying her husband's dinner across the fields. There
was a reign of terror among honest contadini, as well
as among brigands ; and Manhes, judge and executioner
in one, had the soldier's incapacit}' for taking evidence
and the soldier's contempt for it.
But he seemed the man for the moment ; the
CH. III.] BRIGANDAGE IN THE ABRUZZI 57
authorities in the Abruzzi showed themselves grateful ;
and Vasto put up a monument to him with this
inscription —
" Al forte guerriero di Aurillac, Carlo Antonio Manhes,
membro della legione d'onore, cavaliere dell' ordine delle
Due Sicilie, generale aiutante di campo di sua Maesta
Gioacchino Napoleone, distruttore de' briganti, restau-
ratore della publica quiete nelle contrade di Abruzzo, per
voto universale acclamato primo cittadino del Vasto."
The Vastesi dubbed him their " first citizen." The
Calabrians paid him the ambiguous compliment of
changing their common oath of " Santo Diabolo " into
" Santo Manhes." The man of the moment is apt to be
just the man of the moment ; and if Manhes brought
peace for a time to the troubled " contorni " of Lanciano,
Vasto, and Chieti, the mountaineers and contadini whom
he raided were not the more civilized thereby ; for the
legitimized ferocity of soldiers is more demoralizing than
any bandit savagery. And neither Manhes nor another
in his capacity could put down brigandage for long —
symptom of a deep-rooted disease which no militar}^
surgery could cure.
At each period of political unrest it became violent,
and no party can be said to be entirely free from the
taint of complicity in brigandage. In the province of
Teramo there were " liberal brigands," headed by Zilli
and Calaturo. They were used as messengers or as
guides ; and sometimes the suspects were glad to take
refuge with them in the hills. But it was the Bourbons
that adopted it consistently as a handy method of
unofficial warfare well worth paying for. Of course they
also felt its inconvenience at times, but it was not their
policy to take decided steps to destroy a weapon which
might be useful on the morrow. They preferred to make
pacts with the brigands. In 1844 Ferdinand gave
Giosaffate Tallarico a full pardon and a pension of
58 IN THE ABRUZZI [pt. i.
eighteen ducats a month. Giosafifate was no ordinary
malefactor. He was a man of education, I beHeve a
churchman in minor orders, and a small landowner. To
avenge a wronged brother he committed a crime and was
sent to the galleys. He escaped and ranged the moun-
tains of Catanzaro with a formidable band ; and so secure
did he feel that when wearied of mountain solitude he
would come down for an evening's amusement at the
theatre.
After the powerful encouragement of Bourbon gold,
nothing contributed more to the continuance of this state
of things than the lamentable cleavage which existed
between the poor country folk and the bourgeoisie —
indeed, all the educated classes. These latter, whether
they had been favourable or no to the French occupation,
had been influenced by French ideas. The Revolution
had awakened them. With every obstacle placed in
their way, harassed, spied on, imprisoned, they sought
continuously for light. The ferment among them was
thrust underground, and any propaganda by them among
the lower classes was made impossible. On the other
hand, the poor mountaineers were taught nothing save to
fear the king ; and the gendarmes and the priests were
there to see that they did so. They had nothing to
expect save from the king and the Church, they learnt ;
and the bourgeoisie were impious and traitors. The
Jesuits poured missionaries into the Abruzzi as to a
heathen country ; but their mission was to preach
reaction, and instil horror in the minds of timid humble
folk of those who ventured to question the deeds of
Government agents or churchmen. They were eloquent
preachers, and their tales of woe told to an inflammable
people had their due effect. Women fainted, or brought
forth abortions. Men flagellated themselves for others'
sins. Among such congregations the volunteers of the
CH. III.] BRIGANDAGE IN THE ABRUZZI 59
reaction were many. It was a holy war — and this holy
war translated into plain fact was brigandage. Herein
lay the strength of the bandits — that they could cluster
round a political banner ; and no widespread and reso-
lute step on the part of the orderly population could be
taken while the affair was so involved, so diverse of com-
plexion. Thus the criminal enjoyed his long opportunity ;
and an honest, sober people got a bad name and an
execrable training.
'!=>•
To be a noted brigand chief needed concentration.
But some of the less famous led double lives, working in
the fields by day, and at night raiding the country with
the bands, or at least helping them by keeping them
informed of the whereabouts of the police. A traveller
wishing to cross the Matese, the range that runs into the
MoHse, took a peasant for a guide, and found him an
excellent, even a sympathetic one. The two looked
over the glorious stretch of hill and plain and sea,
moved by the beauty and the grandeur. Going on their
way, they passed a wooden cross set up by the path.
" Why is it here } " asked the traveller.
" I set it up," answered the guide.
" Why ? "
" Oh, I had a misfortune just here."
" How } "
" I was unlucky enough to kill a man."
" You ! Not possible ! "
" Yes, alas ! it was so," he replied, in a subdued voice.
The traveller felt for the remorseful man by his side.
On they went a little farther, and they came to
another cross.
" And that one .? "
" I set it up, too," owned the guide.
" You .? But "
" Yes, alas ! a misfortune happened to me there also ! "
6o IN THE ABRUZZI [pt. l.
He had set up nine-and-twenty crosses on the same
mountain !
In speaking of the complexity of brigandage I have
mentioned only two elements, the honestly discontented
(or fanatically alarmed) and the criminals, for the most
part galley-slaves escaped, or purposely let loose. There
were other causes and constituents. Secret societies
have always been of strength in Southern Italy, an out-
come of persistent misgovernment ; and the Cammorra,
with its home in Naples and Sicily, had its emissaries in
the mountains of the Abruzzi. Add to this that at
certain epochs, and where the local authorities were
particularly weak, the bandits organized a press-gang, and
forced young contadini into their service. Judge of the
demoralization when certain townships — little and remote,
of course — were conscious of earning their immunity from
sack and pillage and fire by suffering vigorous youths to
be pressed into the gangs. There were honest fellows
among these hostages, who refused to raid and waste.
Then they knew the brigands' mercy : they were tortured
and shot. As a rule, hardly were they in the power of
the band than they were forced into some serious enter-
prise, into the very van of it. Their good name gone,
they might as well remain in the hills. A fine people's
school ! The peasants went armed, but they dared not,
singly, be even uncivil to the brigands, or refuse to shake
them by the hand. Insolence could go no further, and,
in a country practically roadless, they were all-powerful.
The ruffians would carry off the head of a family, and
come down in person with a letter from him asking for
ransom. Of course the family paid. When they
approached a village they have been known to send a
peremptory message to the parish priest to come out
and meet them. This he did more often than not, show-
ing them an abject and trembling courtesy. But there
CH. III.] BRIGANDAGE IN THE ABRUZZI 6i
were priests of another stamp, and there is a story of
one of them I cannot forget. A band had long been
harrying a village in the Marsica. One day a handful of
them made a dastardly attack on some poor folk ; and
the parocco faced them and shot the leader. His fall took
the heart out of the gang, which dispersed, and the village
knew peace. His parishioners kissed their deliverer's
feet in gratitude, and he received honours and decorations
from the authorities. But from the day the brigand fell
by his hand he never smiled, he never spoke, save to say
the office in the church' and in the ministration of the
sacraments. He had shed blood ; and thenceforth he
lived on, a melancholy shadow, a silent sacrifice, till
death released him.
When the urban guard was too troublesome, and
safety was precarious for the ruffians, it was usually
possible to get regular employment in the royal army,
or sometimes pensions with semi-liberty — though once
the band of Vandarelli were decoyed to Foggia on pre-
tence of pardon and employment, and were shot down.
Of course, during a political crisis there was no question
of pardon. Then they had carte blanche to do what they
liked ; and it was the orderly citizen who read Mazzini,
or a liberal newspaper smuggled over the frontier, who
went to gaol.
With the fall of the Bourbons and during their desperate
struggle to recapture the country, brigandage reached its
height in the Abruzzi. Never had the hiring of bandits
been more openly carried on. The criminal element was
far too strong for it to be called by another name, yet
from the reaction point of view it was a state of civil war.
The mountaineers had .something definite to fight for.
To them the Garibaldians were the brigands. All
through the mountains they were up for King Francis.
The hills resounded with " Viva il Re ! " " Viva la
Madonna ! " Vasto was restive. Civita di Penne held
62 IN THE ABRUZZI [pt. I.
out for the king. Gissi, Liscio, Monteodorisio were in
a ferment. The brigand Piccione, who was annoying
Teramo and the neighbourhood with his six hundred
men, told, after his capture, how the clergy had preached
to him a holy war, Contadini and brigands mingled
freely, and in the strange chaos gendarmes joined them.
Those of Civitella donned the Bourbon colours after the
passing of Victor Emmanuel, rushed down to the plain,
sacked the villages, menaced Teramo ; and Civitella,
headed by these legitimist gendarmes, and aided by
bandits, held out for Francis. The two most influential
persons in the garrison were Zopinone, a brigand, and
P. Leonardo Zilli, a priest. The Civitellesi, after a sturdy
resistance to the Italian troops under Pinelli, would have
given in, seeing victory impossible, and in the continu-
ance of the siege a mere waste of life. But the brigands
had everything to lose by surrender, and compelled
further resistance, defying the governor. Zopinone and
the priest, with Mesinelli, a sergeant, kept it up with
obstinate vigour till they were seized and shot.
In the Marsica was a state of war. When Luparelli
with his gendarmes came from Francis at Gaeta, in i860,
they brought with them a band of released convicts, who
sacked and burned their way along, and cut off liberals'
heads to send to their master Francis. There was
not a shadow of discipline. Avezzano and the little towns
round Fucino were terror-stricken. When the Italian
soldiers came from Aquila they were always too few ;
and, besides, the bandits could find temporary refuge in
the inaccessible places near Civita di Roveto, above the
Liris. Tagliacozzo, a strong centre of reaction, presented
a grand opportunity for brigandage from its nearness to
the frontier of the Papal States. It was in that neigh-
bourhood that took place the astonishing exploits of the
incomparable Giorgi ; but they belong to the story of
the Marsica, and may be passed by here. In all the
CH. III.] BRIGANDAGE IN THE ABRUZZI 6^,
remoter places no one believed that the Savoyard had
come to stay, and at Castel di Sangro the people of the
high town came rushing down to overpower the bour-
geois below with a Bourbon song in their mouths.
" * lam a spass' a spass'.
Viva ru Re e ru popolo bass.'
Cia data la farina,
Viva ru Re e la Regina ! "
Through the Abruzzi, peasants and banditti sang
Bourbon hymns with solemn fervour as they marched
to the attack of those who had accepted the Italian
Government.
"Co' la schioppetta e' la baionetta
Alia campagna hemma da sci ;
Gia che la sorte vole accusci,
Nui pel Borbone hemma muri !
"Addio, addio ! la casa mia.
La zita mia na' vede cchiu !
Gia che la sorte vole accusci,
Nui pel Borbone hemma muri ! "
This was known as the "Brigands' Song," perhaps
dubbed so a little unjustly by the bourgeoisie ; but at least
many of those who sang of dying for the Bourbon were
determined to live as long as possible at the expense of
other people.
The Plebiscite concerning the union of the Two
Sicilies under Victor Emmanuel was the occasion of
wild disturbances. A police officer at Pratola tore off
his tricolor and donned the red tuft, and when his chief
remarked on it, he got a dagger-thrust It was the
signal of revolt. The peasants of the Sulmona Valley
flocked under a red banner, armed with spades, forks,
scythes, and antiquated arms, sacking houses in the name
of Francis, and crying, " Down with the Constitution ! "
Reaction and brigandage mingled inextricably. At
Caramanico on the day of the Plebiscite, October 20,
i860, all the men of the district had voted in the Piazza.
64 IN THE ABRUZZI [pt. i.
They waited for the peasants and the mountaineers of
Majella, who came late. When, at last, they arrived in
bands, an old fierce-looking fellow, his broad-brimmed
hat pulled over his eyes, asked with a haughty gesture,
"Where is the urn of Francis 11. .'"' "There is no such
thing here. There are two urns, one for ' Yes,' and the
other for ' No.' " " Then," cried the peasant in a loud
voice, " I vote for Francis." A crowd gathered about
him on the instant, as if he had given a signal. There
were shouts for Francis, and waving of hats. The.
National Guard tried to disperse them by firing in the
air, whereupon the peasants rushed up to the castle.
From the old Rocca they hurled down stones. They
were joined by others, and soon were masters of the
place. Messengers, riding for aid to the guards, were
stopped and killed. A chief was needed for the revolt,
and Colafella came. He was undoubtedly a brigand ;
probably he was also a convinced Bourbonist, and he
seems even to have had some authority given him by
the ex-king. He brought pictures of Francis and his
wife, Maria Sofia, which were placed on the high altar
of the church as holy things, while they sang the Te
Deum with wild jubilation. Colafella showed some signs
of generalship and resource before the revolt was put
down by a strong contingent of Piedmontese.
Among the fomenters of dispeace at this moment, and
for years after, must be counted the disbanded Bourbon
troops of every nationality. As they could not be kept
together and paid, they were let loose with distinct orders
to annoy the Government, to set on travellers — and thus
discredit the gendarmerie — and to stir up the peasants.
An easy escape was always ready from the Abruzzi over
the frontier to the Papal States. And in Rome pro-
tection and money and arms were forthcoming for them,
and Cardinal Antonclli was their chief and not very
CH. III.] BRIGANDAGE IN THE ABRUZZI 65
remote patron. In this chapter are incidents of various
complexions, some with a strong admixture of the comic,
like the gests of the famous Giorgi, others truly heroic
like the campaign of the forlorn hope under the Spanish
royalist, Borjes. But these belong to the history of the
Marsica, where they will be found.
Moreover, at the passing of Garibaldi there had
been a general amnesty. Let out of prison, the convicts
donned the red shirt out of gratitude, and some of them
made good soldiers under discipline. On the disband-
ment of the Garibaldians they hoped for employment in
the national army. This was refused, and they were
thrown back on their old life. With such an admixture
of men of military training, no wonder the desperadoes
were often more than a match for the soldiers sent to
hunt them. Insolent and brave, they laughed at the
infantry and cavalry detachments ; and the noted ones,
on whose heads a price was set, dared to come down to
the villages tricked out in gold rings and earrings, and
coquettishly attired.
The hat of Aspromonte was a favourite, though
Cannone, who sported it, wore by night the full uniform
of a commandant of the National Guards, a medal on his
breast, and arms of excellent pattern, supplied by the
Bourbon agents across the frontier. Here is a description
of a brigand's dress — a brigand in a good way of busi-
ness, of course. Long hair and a beard were de rigiietir.
If they had no beard, they wore a false one. Above
their flowing locks was set the pointed hat with a plume
or a peacock's feather in it. Their cloth or velvet jacket,
with narrow short sleeves, was worn over a red waistcoat.
On the shoulders lay a large white linen shirt-collar,
Byronic fashion. A gorgeous-coloured sash hung down
one side, and round the waist was a leathern girdle called
a padroncina, in which they carried their weapons, their
ammunition, and their money. The breeches were
F
66 IN THE ABRUZZI [pt. i.
adorned at the knee with brass buttons. There dangled
from them, of course, horns of coral or silver to keep off
the evil eye. A great blue or chestnut-coloured mantle
hung about these exquisites in winter. So I have heard
the dress described. But it was only the ordinary peasant
costume smartened up and worn jauntily. You can see
it in the valley of the Liris to this day. Some added
earrings and magnificent-hued handkerchiefs to the
decoration of their persons ; and none were without
medals and amulets and images of the Blessed Virgin
and the saints.
" Madonna mia, protect this poor sinner, aid him in
the last dangers, and save his soul," was written on the
amulet of Pasquale Moreschi, shot at Scanno.
So far as the suppression of brigandage in the
Abruzzi is due to any one man, it is due to a carabiniere
of genius, one Chiaffredo Bergia, a Piedmontese, born at
Paesana, near Saluzzo. He knew mountain country
well, for his parents were shepherds. Of a wandering
habit, he went to France early in life in search of work,
and on his return entered the service of the carabinieri
at Turin. As a man of vigour, agility, and intelligence
he was given a difficult post, and sent to the Abruzzi, to
Chieti, and later, to Scanno, then suffering from the
depredations of the band of Tamburrini. For the first
time these brigands found some one braver and more
agile than themselves, and he learnt to know the
mountains as if he had been born there. His desperate
encounters were many, and in each he was successful.
Moreschi was caught and shot at Scanno. The Prata,
the narrow green strip that runs from that little town
south to the mountains, has seen ugly fighting ; and the
women that now all the summer long go to and from
the forests for the winter faggots, may well whisper a
prayer for the repose of the soul of Bergia. When the
cii. III.] BRIGANDAGE IN THE ABRUZZI ^j
valley of the Sagittario was cleared, he was transferred
to other centres of disturbance, in 1864 to Pettorano, to
Cittaducale, to Antrodoco. He was given a roving
commission, and he was ubiquitous. The brigands could
not match his alertness, and information of his where-
abouts came, always too late, to Rocca di Mezzo, Rocco
di Cambio, to Popoli, to Capestrano, Now he appeared
as a beggar, now he was a friar, and now a nun. The
bandits saw the end of their merry life not far off. One
of his greatest captures was in 1868, when in the Macchia
Carasale he took the assassin Giovanni Palombieri.
Round Vasto the trouble still continued, though on a
more restricted scale. The ordinary carabinieri were
useless, and were made fools of by the contadini, who
gave them false information. There was one band of
brigands that, when hard pressed and tired of hiding and
skirmishing, used to go into retreat in the prisons of
Gissi, which were often empty, the governor in charge
being their very good friend, and in their pay. The
history of brigandage in the Abruzzi presents many tragic
pages, but likewise abundant themes for comic opera.
One of the last formidable bandits in the province of
Chieti was Colamarino, taken in 1870 between Vasto and
San Buono.
But the province of Aquila (Ulteriore II.) was still
much disturbed by Croce di Tola of Roccaraso, and Del
Guzzo of Pediciano. Bergia rode the mountains till he
drove them out of every hole of refuge. He had been in
many desperate fights, but in none more deadly than
when Croce di Tola was taken, in July, 1871, on Monte
Pallotieri, near Barrea. The capture and death of Del
Guzzo near Fontecchio followed in a few months. Bergia
was made Cavaliere della Corona dltalia and Marischal.
Honours were heaped on him ; he was raised to the rank
of captain, and lived long after the Abruzzi had been
cleared of the brigands, dying at Bari in 1 892.
6S IN THE ABRUZZI [pt. i.
Brigandage never flourished after September 20,
1870, which ended the possibility of easy escape
into a foreign state. Thenceforward the Itahan Govern-
ment became a real and formidable fact in the heart of
the mountains. No more arms from Rome. No more
passports stolen from honest peasants crossing to the
Papal States, and given to brigands. No more help from
the Papal Government and the Spanish Legation to
escape across seas when the fame of their evil deeds grew
too hot. There were desperadoes still ; but the heart was
out of the enterprise, and the peasants could no longer be
terrorized into helping them. The police made no more
pacts with them.
Then the Pica Law was passed. The Legge Pica
was called after its originator, an Abruzzese lawyer and
deputy, Giuseppe Pica of Aquila, who had suffered much
in the long struggle for liberty, and was greatly concerned
for the fair fame of his province. Its principal provisions
were — (i) the institution of military tribunals for brigands
and their accomplices ; (2) capital punishment for armed
resistance to the representatives of the Government ; and
(3) power to be given to the police to confine for a year
the idle, the vagabonds, and such as a special commis-
sion should declare to be Cammorristi, or receivers of
stolen goods ; (4) the formation of a militia of volunteers
for the suppression of brigandage.
The Legge Pica did some good work — though it was
not faultless. Its application was often harsh ; it gave
power into some hands unfitted for it, and it flustered the
peasants. But doubtless it was a contributory force in
the annihilation of what had already received its death
blow. The opening up of the country by roads and rail-
ways was the next step. Roads, railways, the carabinieri,
Bcrgia, the Legge Pica, all helped ; but it was Septem-
ber 20, that cut at the root of the evil plant. There
are doubtless pros and cons in the peasants' minds about
t?is^h
4
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c/)
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OS
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o
^r
CH. III.] BRIGANDAGE IN THE ABRUZZI 69
the benefit of the unity of Italy. From their point of
view there is something to be said for the old regime ;
but at least a united Italy utterly destroyed brigandage
in the Abruzzi.
But memories are long there. And the stories seldom
heard by strangers are still told round the fireside ; and
something less than thirty years is a little bit in the life
of a people. We walked the roads and the mountain-
paths by twilight and in the dark with perfect safety and
confidence. But I think we never once did so without a
warning from some peasant. At Scanno, ere yet it was
dusk, before the first twink of light was to be seen in the
town above us or below, some little sturdy homing maid,
with her faggot on her head, would say to us in peremp-
tory tones, " Fai nott'. Andiam'." And she would wait,
surprised we did not do her bidding. At Roccaraso, or
returning from Castel di Sangro, or on the wild Piano di
Leone, near Roccacinquemiglia, the hurrying peasants
would bid us hurry too, to hearth and home, for the
night was coming. These are the haunts of Tamburrini
and Moreschi, of Croce di Tola and Del Guzzo. They
all lie in their graves. They have no successors lurking
behind the great rocks, in the thickets, on the beech-
covered hillsides. But their ghosts walk, and still the
warning is given. It sounds eerie ; and eerie, too, is the
long backlook of the well-wishing peasant on your linger-
ing amid the shadows or under the stars.
CHAPTER IV
RELIGION IN THE ABRUZZI
The one reality — A home of hermits and mystics — B. Thomas of Celano
— Earthquakes — St. Peter Celestine — Rienzi in the Abruzzi— St.
John of Capestrano — St. Bernardino of Siena — The Messiah of
the Abruzzi — " Representations " — Talami — Madonna, heiress of Ceres
— Pilgrimages— The hermits of to-day.
The onethingthat has remained an everlasting interestand
power in the land is religion. It has been the supreme
and permanent reality in a country where earthly powers
and principalities have had no permanence. On the altars
has never died the fire of the sacrifice to a deity conceived
of many shapes and faces. " I will lift up mine eyes unto
the hills, from whence cometh my help," said the old
Peligni, when they built their temples to Great Jove on
the spurs of Majella, as when, later, they reared houses
of praise to Jehovah almost on the borderland of the
summer snows, and gave the guardianship of the desolate
places to the gracious Virgin and the friendly saints.
The ancient mystic force of the Sabine peoples is not
yet exhausted, and its manifestations to-day are some-
times of a strangeness that brings widely severed ages
together.
The Church in the Abruzzi has been a power without
a rival ; and if it be loosening its hold tliere as elsewhere,
especially in the towns, nothing is adequately taking its
place. You cannot explain it as a mere political force,
though it has been that too. More or less, it has been a
70
CH. IV.] RELIGION IN THE ABRUZZI ^\
faithful symbol of an intense reality behind ; but notwith-
standing their formal submission to it, the people have
retained, with a large and unconscious independence, a
belief in old secret lore, in magic, divination, and wizardry.
The Faith in the Abruzzi still nourishes wild pagans and
ascetic Christian saints, who live, very little perturbed,
cheek by jowl with the new race of rationalists and
materialists. The towns breed, of course, a sturdy crop
of these last ; but then town life here does not count for
much as yet. "
Of old the home of oracles, diviners, enchanters, these
provinces in Christian times have been the haunt of
hermits, ecstatics, fanatics — of all to whom religion has
been more than a circumstance, an incident in life. Here
it has blossomed as a rose in the desert. It has come as
a light in days overshadowed by the desolate hills. It
has come, too, as a flame and as a sword — nay, also, as
a darkness keeping the minds in gloomy, shuddering
places. White magic and black magic have the people
known. Now they have prostrated themselves before
the fair Virgin of the Graces, and now before the
death's-head, and have said to corruption, " Thou art our
father."
Among the countless recluses and manifestors of the
spirit born here, or who chose these wilds for their home,
some have stood out clear and shining. The Blessed
Thomas of Celano was a native of the town that looked
down, till lately, on the Fucine Lake — Thomas who was
the friend of St. Francis, and the friend of Pope Gregory
the Ninth. Learned doctor, saintly director he was, and
also suave and courtly Churchman. The saint died, and
the Order was full of warfare between such as desired to
make manifest its power to the world as a potent militia
for the Church, and such as willed it should remain a
band of Francis's poor men, faithful unto death to Lady
72 IN THE ABRUZZI [pt. i.
Poverty. The little poor man was to be canonized, and
for glorious proof to the world of his saintship Pope
Gregory commissioned Brother Thomas, the saintly, the
learned, the suave, to write the Life of the holy one.
Thomas made his book — the first of his two Lives of St.
Francis — the book of a good Latinist, of a saintly man,
find a poet, yet the book, too, of a courtier. Hardly a
word of the war and the turmoil which fill the rival
Speculum of Brother Leo. Thomas's Life had that
perfect and immediate success which attends the work
of apt writers who meet with apt patrons. A little too
prudent to be complete, it is exquisite, nevertheless, this
collection of tales of the intercourse of Brother Francis
with Christ and men and the creatures.
This suavity is not of his race. But the Abruzzese
in Thomas was uttered in his famous hymn, the Dies
Irce, which he made out of various proses and lamenta-
tions, giving the final form to the shuddering terror of
the sinner in a world of death and danger, to his trembling
hope, like the pale gleam of a star into some dark abyss
of an earthquake-rent land. Was it journeying to Rome,
or in the Foce di Caruso, or was it when climbing the
rocky, calamitous track that led from his own Celano to
tempest-swept Ovindoli, that the picture was fixed for
ever in his mind of the terrors of the judgment "i
" Dies irse, dies ilia,
Solvet SKclum in favilla,
Teste David cum Sibylla.
" Quantus tremor est futurus
Quando judex est venturus
Cuncta striate discussurus !
" Tuba mirum spargens sonum
Per sepulchra regionum
Coget omnes ante thronum.
'* Mors stupebit et natura
Quum resurget creatura
Judicanli responsura."
CH. IV.] RELIGION IN THE ABRUZZI -Ji
No wonder that through the people runs a stern
recognition of the end of mortal things. The King of
Terrors has shown himself in awful guise. War and
pestilence have raged in the old days. The wolf and
the brigand have taken their toll. How many have fallen
in the snow every year and never risen ! And then the
earthquakes, those unforeseeable, awful calamities that
have wrecked nearly all the old splendour and made
thousands homeless. " Not unforeseeable, though," said
the sternly religious. " They are a sign of the wrath of
God with human sin."
" With earthquakes doth angry Heaven awake thee,
and because the weight of thy sins is great, the earth can
no more uphold thee." This is the continual text of
preachers and sonnetteers in the time of calamity. I
have seen a list of appalling damage done in 1706 in
places I know now as broken and seamed and patched.
" Popoli in parte rovinato. Palena rovinato affatto.
Valle Oscura [to-day Roccapia] rovinato intiere. Rocca
Cinquemiglia non ve sono rimasto vestigie. Pettorani
quasi disfatto. Sulmona distrutta intiera." This, the
first report, was in some instances exaggerated. Sul-
mona, for instance, was not razed. But the glory and
much of the beauty vanished then.
They had prayers or charms against earthquakes.
" Christus Nobiscum State," written up on a house, was
considered efificacious. It had been so at Antioch in the
year 128. A specially potent icharm was — " Sanctus -f-
Deus -f- Sanctus -|- Fortis -1- Sanctus 4- et -f Immor-
talis -}- Miserere -f Nobis. I. N.R.I. Per Signum Sancte
Crucis -f Libera nos Domine. Christus Nobiscum State."
It had been imported from Constantinople, where it had
worked miracles of deliverance in the year 132.
The warning preachers and sonnetteers have had to
change their text, for these disturbances have decreased
much in area and intensity since the eighteenth century.
74 IN THE ABRUZZI [pt. i.
The earth rocks now and then ; old houses fall. The
menace rumbles and dies away.
This wild land was the chosen home of St. Peter
Celestine, of him who made il gran rifiuto, and was
scorned of Dante therefor — who was, nevertheless, the
worthy hero of a great spiritual crusade. The Sacred
College once made the strange experiment of electing
as Pope one who was in very truth a saint. Five months
brought the experiment to an end with Celestine's renun-
ciation ; and the world shrugged its shoulders. But the
experiment was made when he was an old feeble man,
worn out after a life of strenuous endeavour. Twenty
years before, the initiator of the Reform of St. Damian
and the Dove, the founder of a great order, the builder
of the abbeys on Morrone and Majella, saint though he
was, would have been a doughtier adversary of Gaetani.
Peter of Morrone, whom kings and cardinals were to
come to fetch out of his rocky cell on the mountain-side,
was a native of Isernia, in the neighbouring province, but
all his spiritual life and endeavours are connected with
the Abruzzi, more especially with Sulmona, and when
in our wanderings we reach there, I shall tell his tale.
San Spirit©, the great abbey that lies outside Sulmona,
under Celestine's hermitage, and San Spirito the ruined
sanctuary, his earlier retreat on Monte Majella, remind us
of that wave of contemplation that passed and repassed
over Italy from the twelfth to the fourteenth centuries.
It was the blossoming time of the universal heresy of the
Holy Ghost — first uttered for those ages by the Calabrian
Joachim de Floris — a heresy the Western world will not
away with, a heresy that saps the foundations of our
world, but eternally recurrent, that has been, and shall
be till the end of time. It found a natural home in
the Abruzzi, where, in the caves of the mountain-side,
the sublime revolters waited for the great third age of
the world — the age of contemplation.
CH. IV.] RELIGION IN THE ABRUZZI 75
Celestine had been dead five-and-forty years when
his sanctuary of San Spirito, on the Majella, sheltered for
a time another illustrious wanderer, the great tribune
Rienzi. It was in 1 349, after his first fall in Rome, that
he came here, a sad and broken man, to the home of
great dreamers. His visions of a new Rome came back,
but amplified, etherealized. The hermits up in the
mountain solitude found no apter pupil ; and to Cola the
breath of the great heresy was like his native air. It was
no longer Rome alone he would revive, not merely the
ancient stones of the city he would give a fresh purpose
to. He was called to bring in a new age of peace, when
the Spirit should rule in the old world ; and he should
be one of its three guardians. So he dreamt on the lonely
haunted mountain ; and fired by Brother Andrea and
Brother Angelo he set out to bid the Emperor at Prague
enlist also in the army of the Holy Ghost. But Charles
had not lived in the rarefied air of Majella ; and he only
shut Rienzi up in prison as a very dangerous person.
Some six-and-thirty years later, in 1386, there was
born at Capestrano in the Abruzzi, a little town about
halfway between Aquila and Sulmona, perhaps the
fieriest spirit of the fourteenth century — a saint who took
the road to Heaven fighting all the way. John dreamed
of no age of peace at hand. The world was warfare,
warfare — and he would ever be in the front of the battle.
He should have been a soldier. Circumstances made
him a lawyer ; and he became a famous doctor in civil
and canon law at Perugia, learned, strenuous, and able.
Trouble and sorrow emancipated him from this way of
life to one where he found himself. Entrusted by the
Perugians to negotiate a peace between them and his
own king, Ladislas of Naples, he was imprisoned on a
false charge, that of betraying the city. While he lay in
prison his wife died. His ransom cost him nearly all his
fortune. Stripped bare of earthly love and fame, he
^6 IN THE ABRUZZI [pt. i.
gave away his remnant of property, and entered the
Franciscan Order, as an Observant. Into his new Hfe he
flung himself heart and soul, and his earnestness, his
whole-hearted honesty burned their way to recognition.
John emerged from his years of penitence as a leader of
men. He was twice vicar-general. He was the Pope's
envoy in Lombardy, in Sicily, in France, probably in
England. His voice rang out clear in councils ; and to
the reform inaugurated by San Bernardino da Siena he
lent all his fiery ardour. Of the same age as Bernardino,
he was his pupil in theology and his devoted friend.
There never was a more splendid friend than John of
Capestrano — nor a more formidable foe. When
Bernardino was accused of heresy — his faith in the
symbol of the Holy Name being accounted to him for
such — this sworn enemy of all heretics fought for his
vindication tooth and nail. John heard of the trouble
while he was in Naples. Without a moment's delay he
set ofif for Aquila, his home when he had one, gathered
various papers to confute the evil tongues, and followed
by frati and people began his triumphal march through
the Abruzzi to Rome. The Pope had forbidden the
exhibition of Bernardino's symbol — the famous I.H.S.,
set within the gold rays of the sun — but John had it
painted on a great tablet, which he placed at the end of a
pike, and marched along with it as a standard. Crowds
of Abruzzesi followed, singing praises to the Holy
Name, and they reached the gates of the Vatican like a
triumphant army. And the Pope, moved by such zeal,
turned the ban of the Church into a blessing on Brother
Bernardino.
John was given a great field by his friend to work for
the reform which was to bring the Order back to poverty,
simplicity, and love. He was given all Italy, and where-
ever he trod a convent of the Observance sprang up. A
learned man, he never shared the Franciscan suspicion of
CH. IV.] RELIGION IN THE ABRUZZI ^^
learning, and the " humility of ignorance " he fought
sturdily, and wrote a burning treatise on the subject,
De pronwvendo studio inter Minores. He was a preacher
of genius. Even in Germany, where he had to speak
to the common people in Latin, his heart and will spoke
so clear in his face and accents that they understood
him ; and the bells rang and folks sang all along the
roads where he passed.
The complement of his friend, he was made to guard
his gentleness and smooth his way. Probably it was
John who gave Bernardino so keen an interest in the
Abruzzi, where he was well known. You can trace the
missionary wandering of the Sienese saint there by
the sign of the Holy Name on town gates and walls
and houses of confraternities ; and there is a legend that
he preached for a whole Lent at Scanno. That he was
familiar to the people, a little folk-song remains to tell.
Here it is, with all its simple faith in the grey brother as
wonder-worker, one of their old magicians come to life
again, and its naive statement of the doctrine of Holy
Poverty.
" San Bernardino se jose a fa' frate ;
Cerco licenzia alia mamma e allu patre ;
Agli fratieje e tutta la signorije.
Quand' arrevose a quije marenare ;
— O marenare, se me voi passare ! —
— Ce so denare ? te pozze passare. —
— De glie denare non ne facce acquiste :
Pe strade ji me recoglie bene e triste :
Si glie truvesse 'mmiezze a una vije,
Ne' glie raccugliesse pe' paga' a tije !
Se glie truvesse 'mmiezze dcUa strate
Ne' glie recogliarije pe' te pacare !
Mettamme lu mantieglie sopre a st' acque,
E sopre ce sagliemme nchi gli piete. —
Non fu 'nu patrenostre ditte e fatte,
E San Brardine steve 11a da I'acque :
Non fu 'nu patrenostre fatte e ditte,
E San Brardine steve 11a da le sicche.
78 IN THE ABRUZZI [pt. i.
Quand' arrevose a quell' Acuela bella,
La messa subete la volose dire.
Se San Brardine trecheve n' autr' ore,
ly' Acuela bella la truveve sole :
Se San Brardine trecheve n' autr' orette,
L' Acuela bella la truveve nette."
["It was San Bernardino would be a frate. He asked leave of his
mother and his father, of his brothers, too, and of all the gentlefolk.
When he met a boatman, ' O boatman,' said he, 'if you would row me
over!' 'There's money to pay ere I can row you over.' 'Nay, as for
money, I never gather any. On the roads I shut myself within myself
with good thoughts and sad ; and if I found it in the middle of the street
I would not pick it up to pay you. Let us throw my mantle over the
water, and we shall step on it.'
" A paternoster was not said and done, and San Bernardino stood
on the other side of the water. A paternoster was not said and done, and
San Bernardino stood over there on the dry land. As soon as he came to
fair Aquila he would say mass. If San Bernardino had tarried another
hour he would have found it solitary [i.e. destroyed by earthquake]. If
San Bernardino had tarried another little half-hour, he would have found
fair Aquila clean swept [of its folk]. "] '
The last flicker of Bernardino's fading life was given
to the Abruzzi. His friends, knowing his w^eakness,
would have hindered his journey ; but he crept secretly
out of Siena, thence through Umbria to Terni, to little
Piediluco on its lake, to Rieti,^and Cittaducale, on the
frontier of the kingdom, where he was stricken with
fever. But he would on, and the frail saint reached
Antrodoco riding on an ass. After San Silvestro he was
carried on a litter to " Aquila bella," where they lodged
him in John's cell. He had been here before, and in
presence of the King of Naples had delivered a sermon
on the Blessed Virgin, while a star shone over his head.
Now he came only to die, for his body was " melting like
wax near a fire." The fire burned fast ; and on May 20,
1444, laid on the floor of John's cell, and "like unto one
smiling," he passed away. His funeral was greater than
for any king ; and in vain did the Sienese clamour :
Aquila would not let the precious relics go. For twenty
' De Nino, vol. iv. p. 225.
CH. IV.] RELIGION IN THE ABRUZZI 79
days did the body stand at the entrance of the Franciscan
church, for the homage of the city ; and from far and
near the mourners crowded, impassioned, exalted, sorrow-
ful. During a quarrel between nobles and people the
saint's nostrils bled ; and nobles and people straightway
made a pact. In after years they built him a great
church here ; and in the church is a beautiful shrine by
a famous sculptor of the town, Silvestro Aquilano ; and
to this day crowds come to the tomb of one of the best-
loved saints in the calendar — the saint of the grey frock,
the open delicate face, with the Holy Name and the
sun's rays emblazoned on his bosom.
John of Capestrano, his fiery friend, resolved he
should be canonized at once ; and at Aquila he met
James of the Marches as full of the business as himself.
To their impetuous souls the inquiry dragged on too
long. Rome does such things at leisure, be the dead
man ever so clear of sin and great of soul. But John
was not made for waiting. Were there any doubts as to
his dead friend's merits ? He offered joyfully to submit
himself to the ordeal by fire. Let a great fire be kindled :
let Bernardino's body be placed therein. Nay, he himself
would walk into the flames with confidence. If they
spared him, it would prove the dead man's sanctity. Did
he perish, it would be because of his own sins. And Pope
Nicholas V. wondered greatly at such friendship. He
would not allow the ordeal, but he hurried on the inquiry ;
and on May 24, 1450, a procession started from Ara Coeli
to the canonization of San Bernardino in St. Peter's.
John's activity did not flag as age came on. " Meagre
of body, frail and shrivelled, all skin and bone and nerves,
yet cheery none the less, and vigorous in toil." So is
he in the picture of him by ^neas Sylvius. Hard of
fibre as the rocks of his native land, he went with bare
and bleeding feet over the rough roads, begging his
8o IN THE ABRUZZI [pt. i.
bread, and clad in a tattered gown. We have seen him
as a friend. He was no less good a hater ; and to him
the arch-foe was heresy. His mind was clear-cut, un-
hesitating, and his training in the law had strengthened
his grip on authority. He could not away with the
Fraticelli and their dreams of the age of the Spirit at
hand, nor with any lax lovers of Holy Church. For the
Hussites he had no mercy. To the Jews he would give
ample chance of atoning to and praising the Master
they had crucified— otherwise, short shrift to them. The
Church knew his fiery missionary zeal, and after the
taking of Constantinople, he was ordered to preach a
Crusade against the Turks. Again and again did he
try to rouse the German princes to combat Mahomet H.,
but in vain ; and in 1456, when he was seventy, the fiery
saint collected an army — he, the Franciscan in his tattered
robe, enlisted them, man after man, till 40,000 obeyed
his call. Mahomet was besieging Belgrade and menacing
all Christendom. Only Hunyadi would face him, and
he was waiting in vain for reinforcements. They came
at last, headed by a friar. John was by Hunyadi's side
in the battlefield ; and it was he, crucifix in hand, and
with San Bernardino's symbol on his standard, who led
the troops to victory. Hunyadi died ; and the fiery
brother followed him a few weeks later, dying of fever at
Villach, October 23, 1456.
This martyr of the faith left no one to urge on his
own canonization as he had urged that of his friend. A
widely different age beatified him in 1690 ; and he was
canonized in 1724 by Benedict XHI.
In modern life, religion has played the same prepon-
derating part, now manifesting itself in pagan outbursts,
now in spiritual ecstasy, now in a wild warfare for the
Church, now in a fierce zeal in the service of this or that
miraculous Madonna. The mental energies of the people
and their originality have found here their best expression.
cii. IV.] RELIGION IN THE ABRUZZI 8i
In the Risorginiento they made a hymn to the Holy
Spirit, the eternal conception of freedom in Heaven and
earth.
" Vieni, O celeste Spirito,
A visitarci in terra.
Sgombra la rea caligine
Che al lume tuo fa guerra."
One ray from the Spirit, one descent of the Mystic
Dove, and then would awaken V Italica virtu.
" A Te Paraclito
I popoli risorti. "
But the Saints and the Paraclete have not had all
the devotion ; for there was the ecstatic sun-worshipper
Sulpicio di Rienzi in Sulmona, a sane man in ordinary
matters ; but the sight of the sun was wont to bring on
him a rapture, when present things were hid from him
and the future was revealed.
One of the strangest manifestations of the latter-day
religious spirit was the mad mission of Don Oreste de'
Amicis, called derisively the Apostle of the Abruzzi.
Born at Cappelle-Monte Silvano, in the province of
Teramo, in 1824, he became a Friar Minor under the
name of Fra Vicenzo. In 1848, when revolution was in
the air, he was hot for liberty. He had fed on the works
of Rosmini, Leopardi, Gabriele Rossetti, and Ugo
Foscolo ; and when news came that Naples had a Consti-
tution he declaimed to the assembled frati Rossetti's
ode, All anno 1831.
" Cingi I'elmo, la mitra deponi,'
O vetusta Signora del mondo,
Sorgi, sorgi, dal sonno profondo,
In su r alba del nuovo tuo di ! "
He declaimed it all through the country, indeed,
followed by a band and crowds of enthusiasts, and with
two pistols in his hand, till General Flogy, backed by the
order of his superior, forced him home to his convent at
G
82 IN THE ABRUZZI [pt. I.
Penne. He escaped, went to Rome, and persuaded Pio
Nono to secularize him. Now he was again Don Oreste,
and in his native Cappelle acted the part of devoted
parish priest. He practised charity every day. His
scriptural " representations " on feast-days were famous ;
and on Sundays, with perfect fearlessness, preached
inflammatory sermons in favour of liberty. In one — but
this was later — he described a vision of Hell, where he
was on his trial before the Eternal Judgment Throne.
Ferdinand II. and the Bourbons generally were his
accusers, with black serpents round their necks, and
chains on their feet. B^-utti ! BriUti ! Cavour and Victor
Emmanuel defended him ; and St. Augustine was his
special advocate, proving his innocence out of the Holy
Book.
His manners were unconventional. He rode madly
through the country like a reckless young gallant ;
and he loved some ladies warmly, if not too .well.
His cousin Rosalia, against the wish of her family,
determined to take the veil. Don Oreste designed the
mise en sdne of the entry, and headed a band of music
which accompanied her and a friend to the convent at
Chieti. He visited her often, and kept up her spiritual
fervour ; but when she was unhappy and ill, he forced
the gates and took her back to her parents. There
she died. Don Oreste followed her to the grave, read-
ing aloud on the way the poems of Leopardi. Her
death struck him hard ; he haunted her grave, and went
as a pilgrim to Celestine's sanctuary of San Spirito on
Monte Majella. Dangerous air for him ! The heresy
of the Holy Ghost had hold of him already.
At Cappelle he became an ascetic, lived in a little
cell, wore a hair shirt, scooped out niches in the wall
and put skulls in them. " Memento inori " was now his
device. He spoke no unnecessary word ; but when he
preached he drew tears from all. But he was one of
CH. IV.] RELIGION IN THE ABRUZZI S3
the born wanderers of the world, the gipsies of the spirit —
" senipre sbattuto come Vacqua del mare" as he said him-
self. After six or seven years his restless fit returned, and
being advised by the prior of the Camaldolese monastery
at Ancona that his vocation did not lie with them, he
wandered through Lombardy, Piedmont, Switzerland,
welcoming hardship, and paying his devotions at every
noted sanctuary. Yet he still frequented men of the
world, and kept a keen outlook on intellectual move-
ments. When he returned to Cappelle, his austerities,
his eccentricities, and his audacious attacks on abuses
irritated the authorities, and he lost his cure in 1866.
More wanderings followed, to Rome, to Casamari with
the Trappists. Then he entered the Cappucini, and
became a devoted missionary in Corsica. It was now he
dreamt of a great religious reform ; and he determined
to run through Italy and write on the gates of every
city the name of the Virgin. '•'■Ho visto tma Stella tra
folti alberi," he cried. So he asked leave of the Arch-
bishop of Naples to preach a new religion, in which there
were to be no more priests and no more friars. The
Holy Spirit was to rule. But when the Cardinal Arch-
bishop saw the red robe — part of the insignia of the new
religion — he sent him wrathfully out of his presence.
So intolerant are we of other people's symbols.
Back in Cappelle, he refused to recognize his suc-
cessor ; and the parish church became a battlefield.
Both priests officiated at the same time, and preached
against each other, and their factions fought over the
elevation of the host. In vain did the mayor intervene.
But Don Oreste had the larger following. No wonder.
He was dressed in a red tunic and a blue mantle. His
hair was long. He wore wooden shoes. In his hand
he carried an iron club with a knob at the end. And
he made hymns for his people of a strange exaltation,
which suited their fervent state. He now called himself,
'S4 IN THE ABRUZZI [pt. i.
or was called, the Apostle of Italy, later, the Apostle of
Europe, later still, the New Messiah.
But Cappelle was too narrow a sphere, for many had
joined him, apostles and apostolesses. They went through
the Abruzzi, which they called Galilee, and their mission
was so exciting that often the authorities intervened, as
they did at Chieti, when the prophet preached on the
steps of the Duomo. It was the band of a new Fra
Dolcino, or rather that of a modern Segharelli. Their
food, which was called manna, was mostly nuts and
honey, for they made a crusade against cooking, and
broke up plates and saucepans ostentatiously — though,
as degeneration set in, excesses of the table were not
infrequent. Poor Don Oreste had to struggle with his
naturally huge appetite — and sometimes he did not
struggle. He composed for them the New Evangel.
Now he spoke out of it, and now out of the Apocalypse,
words which were accounted inspired, or blasphemous, or
absurd, according to the hearer. " -E^^'o sum qui sum.
Ego sum Jesu Christus et Filius Dei vivi. Ego sum Sol,
Luna et Stellce. Ego sum Sponsus Coelestis." There
were weary hearts who listened with eagerness to his
promise : " And I free you from all your langours, and
grant unto you all my graces."
The apostle cured diseases. The country folk clung
to him with fervent hope, though in the towns the priests
interfered. They were not all peasants, however, his
followers. He had adherents among the educated classes
too, one of them a painter of Castellamare ; and the
Duke of Tocco Caraciolo-Pinelli had faith in him, and
tried his skill as a treasure-hunter. In the Duke's
orchard a treasure was said to be hidden. The Messiah
came and superintended the digging, but did not find
the treasure. He said the seekers were all living in
mortal sin.
It was a strange intoxicated crew he led. Among
CH. IV.] RELIGION IN THE ABRUZZI 85
them was the spirit of love, and every human weakness.
There were ecstatics and charlatans and imbeciles ; and
the world laughed, or was shocked, or annoyed. A few
onlookers were impressed and a little sad, as at some
good thing corrupted, as if some breath of the Holy
Spirit had, indeed, passed over their land, but had been
tainted by the poison of human egoism. A good many
women were in the band. Christina the apostoless was
with him in Rome the time he cried out in St. Peter's,
" O te felice Rovia ! O te beat a ! Da te ^partita la luce
e a te ritorna ! "
After many collisions with the authorities, imprison-
ment for vagabondage, and defections, the band dis-
persed. Don Oreste was a sorry Messiah in the end.
It was not so much that he was found out : he found
himself out. His biographer, De Nino, went to see him
at Cappelle in 1889, and found him old and broken and
dying, but clear-headed and repentant. Just one touch
of the old pride was left. " I recognize my nothingness
before God, but not before men. . . . Chi troppo in
alto sale, cade nell' abisso. I was not the true Messiah.
Leviathan the proud spirit deceived me. E un mistero
la vita mea."
And it was a mystery indeed, in its bizarre admixture
of impulses out of different ages and cults. The ancient
Marsian enchanter, the worshipper of Cybele, the heretic
of the Eternal Gospel, the mediaeval enthusiast — and
each was native to the soil he sprang from — all mingled
in this modern pseudo-prophet. Sorry, unstable, mad,
not a little disreputable he was, yet from his kaleidoscopic
visions he shook before distracted and hungry eyes some
glints of beauty and the ideal.
I have indicated a few of the outstanding influences
and episodes in the religious life of the Abuzzi ; and in
the tale of our wanderings others will present themselves,
86 IN THE ABRUZZI [pt. i.
As supplement, I would send my readers for an interpre-
tation of the religious spirit at its simplest and humblest
to D'Annunzio's " Annali d' Anna," in his volume of
tales, Sa?i Pantaleone ; and for a picture of religious
extravagance and frenzy to his description of the
pilgrimage of Casalbordino, in his Trioiifo della Morte.
Neither is exactly sympathetic ; but both are first-hand
documents.
Religious festas in the Abruzzi were once feasts for
the eyes of the people and stimulators of the dramatic
sense. Of the scenic performances with mystical intent,
or with scriptural subject — " Representations," they are
called — some still remain ; and the best, perhaps, in the
province of Chieti. You may see them in Tollo on the
first, and in Villamagna on the fourth, Sunday in
August, There are many others ; and the best guide to
their whereabouts and dates is Signor Tommaso Bruni
of Francavilla.
The feast of the Madonna del Rosario, in Tollo, is
one of the most noted. It is also called the Festa dei
Turchi, or of the Madonna della Vittoria, and is very-
famous throughout all the neighbourhood. The chief
actors in the " Representation " are fifty men of the
village dressed up grotesquely, half of them as Christians,
the other half as Saracens. They are all armed with
long poles in imitation of ancient spears. The scene
of the drama is a little piazza, where once stood an
ancient tower. On its site they erect for this day a
skeleton tower of wood, some six metres high, covered
with canvas. The statue of the Madonna, attended by
all the clergy, the confraternities, and the acolytes, comes
in procession, and is placed on an altar in full view of the
tower, which at the appointed time is manned by the
Christian squadron. Then a trumpeter and a herald
come forward, the latter bearing on the point of his
lance a cartel, which he hands aloft to the captain of the
CH. IV.] RELIGION IN THE ABRUZZI Sy
Christians. It is read by those on the citadel ; then,
with a cry of indignation, torn to shreds. The herald
departs ; and his master, the captain of the Saracens,
now leads his men to the siege of the tower. They
reconnoitre ; find an opening, a foothold ; and in a short
time are masters of the fort. But it is all a trick, as the
Christians soon prove, for they have only enticed the foe
to slay them. Then lo, the miracle ! The dead Turks
spring to life again, and fraternize with the Christians.
They feast together — a feast of love, on maccaroni —
and then follow the Madonna home to her shrine in the
parish church.
According to Signor Bruni, this " Representation "
recalls two historic events — the incursion of the Saracens
on July 30, 1566, under the command of the Hungarian
renegade Pialy Bassa ; and the battle of Lepanto, in
which the Turkish fleet was completely destroyed by the
Christians under Don John of Austria, on September 7,
1 57 1, To this commemoration is added that in honour
of the Madonna del Rosario, instituted by Pius V. When
the great news of Lepanto was announced to him, he
had been reciting the Rosary, and had come to the
verse, " F?nt Jiomo missus a Deo ad nonien erat Joannes!'
This plainly pointed to Don John, the Commander of
the Christian fleet.
In 1566, Pialy Bassa's fleet had blockaded Otranto,
the garrison of which was commanded by the Duke
of Calabria, son of Ferdinand II. of Aragon, King
of Naples. An armistice of fifteen days was granted,
and Pialy, with the main part of his ships, ran up the
Adriatic, to seize on the Isles of the Tremiti, meaning
to make them the base of future operations. The
attempt did not succeed ; so he turned his ships towards
the Abruzzi coast, and rounding the Punta della Penna,
he anchored at the Foce del Sinello. A mile or so inland
lay the famous and rich Benedictine Abbey of San
88 IN THE ABRUZZI [pt. i.
Stefano in Rivo. Among its possessions was one of the
Tremiti isles. The Saracens sacked and burned the
abbey, killed the monks, and then went on to Ortona,
which could not withstand their onslaught. Worse
damage still was suffered at Francavilla. From thence
they went inland in two squadrons, one of which made
for Tollo, the other for Villamagna. At Tollo they sum-
moned the defenders of the place to surrender. The
garrison congregated in the now demolished tower,
allowed a band of the Saracens, by a feint, to occupy
some part of the citadel, and then, having them in their
power, killed them. The rest, renouncing their designs
of pillage, hurried back to the coast. Such is the origin
of the " Representation " of Tollo.
The second division had reached the first houses of
Villamagna, when suddenly a meteor, accompanied by
thunder, lightning, and hail, burst on them. The com-
mander retired to the nearest church, where he presented
to the arciprete — in homage to the patron Santa
Margherita — a diadem studded with many precious
stones, which he had worn on his turban. This historic
jewel was preserved for nearly two centuries, and then a
priest sold it ; so that of the pennaccJiietto^ as it was called,
there only remains a faint memory.
This happening is commemorated in the feast of
Santa Margherita at Villamagna. The statue of the
saint is brought out of the church. Before it walk bands
of women and girls, bearing on their heads copper pots
filled with grain, and on the top a bunch of sweet basil.
They are followed by youths armed with long poles
adorned with ears of corn. A number of barrels form a
7-eposoir for the statue ; and when she is placed there the
" Representation " begins. About a score of young men,
clad in odds and ends of ancient garments and uniforms,
armed with daggers, scimitars, and bows and arrows, play
the Saracens. Two of them on foot and two on horseback
CH. IV.] RELIGION IN THE ABRUZZI 89
advance, to a discreet distance from the statue ; and
there, with fierce mien and determined gesture, they set
fire to a sheaf of straw, thus signifying danger to the
saint, her temple, and her proteges. Then one gallops
back to bring on the main body to the attack. There is
much shooting of bows and arrows and whirling of
swords and scimitars, when, behold, a wonder in the
heavens ! Down through the air comes a long beam
wrapped in tow and all in flames. The Saracens on
foot fall prostrate to the ground, and the cavaliers fall
over the necks of their horses. There is a pause full of
well-simulated terror ; and then the procession takes its
way back to the church, whither, after some showy
perambulation of the streets, the Saracens also wend,
throwing themselves before the saint in humblest adora-
tion. Coming out, they mount their horses, and feign to
flee as hard as ever they can from the village. So ends
the drama.
The " Representations " are mute drama in action.
The talauii, on the contrary, are what we should call
tableaux vivants. A talamo is a portable scenic platform.
At the back of it rises a triangular wall on which is hung
whatever little scenery is needed — for instance, a yellow
wooden disc represents the light of day. In front of this,
and well raised, sits a child Madonna, and at the sides
are two children dressed as angels. These three appear
in all talami. In the foreground are the personages of
the scriptural story to be represented — nowadays nearly
always children. As the talami are carried on the
shoulders of men, who wear the robes of their confra-
ternities, the little actors are tied on securely, though,
indeed, they sit or stand with much solemn dignity, and
would never disgrace the occasion by toppling over.
Generally, at least half a dozen of these talami are
prepared, stationed at various points of the village for a
90 IN THE ABRUZZI [pt. i.
given time, after which the)^ are moved on in the pro-
cession, headed by the particular virgin or saint of the
festa, so that all the tableaux are gradually shown along
the whole route, amid the singing and shouting of the
crowds and the cracking of squibs. Here are some
subjects often represented, taken at random from various
programmes : Moses saved from the water. — Moses
striking the rock. — Solomon leading the Queen of
Sheba to his palace. — Abraham's sacrifice. — The Tables
of the Law. — The Burning Bush. — The Annunciation. —
The Adoration of the Shepherds. — The Flight into Egypt.
— The Marriage of Cana. — The Ascension. — etc., etc.
The progress of the procession is of necessity slow ;
and besides, time for devotion, for wonderment, and for
singing must be allowed. The tableaux are crude, and
sometimes grotesque, but now and then forceful and
original, and owe more to tradition and less to a taste
deteriorated by bad chromo-lithography than one might
suppose.
One of the most interesting features of the ialaini,
and one that is invariably present, is the distinct proof of
their pagan origin, hardly concealed at all. The festa
may be that of Our Lady of Refuge, or Our Lady of the
Rosary ; but in reality Mary here is but the heiress of
Ceres. The last ialamo always represents "The culti-
vators and the women bringing to Mary the produce of
the fields." After the procession of these living pictures
there commonly follow a pair of oxen drawing a cart
laden with sheaves, while youths mounted on it throw
handfuls of ears of corn among the people. There is
a wild scramble for these sacre spighe, which bring
luck to all, and which mothers hold to be of special
efficacy in certain children's maladies. In old times —
there are still men and women who remember it — bands
of peasants used to follow with picks and spades, pre-
tending to dig, and to scatter grain in imaginary furrows,
CH. IV.] RELIGION IN THE ABRUZZI 91
and hunters, too, with guns, who feigned to follow the
game, and fired blank shots. All these are remnants of
the ancient propitiatory feasts in honour of Ceres, who
is now called Mary. The talaini may be seen here
and there in the Abruzzi ; but the stranger will not hear
of them unless he make it clearly and widely known that
his interest in such things is genuine. It is probably due
to the apathy of the clergy when they fall into disuse ;
for the desire to realize history and scripture story
through the eyes is as keen as ever among the people,
and explains the vogue of the cinematograph in the
towns.
I have named but two or three of the scenic festas of
the Abruzzi. In my notes on the Scanno district I shall
speak of the feast of St. Dominic of Cocullo, a popular
saint whose day is commemorated in various parts of the
province after a fashion that calls to mind one of the
oldest powers of the Abruzzesi, that of serpent-charming.
And there are many noted and fashionable festas in the
larger places, where the municipal authorities and the
railway companies exploit the devotion of the people, and
where the religious and local aspects of the fetes are apt
to be lost in the displays of fireworks and in the newer
forms of popular amusements.
This pictorial side of religion is a strong feature ; but
it ministers to only one side of the Abruzzese nature — a
nature with deeps and darks in it, and with a strain of
morbidity, too, almost Spanish. Could it be otherwise
in these mountain solitudes, where disaster has never for
long hidden its grim face } The death's-head and the
bleeding Christ, racked and distorted with physical
sufferings, are familiar objects in the churches — and they
bring their own kind of comfort. Nor is the conception
of the Virgin and the saints as survivals of the lost gods
and the fairies a complete one. Whole cycles of legends
92 IN THE ABRUZZI [pt. i.
exist in which Mary and Christ and the apostles, and all
the other holy ones, appear as laden with earthly
troubles, marked by earthly toil, very brothers and
sisters of the mountaineers hewing their daily bread
out of the rocky hill and stony field. In these tales,
grotesque and touching, the comic role is commonly
played — I wonder why — by St. Peter. Is it solely in
retribution for his denial of the Master that he is made
to fib and pilfer, and get into continual scrapes } Many
of the legends are pastiches^ in which wholly incongruous
elements are combined. In one of them, a story in verse,
or ballad, the mystic espousals of St. Catherine and
Christ are foisted on an earlier tale of some amorous
maiden of free manners and frankly sensuous desires —
though the edifying comes out on the top. The result
would be blasphemous, had the amalgamation been
conscious. Had it been conscious we might call it —
" modern."
Wandering is a constant feature of these stories — of
the sacred as of the secular. It may be the trace left
of the old vagrancy after the ver sacrwn, or, earlier still,
when they were Eastern nomads, made permanent by
the yearly migration of the shepherds. And wandering
calls to mind the pilgrimages. There are many local
shrines, to which pilgrimages are made on foot, or on
mule-back, or in market-cart, in one day, or two, or
three. But there are also the great shrines of Central
and Southern Italy, and the number of their devotees in
the Abruzzi is very large. The noted ones, of course,
are those of Assisi, the Santa Casa at Loreto, and St.
Nicolas of Ban. Loreto and the Porziuncola can be
both taken in one journey — a long and difficult journey,
meaning more than three weeks' absence from home.
But what are three weeks compared to the gain for
eternity ? Such a journey is the event of a lifetime.
Some of the richer go by train nowadays ; but the)' are
cii. IV.] RELIGION IN THE ABRUZZI 93
a small, degenerate minority. The rest walk every step
of the way, and take every bit of food they will want
along with them — salmi, cheese, fruit, wine, even to
bread in some cases. So laden, they trudge from the
remotest recesses of the Abruzzi to the centre of Umbria,
day after day, kinsfolk and friends tramping together in
happy company, singing hymns and litanies. The nights
are spent in hospitable churches. After homage has
been paid at the shrines, after all the supplications have
been sent up, and the privileges obtained, they trudge
back again by hill and v'alley. The return home is a
scene of wild triumph ; and they bring the fervour of
the sanctuary to those who might not go. There is
singing in the streets by night, and processions to all the
churches. And they bring back something even more
lasting than little holy pictures and newly blessed rosaries
and scapulars. " Have you been to San Francesco ? "
I asked a woman on a lonely mountain road, who was
bringing her firewood down from the high beech woods.
" To San Francesco ? Sicuro ! And San Nicola too !
And the Santa Casa ! See here ! " She whipped up
her sleeve. " See here ! I have my marks." And there
on her arms were plainly visible the signs of privilege —
passport to show Peter at the Gate of Paradise — the
blue tattooed image of the Holy House of Loreto, and
the stamp of the holy place of Assisi, with the dates of
her visits. They were some twelve years back. " Ah ! "
she said, " I go no more. The times are hard — and
there are the children."
Besides the churches in regular use, and the vast
number of abandoned ones, there are many chapels and
sanctuaries in the Abruzzi of too holy fame to be left to
the ruin of time and the chance care of the faithful.
Frequently they are in the loneliest and most desolate
places, like those of San Domenico, near Villalago, and
94 IN THE ABRUZZI [pt. i.
Santa Maria della Predella at the opening of the Piano
di Cinquemiglia. They are placed in the care of one or
more hermits, who live in a romitorio adjoining, ring the
bell, and repeat matins and vespers. For the most part
they are not clerics at all, but old shepherds approved
for their virtuous lives by the arciprete of the district.
They keep a simple rule, which enjoins reverence for the
sanctuary, devotion in religious exercises, and general
discretion of life. For material things, they live on the
alms of the faithful. A box with a picture of the patron
Madonna or saint stands on the altar. On certain days
of the week the hermits visit, in turn, the neighbouring
towns or villages, with licence to beg for food, or for
pence, which go into the little pictured box. It is
mostly from the poor they reap enough to keep them
from want. Some wear their old shepherd's cloak, but
generally they have a distinctive dress — a black or brown
frock, with a leathern girdle, and a wide-brimmed beaver
hat. You meet them toiling up the steep roads, with
their wallet and their box, on their appointed begging
days, and in the market-places, and in and out of the
houses of the little towns ; and not a peasant woman will
pass without kissing their holy picture, and giving it to
her little child to kiss. Odd, rough, uncouth, are these
shepherd hermits of the Abruzzi, and their lives through
the long solitary winter are of the hardest ; but from the
lonely scattered sanctuaries they would be missed. Their
bell rings the herdsman and the labourer home. Their
little chapels are resting-places and shelters along fearful
roads, and as the shadow of a great rock in a weary
land.
A SANCTUARY IN THE ABRUZZI
CHAPTER V
FOLK-LORE AND FOLK TALES
Pagan survivals — Demons — Treasure-hunting — Witches — The Malocchio —
New Year, Easter, May Day, and St. John's Day celebrations — The
Bond of the Comiiiare — The tede pagane — Evocation of the dead — Folk
Tales — The Land where Death is not — The Creation of the
World — Misery.
Amongst a people still so largely primitive there is no
clear distinction between their religion, so far as it is
traditional, and their folk-lore. The stories of the saints
are often refurbished legends of the rustic gods, of the
vanished fairies, or of magic men of the antique world.
San Domenico of Cocullo is a reincarnation of the old
priest-enchanter of the Marsi ; and Ceres is now called
the Virgin Mary. There has been no conscious accept-
ance of the transference by the Church, of course ; but a
natural process has gone on amongst the people, who in
all primitive Catholic countries make their own religion
to a much larger extent than Protestants do, or than they
can understand. Pagan and Christian are not two rival
worlds living side by side. They are to all intents and
purposes the same world. Their division is a step on in
sophistication, but their separation does not involve either
being annihilated. The one born of the soil gives sub-
stance to the other that has come on the wings of the
spirit. That of the spirit softens the crudities and the
grim rites of the old. But the process of degeneration,
if slow, is sure ; and thus the mighty gods that dwelt on
the Olympus of the Abruzzi, Monte Majella, are now
95
96 IN THE ABRUZZI [PT. I.
demons of the storm ; and the daughters of Circe and
Angizia are witches h'ving in a hillside hovel. The
traveller will often fail to trace the old beliefs in the
Abruzzi, or they will be denied. They vanish suddenly ;
they reappear ; above all, they hide. The most finished
latter-day sceptics are not rare ; but when you find one
he will be living next door to a mediaeval Christian on
one hand and a meddler in ancient magic on the other.
The traditional lore of the people, the folk-legends in
prose and verse, the store of wise saws, of remedies,
of notions of history filtered through minds at once
ignorant and imaginative, may not be all indigenous.
^ Signor Finamore thinks there is little Abruzzese lore
pure and simple. But whether borrowed or shared,
or exclusively native, the store of it is rich and varied.
And first of the deposed gods, soured by neglect
and the wear of time. They are demons now, and
so vengeful towards men you can hardly pity their
sorry condition. Here is a story they tell of them in
the Vastese.
" On the top of Majella were gathered a crowd of
devils, so many you couldn't count them. They all had
shovels, and were shovelling up the snow and rolling it
down the slope, while the wind was whistling shrill. The
wind carried the snow through the air, and formed hail,
which fell on the fields like waves of the sea. The devils
gave themselves no end of trouble over it, saying, ' Haste !
Let us make haste, for if once the ciiicculalle begin we'll
get nothing done.'
"A good man was passing by, and he heard this
saying of the devils. So he said to them, 'What are
the ciucculalle f ^ The devils shouldn't have explained
the word, but all the same they did, and said, ' The
ciiicctdalle are the bells.' So you see that, though devils
have their vices, they are not so sly after all !
" The good man hearing this, set off running to the
CH. v.] FOLK-LORE AND FOLK TALES 97
village, while the hail was battering down worse and worse
every minute, and once at the church he seized the rope
of the bell and rung it like mad. At the sound of the
bell the people knelt down and prayed, and the candles
were lit for the feast of the Purification, and the chains of
the chimneys were thrown out on the roads. Little by
little the hail withdrew towards Majella, and the devils
went back to hell."
Many of these stories are of the order of Plutonic
legends, the demons appearing as guardians of buried
treasure. Indeed, the quantity of buried treasure in the
poverty-stricken Abruzzi is surprising. The hunts go on
still, in secret. Doubtless, rumours of wealth hidden by
brigands have helped to keep up the belief among those
who would be sceptical of demons. But it is not a few
who hold, according to Finamore, that the treasures are
guarded by spirits. Whenever wealth is buried, some
one is killed, and the soul of the dead man hovers about
it so long as it is not seized. As soon as it has been
taken, the soul of the murdered man has peace. The
treasures belong to the devil, and he does his best to
terrify the seeker, who will take no harm, however, if he
keep up his heart. It is very important, of course, to
know the perfect spell— /czr^ uno scongiuro buono — but
fearlessness seems to be still more efficacious. Not so
easy, though, seeing that you may suddenly be confronted
by a lady in white, or a huge toad, or the devil himself
Moreover, a pistol may be fired at your entrance, and in
the smoke you may lose your way ; or while all is calm
outside, within there may be wind, rain, hail, thunder, and
lightning to bewilder and stun you. In more than one
place the treasure takes the shape of a golden hen and
seven golden chickens. Everybody knows there is such
an one in a well close to the Madonna del Palazzo, near
Montenerodomo, where was once a rich Benedictine
abbey, and in ancient days Juvanum, Jove's city, of the
H
98 IN THE ABRUZZI [pt. i.
Peligni. But the Government won't let it be meddled
with. Another golden hen is under the stairway of Santa
Maria Maggiore at Lanciano, an ancient temple of Apollo ;
but the lady who is to own it is not yet born. Naturally,
the spirits condemned to watch the treasure are often
anxious to be released of the trust, so they tempt you to
dig. Then your peace is gone. If you refuse, they beat
and torment you. If you accept, you in your turn have
to guard the treasure, and know no rest. The story of
the bold priest treasure-hunter and his timid companions
is common. There is a great deal of wealth buried all
about Chieti. In the hill of St. Paul, between Chieti and
Pescara, is hidden a chest of money. A certain priest,
who had il libro del commando, took thirty persons with
him, all chosen for their strength and courage. He warned
them to be bold, bold, and yet again bold. They stood
in a circle while he read from his book and made the
scongiuro biiono. In the middle of the circle rose first a
head, then a body, then the whole figure of a monk. He
appeared and vanished, reappeared and vanished again,
and every time there was a great noise like a hail of
money. At last he came up with a gun, and was aiming
it at the seekers. " Courage ! Courage ! " cried the
priest. But in their terror some of them fell to the ground,
where they were kicked and flouted by the spectre monk.
And the kicks and blows were of such force that before
they knew what was happening they found themselves,
some at Bucchianico, some at Alento, some at Chieti,
and — well, the whole country round seems to have shared
their scattered bodies. At Pescocostanzo treasure-seekers
were treated in the same fashion — one awaking on the
top of Pizzalto, one on Porraro, one on Morrone, one on
Monte Corno — a long leap that — -while still another died
of fright. It was the tired spirit clamouring for his own
rest, doubtless, that attacked the boy at the Tricalle
of Chieti. (The Tricalle stands still — a little antique
CH. v.] FOLK-LORE x\ND FOLK TALES 99
circular building, once the temple of Diana Trivia. You
pass it on your way up by the electric tramway to the
town.) The door opened as the boy passed, and some
one appeared with a lump of gold in his hand, signing to
him to take it. The little lad ran away, whereupon the
spirit blasphemed horribly, rushed out, hit him a ringing
blow, and knocked him down. He was ill for long, and
he never had his wits again.
There are treasure-stories, too, without any mention
of the demon. The old Cappucino convent at Taglia-
cozzo, near the Madonna delle Grazie, built in 1626, is
said to owe its existence to the finding of a treasure. A
lay brother of the earlier convent was sent by his guardian
to gather goat-dung in a cavern on the side of Monte
Salviano, near Avezzano, where certain Luco folks stabled
their goats in winter. In the grotto he found an immense
treasure. I do not know how he explained his sudden
affluence, but he built a palace for his family — the degene-
rate frate ! — and salved his conscience, I suppose, by
building likewise a new convent for his community. So
runs the tale.
Treasure-hunting goes on to this day. The old
hermitage of Sant' Onofrio, Pope Celestine's refuge on
Monte Morrone, is reputed to have a mine of buried
wealth somewhere about its rocky foundations — perhaps
part of the hoard of the magician Ovid. To-day it is
utterly deserted, and, according to a story told me — but
after I left Sulmona, and thus I had not the chance of
verifying it on the spot — deserted for a terrible reason.
Till a few years ago it was inhabited by three hermits.
One day, as none of them were met on their begging
rounds, folks went to see what was amiss. No one
answered the visitors' knock. The door was broken in —
and all three were found murdered on the floor.
To-day in the Abruzzi they laugh at the idea of
100 IN THE ABRUZZI [pt. i.
witches : they laugh to you, and in many cases, of
course, the scepticism is genuine. But Hve there, and
you will hear strange tales that are not all of yesterday.
It is the belief of many in the remoter parts that a male
child born on Christmas Eve is destined to be a were-
wolf, and a girl-child a witch. You can take steps to
circumvent destiny if you are of a bold unflinching spirit.
For instance, if the father for three Christmas Eves in
succession make a little cross with a red-hot iron on the
baby's foot, this holy sign will burn out the evil fate.
Leave the child alone, and all may go well for a time.
But the son or daughter will not pass twenty ere fate
overtakes them. They will curse their parents. The
son may keep a good face to the world during the day ;
but at midnight he turns to a wolf, and goes out howl-
ing. And if the nightly revels of witches be ended, it is
in very recent days indeed, and within the memory of
men and women who are still living.
The witch abhorred, and yet secretly admired and
propitiated in her lifetime, sick of her awful power,
often longs for death. But she cannot die without first
handing on her power — senza lasciare r7ifficio. Her
agony may thus be indefinitely prolonged, if she has
compunctions, or if those who tend her take shrewd
precautions. But she may call to a woman and say,
" Take my hand " ; and her hand touched at such a
moment, the power is passed on — Vnfficio e passato.
According to some, indeed, the last breath of a dying
witch is contagious ; and the unholy art may be yours
for an act of mercy. But such delay is very reprehensible
in a witch who is sincerely desirous of release from her
powers, which she may gain by the aid of a charitable
priest, if on a Friday he lets down his stole on her from a
window.
^ The baby lying in the cradle is especially liable to the
evil influence of witches, and so the careful mother will
CH. v.] FOLK-LORE AND FOLK TALES loi
know potent spells ; and will commend it to certain
saints, and sing —
" Sande Cosem e Damijane,
Ji' m'addonn e ttu me chiame.
Sanda Lodo, a tte re le done.
Lu jurne nghe ma, e la notte nghe tta.
Sand' Ann' e Ssande Susanna,
Huarde' stu fuejj a llat' a lu lett' a la mamma."
But there are mothers that utter no spells. " Did
ever a witch hold your child in her arms ^ " said a folk-
lore inquirer to a woman with a meagre ailing infant.
" The witch that harmed my child was Poverty," she
answered.
If it be unfashionable now to believe in witches, there
is no use denying the evil eye. The belief in the
malocchio in the Abruzzi, as in all the South of Italy, is,
of course, widespread and deep. You don't argue about
it, or speak of it, but simply take every possible precaution
against it. Men do so quite as often as women, and charms
are not more generally attached to the necklace than to the
watchguard, especially, I think, in the towns on the coast.
The horn-shaped charm is not universal ; the hand-
shaped one, with the forefinger and little finger open,
is also very efficacious. So is a little golden fish, or a
bunch of badger's hair, or the tooth of a wolf killed in
the springtime. The fiore d'argcjito is highly thought
of, but is not a common possession. It consists of a
little tree with five branches arranged fan-wise. One
branch ends in a flower, one in pincers, one in a serpent's
head, and two in closed hands.
If on Friday evening in the twilight a black cat
comes in unseen by the man or woman of the evil eye,
and you catch it fast by its two fore paws and make it
mew seven times, the evil power is made impotent.
This is no jester's remedy : it has its recommenders ; but
it is acknowledged to be clumsy, and you would do
102 IN THE ABRUZZI [pt. i.
much better, if you or yours are being injured, to call in
the aid of a medic/iessa, or wise woman. Indeed, it is
highly important you should do so ; for doctors' stuff
made up by apothecaries with grand diplomas from
Naples and Aquila may be all very fine, but it is well
known that the malocchio is the real cause of every
malady. A slight precautionary measure on meeting a
person who is obviously a stranger, is to make the sign of
the cross. A score of times, at least, I have seen this
done at my approach — and a civil greeting followed.
This is the darker side of the people's customs and
lore. One need not dwell too much on it — though perhaps
it may live as long as the local festivals. All that concerns
ceremony has a tendency to die in the air of to-day, and
ceremonial observances are dying in the Abruzzi, too, if
more slowly than in most other places. Not so long ago
there must have been a complete ritual in use for all the
great acts of life, as for all the seasons and labours of the
}'ear. Perhaps few of these ceremonies have actually
vanished ; but they no longer survive simultaneously in
the same place. What remains is not all degenerate.
The fragments are sometimes grotesque, oftener still of
beauty. They are broken poetry out of an older world.
If you dare a winter there, you may still hear the
New Year sung in, piped in, drummed in — though the
drum may be a frying-pan. The singers and pipers are
regaled at every hospitable house with cake and wine.
The New Year is greeted, too, at the dawn ; and the
singers enter, carrying large stones, a club, a knife, and a
sack. If food is given, it is put in the sack ; if money, a
knotch is made in the stick, and all is divided afterwards ;
if nothing, the stone is left in the kitchen with the words,
" May this be the head of the house ! " At Canzano
Peligno, on New Year's Eve, the fountain is decked with
leaves and bits of coloured stuff, and fires are kindled
CH. v.] FOLK-LORE AND FOLK TALES 103
round it. As soon as it is light, the girls come as usual
with their copper pots on their heads ; but the youths
are on this morning guardians of the well, and sell the
" new water " for nuts and fruits — and other sweet things.
Here is a pretty Easter absurdity in Sulmona. The
statue of Christ is placed on an altar under one of
the aqueduct arches looking over the market-place.
The statues of all the local saints are then brought out of
the churches and made to defile round Him in adoration.
Then their bearers set off with them at a run. They are
hurrying to tell His Mother that He is risen. She,
housed in the Church of the Tomba in the meanwhile,
is now carried out and run hastily down to the altar
under the aqueduct, and Mother and Son meet.
The May greetings are still sung, and till lately were
general. At Frattura, a village in the mountains, near
Scanno, remote, high perched, yet so girt round by the
hills that the most precious of all things is the light of
the sun, this greeting of May is pathetic and signifi-
cant. On the eve the young folks go out with cow-bells
to meet the May. " Maggio ritorna ! " they cry. " Viva
Maggio ! Ecco Maggio ! Oh ha ! " At dawn the cries
are redoubled, and shouts greet the first glimpse of the
sun above the mountain-tops.
The St. John's fires are dying ; but the Precursor is
commemorated in other ways. On the coast they plunge
and swim in the Adriatic before dawn, or go out in barks
to greet the rising sun, and then feast on the sands. The
idea of purification, of renewal, on this feast, is nearly
always present here and everywhere else. At Pesco-
costanzo they wash with dew on St. John's morning.
On the eve they have gathered herbs which have special
virtue then. At Catanzano they gather herbs, too, and
wash their faces and hands at seven fountains. From
I04 IN THE ABRUZZI [pt. i.
Introdacqua, near Sulmona, they go up to La Plaja by
night, and sing and feast and gather armfuls of flowers,
and tell the old story, how when the moon won't give
way, the sun picks up a handful of mud and throws it at
her — and that is why there are spots on the moon.
The fight gets hot ; for the moon is very obstinate,
and the sun insists on its disappearance. Then St. John
the Baptist, who thinks there has been enough of this
squabbling, comes and orders the lesser light to vanish ;
after which the saint dips his face in the sea and goes
about his business. Buckets of water are left out for St.
John to bless in passing, and it is very good to wash in
such water in the morning. Up in Majella the herbs are
very potent that are gathered on the eve ; and bands of
men and maidens, wreathed with briony, start in singing-
bands at midnight up the sides of the great mountain
and its spurs, to gather healing plants and flowers and
to greet the dawn.
Birth and christening, the bond of the commare tied
in childhood — the bond exists between those who have
been passed by their mothers as infants over the altar
together, or sometimes such as have done homage at a
certain shrine together after their first communion —
betrothal, marriage, death, and burial, all have their
ritual, here falling into disuse, there broken and in-
coherent ; but enough is left to link together the dim
old world and the new. At Roccapia, for instance, deep
in the hollow of the great hills, they keep still a relic of
the tede pagane. A bride and bridegroom in church
receive two lighted candles, symbol of the domestic fire,
the fire of renewal, of generation.
Death has its grim usages, but likewise those that
lift the heart and soften it. At Barrea, a dead youth is
carried to his grave by maidens. On the Adriatic coast,
on All Souls' Eve, they still go out with lights and bells
to evoke the dead ; or they make all speed to the
CH. v.] FOLK-LORE AND FOLK TALES 105
church, for the one who gets there first releases a soul
from purgatory. There are old women who evoke the
shadow of their dead kindred in a pot of water. They
call to them, those whom they have known long ago.
" The dead walk to-night," they say. And then, " Re-
quiescant in pace ! " They are not very far away, our
dead. When the last breath is passed, close well the
eyes — else would they call and call one of their kindred
to go with them on the dark journey. Nor might he
say nay. Sometimes a piece of money is put in a pocket
of the shroud to pay the dead man's way ; and you must
make haste to wash the linen of the deathbed, else the
soul will not rest. If the dead appear to the living in
white raiment, it is well with them : they are in Paradise ;
if in red, they are in hell ; if with nuts in their hand, be
not sparing of money for masses for their souls.
Whether the old stories that once were the possession
of all, and now linger about the firesides and the pastures
where the herds gather, be indigenous or not, there is a
goodly store of them. And where they are not forgotten,
the evenings are not too long about the hearth, nor the
days too lonely on the hillsides. Only a few have local
settings ; for a strong instinct in the midst of a hard life
is ever — Escape, escape ! The bodily feet may linger and
lag, but the heart and mind are agile to win — Heaven or
Fairyland. Photography and newspaper reporting are
the arts of smug prosperity. A life luxuriant in incident,
not too soft, but without close limits — that is their
favourite material ; and for heroes and heroines they like
adventurous boys, wandering princesses, magicians with
master-keys to treasure, to regions of infinite hope or
infinite terror. Nearly all the personages are travellers ;
for the natural heart of man is ever on the road. Some
I cannot follow : they are framed by a different logic of
life from ours, and yet they whet the imagination by the
io6 IN THE ABRUZZI [pt. i.
inexplicable in them, and stimulate by simple audacity of
statement. What is the meaning of // Re de Sette Vele ?
And what is the end of it ? I shall never know, and
always desire to know.
But there are other tales, where the instinct of escape
is not present, the makers of which have looked with
clear, open eyes at life as it is lived in these mountains.
They have not abated one jot of the harshness of the
facts as they know them, but have looked steadily, and
without rancour, on sin, toil, poverty, the passing of the
years, and Death both as foe and as friend. By a simple
process of generalization they have lifted these pictures
of life to a region beyond petty accident, and given them
truth for all the world — yet from essential detail none of
the keen edges are rubbed. A grave dignity marks
most of them, and a clear, cold-eyed resignation. They
neither flatter life nor whine over it. I do not know
their date, nor whether they be native to the Abruzzi,
but they are current there ; and if I know the grave-
eyed mountaineers, these stories utter with marvellous
exactitude their outlook on human life — save as it may be
modified by the kind caprice of Heaven and the saints.
Here is a homely version of the everlasting truth,
" By one man sin entered into the world, and death by
sin." For all its homeliness, its idealism could hardly be
bettered.
" There was once a young man. Oh, but he was ugly,
ugly, ugly. A fairy kissed him, and he grew beautiful,
beautiful, beautiful. Then the fairy said to him, ' Go,
seek for a world where death is not.' So the young man
went about looking for the world where there is no death ;
and nowhere did he find it. When he came to a village
and heard the death-bell ring, he set out again at once
on his travels. There seemed no end to his seeking.
One day he came to a wood, where the trees were old,
CH. v.] FOLK-LORE AND FOLK TALES 107
oh, but old, old ; and he said to himself, ' Would this be
the world where death never comes ? ' But then he found
a tree fallen on the ground, and there was a great coming
and going of ants about it. So he concluded, * If trees
die here, so must men too.' On he went again, and he
entered a valley. There were a great many beasts about,
and all of them old, old, so old. Said the young man, ' Now
this, for sure, is the world where there is no death.' But
it was not true, for hardly had he made a step ere he
saw a dead lion. So he went on again, and came to a
great plain. There an old man, so old, old, was plough-
ing the ground. Said the young man to the old, ' Could
you tell me where is the world where folk never die ? '
The old man answered, ' Go you on a little way, and
you'll meet my grandfather. Perhaps he'll be able to
tell you.' And so the young man went on still, and
found another old man, old, but so old, and he too was
ploughing the ground. The young man asked the same
question. ' I am looking for the world where folks never
die. Be so good as to tell me the way there ! ' The
other answered, ' Ih-h-h ! Who knows ? But you might
ask my grandfather who is ploughing a little farther on.'
The young man came up to this third old man, old, old
he was ; asked the same question and had the same
answer. And so did he have from a fourth, a fifth, and a
sixth, all of them old, old, old. The seventh had a white
beard, long, long, long, that came down to his feet. Said
this old man to the young one, ' Here in truth is the
world where folks never die. If you would stay among
us, you must earn your bread by the sweat of your brow.'
Just think of it ! The young man began to dance on
one foot, so great was his joy. Then the old man said,
' Go to that house you see up that mountain, and say
to my grandmother there to prepare two plates of soup
and a boiled hen, so that this evening when we all come
home, we shall find everything ready. Off set the young
io8 IN THE ABRUZZI [pt. i.
man ; but by the way he thought to himself, ' Two plates
of soup and just one hen, and seven old men who work
from morning to night ! Besides, who knows how many
sons and grandsons and great-grandsons there may be ?
And now there's another mouth to fill. Am I to eat
nothing to-night ? Oh, but this is a poor kind of house-
keeping ! ' So when he went into the house of the seven
old men, he said to the grandmother of the old man with
the long, long, long beard, * Your grandson bids me say
that you are to prepare four dishes of soup and two hens.'
The old woman crossed herself with her left hand. But
all the same she prepared the two hens and the four
dishes of soup.
" Evening came, and into the house came a whole
caravan of people. The seventh old man said to the
grandmother, ' Who bade you make ready all this ? ' She
answered, ' This fine young man told me.' And the old,
old carle said to the fine young man, ' Bravo ! You have
begun well.
"'Ours is the world without any sin;
Be off to the cheaters — they'll let you in.
" ' Ah ! you know nothing, nothing !
" ' Ho mangiato senipre broccoli,
Ho portato sempre zoccoli,
Poco cervello alia mia perlencocola.'
["I have always eaten cabbage, I have always worn clogs, and tliere's
little wit in my head."]
" And so the young man took his long way back ;
and if he isn't dead by this time, he'll die one day.
" ' Patre nostre de ji senze
Alia trippe se cumenze ;
Se fernisce a ju spedale :
Sette libbre noss' a male.'"
[" Pater noster of the senses. Give in to the stomach and it's at the
hospital you'll end. Sed libera nos a 7nalo."'\ *
' De Nino, vol. iii. p. 368.
cii. v.] FOLK-LORE AND FOLK TALES 109
And what of the fairy who had kissed him into
beauty ? What did she think of a world where death
never entered, but only at the price of such austerity ?
Or did he come back to her again, brutto^ briitto, bruito,
and give her an excuse for running away ?
The next one I shall give is grimmer, bitterer to the
taste. The text of it is —
" I said in mine heart concerning the estate of the
sons of men, that God might manifest them, and that
they might see that they themselves are beasts. For
that which befalleth the sons of men befalleth beasts ;
even one thing befalleth them : as the one dieth so
dieth the other : yea, they have all one breath ; so that
a man hath no pre-eminence above a beast, for all
is vanity. All go unto one place ; all are of the dust,
and all turn to dust again." So says Ecclesiastes. Com-
pare the statement with this folk-tale. Life .'' " All is
vanity, saith the Preacher." Life ^ " Who has had it
has had it," says this unknown maker of folk-tales.
Kismet.
" After the creation of the world the Eternal Father
went in to His palace to rest. And it wasn't little He
had had to do, was it .-' To create all the animals just !
Well, He had gone in, and flung Himself down on a seat.
Then all the beasts came to pay their respects to the
Creator, and to ask a favour of Him.
" The ass came in : ' I thank Thee who hast created
me, and I kiss Thy hands and Thy feet.'
" ' Don't speak of it ! ' replied the Eternal Father.
" And the ass went on : ' I would fain know what is
my destiny.'
" ' Your destiny ? I'll tell you at once. You must
work from morning till night, and patiently put up with
it however they belabour your back, and not murmur
either. Otherwise there'll be nothing to fill your belly.
no IN THE ABRUZZI [rx. i.
And it will be a feast day for you when they give you a
little straw.'
" The ass bowed its head, and began to reflect. ' To
work all the time ! Little or nothing to eat ! To be
beaten, and then beaten again ! What a life ! ' He turned
it over in his mind, and raised his head. ' I would know
for how many years this weary life of mine shall last'
" ' Twenty years,' replied the Creator.
" ' Twenty years ! Twenty years is too long. I am
not worthy to kiss Thy hands and feet ; but one grace
Thou should'st grant me.'
" ' Well ? '
" ' Let me get out of it a little sooner.'
" ' And how much would you have cut off ? '
" ' Ten years would still be too much ! '
" ' This grace is granted.'
" The ass went out and told everything to the dog
waiting at the door. The dog entered. 'I have come
to thank Thee for having made me, and I would fain
know what is my destiny.'
" ' Your destiny is to stand barking and often chained ;
you must be faithful to your master ; and if he beats you,
then you shall lick his hands. As for eating, you may
look for a bit of black bread, and now and then they'll
throw a bone out of the window to you.'
" The dog put his tail between his legs and hung his
head, thinking. ' Always barking ! Often chained ! To
love him who hates me ! Dry bread ! A stray bone !
Ah, Father Eternal ! '
"The last words escaped him so loud, that the Eternal
Father said, ' What's the matter } ' And the dog
answered —
" ' I throw myself at Thy feet. I would know how
many years I have to live .-' '
" ' Twenty years.'
" ' Too many. O my Eternal Father, cut some off ! '
Cii. v.] FOLK-LORE AND FOLK TALES in
" ' And how long would you have ? '
" ' The half ; and the other ten blessed years some
other comrade can have.'
" ' This grace is granted.'
" Hardly had the dog gone out ere he began to bark
out of desperation ; and by his barking the other beasts
that stood at the door knew of the dog's misfortune.
" Entered the ape, swinging his tail. ' I thank Thee,
Father Eternal, for having made me.'
" ' Well, and what else do you want .'' '
" ' I would know the fate that awaits me.'
•"You shall never speak. You must live hidden in
the woods, and feed on leaves and grass and beech-mast.
In short, your mouth will often water. Man — you will
either not see him, or you will flee him.'
" Then the ape's legs began to shake. ' Always silent !
Alone ! Nothing but wretched food ! '
" The Eternal Father looked on with amusement the
while. And the ape said, ' At least I would know if my
life has to last long.'
" ' Twenty years ! '
" ' Oh, in mercy ! But I shall die before then.'
" ' It isn't your business to order the feast. You shall
not die.'
" ' I am not worthy to kiss Thy hands and feet. But,
for charity, make my days shorter.'
" ' Will ten years content you ? '
" ' Yea, my Lord.'
" The ape went out and told all to a child, who was
the last to go in. He entered, and knelt before the
Eternal Father, who gave a long, deep sigh, saying,
' Well, this is the last of them.'
" The child began, ' I thank Thee for having made me
in Thy image and likeness. Now tell me what is my
destiny.'
" ' Your destiny is the best of all. You will be master
112 IN THE ABRUZZI [pt. i.
of all the things about you, and free to make and to un-
make. You alone shall enjoy life and shall rule over all
the other animals. Are you content .'' '
" ' I am overjoyed. Oh, what more could I desire ?
But tell me, how many years will this good time last .'' '
" ' Twenty years.'
" ' It is too little, my Eternal Father. A little longer.
Find me at least another hundred years.'
" ' There are no more.'
" Oh, but that is not true. Are there not the ten
years that the ass wouldn't have, and the ten years of the
dog, and the ten years of the ape ? '
" ' Would you have them ? Take them,'
"And the child went out grumbling also, because to
have only fifty years of joyous life was a foolishness.
" All the words of the Father Eternal came true.
In the first twenty years man is master and can do
whatever he will. He listens to no one's reproofs. He will
have a wife, and he takes her. Then his father says to
him, ' Get out of the house and bear your own burdens.
Work, work, work, if you would live.' And then man
passes those ten years which the ass would not have.
And children come. One is crying here, and another
there, and he scolding and shouting all the time. Often
he is forced to stop the whole day at home so that no
harm may come to them. Often that his family may eat
he touches nothing himself. And these are the ten
years that the dog would not have. Then the sons grow
up, take wives to themselves, and thrust the father aside.
And when the father makes an observation, his sons say,
' Be quiet ! ' And when some visitor comes to the house,
' Don't you see how dirty you are ? Keep to your own
room.' These are the ten years that the ape refused.
And after fifty years, what is life worth to you ^ Who
has had it has had it ! " ^
' De Nino, vol. iv. p. 3.
CH. v.] FOLK-LORE AND FOLK TALES 113
And of what date is this tale I find in Finamore's
collection ? The bitterest revolutionary of to-day could
find no apter illustration. But it is not revolutionary,
and it is not bitter. It has only the ascetic cynicism of
long and ingrained experience of hardship. It sounds
very new. One suspects something of the self-conscious-
ness of the modern. But you find the same note in the
old tales. It was not yesterday men began to talk like
that.
" There was once a village called Misery. In the
wretchedest household there a son was born. Said the
wife to the husband, * What name shall we give him } '
And he answered, * Misery.'
" When Misery had grown to be a young man, he set
off to beg his bread. Folks said to him, * Why don't you
work ? At least you could go as a servant.' ' I'd do so
willingly,' replied Misery, ' if I could find a just master.'
' Oh, come, come ! ' they said. ' Is that so very difficult .'' '
' Yes,' he answered. ' I don't believe there is one any-
where. Tell me, what master is there who shares his
wealth with the poor ? '
" One day he met a prince, who said to him, ' I never
saw any one so young and so wretched. Why, if you
can't do anything else, don't you find a master .-' ' ' Be-
cause no master is just,' ' Will you come with me .'' '
' No ; you are a prince.' ' Well, what of that .'' ' ' Because
you are a prince, and I am a poor man, and we should
not be equal.'
" Begging his way from place to place, Misery reached
Rome. There the Pope said to him, ' Will you come
into my service .-* ' ' No ; because you are not just.'
' What ! I not just ? ' ' No ; you are the head of the
priests, and you say you are just.'
" So off he set once more ; and he met One who called
him by his name, and who said to him, ' Will you come
114 IN THE ABRUZZI [pt. i.
into My service ? ' ' And how do you know about me ? '
asked Misery. ' I know all things. I am the Eternal
Father.' ' Then you are the most unjust of all masters.'
' What ! I unjust ! . . . ' ' Yes ; because you do not
make all men equal.' The Eternal Father went back
to Heaven, and straightway ordered Death to go forth
and meet Misery.
" Death went, and said to Misery, ' Is it true that you
are looking for a master .-• ' ' Yes.' ' Will you come with
me } ' ' And who are you }' 'I am Death.' ' Ah-h-h-h !
. . . Yes, with you I will go, for you alone are just, and
treat all men alike. But you'll have to give me good
wages, you know.' ' As for pay, be easy on that point.
You'll come with me to the sick folks. If you see me at
the head of the bed, it means the sick man will die ; if at
the foot, he'll get better.'
" So Misery began to play the doctor ; and he never
made one mistake. Did he see Death at the head, he
ordered the sacraments ; at the foot, he ordered cold
water ; and he won much fame and lots of money. One
day, Death said to him, ' Now let's go to your country.'
' No, no ; there's too much misery there.' ' And what
does that matter .'' ' asked Death. ' Well, well,' said the
other, ' we'll go if you like ; but we shan't do good
business there. Where there's little to eat, and less to
drink, there's a health ! . . . '
" So it turned out ; and they left again ere long. On
the way said Misery to Death, 'Where are we going
now ? ' * To my home.' After three days' journey they
came to a big house. There was a great hall in it full of
crosses, some big, some not so big, and one single huge
one. ' What do these crosses mean .-* ' asked Misery of
Death. ' They are the crosses which each man has to
bear.' ' And what is that very big one .-* ' 'It is the
cross of Misery.' On they passed to another hall still
greater than the first. It was full of little lights. ' And
CH. v.] FOLK-LORE AND FOLK TALES 115
these little lights ? ' ' These little lights,' said Death,
* are the lives of men. Each time one goes out a man
dies.' ' And that little, little light just flickering out ? '
Said Death to Misery, ' Comrade, that is your light.'
* And so I have to die .-' ' ' Yes, comrade.' ' Ah, but
before dying, I beg one grace from the Eternal Father.
I would fain say three Ave Marias.' The Eternal Father
yielded this grace — but Misery has never yet said those
three Ave Marias. And so he is still above ground."
CHAPTER VI
A NOTE ON ART
No museum cities — Classic remains — Christian architecture — Sculpture —
The lovely lady of Aquila — Present-day aspect of churches — The
master-craftsmen of the Abruzzi — Modern painters: F. P. Michetti.
An Italian sky, mountains, glorious air — and no art. So
may one lightly recommend the Abruzzi. It is not true,
of course — Bindi's ponderous volumes are an overwhelm-
ing protest against the statement. It is true only to the
extent that there are no museum cities, and that the
scattered monuments of a great time are mutilated.
The artist and the casual wanderer will find things
worth laborious searching after ; and the three fiends,
earthquakes, poverty, and vandalism, have had much to
spoil, though the second of the three has often had a
beneficent influence.
The remains of the art of the classic ages hardly
count, at least not as art. Roman walls, bits of Roman
columns, Roman substructures are common enough ;
but as for buildings in any sense complete, when you
have named the little Tricalle at Chieti, once the temple
of Diana Trivia, and the Church of San Pietro at Albe,
you have named the best. The ancient busts and
statues dug up in temples and villas have long ago found
their way to Rome.
But in Christian architecture the province has been
very rich. Even in this poor mountainous place the
Church found means to build gloriously to God,
the Virgin, and the Saints. Aquila had ninety-nine
116
CH. VI.] A NOTE ON ART 117
churches. Counting the number in places that are half
dead now, one tries to revise all one's notion of history ;
but probably there never was a civil life in proportion to
all the ecclesiastical display. The land is covered with
convents, chapels, hermitages. To-day it is difficult to
point to one completely beautiful and in perfect pre-
servation. San Felice of Pescocostanzo, San Marcello
of Anversa, Santa Maria in Valle, Santa Maria in
Moscufo, San Pietro d'Albe, the ruined abbey church of
Casauria, rise to the mind, all of special interest or grace.
Many with beautiful exteriors, such as San Bernardino
and the Badia of Collemaggio, both of Aquila, and the
cathedrals of Atri, Ortona, and Chieti, are hopelessly
spoilt inside. Still, in broken words, you may read, in
the monuments of the province, the whole story of
architecture from the ninth century — Lombardic, Italo-
Byzantine, Angevin, Renaissance, down to our own evil
days. The best belong to the eleventh and twelfth
centuries.
The art of sculpture in the Abruzzi was always
subservient to ecclesiastical architecture. Much of the
finest work has vanished. Niccolo Pisano worked here ;
but Santa Maria della Vittoria, the splendid church he
planned for Charles of Anjou, is now a heap of shapeless
stones. Of native architects and sculptors there were
some of exquisite and very individual talent, whose
names the world has never heard. And in sepulchral
monuments, if not rich, it has at least one masterpiece
by Andrea dell' Aquila, a pupil of Donatello.
I do not like Aquila. Up there, under the Gran
Sasso, it is hard and clear-cut and prosperous. It has
had a stirring history, and its bright, intelligent people
have made the best of a proud but naked situation, and
a climate with terrible rigours of heat and cold. Once
it was a treasure-house of beautiful work in stone ; and
even to-day the antiquarian can find abundant material
ii8 IN THE ABRUZZI [pt. i.
for his researches. But I did not wish to linger there, as
at Chieti, with its glorious outlook on mountain and
plain, nor as in soft, sleepy Sulmona, nestling in its
happy valley. Yet I shall remember Aquila for that
thing of exquisite beauty, the monument in San Ber-
nardino erected by Maria Pereira, the Spanish wife of
Count Lalli Caponeschi, to her infant daughter Beatrice,
which commemorates both mother and child. The
mother gazes out gently towards you, her hands resting
on a book. She is young and gracious, a very noble
lady. Underneath the sarcophagus lies the little child
like a tender flower. The exquisite work was long
given to Maestro Silvestro, the son of Giacomo da
Sulmona ; but it is almost certainly from the hands of
Andrea dell' Aquila. The great and interesting, yet
inferior monument in the same church, the shrine of San
Bernardino of Siena, is the work of Silvestro and his
pupil Salvatore, both of Aquila. Who knows the lovely
lady of the Camponeschi that lies here .-' A few critics.
She is named in the handbooks. But Aquila is far
away, and her lovers are few.
The present-day aspect of churches, in the Abruzzi
will certainly make a purist very unhappy indeed, and
some who are not purists. Everywhere has the baroque
invaded. After the terrible earthquakes in the beginning
of the eighteenth century, there were so many churches
ruined that repairs on a huge scale were doubtless
necessary, if the fabrics were to last another fifty years.
This gave a lamentable opportunity for vandalism ; and
even those left unharmed followed suit. There was one
pattern ; and energy and ingenuity were strained to
their utmost to make the most diverse structures conform
to it. Alas ! in the eighteenth century, so calamitous for
ecclesiastical art, there were riches in the Abruzzi —
hence all those plump curves, those bloated cherubs, the
vulgar voluptuousness, the gilding, the gilt-edging.
CH. VI.] A NOTE ON ART 119
The terrible result is too well known to need description.
In the poorer churches, however, though the purist may
again be offended, the artist may often find something
to delight or to amuse him. They are, indeed, people's
sanctuaries, full of poor treasures j faded and worn with
time and kisses. The stiff, formal roses that deck the
home of the Virgin are blanched almost to silvery white-
ness ; and even when brand-new pink ones are bought
by the meagre pence of priest and people, they are
arranged with a barbaric profuseness from which the
commonplace touch of the bourgeois is entirely absent.
Tawdry in themselves, they glow in dark, age-worn places
like spots of living fire. A few years ago Mr. Francis
James, the water-colourist, painted some of these humble
Abruzzi shrines with excellent effect. There may be
few statues one would look at twice for their art's sake,
yet one carries away a sympathetic impression of some
of the images. They are called " Our Lady of the
Graces," or " Our Lady of Sorrows," or " St. Lucy," or
" St. Appollonia " ; but, frankly, they are dolls, nothing
but big dolls. The recent ones are as vulgar as new satin
and wax and simpers can make them ; but the old ones,
dressed in bombazine or antique brocade, have often a
charm indescribable in words. To strangers' eyes they
present nothing spiritual. The ideals of the church
doll-makers of the eighteenth and early nineteenth
centuries were three — the meagre prim virgin, the sub-
stantial dignified housewife, and the jewelled court lady.
None of them have the insipid vulgarity of the images
of to-day.
It was in the minor arts that the Abruzzesi shone.
As goldsmiths they were unrivalled throughout Europe in
the fifteenth century ; and Sulmona was a great school
that trained many masters. Of the work of Niccolo
Gallucci of Guardiagrele, one of the most accomplished,
a good deal is left in the province. But Bindi names
I20 IN THE ABRUZZI [pt. i.
these artists by the hundred. Hardly less skilful were
they as potters, their most famous faience being made at
Castelli in the Valle Siciliana. There had been potteries
there from the time of the Romans ; but in the sixteenth
century the art of majolica was brought there to a pitch
of perfection under the Di Grue family, especially under
Carlantonio and Francescantonio of that house. Speci-
mens of Castelli ware are to be found in all the great
museums of Europe; but in the Abruzzi none, save
perhaps a piece or two in private collections. The
bric-a-brac dealers of Rome know the embroideries of
the province ; but the art is lost. Out of old cupboards
and chests I have seen bits and scraps produced, feasts
for the eye and the touch. To judge from the deft
fingers of the women and their love of colour, the art
might easily be revived — as lace-making has been to
some extent. But the whisper from the outside world
has come : the machine will make it cheaper. What is
beauty ? What is the craft of the hand ? Will it sell for
bread ? And life is hard.
If the crafts have disappeared, since the opening up
of the country there has been a rush of energy towards
the pictorial and plastic arts. In painting, the Abruzzi
during the Renaissance produced no artist worthy to be
named with its sculptors. II Zingaro is too legendary
for discussion. But several of the best known modern
painters of Southern Italy have been natives of the
province. Indeed, one of the most powerful and original
of living Italian artists is Abruzzese, Francesco-Paolo
Michetti, born at Tocco Casauria, near Chieti, in 1852.
He was early influenced by Morelli and Fortuny ; but he
soon found his own inspiration among his own people.
His subjects — "peasant idylls scorched by Southern sun,"
they have been called— are nearly all of his native
Abruzzi, and mostly from his own province of Chieti.
You will hardly think of the Abruzzesi as a staid,
CH. VI.] A NOTE ON ART 121
reserved people after you have seen Michetti's interpreta-
tion of them. He has painted them with sun-heated
passions of love and mysticism, in a whirl of light. In
his treatment there is an intoxication of energy ; and if
his touch is sometimes brutal, it is always alive. His
first great success was, " The Procession of the Corpus
Domini at Chieti," in 1876. Since then he has shown
the peasants abject before the divine, as in " II Voto,"
and exalted as in "The Feast of San Domenico of
Cocullo." It was his picture, " La Figlia di Jorio," which
inspired D'Annunzio's play of the same name. Indeed,
his friend D'Annunzio has been his untiring and
enthusiastic eulogist in prose and verse. Another
Leonardo he has called him, for his vigour, his colour,
his universality.
" Tu che come Leonardo
hai la dolce facondia allettatrice."
CHAPTER VII
SINGERS AND IMPROVISATORI
Folk-Song in the Abruzzi — Love-Songs — " The Shepherd's Return " —
Songs of Labour — Songs to Madonna and the Saints — A literature
of improvisation — Serafino Aquilano — "The ploughman poet" — ■
Gabriele Rossetti — The English Rossettis — A forgotten romantic
— Gabriele D'Annunzio.
They sing still in the Abruzzi. At least the poor folks
do, and not only those who work out-of-doors. Young
Italy is a little inclined to be depressed at this persistence
of song ; for he is secretly of opinion that it is incom-
patible with intelligent occupations. Singing in a factory
now ? Intolerable, of course, he reflects. But while he
is thus reflecting, the croon of an old litany is mingling
with the birr-r-r of some antiquated loom in the rocky
streets of Scanno. Down to the bleak plain of Cinque-
miglia fall the long calling songs of the shepherds, who
have become but wandering voices on the heights.
Under the glaring sun of the Campi Palentini the
harvesters sing to the rhythm of their scythes and sickles.
In the mellow valley of Sulmona, and on the vine-clad
hills overlooking the eastern sea, lovers sing to each other,
and answer each other in song from field to field, cease-
less and without effort like birds, bending at their work
the while, only rising now and then to breathe out a
longer note. These are the stornelli (Abruzzese sturjijele).
As Signor Finamore points out, they have no emphatic
invocation, but are sung alternately by men and women,
and often there is a little melody between the parts.
122
D .1
, '•> • 1 ' ' ' '
' ) ' 3 'j 3 3 3 3^
c C C C O b
O C «.*''€ c
« c r c -^ f r
C C ' r ' - r
CH. VII.] SINGERS AND IMPROVISATORI 123
The sweetest singer I heard was a Httle damsel of
perhaps fifteen, whose occupation was to carry loads of
bricks on her head for the masons who were building a
new villa on the sands of the Adriatic. Her comrade
was a slim lad, perhaps a year or two younger. To and
fro the children went in company, singing bravely under
their loads. On their return journey now one took up
the tune, now the other. In rest times they dabbled
their feet in the sand, or in the water, letting the sea
sing to them. Then back to their work again, to the
monotonous journeys to and fro with the bricks, and to
the sweet singing they had learnt on their hillsides.
Like nearly all folk-music the tunes are mostly in a
minor key. I have heard some of marvellous beauty
chanted only to the sky above and the Madonna by an
unseen singer in a vineyard. But not all the solemn tunes
have solemn words. For the tunes are old, old, and un-
spoilt ; while many of the words have degenerated. Muti-
lated ditties, out of which most of the sense has gone, or
frivolous, or amorous fragments, may be sung to the
same religious chant. All the chapters of the book of life,
and all the works of all the seasons, doubtless had once a
song ritual, stray fragments of which wander still in the
mountains and the plains. But love is the chief theme.
Once the love-songs were always accompanied by the
pipe, and they are so to-day in the remoter parts of the
Vastese. Elsewhere they are sung mostly alone, or with
the guitar, or the chitarra battente, a kind of lute.
The older songs are finer, subtler, than the new ones.
Perhaps they are not all relics of shepherd and peasant
wooing.
" Quanno nacesti tu, nacqui pur ijo ;
Nacquero li distini tra de noi,"
[" When thou wast born, then was I born too ; and the fates that bind
us came into being."]
124 IN THE ABRUZZI [pt. i.
Again —
" Vijate chi te da lu prime vace,
Vijat' a cehela cas' addove trace !
Questo se cand' a tte, dolg-i-amor mije :
Ca I'ombre che ffaje tu, quella so' jije."
["Blessed be she who gave thee the first kiss. Blessed the house that
shelters thee. This is sung to thee, sweet love of mine ; for the shadow
which thou castest, it is I."]
But it is not only the sweets of love that are sung —
" Vaj' a 11' infernu, spenzieratamende,
Trov' nu vecchiu, ch' era stat' amande,
E jji me jj' accosto, ssecretamende ;
Ji' isse : — Bhon vecchiu me, che ppene fati ?
— ^Ji cambo mejje mo', quand' er' amande.
Le pene de 11' infernu non zo gniende
A cquelle che ppate tu, pover' amande."
[" With heavy heart I made my way to hell, and there I found an old
man who had been a lover. And I whispered to him secretly, ' Good old
man, what pains dost thou suffer ? ' And he, ' I fare better now than when
I was a lover. The pains of hell are nothing to those thou sufferest, poor
lover.' "]
And this of the love of an old man for a maid —
" L'amore di li vecchi
Mo te 1' accente come va ;
Nu fasce de rame di ficura,
Fa lu fume e lu foe' nin fa."
[" The love of old men : now I will tell thee what it is : — A bundle of
fig-twigs. Smoke it makes, but no fire."]
Among a nomadic people the farewell songs are many.
"Addij', addij', e 'n' aldra void' addije,
La lundananza tue, la pena mije."
["Adieu, adieu ! thine the distance, mine the pain."]
This is the burden of half of them.
I have heard "The Shepherd's Parting Song," and
much oftener, "The Shepherd's Return," at Pescoco-
stanzo, at Scanno, and elsewhere. But when they were
written down for me, I found the words transformed
into something with a rather modern sound — not quite
modern, for we do not allude to Cupid in our most
up-to-date lyrics — but at least not very rustic, or pastoral,
CH. VII.] SINGERS AND IMPROVISATORI 125
according to Northern ideas. Perhaps this was out of
kindness to the Inglese. They certainly have not the
air of having been sung " when vines grew in the market-
place," as they say of the oldest ditties. But the airs, at
least, are traditional ; and sung to the guitar or fiddle by
lusty mountain voices, they stir and haunt. And because
" The Shepherd's Return," is one of the songs you may
hear any summer evening in the mountains, I give it as it
was given me at Scanno.
APPENNESELLA SCANNESE.
IL RITORNO DEI PASTORI.
MOTIVO DEL Canto {accompanied by the instrument only at the under-
lined passages,
Molto largo {appasstonafo).
'Egig^g^£EEijg^^^!=^^r^g:
Ec - CO - mi, bel - la mi - a, son ri - ve - nu - to
Le
i
9
W^izw^-^im
lt2=^
^=?=^
E^^iEiE5EKEE&^Ei^_^
I
^ \ r IF
tue bel-lez - zemihan-no ri-chia-ma - to - - - o (i]
(l) Here begins the appennesella, or ritornello {i.e. burden), played by
the violin or guitar.
126 IN THE ABRUZZI [pt. i.
Eccomi, bella mia, son rivenuto.
Le tue bellezze mi hanno richiamato.
Ora che a te vicino sono tomato
Fidele a te saro all' infinito.
Quando nacesti tu, fior' di bellezza,
II sole ti dono il suo splendore ;
La luna ti dono la sua chiarezza,
Cupido t' insegno a far' 1' amore.
Quanto sei cara, fior' di Diana !
Tieni le bellezze della luna ;
Porti i capelli alia fuggiana.
II cuor mio per te si consuma.
Bella, che delle belle regina sei,
L'unico oggetto dei pensieri miei.
Fiore di ruta,
II mio cuore innamorato ti saluta."
In the songs of labour the signs of decadence are very
apparent, in the words, at least. Tradition has worn too
thin. Memory has failed, and several have got tagged
together, without fusion. Deep and solemn chants come
across the fields to the passers-by. But ask the singers
to tell the words, and this is what the song-gatherer
gleans —
"Ji' meta meta e la faggijja mete,
Ca la patrona ha ma da di la fijje.
Ni I'a prumess', e nni' mmi li vo' daje
Tutto lu grane je vijje scippaje."
Or this, which is a jumble of old tags —
" Fiore de lemon e ffiore de lemone,
La pan a' cummattute ghe la fame,
E le vedeille me va 'm brecissione,
O bella, bella de la cicia custte,
Puorrem' a bbeve, ca me s'e' remboste ;
E dda' mme I'acque, ne mme da' lu vine :
Damme 'na rama de truzzemarine.
Truzzemarina, vatten' a la Rocche ;
Va wide la bella mi s'e' vviv 'o morte.
Se e wive, bacittel' armlui' ;
Se e mmorte, facettel' asseppelli'.
Next to songs of earthly love come songs of heaven and
the saints. Even to-day the Abruzzesi are a very lonely
CH. VII.] SINGERS AND IMPROVISATORI 127
people. Husbands and sons and lovers go for more than
half the year down to the plains of the South, nay, for
years, across the sea. And the winter is very long. And
the hills become walls of separation. And even good
neighbours have their own troubles without bearing other
folks'. Only the Madonna is ever there — she of the
graces, best beloved, perhaps ; or she of the many sorrows,
who knows theirs ; or she of the Orient, who shines like
the morning star out of the darkness. And the saints
are near, very near, indeed, in the wild Abruzzi. Out of
their heaven of blue, and from their fleecy couches, they
come to hard rocky places, and their light feet keep time
to the patter of little maidens on their way to the well,
to the tread of the mules up the stony ladder path, to
the staggering run of the old under burdens they would
fain lay down at last. They are very near and com-
panionable, almost brothers and sisters, for all the gold
crowns and the garlands they wear in church. Some-
times these songs of the saints are long narrative
ballads. Others are invocations. Many are sing-song
rhythmic phrases, repeated and varied, made to lull the
singer and her little world. The mother bending over
her sick child, whispers and sings —
"Vieci, Madonna, vestite dcbianchi,
purteje lu suonne e liveje lu piante ;
viece, Madonna, vestite de rusca,
purteje la suonne, e liveje la tosce :
viece, Madonna, vestite de nire,
purteje lu suonne, e liveje le pene."
I have it on the authority of an Abruzzese — his infor-
mation is twenty years old — that you will never find a
viandriano of the Marsica without a book of poetry,
Tasso or Arisosto, which he learns by heart in entirety,
sitting up against a tree. As a good many cannot read,
the statement is a rather sweeping one. I doubt if the
128 IN THE ABRUZZI [pt. l
observer would say the same to-day ; but I do not
entirely disbelieve it. Whatever there is of culture in
the Abruzzi belongs to the past ; and the peasantry are
its best guardians. The bourgeois may be intent on the
new, but not very strenuously ; for the new does not
present itself to this race of peculiar gifts and limitations
in an appealing fashion.
Like all the Southerners the Abruzzesi have ever
been great improvisatori. Of improvisers by profession
they have had notable examples, among them that
Serafino Aquilano (1466-1500), so famous that his
epitaph in S. Maria del Popolo in Rome pronounced you
in deep debt to your eyes only to have looked on his
tomb. Serafino was a vagrant of genius, known at all
the Courts of Italy — Milan, Urbino, Frederic of Aragon's,
Caesar Borgia's — the delight of them all for his admirable
extemporary songs, which he sang to his lute, and not a
little feared, too, for his satires, which were free and
courageous. He passed, and the wind swept away his
traces. The nobles, the bourgeoisie, the scholars, the
peasants, the shepherds, all improvised ; and they all,
but chiefly the peasants, improvise to this day. One
night last spring, after a little festa in S , the
musicians serenaded the host and his family under
the window ere they went home. To the air of the
Shepherd's Partenza, the singer made a song half old,
half new, with allusions to the events of the evening,
with separate greetings to each member of the family,
and a stanza specially made for the Inglese — all with
a surprising readiness and a faultless sense of rhythm,
while the guitar did its part, no less gallantly, emphasizing
each sentiment, gay or serious, with equal promptitude.
The improvisatore in this case was a yellow-haired,
blue-eyed, ruddy-faced young fellow, own brother to a
Northern Scot, a contadino, who did odd jobs about the
CH. VII.] SINGERS AND IMPROVISATORI 129
village, and had lately been working in the brickfields
near Pittsburg, U.S.A.
The genius of the people has expressed itself largely
in improvisations — has wasted itself, some one will say.
But improvisation is one art, and literature is another.
Sometimes they are combined. Improvisation is like
acting : the next generation knows of its triumphs only
by hearsay ; but its triumphs were none the less real.
If the stuff of great literature is in a people, they will
not choose iinprovisatori solely for its outlet ; and the
easy triumphs of these may divert the energies from
the harder task of finding the precise, the ultimate
expression. But at least it is something to have a
ready means to speak out what is in your heart, be it
praise of your mistress, or love of the saints, or hate
of the tyrant, or a compliment to your neighbour who
has sent you a bottle of his best wine. This special
talent Tasso never had, in spite of his Neapolitan
mother, The.Marchese Manso, in 1588, took Torquato
with him to Bisaccio to enjoy the pleasures of the autumn
season. The host wrote to the Prince of Conca, " Tor-
quato has become a mighty hunter, and overcomes even
the hardships of the season and the country. The bad
days and the evenings we are wont to pass listening for
long hours to playing and singing, for he has the greatest
delight in hearing those improvisatori, envying them
that readiness in versifying, of which nature, he says, has
been so sparing to himself."
That the Abruzzesi have ever had this talent in a
marked degree is a fact of much significance in dealing
with whatever literature they have produced. Where
improvisation has been modified only by learning, the
effects are more striking than happy — as in the case of
Benedetto de' Virgilii, " the ploughman poet." It was by
his improvised shepherd songs he first became known-
K
I30 IN THE ABRUZZI [pt. i.
They are all lost now, though one would give all his
printed volumes, inspired by Jesuit fathers, for one scrap
of the early untaught verse that brought the shepherds
about him, and gave him fame in his native Alfedena.
When he left his mountains he became a ploughman
on the lands of the Jesuit College at Orta. His love of
learning attracted the attention of the fathers ; and they
stuffed him with Latin and theology. In return, he
wrote a long poem on Ignatius Loyola, and others on
religious themes, all of which were printed and gained
many admirers. Ariosto and Tasso were his masters,
and he attained to elegance. But it was his great
namesake he would fain have imitated ; and under his
picture — painted by order of the Pope — was written this
epigram and apologia —
" Non impar ego Virgilio, si vel mihi civem,
Vel illi nasci sors dabat agricolam."
The " ploughman poet " of the Abruzzi had rooms
assigned to him in the Vatican by Pope Alexander VII.,
and he was made a Cavaliere di Cristo. But his works
are now mere literary curiosities. Had the good fathers
left him alone, he might have expressed something of
the soul of his people, as did the far greater ploughman
poet of the North.
There is plenty of minor verse in the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries ; but it is trivial, and after a fashion
that was fated to die utterly. It was the emancipation
of the spirit that came with the French Revolution and
with the French occupation that lifted the hearts and
loosened the tongues of the lettered Abruzzesi. And in
that dawning age of liberty the most outstanding name
among the liberators or the singers is one that makes
special appeal to us English — the name of Gabriele
Rossetti. In the beginning of one of his lectures on
modern literature, the great patriot, Luigi Settembrini,
cir. VII.] SINGERS AND IMPROVISATORI 131
said, speaking of his own young days, " In Naples there
was conspiracy, and art was its vehicle. When we were
young fellows each of us kept a notebook, which was
secret and dear to him, wherein he wrote the finest
patriotic poems he could find, not being able to have
them in printed form ; and he got them by heart and
recited them in company. In 1831, five of us had gone
out one day to the country, and all at once an
Abruzzese recited a new hymn —
" ' Su brandisci la lancia di guerra,
Squassa in fronte quell' elmo primato,
Scendi in campo, ministro del fato,
Oh quai cose s' asppettan di te ! '
" The hymn set our hearts beating ; and I remember
still the voice of that youth as he cried, * Cursed be the
Abruzzese, who shall ever forget Gabriele Rossetti ! '
To-day I repeat that no Italian should ever forget him."
And, indeed, Don Gabriele was a great force in his
time, before ever he set foot on English shores. After
that he was but an exile calling home over the sea,
calling in hopeless times to his own people, unhappy and
distraught. The improvisatore of Naples had lifted their
hopes, and his songs had run through all the kingdom,
setting their hearts alight for liberty. Gabriele Rossetti
was born at Vasto in the Abruzzi in 1783, the son of
Nicola Rossetti, blacksmith, and Maria Francesca Pietro-
cola. These poor parents were honourable folks of great
intelligence, though unlettered. Nicola held he was of
good ancient stock, belonging to the Delle Guardias, a
well-known Vastese family, Rossetti being but a sobri-
quet. The sons were all in their way distinguished.
Andrea, the eldest, became a priest, and canon of Santa
Maria in Vasto. He was a well-known improvisatore.
Domenico became in course of time a lawyer, and settled
in Parma. He also improvised, once notably in front
of the tomb of Virgil ; but some of his poems were
132 IN THE ABRUZZI [pt. i.
committed to paper, and a volume was printed. Antonio
did not contrive to follow his brothers into the learned
professions ; but at Vasto, where he was a barber, none
was better known for his lively rhymes on gay occa-
sions, and his extempore parody on the Dies IrcB is
remembered to this day. Gabriele was educated first
by his eldest brother ; but his mind was open to many
influences, and he picked up a wonderful amount of
varied learning before he left his father's house. Vasto,
the natural birthplace for a poet, hangs on its cliffs
overlooking the sea. Behind and to the south lie the
beautiful fertile plains and olive groves, and back of them
the great mountains. Gabriele, as a youth, wandering
about the valleys of the Casarsa and the Trave, im-
provised his songs to the sea and the sky and his friends
— on an out-of-date Arcadian pattern, the only one the
provincial youth as yet knew. When he was about
nineteen there was a more than usually serious dis-
turbance in the town, stirred up by the Calderai (rivals
of the Carbonari), in which the brigands took part.
The podesta was killed. When the youth heard that
"this was a revolution in favour of legitimacy and the
Catholic religion now attacked by the Jacobins," he
reflected that the throne and altar were being defended
in a more than doubtful fashion ; and from that moment
his political principles began to take definite shape.
There were republican ideas afloat, and even in Vasto
a cap of liberty had been hoisted. French, which he
had learnt from the invaders, became a medium of
emancipation. For family reasons he might have hated
the invaders, since his father never got over the insults
of some French officers who had fallen foul of him for
not furnishing certain provisions. Nicola was a man of
strong feeling, and, like all Abruzzesi, very proud. This
is how his grandson, Mr. W. M. Rossetti, translates an
epitaph made for his tomb by a relative.
cii. VII.] SINGERS AND IMPROVISATORI 133
" Nicola Rossetti, blacksmith, poor and honourable,
lovingly sent in boyhood, to their first studies, his sons,
carefully nurtured in childhood. If Fortune neglected
him, provident Nature ultimately distinguished, in the
obscure artizan, the well-graced father, who, to the
strokes of his hammer on the battered anvil, sent forth
the sonorous and glorious echo beyond remote Abruzzo,
into Italy and other lands."
Vasto had always had a stormy history, invaded by
Turks and French and English and Austrians, now at
the mercy of the foreigner, now of the brigands — for
Manhes had not yet come to clear them out, and the
town lived in daily fear of attack. With brigands
without and feuds within, life was neither calm nor
pleasant in the Vasto of those days. The studious and
ambitious youth needed a larger sphere ; and he said
adieu to the "collini ove scherzai bambino, ove adulto
cantai."
His priest brother, Andrea, procured for him an intro-
duction to the great Abruzzese magnate, the Marchese
del Vasto, armed with which he left his native place
when he was twenty-one. He never saw it again, and
he never forgot it. The poor blacksmith's son from the
remote seaboard town, seems to have taken a prominent
place from the beginning among the cultivated circles
of Naples. He received a small appointment in the
museum, but literature was to be his profession. Life
in a great city and among men of thought and intellectual
striving, stirred him, shook him out of his early Arcadian,
insipid style. Besides, he had now something to say.
It was to awake Italy he sang ; and let us remember, as
we scan his lines coldly to-day, that he did awake it.
He joined the Carbonari, and became their heart and
soul in Naples. He, the Government official, had the
boldest voice of them all. This was all very well during
Murat's rule, but on the Bourbon's return, what was to
134 IN THE ABRUZZI [pt. i.
happen to an employe who wrote and sang out of his
heart, and whose theme was Hberty ?
But it was still as an improvisatore he was greatest
and most potent ; and the sonnet, not reprinted among
his poems, which he rang out in the Caffe d'ltalia while
they were waiting for Ferdinand's lagging hand to sign
the Constitution, is improvisation at white heat and of
splendid power,
"Sire, che attendi piu? Lo Scettro Ispano
Gia infranto cadde al suol, funesto esempio
A chi resta a regnar ! Vindice mano
Gli sta sul capo, che ne vuol lo scempio.
Sire, che attendi piu ? I'orgoglio insane
Ceda al pubblico voto : il fore, il tempio
Voglion la morte tua — resiste invano
II debil cortigiano, il vile e I'empio !
Soli non siam ; fin da remoti lidi
Grido di morte ai Despoti rimbomba , , .
Passa il tempo a tuo danno, e non decidi ?
Sire, che attendi piu ? gia il folgor piomba . , .
O il tuo regnar col popolo dividi,
O sul trono abborito avrai la tomba."
There were spies in the cafe, and the sonnet was
never forgiven. There were other counts against him,
and when despotism was redoubled after Ferdinand's
return from Laybach, Rossetti was a marked man. A
warrant for his arrest was sent out. A friend hid him in
the port of Naples till he was taken on board an English
steamer. In Malta he lived for over two years, befriended
by John Hookham Frere. Then he came to England,
and he never saw Italy again. The improvisatore of
power was silent. True, his later poetry was all more or
less improvisation, but no longer to an inflammable
audience, eager for the breath of life from his lips. He
sent messages over the sea, and knew hopes and despairs,
and hopes again. But '48 passed away ; and, tied to
England, he grew old and ailing and blind. For the
sake of his gifted children he had borne with foggy
CH. VII.] SINGERS AND IMPROVISATORI 135
London — "O che notte bruna, bruna, Senza stelle e
senza lume"— while longing for his own keen air at
home, and crying, " Salve, O ciel d' Italia bella."
In England he saw all his countrymen of liberal
opinions who came there. Poor himself, he was the
generous friend of all, and his little house was ever open
to them. Among the refugees were many Abruzzesi.
The children knew them and the other Neapolitans
because they called their father Don Gabriele. One of
them was the distinguished painter, Smargiasse, Another
painter, Rulli, gave Dante Gabriel some drawing lessons,
and Mr. W. M. Rossetti has a picture of Vasto painted
by one of them. They kept green in Don Gabriele's
memory the home of his youth. " He could readily
throw himself back," says his son, " when he liked, into
the Neapolitan dialect, or the Abruzzese."
Towards the end of his life he was engaged on his
laborious Dante commentary, in the study of Kabbalism,
freemasonry, and mysticism of every kind. Intensely
religious by nature, he had broken entirely with his early
faith, and had brought his children up, or allowed their
mother to bring them up, as Anglicans. At the end he
was a perhaps not very coherent mixture of freethinker,
Protestant, and mystic — but the last predominated. His
highest praise for a book was, " un libro sommamente
mistico."
Gabriele Rossetti died in 1854, and lies buried in
Highgate Cemetery. The medallion on his tomb is the
work of a sculptor of his own province. In Santa
Croce, Florence, he is named with honour, this singer of
unity, this prophet of a free Italy. And in Vasto he is
not forgotten. The Central Piazza, once del Pesce, was
renamed in 1883, at his centenary, Piazza Gabriele
Rossetti. The old name has died out there. The last
of the Vasto Rossettis, Vincenzo, died there in 1894.
136 IN THE ABRUZZI [pt. i.
" Since the close of my father's life, my knowledge of
Italians in England is practically a blank, and the same
was the case with my brother." So wrote Mr. W. M.
Rossetti. They honoured their father, but none of them
—save perhaps Maria Francesca — had ever been much
interested in their father's kindred or his early or his
later inspiration. Born in safe and happy England, they
were content to stay there. Italy was a long way off.
Many of the exiles they had seen in childhood they
had looked on perhaps as rather ridiculous persons ; for
children are wont to fix on the ludicrous out of the
dimly comprehended sum of a grown-up stranger. The
Italian call had to them nothing of novelty. They had
their own intense individualities and interests. The
younger son, who had the stronger political instincts,
was tied to his Government office ; and Dante Gabriel
was claimed by his art. He thought it ridiculous when
some one suggested he should go and fight for Italian
liberty. Their father's mystic studies seem to have
bored them. None of them went back to his old town
or province ; and had not the Vastesi, proud of their
son, and of their son's sons, written from time to time,
and had not the genial cousin, Teodorico Pietrocola —
who later took the name of Rossetti — been a link
between them and Vasto, there would have been no
communication at all. But Vasto celebrated its great
man's centenary ; and Mr. W. M. Rossetti sent certain
of his MSS. to the Vasto town museum.
The English strain of the Pierces may account for
some of this indifference. The English strain and the
English education account for the insularity of their
superficial tone and manner, and for a contempt, which
at least the greatest of them was wont to express, for all
foreigners. Even Mr. W. M. Rossetti seems to rejoice
that his father was not like the conventional Southern
Italian. The English dislike of expressed sentiment
cii. VII.] SINGERS AND IMPROVISATORI 137
and fuss was strong in them all ; and their friends doubt-
less held that the austere honesty and uprightness of the
air of their childhood's home was due to English in-
fluences. Settembrini thought the mystical writings of
their father's later days the result of English Protestantism.
But Gabriele Rossetti, first and last, and through and
through, was a Southern Italian of the Abruzzese type,
proud and austere, with his passionate nature well under
control for the most part, yet subject to sudden and
unforeseen bursts of expression. He had all the re-
spectable virtues, fitted well into a bourgeois life ; yet
was ever the potential revolutionary who had, in his fiery
youth, declaimed, " Sire, che attend! piu .'' " in the Caffe
d'ltalia. His literary style was, to the end, tainted by
the old-modish artificiality of South Italian Arcadian
models ; and he was always the improvisatore. He
knew this ; regretted it ; and even said that improvisation
had damaged his health. And the mysticism of his later
days was assuredly neither British nor Protestant, but an
unconscious, instinctive return, in uncongenial surround-
ings, to the spirit that has ever haunted his native province.
A sense of the divine is native there, and baffles its con-
tinual seekers, now hiding in secret recesses of the
mountains, now lost in demon-ridden dreams, brooding
over the high-set plains, and whirling in the glory that
blazes and dazzles in places made out of the hardest and
harshest of earth's material. There is something in the
land that never all pleases, and never cloys, that has
made the race cling to their mountains, and left them
unsatisfied, homesick even at home. How sympatheti-
cally apt is the verse they wrote on the exiled Don
Gabriele's tombstone at Highgate, " But now they desire
a better country " !
Dante Gabriel Rossetti was well content with England.
His bluff geniality of manner in his best days was called
138 IN THE ABRUZZI [PT. I.
particularly English. They have pointed out a physical
likeness between him and Chaucer. Once he thought of
visiting Italy, got as far as Paris, and turned back. But
the English Pierce strain had done nothing for the making
of his mind or temperament ; and even the Pre-Raphaelite
movement did not shape him, but only gave his special
gifts a chance. Ruskin called him " a great Italian
tormented in the Inferno of London." The Italian
element in his genius has, of course, often been touched
upon, though mainly in connection with his painting, but
its force has been denied because they could point to no
Italian resembling him. In a ponderous German critique
of his genius ("Dante Gabriel Rossetti, der Maler und
der Dichter, von Wolfram Waldschmidt ") we read,
" Rossetti steht in England nicht ohne Vorganger da,
und in seiner mystischen Kunstrichtung ist er iiberhaupt
mehr Englander als Italiener." And again, " Nicht in
den Praraphaeliten, sondern in die Reihen der Englischen
Visionare gehort er." To what English visionaries does
the critic refer .'' Who are his English forerunners } In
poetry I can only think of the ballad-makers, from
whom he learnt something. And assuredly he is not
Tuscan, in spite of the Polidori blood and his study of
Dante. The discipline of the Tuscan spirit he under-
went during his translation of Tuscan poetry counted for
something in his making. But the Tuscan intellectual
grip and clear-cut precision were not gifts of his. Save
in pictorial vision he is not precise. In all, save a few of
his poems, there is a sense of the incomplete. There are
loose ends. The final word is there when the vision is
rapidly translated — or it is never there. Rossetti had
great artistry, of course, but it failed again and again.
He, too, was improvisator e, disciplined by living among
conscious artists. And for his pictorial vision, expressed
in art and poetry, it is of the race that still utters its
religious faith and experience in " representations," that
cii. VII.] SINGERS AND IMPROVISATORI 139
must bring heaven and the saints on to a Httle earthly
stage to vivify the dry bones of everyday living, and
make ballads about them, to utter the conviction that
saints and " blessed damozels " are more present and
living companions than kinsfolk and neighbours. He
is a mystic of a more primitive type than his father.
Assuredly he is of the race, a race often undemonstrative,
yet hot and fantastic in love, incorrigible mystics, ever
seeking to pierce the Veil, or project pictures on it.
As for Christina Rossetti, she was iniprovisatrice ^Xvsxo^X.
pure and simple. Her Goblin Market, a little work of
exquisite spontaneous genius, is perfect improvisation.
No second vision disturbed the first. No pruning was
needed, and the utterance was adequate. For better and
for worse she was improviser ; and she poured out much
undisciplined stuff when her brain and heart and imagina-
tion were not working in unison, and when her inspira-
tion came from the English hymn-book. Perhaps her
emancipated father never told her a single demon-story
of the Abruzzi, and yet the matter of the poem might
well have come out of the folk-lore of his province.
Moreover, her Anglican training and all the anti-popish
principles she had imbibed from a father who had known
the evils of a priest-ridden Naples, did not go very deep
down. She and Maria Francesca are daughters of the
race. They are own sisters of the large-eyed, lonely-eyed
women you see every day in the Abruzzese churches and
mountain sanctuaries, to whom religion is the one reality,
who find their full life only in adoration of Christ, His
mother, and the saints. Christina in England is only a
little sadder, more homesick that there are no holy feet
to kiss, no holy relics to brood over, for love of the great
companions unseen.
Improvisation was a great force during the Risorgi-
mento, and almost every young liberal was a poet. But
I40 IN THE ABRUZZI [pt. i.
one of these patriotic improvisers had vaster aims than
his fellows. His name is probably quite unknown to
English readers, as it has nearly died out of the memory
of his compatriots to-day. His works — five volumes
there are of them — are now unread. Nevertheless, Pas-
quale de' Virgilii — born at Chieti in i8i2 — was once the
hope of the romantics, and Victor Hugo wrote to him
" le souffle du vieux Dante a traverse votre esprit." A
romantic of the romantics, he desired to expand his world
limitlessly, and grasp all that was great and beautiful.
Byron was his first inspiration ; and not only did he
translate his dramas, but he followed in the track of his
leader's footsteps — throughout Europe, to Greece, and
the East, ever hungering for new experiences and the
contact of diverse minds ; became the friend of Mehemet
AH, of Reschid-Pasha, and of Mavrogordato, and talked
over the New Italy with Pius IX. His love-story was
stormy and tragic. An impassioned lover of liberty, he
sang for it, suffered for it, fought for it. His ideas and
faith he threw ceaselessly on paper in prose and verse,
headed the liberal literary and journalistic movement in
Naples, and composed dramas indefatigably — Masaniello,
I Vespri Siciliani, Rienso, and a host of others. His
Condamiiato perhaps suggested Victor Hugo's Dernier s
yours d'nn Condanmi ; and the Conimedia del Secolo, full
of ideas, of poetic inspiration and brilliant flashes, was
hailed by an elect few as something greater than Southern
Italy had yet produced. In 1866 Pietrocola, writing to
his cousin, Mr. W. M. Rossetti, says, " As regards poems
here among us all is still regulated and conformable to
the rules of the Ars Poetica, if we except one Abruzzese,
a friend of mine, Pasquale de' Virgilii, who has broken
the Horatian dykes, and goes ahead, untrammelled, pro-
ducing excellent things, but little appreciated. Lately
he wrote an historical drama, Niccolb de' Riejizi, worth
its weight in gold." Lighter spirits won recognition, he
CH. VII.] SINGERS AND IMPROVISATORI 141
none. He was an improvisatore weighted by too much
thought and matter for his artistic powers. But one satis-
faction De' Virgihi had. He Hved to see the Hberation
of his country ; and it was he that welcomed Victor
Emmanuel into the Abruzzi.
To-day the province is very proud of its living poet —
Gabriele d'Annunzio. The stern, austere mountains —
and D'Annunzio ! It seems impossible to think of them
together. But under the rock there is the fire ; and behind
the mountains are sheltered, perfumed valleys. And if
passion and sweetness do not sum up all that is in this
child of our own time, then let us add that he is Pescarese ;
that Pescara is built on the low marshlands by the sea,
and is not above the suspicion of malaria. D'Annunzio
bears in his heart a strong love for his native province,
and in his countrymen's pride in him there is not the
shadow of criticism. They feted him and their great
painter Michetti the other year at Chieti ; and if there
was such a thing as crowning on the Capitol nowadays, I
am sure an enthusiastic band of mountain and seaboard
folk would storm Rome to see that the laurel was duly
and thickly enough wreathed about their poet's brows.
They play his plays, even in the little towns, especially
the two with Abruzzese backgrounds — La Figlia di Jorio
and La Fiaccolo sotto il Moggio ; and in the little wooden
Teatro d'Ovidio at Sulmona there is such deafening
applause as almost to bring the crazy structure about
your ears on a D'Annunzio night.
In the train from Roccaraso one day, a young man,
a little employe in Naples— a mixture of monkey and
mountebank and spoilt child, withal a clever youngster —
set about amusing a carriageful of market women and
ourselves with his quips and cranks and teasings and
airs and graces. As his manners were not those of the
countryside, they flung " Neapolitan " at him. Whereupon
142 IN THE ABRUZZI [pt. i.
he wrapped solemnity about him as a mantle, drew
himself up to his full height, swelled till he nearly filled
the carriage, and with a declamatory gesture to the
mountains and to us, rolled out, " Non, non io vi dico !
lo son' Abruzzese — io son' del paese di Gabriele
D'Annunzio ! "
I am not writing a critique of D'Annunzio — am only
considering him as Abruzzese, the one voice in modern
poetry that has reached beyond the rocky frontiers of the
province, out to the world. And he, too, is improvisatore
— more so than all the others — a literary artist, of course,
exquisite and subtle, but essentially an improvisatore.
La Fiaccolo sot to il Moggio is, in the literal sense of the
words, an improvised drama. But, besides, this character-
istic accounts for much that his severer critics call " gush,"
for his uncontrolled stream of words as of a man drunk
with language. Judging him by certain classic models,
they say, " How un-Latin, how un-Italian [meaning
un-Florentine], how wanting in grip and terseness and
lucidity ! " But he is no Latin, he is no Tuscan. He is
a Southerner — impetuous, luxuriant, and sensuous. In
fine, he is an Abruzzese improvisatore of genius, who
has wandered to far-away courts, got tainted with foreign
corruption, become enamoured of strange beauties, but
who charms the big world outside oftentimes with songs
from his own seashore and his mountains.
PART II
CHAPTER VIII
TAGLIACOZZO
The Valerian Way — The earliest Tahts Cotium—'Y\\^ body of the
Blessed Thomas — The Orsini and Colonna — The Valerian Way
within the town — The Soccorso — The Calvario — The gests of
Giorgi — Jose Boryes — A mild scent of brigandage — Benvenuto
Cellini at Tagliacozzo — The Castello — Home from the hills — The
Madonna dell' Oriente — The Battle of Tagliacozzo — Young
CONRADIN— Santa Maria della Vittoria.
Follow the ancient Valerian Way from Tivoli to the
Adriatic, and its chief arteries, and you need never step
very far aside to see what is best and most characteristic
in the Abruzzi. You can tread some portions of the old
road still, and the new ones made yesterday do not
widely diverge from the ancient course planned by the
engineers of Imperial Rome. In the main it is our
course through the rest of this book.
The Via Valeria started from a richly carved column
in the Forum, and ran eastward, up and down the moun-
tains, to the sea. It was not all made at once. The
first portion, from Rome to Tivoli, was known as the Via
Tiburtina. The Dictator Valerius continued it to Cor-
finium, and from him the whole length of the road
ultimately took its name. Later, Tiberius Claudius
brought it to the Adriatic, at the spot where is now the
river port of Pescara. Its principal stations can all be
traced to-day, and to set down their ancient alongside
143
144 IN THE ABRUZZI [pt. it.
their modern names is to write a skeleton history of
vicissitude and ruin — Tibur (Tivoli) ; Carsioli (Carsoli) ;
Cuculum (Scurcola) ; Alba Fucentia (Albe) ; Cerfennia
on Mons Imeus (to-day Monte Caruso) ; Staticle (Gori-
ano Siculi) ; Corfinium (Pentima) ; Interpromium (San
Valentino) ; Theate (Chieti) ; Ostia Aterni (Pescara).
All, save the first and the two last, have sunk into abject
insignificance or vanished utterly. Yet Alba was a
proud place, and Corfinium dreamt of absorbing Rome.
At Carsoli you are in the Abruzzi ; but there is no
sudden change to announce it. You have already been
making your way among the mountains ; and the brown
villages, waked from their long winter sleep in the snow,
are looking down and blinking at the railway to which
they have never grown used. Up you crawl, the brown
wall rising higher and higher, till the last remembrance
is shut out of sunny Rome, little more than an hour
away. Then the mountains engulf you for miles upon
miles in their dark chambers, and daylight is sparing
and fitful till you are shot down into a narrow green
plain, and the train stops under a great rock with houses
and towers clinging to it right up to the summit. And
here, if you would make a good beginning in the
Abruzzo, you will get out. The wedge of green plain is
the extremity of the Palentine fields ; and the great
rock with the ruddy dwellings clinging fast and thick
about it, tier on tier, as far as the grey fragments of ruined
castle on the peak, is Tagliacozzo.
The place smiles on you at the start. There is an air
of suavity about the little avenues that wind round the
green enclosures where the children play, and where the
visitors from Rome sit to receive their friends. You can
watch half a dozen salons being held at a time on a
sunny morning in July. There are old mellow convents
on the flat, and new villas ; and if the latter offend your
aesthetic eye, they at least suggest well-being and comfort,
CH. VIII.] TAGLIACOZZO 145
till you begin to conceive of the mountains as merely
scenic, or hygienically contrived for shelter ; or, should
you pant for higher air — though down on the plain you
are 2500 feet above the sea — adapted for health-giving
expeditions. The mountaineers patter along on their
mules, simple folk who have not yet learnt the use of
trains, and with their touches of colour and bits of
ancient costume, a rose-hued kerchief, a string of gilt
beads round a dark throat, a jaunty feather in a weather-
worn hat, and sandalled feet, they are part of the stage
show ; they are the picturesque supers. We and Baede-
ker, and the out-pourings of the villas on the green, and
the ladies in villeggiatura, with their sunshades and
novels and embroidery — we are the real actors, bringing
" some life " into the old place. And, indeed, as a
theatrical background, the town on the rock is superb.
You feel that the scene-painter's romantic imagination has
run riot, that never did town grow with such flaunting
defiance of the ordinary, though you cannot wish him to
have docked an inch of his wild dream. Only it makes
one a little uneasy lest the tame adventures on the green-
sward should shame their setting.
And the picture thus composed will be all wrong.
The pretty avenues, the suave plain, the villas and the
new-made gardens, and the Roman ladies and gentle-
men, and ourselves — these are the illusion, and one that,
looking back on Tagliacozzo, is almost impossible to
recall. Nowhere else in all the Abruzzi did we feel the
tang of the wild as here at the point nearest Rome
where the traveller is likely to get down. Above the
railway and the summer visitors, the old town hangs, a
magnificent and a sinister reality. Round the rock it
climbs in a series of twining ladders, with successive
ledges for palace, or church, or convent ; till it pauses,
out of breath, at the Calvary. But beyond that rise the
fragments of the castle that once commanded all the
L
146 IN THE ABRUZZI [pt. ii.
hills and valleys of the Marsica. In beauty of detail a
hundred cities will claim precedence. For sheer pictu-
resqueness, for heroic defiance of all modern conditions
and demands, for surprises in the shape of prison-holes
habitations, and noble outlooks, Tagliacozzo is hard
indeed to rival. There are streets in it to make the
most uncompromising philanthropist stay his hand before
tampering with their beauty, and almost to tempt the
ordinarily inhuman artist to sweep them away in horrified
pity. As for the dwellers — we met many agreeable
persons in Tagliacozzo, and went our ways freely all
round. Yet nowhere else — not in the remote valley of the
Sagittario, nor in the solitudes round Roccaraso, nor in the
wind-swept, top o' the world plains about Ovindoli and
Rocca di Mezzo — did we feel the same suggestion of
humanity untamed as here. Singly, the traveller will
find the people trustworthy and serviceable ; but stir
them up in the name of their old gods, their old
memories, and thirty years of training and schooling will
pass from them like a frail and tattered garment. . . .
Add a great many more bizarre and original character-
istics, and you have Tagliacozzo, whose name is hardly
known save as that of a battle of long ago — which was
not fought here at all, but over yonder to the east, by
Scurcola, full six miles away.
Look up at the place from the green below to under-
stand the name. Tagliacozzo is Talus cotmm, the cleav-
age of the rocks. Some great cataclysm rent the hill-
side asunder from peak to plain. The left-hand portion
has been little built on. Only a few lines of houses
straggle up to the ledge where are what are called the
sources of the Imele — though the little river rises far
behind among the mountains. Every place has its point
of local pride ; and it is here the Tagliacozzesi would
like to lead you, to sit in a cave amid the spray and
watch the water in the pools outside, or see it rushing
c
N
N
O
U
<
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CH. VIII.] TAGLIACOZZO 147
past over the stones to work the little mills on the way
to the lower town. So fine a place do they think it,
that the fancifully minded have dreamt of it as the haunt
of the gayest of the Muses, and have read their town as
Thali(E othim, Thalia's rest ! But there in front of you
is the great cleft of the rocks that plainly gave the place
its name.
The town clusters about the right-hand rock, because
one of the arteries of the Valerian Way ran down there,
to join the main road at Scurcola. Probably the place
did not exist at the time of the Samnite wars, but sprang
out of the ruin of Carsioli, destroyed, or reduced to a
colony for its resistance to Rome, about B.C. 300. The
refugees fled eastwards to a spot where they could over-
look the plain, to the Place of the Cleft. And when the
Valerian Way was cut down here, other hamlets in the
neighbourhood were gradually deserted, and their inhabi-
tants amalgamated with the exiles from Carsioli, to be
near the new road and the rushing Imele, which would
turn their mills. Here, under the castle rock, archi-
tecture can have changed little since those days. The
rows and tiers of cave-boxes of to-day might be the
hastily thrown-up shelters of the flying refugees.
To see Tagliacozzo historically one should come over
the mountains on foot or on mule-back, not be shot out
of the train on the green plain below ; for it began here
at the top, and made its way down very slowly, very
shyly. It was the end of the twelfth century before it
ventured as far as the Piazza. But the normal route is
upward ; and we must gather what history we can on our
mounting way. First through the Porta de' Marsi to the
Piazza of the Obelisk, whence we climb steadily, with
breathing spaces where in old days they scooped ledges
deep enough for church or convent. Tagliacozzo may be
described as a Via Crucis ; at least, you can say your
prayers to many a saint on many a level ere you reach
148 IN THE ABRUZZI [pt. ii.
the Calvary at the top. On one of the first ledges is
San Francesco. The cloister is now used for public
offices and for a school ; and there is a constant tread
of feet under the arches and round the old well, where
once the frati walked in meditation. All round the
walls are frescoes, not of the good time ; and art in
austere mood has nothing to say to them. But the f rate
who painted them must have been a young light-hearted
brother, one who knew all the fairy-stories of his Order,
and not only the common ones. Most of all he liked
the gay young St. Francis, the romantic dreamer of
chivalry ; and youth on horseback with hunting horns
and in bright raiment he prefers to emaciated old friars
with a sense of sin. The interior of the church shines
with ugly modernization ; and St. Francis must be a
stranger here, if ever he enters this place of his name.
I doubt if he comes beyond the steps where the poor
folks sit. I saw a brown frock lingering amongst them.
But one relic of beauty and grace remains from a better
time — the great wooden crucifix hanging on the wall,
carved by a pious brother. In the jubilee year of 1600,
it was carried to Rome in procession ; and it roused the
Romans to such a pitch of piety that they stole it. But
some of the Tesi family were persistent, and Tagliacozzo
got it back again. And here is the mummified body of
him who was the Blessed Thomas of Celano, the
biographer of the Saint, and the writer of the Dies Ires.
After the death of St. Francis, he was sent into the
Marsica, his own land, and amongst other pious works
of his there, he inaugurated the convent of this town. A
scholar, a man of elegant Latinity, a noble of fine manners,
he was a perfect director for cloistered ladies. And
the Clarisses of Valle de' Varri had him for their
spiritual guide. It was there he died, somewhere about
1250; and, in spite of his beatification, his relics were
left where he probably desired they should be left, in
CH. VIII.] TAGLIACOZZO i49
the convent graveyard in the woods. They lay lost and
forgotten for more than two hundred and seventy years.
Nowadays his writings are edited and commented, and
there are hot disputes over them ; and Franciscan students
nearly come to blows on the question whether he was the
sole source of truth for the history of his master, or whether
he was but a cold literary person with a correct style and
an official mind. Nevertheless, his remains lay neglected
for two and a half centuries ; and then the abbess of the
day revealed his resting-place. Three years after, in
1530, the ladies went to Scanzano, their place in the
woods no longer safe, being, indeed, a special mark
for invaders and robbers. Scanzano was well disposed
to welcome the ladies for the sake of so precious a
relic ; for the cult of the Blessed Thomas suddenly
woke up from its long sleep. They were preparing for
the solemn translation of the bones, when Tagliacozzo,
getting wind of it, held secret council thereon. By night
came a furtive band of citizens and frati, and took the
body without a by-your-leave. It seems his own town
of Celano put in no claim to them at all, nor ever
honoured its son by a single attempt to steal his dust !
Winding up to a higher level, we come on the
palace — the old Orsini-Colonna, now the Barberini
palace, a plain, solid, bulky pile, blossoming out in a
single carved stone loggia overlooking the plain, Goths,
Lombards, Saracens have held the heights of Tagliacozzo,
and tumbled down its precipitous sides to pour through
the Marsica. The first lord whose authority it widely
acknowledged was of Charlemagne's race, Berardus, son
of Pepin II. He and his descendants were Counts of
the Marsi, with sway all round Fucino, till the thirteenth
century. Then they sided with Otto IV. against the
great Ghibelline Emperor Frederic II., who turned his
arms against them and swept them out of their fief
In 1250 he gave the investiture of it to his son-in-law,
ISO IN THE ABRUZZI [pt. ii.
Napoleone Orsini. The rule of the great Roman family
gave Tagliacozzo, till the end of the fifteenth century,
constant opportunities of shedding its blood, and the
ancient Marsian valour was at the service of the restless
Orsini ambition, now conspiring with the barons of the
kingdom, now fighting the Pope, now the Colonnas,
whose stronghold of Palestrina, on the Sabine heights,
had a jealous, sleepless rival in Tagliacozzo of the
Abruzzo.
Roberto Orsini built the palace here, with its chapel
frescoed in Giottesque fashion, in the fourteenth centur}',
and its dungeons. Save for a few periods of neglect, it
has been inhabited ever since. The Orsini were caus"ht
at last in the meshes of the net spread by Charles VIII. 's
invasion of Italy ; and when Virginio Orsini died in a
Naples prison, Tagliacozzo reverted to the crown, until
the Colonnas, finally triumphing over their old rivals,
got it, and with it the title of Duke. The story of raids,
sieges, and faction fights repeated itself under them ;
and with the death of Marc-Antonio, the hero of Lepanto,
their great days were over, and the great days of their
fief in the Abruzzi. But the name has only recently
passed from their palace, lately restored, and occupied in
summer by a Princess of the Barberini. Here it stands,
with hardly a trace of modernization on its exterior,
cheek by jowl with the dwellings of the poor, a grim
fortress still, though dismantled, and gardenless, so that
the Principessa's guests, .in their light summer raiment,
with a dignified simplicity which the populace under-
stands and never abuses, seat themselves on a great heap
of broken stones on the roadway outside to enjoy the
evening air.
The new road creeps up by wide zigzags ; but you
can mount by a rough, short cut, and reach the ledge
where is the Porta Valeria. Inside, the Via Valeria
appears in the shape of a mediaeval street that serves
CH. viiL] TAGLIACOZZO 151
the inhabitants of the upper town as their chief thorough-
fare. We climbed it first by twilight ; but, indeed, there
are portions that daylight hardly visits. It is still the
mountain-side : the displaced cobbles, the jagged steps
on which you tread are only the broken rock. Every-
where it is narrow — two outstretched arms could almost
span it, and the low houses are set thick, but irregularly,
so that the breaks in the lines make crevices and caverns
for lurking shadows. Here is a shrine under an archway,
and there a chapel with children swarming on the steps.
Through open doors you get glimpses of low, vaulted
rooms, like caves. From the wooden balconies above
your head the stab of dark eyes pierce you as you pass.
The place is alive with humanity — uneasy, restless, curious
folk, whom your presence has called out. The beggars
scent you and begin their plaints ; but otherwise there is
a deep silence as you pass. Squalor and dirt are here as
you hardly find them now in great cities — and beauty
too. It is a street run back to the wild — a wedding of
untamed crag and dilapidated hovel. Eveiy other step
you try to efface yourself against the wall, for the Angelus
has rung from the belfries ; and down from the moun-
tain, along the narrow way, come trains of mules and
donkeys and cattle and goats, with their herdsmen and
riders. Now a beast and man disappear beneath an
arch, to be housed and stabled there till dawn calls them
up to the heights again, and the rest pass on and vanish,
among the other shadows, into the uneasy night behind.
Such is the ancient Valerian Way at twilight in Taglia-
cozzo. Amidst its dark, unholy beauty we may not
linger, but it is unforgettable.
Once out at the Porta Romana — or the Porta del
Soccorso — save for a few scattered houses, the town is
behind us. We are facing the little Longobard church,
whose beautiful portico and campanile we looked up to
from the plain below. This is a favourite church ; but it
152 IN THE ABRUZZI [pt.it.
is not very often open, save on its Feast Day, August
15th, when a holy picture of the Assumption, with the
arms of the town, and the emblem of the Colonnas, comes
up here from San Francesco in procession, and rests awhile
for the veneration of the faithful. But its devotees are
not discouraged on other days by closed doors. The
wide, deep portico, with the faded frescoes on the fagade,
does well enough. Our Lady of Help will hear, if they
kneel on the threshold, or with their hands on the sill of
the little shuttered windows, or just outside at the base
of the old carved stone cross. A friendly place this
threshold of the ancient church on the edge of the
mountain. Mothers sit there and suckle their babes, out
of the glare of the rocks. It is a nursery and a children's
club. While an old grandmother is at her devotions,
half a dozen little girls keep up a long sing-song and
dancing game, and wheedle pence out of the stranger.
It is very dramatic ; and in a wooing scene a little maiden
of eight, with the subjugating air of a gallant of twenty,
tells to a four-year-old mite how it is " bello dormire sul
letto de' fiori," and many other sweet things, ending in
"amore," entreating her, "Bella biondina, dammi la
mano."
Tradition has it that the Soccorso was built by the
pietistic Charles d'Anjou. Down in the plain, from near
Cappelle, he saw on these heights the advance of Con-
radin, and he vowed a church to Madonna, did she stand
by him. Reading his victory as the answer of the Queen
of Heaven, he built a temple here to the Lady of Help.
There may be some truth in the tale ; but if so, the fa9ade
and the door are much later. The atrio is of the end of
the fifteenth century, as the inscription on the architrave
shows — " Santa Maria de lo Socorso ora pro nobis A.D.
M542 a di xxiii agosto."
Just above the Soccorso stands the Calvario. A rough
path lined by " stations " — with frescoes for the most part
CH. VIII.] TAGLIACOZZO 153
mercifully obliterated, if they resembled the few left —
leads to the little chapel whose pretty loggia and tiny
campanile are visible all round and from the plain below.
The whole town seems to lead up to this hermitage and
sanctuary. It dates from 1702, and was built by a Bene-
dictine oblate and hermit of the Madonna del Oriente —
one Angelo Santariga — in honour of the Passion. Later
were added the living-rooms and the garden. The stations
are of more recent date, when a Franciscan missionary —
Leonardo da Porto Maurizio — chose this rocky hillside
as his preaching-ground. On his shoulders he carried
up the great wooden cross that stands at the rear. His
pulpit was a huge stone, and round it the people of the
wide hills all about, and the thick town beneath, gathered
to listen ; and, fired by him, they built the crescent of
stations below the perching chiesetta. The treasure of
the place is a portion of the True Cross, exposed to the
veneration of the faithful on Fridays in March. Inside
it is the homeliest of holy places, this shrine of the Gesit
Morie, all the colour and almost the shape withered out
of the altar finery. A door leads through to the dwelling
of the hermit — a tiny, wizened atom of humanity, a frail,
fusty-looking bundle, save when, in full dress, in his new
beaver, his best brushed-up frock, new leathern girdle,
and his wallet over his shoulder, he goes down to the
town for alms. He is gentle-faced, with crinkled smiles
about his old eyes and mouth. His life is not gay. When
the winter winds sweep down the gap in the hills they
must whistle cruelly about his little body ; and in summer
the path is steep indeed from the lower town whence
most of his pence must come. But he is not solitary.
He is a married hermit. The Church is merciful, and
does not hold that the Angelus is rung in vain for the
presence of an ill-favoured wife. She looks faithful, if
uncomely. The pious little creature struggling up the
stony path under his bisaccio, or his little pail of " good
154 IN THE ABRUZZI [pt. ii.
water " from the well below, has his dreams of the world.
He is no old shepherd. Once he was " a merchant " in
Rome. It has a high sound ; but perhaps he has lost
no princely fortune. It is far back into his childhood he
looks with longing awe, when he lived with his mother in
" a house with two loggias ! " Some relations who had
been benefactors to the sanctuary got him the hermit's
place ; and dreaming of his childhood's palazzo, he
accepts soldi with gratitude. Still more does he like a
bit of company, and he will sit for hours in the roadway
below the hermitage for the sake of a word or two from
the passing herdsmen and labourers. They have nothing-
else to give him. I have seen him quivering with impotent
rage when holiday-makers used his Via Crucis as a short
cut by which to gain the castle track ; and he would have
broken his feeble limbs in vain pursuit had we not dis-
tracted him with questions about the guardian mountains
behind. For one of them he has great veneration — Monte
Midia, from which you can descry, he says, Rome and
the Tyrrhenian Sea. For him it is Mount Pisgah. Go
up there, he says, by night, and you will see the blaze of
light about St. Peter's — that is, all the splendour of earth
and the glory of heaven.
Up here at the Calvario you seem above the world,
and at peace ; but a harsh note is struck when in his
infinitesimal garden the hermit points to the ruined shrine
of Sta. Scholastica. Ruined by the Piedmontese, he says.
To him the Piedmontese remain what they seemed then
to all the Southerners, heathen barbarians, foreign dogs ;
and it is doubtful if he ever connects their passing with
the advent of a time which has brought peace to him and
his, or with a Government to which he is probably not
disaffected. But the ruin of Sta. Scholastica awakes one
from the peace of the hills with stormy memories.
Fighting in Tagliacozzo did not cease with the feudal
quarrels and raids of Orsini and Colonna. It has ever
CH. VIII.] TAGLIACOZZO i55
needed but the slightest ferment to set the bells a-ringing,
and bring out the folks of the high town with knives and
cudgels. The French occupation caused much excite-
ment and roused ill blood. The cleavage between the
educated population and the lower classes was complete ;
and the Bourbon conspiracies which stirred and bribed the
populace to reaction, bore unhappy fruit here. The see-
saw of tyranny demoralized a fiery population, and made
Tagliacozzo a troublous place during the Risorgimento,
It is just up here by the Calvario and the Soccorso, both
battered in the skirmishes, on the road from Rome into
the Marsica, that we can best recall the stormy time.
Throughout the town, among the substantial citizens
and the artisans, liberal ideas were rife. The liberals
were, in the main, persons of standing, and their houses
well worth sacking, which gave a peculiar zest to the task
of persuading them to correct opinions. Mazzinians
had suffered much and heroically ; but among all the
cultivated gentlemen and intelligent artisans who made
private sacrifices for the sake of a free and united Italy,
there was a lamentable lack of leadership. And the
people of the high town and the shepherds from the
mountain villages were flattered into thinking they were
divinely appointed avengers of Church and throne and
morality. Likewise, there were good pickings to be had
in reward of zeal. Even when the rest of the world
knew that the cause of united Italy was won, they did
not know it here. The lying rumours were louder than
the truth.
Then came Giorgi's opportunity. It is difficult to
think of him now without laughing ; but Giorgi had his
great hour, when distracted mayors and solemn persons
of worth lost their heads and took him at his own estima-
tion. He was a native of Tagliacozzo, though brought up
at Aquila by the Jesuits. He was bred to the law, and
early in life embraced liberal views, but discarded them
156 IN THE ABRUZZI [pt. ii.
for reasons doubtless satisfactory to himself Having
got into trouble for cattle-lifting and other offences,
he suffered a period of forced retirement in Chieti ; but
in the excitement of the time this " misfortune " was
forgotten. He said he had a commission from Francis
at Gaeta, which was not unlikely. The price of such
commissions was proof of willingness to make a row and
annoy the other side. Giorgi joined La Grance's royalist
troops at first ; but his was a proud spirit, and in his own
old home and the neighbourhood he was nobody's man
but the Bourbon's. His procedure was simple, and for a
time effective. At Avezzano, for example, he proclaimed
himself Intendente of the district, and with this dignified
name, and riding on a horse he had stolen, and with
a scratch troop behind him of deluded shepherds, of
brigands from the hills, and of men much better than
himself, he cut a very fine figure indeed. He was
resisted, of course ; he was thought worth while resisting.
The mayor and councillors of Avezzano were scared,
sent for troops in all directions, but finally gave in.
Keys of cities were handed to him abjectly ; he levied
taxes on the liberals, which were paid. He sacked
houses. Avezzano, Scurcola, Cappelle, and Magliano
were practically his. In Tagliacozzo his band shouted,
" Garibaldi is dead ! " and were believed ; " Long live
King Francis ! " and were echoed. He had to flee some-
times, when news of Capua came, for instance ; and he
took with him spoil of money and valuables, which never
reached Gaeta. But he came to the top again, and had
a merry time while it lasted. At Carsoli he entered in
grand style, and from there came on for a determined
attack on Tagliacozzo. The Italian soldiers were waiting
for him just here at the Calvario. Giorgi's men made a
great show ; but those spread about the castle rocks and
the opposite hill were mostly shouldering staves and cud-
gels for guns. There were enough armed ones, however,
CH. viiL] TAGLIACOZZO 157
for a stiff fight ; and men of both sides He buried
behind the hermitage. The Italian soldiers had orders
to move on to Avezzano, and left the town but little
defended from Giorgi, who stirred the crowds to sack
and plunder. The lawless were just breaking out at the
word of the " Intendente," when a handful of belated men
of. the 40th, hurrying down after their regiment, multi-
plied themselves to the excited mind of the populace
into a new army, and cleared the streets. Giorgi moved
on, well in the rear of the Italians. Enthusiasm still
reigned among his followers ; and one of them, a priest,
proclaimed him " the Christ of '61." But his hour was
passing ; and at Scurcola, which he was counting on for
plunder, there were cries of " Morte a Giorgi ! " " Fuori
i briganti ! " It was now or never for spoil, for a new
detachment of troops was expected. The general in
charge let him have his will for a time, pretending to
retire. But attacked in the open, the Giorgian valour
oozed. He flew back to Tagliacozzo, leaving seventy
dead behind him, including the priest who had proclaimed
him "the Christ of '61." At dawn he escaped to Rome,
seeking reinforcements. He skulked about there for a
time ; but pay was not forthcoming. There were too
many counts against him ; and his jest had turned sour.
So he travelled to the East, to Smyrna, playing a beau
rolesWW., I suppose. Caught, however, and brought back
to Aquila, he was sentenced to penal servitude in Elba,
and died before the end of his term.
In Tagliacozzo it was long before they ceased to
expect his return ; and there were many who suffered for
fidelity to the jester-Intendente. Colonel Quintini was
about to bombard the high town, from S. Cosma up to
the Soccorso, and only desisted at the supplication of the
liberals ; but he declared a state of siege ; and every
house or hovel backing on the rock, and in the long
dark street as far as the Valerian Gate, was searched for
I5S IN THE ABRUZZI [pt. ii.
arms. Still the peasants waited for Giorgi, even after
Gaeta had capitulated, and there were more skirmishes
up at the Calvario ; and the sentries by the Roman Gate
knew no rest till the contadini went back to their flocks
and fields again, and left " the cause " to the brigands.
But the Bourbons had a more imposing witness in
Tagliacozzo than the rascal Giorgi. Why have writers
of adventurous romance neglected the career of Jose
Borjes ? I hand over the suggestion to them hoping
the theme may be handled by one who knows the
wild country the Spaniard sped through in his last ex-
pedition. Borjes was a royalist of Catalonia, who had
fought valiantly in the legitimist war in his own country.
After that his sword was ready in defence of " the cause "
anywhere. He was an old-world soldier of adventure,
and minute scrupulosity of means and methods was not
a feature of his school. He was no hired ruffian, how-
ever, but a fervent Catholic, a royalist of intense con-
viction, and brave and audacious to the ultimate demands
of romance. Called to Rome and hired by the Bourbons,
he undertook an expedition through Calabria and the
Basilicata to raise volunteers and organize an effective
attempt at Bourbon restoration. He had with him a
number of Spanish gentlemen, soldiers of tried valour.
Borjes began his recruiting work with ability and en-
thusiasm, and kept up the courage of his men through
a constant discouragement lit by hardly one gleam of
luck. The information given him was utterly mislead-
ing ; the money and support promised were not forth-
coming. Only the poor folks followed him who could
not feed them. Throughout the hopeless expedition
Borjes kept a journal, an interesting document which
exists now, a most poignant revelation of a brave man,
never for a moment blind to all the odds against him.
" The rich," he writes, " with very few exceptions, are
cii. VIII.] TAGLIACOZZO 159
everywhere bad," — by which he means that they were
not Borbonesi, or at least not disposed to make any
sacrifices for the cause. He, or L'i\nglois, who was
nominally in command of the expedition, resorted to
means for which they had the sanction and example of
kings and cardinals ; that is, they leagued themselves with
the brigand Donatello Crocco and his band. Crocco, a
ruffian of the most brutally criminal type, professed
correct Catholic and legitimist sentiments, of course ; but
if any one was duped by this, it was not Borjes, as his
Journal testifies. " We lodge the band," he writes, " and
the chiefs go off to steal whatever they please." And
again, " Crocco has left us on the pretext of finding
bread, but I fear it is only for the purpose of hiding the
money and the jewels he has stolen." They parted at
last ; but the expedition was doomed ; and Borjes made
up his mind that retreat with the few followers that
remained was the only thing left. The Italian soldiers
were on his track. He made for Rome through the
Abruzzi by forced night marches. Winter had set in,
and the cold was an enemy that could not miss them.
The route of the little band, a handful of Spaniards and
a few Italian volunteers, lay from the Terra di Lavoro
over the terrible plain of Cinquemiglia, where vaster
bands than theirs had perished before. When they
gained the Avezzano road hope must have stayed them,
for the frontier of the Papal States was nearing. Turn-
ing aside to avoid the town, they passed Cappelle and
Scurcola ; and in the guise of chestnut merchants going
to Sante Marie, got through the gates of Tagliacozzo.
Now they were on the threshold of safety. On the Sante
Marie road, worn out and starving, in a night of terrible
cold, they halted for food and a fire near the Mastroddi
farm. But on the way they had been watched by a
shrewd man, who knew Borjes was being looked for, and
suspected the chestnut merchants. He gave information
i6o IN THE ABRUZZI [pt. ii.
to the carabiniers at Avezzano, who galloped in pursuit
on fresh horses, and soon came up with the weary
remnant at the farm. The fight was desperate, and the
resistance of the Spaniards gallant to the end, which was
never doubtful. Their guns, horses, and papers seized,
they were taken back to Tagliacozzo, the coolness of
their bearing winning them their captors' admiration.
Of their plans they would tell nothing. Only one bitter
word escaped Borj^s. " As for my business in Rome, I
was on my way thither to tell King Francis that there
are only rascals and ruffians left to defend him ; that
Crocco is a blustering coward and L'Anglois a brute ! "
Save for that, it was —
" Sae ranting! y, sae dauntingly,
Sae wantonly gaed he " ;
Wantonly ? No. They were Spaniards, and their high-
hearted dignity stopped short of mirth ; though on their
way to execution next morning in the Largo del Popolo
of Tagliacozzo, they chatted with charming courtesy to
their guards, and smoked as if it had been a party of
pleasure. " Courage, my young fellows ! " cried Borjes
to the Italian soldiers. " Love Italy ; defend her, and
do her honour — and, I beg you, do not aim at my
face, but aim well." They all confessed, embraced the
leader, knelt while he sang a Spanish litany, and met
death singing. One of them had written on the eve,
" We are all resigned to be shot. We shall meet again
in the Valley of Jehosaphat." A cry went up even
among the liberals against this summary justice, and it
was echoed throughout Europe. Victor Hugo was
among the protesters. But Borjes had never hidden
from himself the end of a leader of a lost cause.
The royalist fervour was for the moment hotter than
ever in the Marsica ; but it died out for want of a head,
leaving well-conditioned folk to settle down slowly to
CH. viiL] TAGLIACOZZO i6i
a new state of things, and adapt their minds to the
thought of an Italy in which the old kingdom of Naples
was henceforth a mere province. But a heritage of
turbulence and suspicion was left behind. Smuggling
over the Papal frontier was a source of considerable
profit and a cause of much fighting till, along with
brigandage, it died of the obliteration of the frontier and
the union of the Papal States with Italy.
There is a mild scent of brigandage in the air here
still. The little boys of the upper town emulate the
bandits in spirited fashion ; and alone with them on the
hillside one day, I found my virtuous refusal of soldi had
such serious consequences that I wished I might have
demoralized half the population with alms rather than
encounter the volley of well-aimed stones which showed
their opinion of foreign meanness. They sit on the
rocks up there, with their one goat or their two sheep,
well out of the schoolmaster's reach ; and doubtless tell
each other tales of the exploits of Crocco or Ninco-
Nanco, and dream of reviving the good old days. And
maybe they will grow up law-abiding and civil-spoken
persons like most of their fathers — and maybe not. For
human nature here is vivacious, and sometimes a little
sinister — and poverty is very evident.
In our lodgings they boasted how Roman visitors
besieged them in summer time, willing to pay anything
for the privilege of a corner. But on the eve of our
departure we found the whole family known to us madly
gloating over our mountain-worn-and-torn, discarded
boots and garments. At our approach they seized them
and fled ; but came back to present unknown members —
with " Niente per questo bambino ? Ah-h-h ! Niente
per questa poverina } Ah-h-h ! " It was difficult to escape
from the clutching hands and greedy eyes with our
travelling garments intact. We felt the breath of the
M
i62 IN THE ABRUZZI [pt. ii.
brigands. This was at Tagliacozzo, and nowhere
else.
And speaking of genial ruffians — for such was Giorgi
— I am reminded of one who came here a long time ago,
Benvenuto Cellini. The goldsmiths of the Abruzzo were
famous, and Ascanio, one of his cleverest apprentices,
was a native of Tagliacozzo. II Vecchino, as he was
called, was a talented little imp of twelve or thirteen
when Cellini took him into his employment. Taking
example by his master and beating the shop boy, he was
thrashed by Benvenuto and ran away. Of Benvenuto's
wrath, and how the father came down from his mountains
to entreat the great man to leniency, is it not written in
the wonderful Vita ? When Cellini went to France for
the first time, Ascanio insisted on going with him ; he
kept his master's shop when he was in the fortress of
St. Angelo, visited his master very often, and was, indeed,
a faithful little plague. On Benvenuto's refusal to give
him his blue satin vest to make a coat of, he bade him
adieu for ever in a frenzy of rage, and Cellini begged the
castellan never to let him in again. " The castellan was
much distressed, for he knew the boy to be wonderfully
talented, and, besides, he was of so fair a shape that no
one could see him without falling deeply in love with
him. The lad went away weeping. He was carrying,
I must tell you, a little scimitar, which sometimes he
wore secretly under his garments. When he left the
castle, his face all tearstained, he met with two of
my worst enemies. One of them was Jeronimo, the
Perugian, and the other was called Michele, and they
were both goldsmiths. Michele, who was a friend of that
rascally Perugian, and none to Ascanio, said, ' What is
the meaning of Ascanio weeping .<• Perhaps his father
is dead. I mean that father of his in the castle.' Where-
upon the boy replied, ' He is alive, but you're a dead
man ! ' and, lifting his hand, he struck twice at the man's
CH. VIII.] TAGLIACOZZO 163
head with his scimitar. At the first blow he knocked
him down, with the second he cut off three fingers of his
right hand, though he had aimed at his head, and the
fellow lay there for dead." (Ascanio is Tagliacozzese all
over.) The affair was likely to be serious for Benvenuto,
who cleared himself with some difficulty. " Ascanio
fled home to Tagliacozzo, and from there he wrote ask-
ing my pardon a thousand times, saying he knew he had
been wrong to add to my vexations and my great trouble.
But, he went on, if by God's grace I got out of prison, he
would never leave me any more. I sent him word that
he was to go on learning his trade ; and I promised, if
God ever gave me my liberty, I should certainly call him
back to me."
Later, when a free man, Benvenuto came to Taglia-
cozzo for the benefit of his health, and to visit his pupil.
" There I found him, together with his father, brothers,
sisters, and stepmother. For two days I was entertained
by them with the utmost hospitality ; and then I departed
on my return journey, taking Ascanio along with me."
Ascanio had a distinguished after-career. He went
to France again with his master, received a salary from
Francis I., took part in Benvenuto's triumphs and his
broils, fell in love, and — with that bizarrerie which is a
constantly recurring note in the true Abruzzese — housed
his lady in the head of Cellini's great statue of Mars,
when her movements, seen through the eye-holes, revived
in the people of Paris the legend of the spectre Maine
Boicrreau. He was left behind with Pagolo, another
apprentice, in charge of Benvenuto's property when he
quitted France, after which Ascanio, once his " first and
dearest," is called "that traitor, Ascanio." But the
charges of faithlessness to his former master's interests
are by no means surely founded. It seems the lads had
much to suffer on the great man's account after his
departure. Later, Ascanio de' Mari became goldsmith
i64 IN THE ABRUZZI [pt. ii.
to Henry H., married a daughter of the Delia Robbia
family, and became Seigneur of Beaulieu.
From the Calvary it is still a stiff climb to the long-
deserted castle. The lower portions of the central fort
are standing ; there are fragments of outworks running
down the hill ; and the whole circuit of the place can
still be traced, as it rises over a superb rock, a magnificent
fortress of nature. No one knows its earliest history.
Probably it was first thrown up long before Pepin's son
was lord here. It sheltered Conradin on his way to the
tragedy of the plain below. It withstood the Tiburtines
in their constant feuds with the Orsini. Ladislas re-
fortified it in his struggle for a kingdom. Long, long it
has lain in ruins, and now it serves to shelter a shepherd
from the midday rays, or a dreamer looking from it over
a wonderful world. A great theatre scene lies out to the
east — the plain of the Marsica, and under Scurcola the
battlefield where the boy Conradin played for a kingdom
and all but won ; the little hill towns thrown up aloft,
or nestling in the folds of the mountains — Cese, San
Sebastiano, Poggio Filippo, Antrosano, little, ruined,
once-great Albe, You are far above the world here, and
in touch with many mountains, Velino, Sirente, Monte
Bove behind to the left, and, onward, the ranges across
Fucino. It is very lonely and very quiet, yet humanity
is not far away, and from the edge of the outer wall you
can watch its comings and goings and its labours. Below
is the Soccorso, and from here you can watch the whole
process of primitive threshing that goes on in the cobbled
threshing-floor behind it. One day they burn away all
the grass, endangering the church and filling the glen with
smoke. Next you watch a white horse and a brown, tread-
ing the corn, and the severing of the chaff from the grain,
and the sweeping up of the straw, and the sacking and
carting of the grain. Young Italy shakes his head, and
CH. VIII.] TAGLIACOZZO 165
tells us to a bushel how much the farmer has lost for want
of a machine, and how brutalizing and how wasteful is his
labour. But they were busy and expert husbandmen
those fathers and sons down there. What they lost is
calculable ; what they gained not so.
The hills are sudden and quick-change actors. Re-
turning by the Cappadocia road, we are stayed on our
way by enchanters in the shape of two little shepherd
boys. One babbles to us with the confidence of those to
whom all the world is friendly, and gives us wild goose-
berries out of his wallet. The other has no words. A
ragged-locked wild thing of the hills, he pipes shrill,
sweet melodies to us on a wooden pipe of his own
fashioning. They are gone, and we are in a new world.
The range behind, in which is engulfed the road to Rome,
is black and awesome. But in front all is glory and
wonder. The far hillsides are of pearl and opal and
kingly purple, the long crags of living gold. The near
hills run with us while we hasten, but the far ones retreat
and are proud ; or they sink into a soft slumber ; and the
towns we had an hour ago pointed to and named, are but
as handfuls of coloured dust about their eternal steeps.
A soft bell rings out from the Calvario : the little
hermit has seen the sun set behind Midia ; and now the
hillside becomes alive. Down the craggy paths in a slow
rhythm come the men and the beasts, herdsmen with
their flocks of sheep and goats, labourers with loads of
wood from the forest, or from some high-set stony fields.
Now and then a mule-hoof rings out sharp on the rock.
It is the only sound, for incredibly soft is the tread of the
sandalled feet on the homeward track. Obeying some
law of the twilight sky, no man speaks. White or light-
clad, they move on like ghosts, each man a unit in the
long procession, or each group curiously isolated in the
clear, quiet air, as if all unconscious of the rest. So
i66 IN THE ABRUZZI [pt. ii.
would it be in a dream. And this is a dream, that
annihilates the ages — after the heat and stress of the
day, immemorial labour going downward to its rest.
But the riders have a proud seat, and are knights, if you
will, returning from raid and foray, should your fancy
play that way. At the Gesu Morte, and at the stone
cross of Our Lady of Help, the old ones bare their heads.
And now their ways divide. Some go in at the Roman
gate, and there is a clattering of hoofs down the narrow
Valerian Way, and a vanishing there into dark holes till
morning. The rest, and we with them, take the long
white road to the left, under the castle, that folds and
writhes and turns to make an easier track on the hill-
side. A star shoots a gleam on us from above, and there
are sparse lights here and there in the town. They are
coming on behind us. We, too, are constrained to silence,
and fall into the slow rhythm of the homing feet on their
way to the plain and into the night.
The neighbourhood of Tagliacozzo is so beautiful
and, in its softer as in its wilder aspects, so perfect an
epitome of the Abruzzi, that there is no reason save
restlessness for moving on. Behind, in the high valley
near Cappadocia, where are the entrancing springs of the
Liris, or among the vineyards and cornfields, where the
Imele flows, there is every temptation to linger. The
Imele is but a poor little willow-bordered stream after it
tumbles down the hill ; but its course is an interesting
one. It rises near Verrecchie, behind Tagliacozzo, has a
course of nearly a mile in the open, then rushes into a
grotto under Monte Arunzo, continues a strange under-
ground career for about two miles more — which it spends
twenty hours over — and issues on the hillside of Taglia-
cozzo. In the plain it runs below San Sebastiano to the
Campi Palentini, then north, under the name of the
Salto ; finally joins with others to form the Marmore ;
and thus the little trickling torrent that turns the humble
CH. VIII.] TAGLIACOZZO 167
mills of Tagliacozzo, gives itself up in the vast uproar
and volume of the famous falls of Terni.
Wandering by the Imele near San Sebastiano, you
will see a vast convent building finely placed on a hill.
The building is quite modern, but it holds the famous
shrine of the Madonna dell' Oriente. It takes its name
from an ancient picture of the Virgin, which a legend
declares to have escaped the iconoclastic fire of the
Emperor Leo the Isaurian in 726. By the way, it is
an oil-painting ; that is part of the miracle. It hailed
from the East, but was deposed in the exarchate of
Ravenna ; and two faithful rescued it and bestowed it
here. Ever since it has worked wonders, and faith in
it is still strong. Many pilgrims seek the aid of this
Lady of the East ; and in times of public calamity and
on extra solemn occasions it is brought to Tagliacozzo.
Then it is that the temper of the Tagliacozzesi is tried.
They, with all their fine-clad priests and dignitaries and
congregations, naturally suppose it should be given over
to their hands freely. Not a bit of it, says Villa San
Sebastiano. And over and over again there have been
free fights as to who should carry it, and who should
walk first in the procession. From threats and insults
the men of the Villa have come to blows, nor have the
priests always been spared ; and it has needed the
intervention of the mayor and the carabinieri to bring
about a semblance of peace. They take their religion
seriously in Tagliacozzo and the Villa.
Just beneath and around Scurcola, the little town on
the slope with the tower of the old Colonna castle, is
that portion of the Palentine Fields, where was fought
the great battle to which Tagliacozzo, six miles behind,
has given the name. Later historians have tried to call
it the Battle of Scurcola, or of Albe, of Ponte, or Palenta ;
but the old name has stuck.
i68 IN THE ABRUZZI [pt. ii.
It was the year 1268, and a boy in Bavaria of restless
heart took a great resolution. His grandfather had been
the Emperor Frederic II., who, when a boy himself, had
crossed the Alps and won an empire to add to his
Sicilian throne. What had been done before should be
done again, with a southward course this time. Conrad,
his father, was dead, Manfred, his brilliant and unhappy
uncle, killed at Benevento. And now the Angevin
Charles, blessed by the Pope, had seized the kingdom
of Naples. " It is my throne," said Conradin, " and I will
have it back." He was sixteen at the time, a handsome
lad of brilliant promise, already a scholar and a poet—
his grandfather come to life again. So Conradin, with
his dearest friend, Frederic, Duke of Austria, one
year older than himself, riding by his side, and with a
few knights, set off to make appeal to the Ghibellines
of Italy. He seemed to be irresistible. No one called
him foolhardy. They acknowledged the young captain ;
and at Pisa he got men and money and horses and
weapons. At Siena, too, they flocked to his banner ;
and it was with an army of five thousand knights he
made his way to Rome. There he was hailed as the
coming saviour. The Senator and the great awaited
him on the slopes of Monte Mario. At Ponte Molle
he was greeted with garlands and waving branches
and with songs. The city was decorated in his honour,
and Roman maidens played airs on the guitar as he
passed with young Frederic by his side. The Roman
Ghibellines were with him, heart and soul — Jacopo
Napoleone Orsini, the Annibaldi, the Count of Sant'
Eustachio, Giovanni Arlotti, and all the best of them.
And a worthy hero of such a triumph seemed the
" giovinotto . . . con la chioma d'oro, con la pupilla
del color del mare."
But meanwhile Pope Clement was calling the blue-
eyed Swabian boy " the sprout of a cursed tree." And
CH. VIII.] TAGLIACOZZO 169
Charles of Anjou was commending himself to all his
saints ; for Sicily stirred at the coming of a prince of the
ancient race ; Calabria was in insurrection ; and the
Pisan fleet, with Conradin's friends on board, had set
sail for the mouth of the Tiber, whence they were to
rouse the Terra di Lavoro, It was in that province
Conradin thought to meet Charles ; but the astute
Angevin dashed from Foggia north to the Abruzzi. His
available forces were scanty, and he could not give the
enemy the choice of the ground. On August 9, 1268,
Charles was at Scurcola.
Conradin and his friends set out from Rome, ten thou-
sand strong — Germans, Italians, Spaniards. The Senator
was with him, Guido da Montefeltro, and many eminent
Ghibellines ; and for two days they were convoyed on
their way by enthusiastic Romans. In vain they tried
to draw Charles into the mountains ; and so along the
Valerian Way they came, by Tivoli and Carsoli, and
halted at the old castle of Tagliacozzo. The legend
that Charles from below saw them coming, and called
to Mary Virgin to aid him in return for a new church,
is contradicted by another, which declares he had lost
all trace of the enemy, and thinking they had turned
north towards the valley of the Aterno, he acted as his
own scout, and was up at Ovindoli seeking for news of
them, when messengers came to tell him they were
at Scurcola, and had camped by the bridge near the
Valerian Way. He returned and took up his position on
the hills of Albe, He had but six thousand men ; but
his generals were wily. Eight hundred of the best were
hidden the night before between Antrosano and Monte
Felice. The rest were in two divisions : one, under the
Provencal Jacopo Cantelmi, advanced as far as the Salto ;
the second was under Enrico da Cosenza, who was
the living image of the king, and for the occasion wore
Charles's armour and crown. Charles himself stayed
lyo IN THE ABRUZZI [pt. ii.
in the rear, well hidden among the thick woods of
Cappelle — woods that have all vanished now. He was
no sixteen-year-old boy, and as a responsible monarch
he thought his person worth preserving. Antinori says
that sham ambassadors came down to Conradin bearing
keys in their hands, the keys of Aquila, they declared,
which was his for the asking, and quite ready to betray
the Angevin. Charles heard of this, and was shaken
with a sudden fear. By night he rode fast and furious
up the heights past Ovindoli and Rocca di Mezzo, got
entrance to Aquila, and demanded its fealty. The
governor swore to him that he was true, that the offer
of the keys had been but a feint to put Conradin off
his guard ; and next day the Aquilesi, men and women,
came down to the help of the Angevin, dragging loads
of provisions. Yet the young Swabian was not left with-
out sympathy from the people round about ; and Albe
and other places suffered savage reprisals for the same.
The first division of the Ghibelline army was led by
the Senator, with three hundred Castilians, Lombards,
and Tuscans ; the second by Conradin, with whom
were young Frederic of Austria and all the Germans.
They crossed the Salto and set on the Angevins with
dash. Their attack was irresistible, and after some
obstinate fighting, the enemy scattered in all directions
among the hills and woods. Cantelmi fled with his
men up the road to Aquila, Da Cosenza, wearing
the royal armour, was slain. Conradin was dancing
in to victory ; and Charles in the shade of the woods,
with his priests about him, was hearing mass, and
calling on Our Lady for succour. But his captain's eye
was not asleep ; and hearing that Orsini and several of
the other leaders had left the field with their men, in hot
pursuit of the Angevins, he — or as Dante and some
historians say, his general Alardo (Erard de Valery),
thought it was time to make use of the concealed eight
CH. viiL] TAGLIACOZZO 171
hundred. An hour ago they would have been but a
mouthful for the conquerors. Now they were enough to
rally his armies, call back flyers, and simulate a mighty
force. Conradin's men had exhausted themselves in
pursuit. They were scattered now and disorganized :
and ere they could grasp the change of fortune, they, the
victors, were the flyers. Struggle as they might, one by
one the chiefs were taken. Even the Senator only
escaped capture by desperate flight. Conradin and
Frederic, the two brothers-in-arms, were hurried from
the field that had been theirs. Of the two armies four
thousand had fallen, and the Swabian prisoners were
countless. Thus was gained and lost the battle of
Tagliacozzo,
"Ove senz' arme vinse il vecchio Alardo."
" Now let the Church, my Mother, rejoice," wrote
Charles to the Pope, " and set up a cry of exultation for
such a triumph, which from on high, through the service
of her champion, is vouchsafed to her. At last hath the
Omnipotent Lord put an end to all oppression, and freed
her from the greedy vengeance of her persecutor." Where-
upon he set to beheading and torturing and mutilating
the prisoners with a fury which surely, even for the satis-
faction of the Church, was not strictly needful.
On Conradin's march from Rome it had been " roses,
roses all the way." There were no roses now. Towns
whose people had crowded to cheer him, hustled him
through. Even in Rome there was a sudden panic
among the Ghibellines, and they would shelter no van-
quished enemy of Anjou ; and, indeed, such of his
followers as stayed only met their fate the sooner. It
was still possible he might escape by means of the Pisan
fleet ; but Angevin spies were everywhere ; and he and
Frederic took a roundabout route to the coast, seeking
1/2 IN THE ABRUZZI [pt. il.
a moment's shelter at Castel Saracinesco with Orsini.
From there they made their way through the Campagna
to Astura on the coast of Romagna, weary and worn.
The golden-haired Swabian and his gallant comrade
could not look like the humble folk they gave themselves
out to be. The lord of Astura, Giovanni Frangipani,
recognized the two watchers for the saving ships, and
took them prisoners. Hurried back to Rome, they
graced the conqueror's triumph ere they were taken to
Naples for their mock trial. Not that the men of law
were not in earnest. Charles's highest legal advisers
spoke for Conradin, and judged him guiltless of treason.
But nothing availed, and on October 29th, two months
after the battle of Tagliacozzo, the two boys were
executed in the market-place of Naples. Their de-
meanour was proud and composed ; but one cry was
heard from Conradin's lips, " O mother, what terrible
news shall you hear of me ! " Their bodies were thrown
on the shore, as if they had been cast up by the sea.
Some faithful friends raised a cairn of stones above them ;
and Charles's son made no protest when a Carmelite
chapel was raised there.
So vanished Conradin, " like smoke," said the victor.
He was the last of a great race.
Come dilegua una ardente stella,
Muto zona lo svevo astro e disparve,
E gemendo I'avita aquila volse
Per morire al natio Reno.
Ma sul Reno natio era un castello,
E sul freddo verone era una madre,
Che lagrimava nell' attesa amara :
Nobile augello che volendo vai,
Se vien' de la dolce itala terra,
Dimmi, ai veduto il figlio mio ?
Lo vidi,
Era biondo, era bianco, era beato,
Sotto I'arco di un tempio era sepolto.
(Aleardi.)
CH. VIII.] TAGLIACOZZO 173
In thanksgiving, Charles built a great church and
abbey some little way from the battlefield, near Scurcola,
on the Tagliacozzo road, called Santa Maria della
Vittoria ; and gave it into the hands of French Cistercians.
He spent profusely on the building and its decoration ;
but there was economy in his profusion, for most of the
stone he stole from the ancient Roman ruins of Albe.
Niccolo Pisano had the planning of the place, and the
great artist carved stones here with his own hand. Not
a vestige of his work remains. A few fragments of wall
are all that is left to tell of the Church of the Victory.
Earthquakes, neglect, and a dangerous situation worked
its ruin, and it never lived to be old. One thing has
survived — a painted image of the Virgin in a case studded
with the lilies of France ; and now it is in the parish
church of Scurcola. And according to Corsignani, this
is how it comes to be there. The long-venerated image
was lost and almost forgotten, when, in 1524, a Taglia-
cozzo woman dreamed that it lay in a certain spot in the
ruins called the Abbadi, near the river Salto. She told
a priest, who set diggers to work, " a heavenly melody "
directing them to the place. There it was, intact, with-
out stain, unblackened, in its casket of gilded wood.
Said the Tagliacozzo folks, " It is ours. The
dreamer is one of our women." " Nay," said the Scur-
colesi, " it was found in our territory." They fought
over it ; but finally asked the Bishop of the Marsica to
decide. The said prelate, inspired by God, ordered it
to be placed on a litter drawn by mules, the beasts to be
left free to go whithersoever they would. Whereupon
the Tagliacozzo men threw up their caps, for the mules
were theirs, and would go back to their stables. " But as
was the will of God, once outside the gate which leads to
Tagliacozzo, that is, the Porta Sant' Antonio, and past
the hospital, they turned to the right and upwards, and
went and knelt down above the piece of land where
1/4 IN THE ABRUZZI [pt. it.
stood a cona [i.e. a chapel with an icon], which had a
picture of the Most Blessed Virgin of Providence. And
there was built a church, and there is now the image, an
object of much applause and no little devotion to the
said land and the neighbourhood." But it does not
enjoy the great repute of Our Lady of the Orient, whose
power remained undimmed even when Cese hard by
owned a picture painted by St. Luke.
CHAPTER IX
ROUND ABOUT FUCINO
Ancient FUCINUS — The Claudian experiment — The Claudian pageant —
Success of the modern scheme — High cultivation and vanished beauty
— Mythical origin of the ancient Marsi — Marsi enchanters and
serpent-charmers — Avezzano — The ruins of Albe (Alba Fucentia)
— Santa Maria in Valle.
Where was once the great Lake of Fucino (or of Celano)
are now the vast corn-fields of Prince Torlonia. From the
heights of Celano, or from the hillsides above Avezzano,
you recognize the fact with horror, or satisfaction, accord-
ing as your interest in landscape or agriculture predomi-
nates. Five and thirty years are not enough to make a
thing of beauty of a dried lake, of course ; but a hundred
would be insufficient on the chosen plan, that of geo-
metrical precision of design over an area of sixty-five
square miles — endless parallelograms edged with spiky
poplars, the whole like a fancy chessboard. Even its
glorious fields of waving corn lose their beauty by the
neat measurement to which they have been subjected.
It is no use talking of a formal garden. You cannot
have a garden twelve and a half miles long ; and it is no
place for a garden, this space in the great circle of giant
hills. Seen from above, Fucino to-day is a blot on the
beautiful Marsica. The agriculturist will allow us to say
so, seeing that his point of view is now embodied in an
accomplished fact.
The drying of Fucino had been a dream which
practical men had striven to make a reality ever since
175
176 IN THE ABRUZZI [pt. ii.
the time of Julius Caesar — possibly before that. The
lake was an uncomfortable and dangerous neighbour,
which changed its area and its level with such suddenness
that it swept away the towns on its banks, and worked
havoc on all the country round. Ortucchio on the
southern shore was often an island ; and Avezzano nearly
swamped over and over again. In its quiet moods a
useful lake, it supported a population of fishers on its
banks, and its fish were famous. But once the hidden,
and never-understood, springs were agitated, then rose
the cry, " Dry up, Fucino ! " The Marsians appealed to
the Roman Senate, but the senators thought it was no
concern of theirs. Julius Caesar, however, considered the
matter seriously, but he never found time to take it in
hand. That was left for Claudius. " Fucinum aggressus
est, non minus compendii spe, quam gloriae, cum quidam,
privato sumptu emissarios se repromitterent, si sibi siccati
agri concederentur," is the rather grudging acknow-
ledgment bestowed by Suetonius on his initiative.
The first plan was to find an outlet for the lake by
means of a canal connecting it with the Salto. Then the
waters would have found their way to Rome in a round-
about way, via the Velino, the Nera, the Teverone, and
the Tiber ; but the Senate, fearing floods in the city, for-
bade the undertaking. So the Liris was chosen instead.
The engineer was Narcissus, a man of great talent ; but
a sensational report of the time says he got the post
because Agrippina, who hated him with a deadly hatred,
felt sure he would make a mess of the business and thus
disgrace himself. An aqueduct was made under Monte
Salviano, on the western side of the lake, and under the
Campi Palentini, by which the waters were to flow to the
Liris below Capistrello, where you can see the structure
of the wonderful Claudian emissary to this day. For
eleven years, a.d. 43-54, thirty thousand slaves were
working under the direction of Narcissus. At last the
CH. IX.] ROUND ABOUT FUCINO 177
work was nearly done. Once again, said Claudius, should
the people see the lake, amid splendid circumstances, and
then no more. A great sham naval battle was organized
on it, a feast of tyranny on a sublime scale. A hundred
ships were launched on Fucino, and to make this
Claudian holiday, twenty thousand slaves were doomed
to fight in deadly earnest. It needed a Claudian heart to
look on ; but if you had one, the scene was splendid :
Claudius and Agrippina on the slopes above, and thou-
sands and thousands of spectators from the proud towns
on the hills, Cliternia and Alba ; the Imperial galleys
on the blue water; the struggling, desperate men — and
all encircled by the giant hills.
This is Tacitus's description of the scene —
"About the same time the mountain about Lake
Fucensis and the river Liris was bored through, and that
this grand work might be seen by a multitude of visitors,
preparations were made for a naval battle on the lake,
just as formerly Augustus exhibited such a spectacle in
a basin he had made on this side of the Tiber, though
with light vessels and on a smaller scale. Claudius
equipped galleys with three and four banks of oars, and
nineteen thousand men ; he lined the circumference of
the lake with rafts, that there might be no means of
escape at various points, but he still left full space for the
strength of the crews, the skill of the pilots, the impact of
the vessels, and the usual operations of a sea-fight. On
the rafts stood companies of the Praetorian cohorts and
cavalry, with a breastwork in front of them, from which
catapults and balistas might be worked. The rest of the
lake was occupied by marines on decked vessels. An
immense multitude from the neighbouring towns, others
from Rome itself, eager to see the sight or to show
respect to the Emperor, crowded the banks, the hills,
and mountain-tops, which thus resembled a theatre.
The Emperor, with Agrippina seated near him, presided ;
N
1/8 IN THE ABRUZZI [pt. ii.
he wore a splendid military cloak, she, a mantle of cloth
of gold. A battle was fought with all the courage of
brave men, though it was between condemned criminals.
After much bloodshed they were released from the
necessity of mutual slaughter.
" When the sight was over, the outlet of the water
was opened. The careless execution of the work was
apparent, the tunnel not having been bored down so low
as the bottom or middle of the lake. Consequently,
after an interval, the excavations were deepened, and to
attract a crowd once more, a show of gladiators was
exhibited, with floating pontoons, for an infantry engage-
ment. A banquet, too, was prepared close to the out-
flow of the lake, and it was the means of greatly alarming
the whole company, for the water, in the violence of its
outburst, swept away the adjoining parts, shook the more
remote, and spread terror with the tremendous crash. At
the same time Agrippina availed herself of the Emperor's
fright to charge Narcissus, who had been the agent of
the work, with avarice and peculation. He, too, was not
silent, but inveighed against the domineering temper of
her sex, and her extravagant ambition." ^
Efforts were made to repair the disaster ; but some
years later a fall of rock dammed the opening ; and the
project was abandoned till Trajan's reign, when again it
failed. During the barbarian invasions great public
works were out of the question ; and not till twelve
hundred years after Claudius was any serious thought
given to it, by the Emperor Frederic H. But like
Caesar he died ere he found time to take it in hand.
Alfonso v., in the fifteenth century, revived the scheme ;
and, in fact, all the great kings dreamt the dream of
Claudius. But ages passed, and the thing was forgotten,
save by a few scientists. Then some French engineers
' Annals, ,\ii. 56, 57. Trans. Church and Brodripp.
CH. IX.] ROUND ABOUT FUCINO 179
formed a company, and a royal decree of 1853 conceded
to them the right of restoring the Claudian emissary.
The work had been going on for over ten years when
Prince Torlonia of Rome, already the largest shareholder
in the company, bought the whole concern, and undertook
to finance the vast undertaking, on condition that the
reclaimed territory should be his at the end. It cost
millions ; and for years, when Fucino was spoken of, people
said, " Either Torlonia will dry up Fucino, or Fucino will
dry up Torlonia." But Torlonia's millions proved the more
obstinate; and in 1876 the gigantic undertaking was
finished, and through the new emissary the waters of the
lake joined the Liris under Capistrello. The cultivation
of the soil began at once. Roads were made, trees planted,
and high farming taken in hand over the 26,000 hectares.
And Avezzano is much more prosperous, and bands of
labourers and teams of great white oxen work now in the
bed of Fucino. At first the drying of the lake caused
malaria ; but that has passed away, and save that the
fruit-trees on its banks no longer bear, in kind or
quantity, as they did, there is no reason to grumble, save
from a landscape point of view. Get down into it, and
you forget even that grievance. We have never seen
such corn — high above us it grows, and thick, with
monster heads. The patchwork pattern is not evident,
for the lines of trees that are like spiky palings from
above, are hung with garlands, and the flowers have
sprouted and clung. And, indeed, the bands of women
working in the fields in their coloured dresses, are like
beds of flowers too. The grassy banks of the canals are
edged with poplars already shady and tall and decorative.
Close by a bridge over the lock of the Emissario has been
erected a huge statue of the Madonna of the Immaculate
Conception, a colossal enormity, a terrible example of
modern sentimental art, hailing from Rome. The
inscription vaunts first the patronage of Our Lady Maria
i8o IN THE ABRUZZI [pt. il.
sine lahe concepta ; and goes on to say that what kings
and emperors had failed to do had been done by
Alexander Torlonia, Prince of the City, "by the
immensity of his mind and force of money " ! There is
no mention made of the engineers.
A vast, rich granary it is ; but we shut our eyes and
see the sails, and hear the plashing of the oars, and watch
the reflections of the little towns on the southern edge.
Some that were are utterly vanished. Of Marruvium,
once the capital of the Marsi, there are but a few poor
remains in the miserable little village of San Benedetto.
Valeria, Penne, Archippe, are below the waves. Save
Avezzano, the only place that has remained a town is
Pescina, which has the dignity of a cathedral, and fame
as the birthplace of Cardinal Mazarin. Yet the Abruzzi
can hardly claim Mazarin for its own, nor his genius as
at all characteristic. His birth here in 1602 was some-
thing of an accident, though doubtless he spent a portion
of his childhood in Pescina. His father, a Sicilian of
Genoese origin, had an important post in the service of
the Colonnas here. Where did Dumas get his notion
that Mazarin was the son of a poor fisherman .-' In the
Vicomte de Bragelonne the Cardinal says, " Le fils d'un
pecheur de Piscina je suis devenu premier ministre du roi
de France."
The ancient Marsi were not only fighting men of
valour ; not only did they wring the heartiest admiration
from Rome, which they shook to its foundations in the
Social War ; but they were likewise a race of peculiar and
fascinating mental gifts. Their mythical origin is signi-
ficant. According to one legend, their ancestor was
Marsyas, the Phrygian flute-player who challenged
Apollo to a contest of musical skill, nor was overcome
till Apollo added his voice to the music of his lyre. The
fauns, the satyrs, and the dryads wept at his cruel fate at
the hands of the victor. Marsyas was a follower of C}'bele,
CH. IX.] ROUND ABOUT FUCINO i8i
goddess of liberty. In the fora of ancient cities it was
usual to place his statue, to betoken the freedom of the
state. A not unfitting ancestry this for the race that so
stoutly resisted Roman oppression. But Cybele signified
more kinds of liberty than one ; and the image of Marsyas
in Rome was a rendezvous of courtesans, who wreathed it
with flowers. Nor has the cult of Cybele been entirely
alien to the genius of this hot-blooded Southern folk.
According to another account, the ancestor was Mar-
sus, the son of Circe ; and this is maintained to be the
more plausible, inasmuch as Angitia, Circe's sister, held
her mystic court in a wood near Luco, on Lake Fucino,
which became a famous school of occult learning.
Legend gives to all the earlier descendants of Marsyas,
or of Marsus, the gifts of art and magic. " The magic
song of the Marsi transforms hags into birds," says Ovid.
Their fame as doctors and as serpent-charmers was tra-
ditional. And so Virgil : " There came, moreover, from
the Marruvian [Marsian] nation Umbro the priest, bravest
of the brave, sent by his chief Archippus, his helmet
wreathed with leaves of the auspicious olive ; who by
charms and by his hand was wont to lull to sleep the viper's
race, and hydras of foul and poisonous breath ; their fury
he assuaged, and by his art disarmed their stings. But
to cure the hurt of Trojan steel surpassed his power ; nor
soporific charm, nor herbs of Marsian mountains availed
him aught against its wounds. For you, Angitia's grove ;
for you, Fucinus, with his crystal waters ; for you the
glassy lake lamented." ^
An old writer (Mazella, Parthenopceia) says, " Giulo
Capitolino writeththat the Emperor Heliogabalus gathered
a great company of serpents with the incantations of the
Marsi, the which he caused on the sudden to be thrown
in the place where the people assembled, to see their
publique sports ; whereupon many being bitten fled with
' ALneid, vii. 750-760,
i82 IN THE ABRUZZI [pt. ii.
great terror. Neither is it to be held as a fable which
is written of these Incantations, because the prophet
David . . . makes a similitude of the deaf adder, which
stoppeth her ears to avoid enchantments. And St.
Augustine expounding it saith, That that similitude was
meant of the Marso, which maketh his charm to draw
the adder out of his dark obscure hole into the perfect
light ; and the serpent which loveth darkness, to avoid
the sound of the charm, which he knoweth will inforce
him, layeth one of his ears to the ground, because he
would not hear, and the other he covereth with his tail."
The historian of the Marsi, Muzio Febonio, writes :
" In the parts which lie about Lake Fucino, and especially
about the roots of Monte Penna, there is such an abun-
dance of serpents that in the summer heat they are wont
to come out of the mountain, and go down to the water ;
and they may be seen coiled up like bundles of vine
twigs on the stones, or sitting on the rocky ledges above
the lake. And albeit their fangs are not poisonous, yet
have they so deadly an odour that it may be called
poisonous. This we learnt, to our misfortune, in the
person of a certain religious. When they came out of
the caverns in the hot hours, he was wont to amuse him-
self by killing those he could with a stick. He continued
this play through the summer till, overcome by their
odour, he little by little fell into a malady which increased
and raged, till the matter being referred to the judgment
of the doctors, they assigned it to poison, and he was
cured. Which thing happened to many others who were
in the habit of catching or killing them. And out of the
same mountain earth is dug, what is vulgarly called terra
sigillata, which overcomes poison by its wonderful virtue,
and is judged by the skilled to be far better than that
which comes from Etruria and Greece." Febonio quotes
the classic writers that have told of the Marsian magi-
cians, and adds from his own knowledge that Don Paulo
CH. IX.] ROUND ABOUT FUCINO 183
Ciarallo, archpriest of Bisignano, of the old race of the
Marsi, had, with all his family, the power of catching
serpents, and of curing their bites merely with the saliva
of the mouth. On their shoulders they bore the effigy
of a serpent.
This faculty of the Marsi is well attested, and is by
no means lost. Charmers from the Marsica used till
lately to be met with in all parts of the kingdom of
Naples. They carried boxes full of snakes, which they
played with ; or they offered to render the spectators
innocuous by scratching their hands with a viper's tooth
divested of its venom, and then applying a mysterious
stone to the puncture. Afterwards they gave their clients,
now ingermati, a little image of San Domenico di
Cocullo.
In D'Annunzio's Abruzzo tragedy. La Fiaccola sotto
il Moggio, the villainess, who is called after the sorceress
Angizia, is the daughter of a serpent-charmer, and the
father, the man from Luco, comes on the scene with his
bags of creeping, venomous things.
" Sopra Luco evvi un monte erto e serposo
Nomato Angizia . . .
. . . dove salgo per far preda. E v'era
una cittk, nei tempi, una citta
di re indovini, E son vi le muraglie
di macigni ed i tumuli
di scheggioni pel dosso. E quivi su
cercando in luogo cavo,
trovai dintorno ad uno ossame tre
vasi di terra nera coperchiati."
To-day the art is mainly to be seen in religious
festivals. At the festa of San Domenico di Cocullo, at
Cocullo, at Villalago, and elsewhere too, serpent-charming
forms a main feature of the ceremonial. On the hermit
saint who lived in caverns in the rocks, and made friends
with the wild things of the mountains, has fallen the
mantle of the early enchanters. For the rest, something
i84 IN THE ABRUZZI [pt. ii.
of it falls about the shoulders of all the religious
enthusiasts. In Marsica, as throughout the Abruzzi, the
Church took so fast a hold because it used the pagan
rites, and never shut out the hope of penetrating the
dark. That is one part of the explanation of the convent
on convent, the church on church, the chapel on chapel,
that lie thick on every hillside, in every valley. And
the " backwardness " of the people is but a dumb, instinc-
tive resistance to a modern life which offers them nothing
that ministers to their most primitive need.
At Avezzano we are in the full Marsica. And
Marsica it remains to-day ; the name is no romantic
revival. The ecclesiastical jurisdiction has always kept
up the ancient racial demarcations, and the Bishop of the
district is, and always has been. Bishop of the Marsica.
There is an old pride of race left which adverse modern
circumstances have never eradicated, and a consciousness
of their early history among the people which you will
hardly find to the same extent elsewhere in the Abruzzi.
Coming here from Rome, the distinctive type of the
peasants in the market-place is very noticeable. The
exuberant handsomeness you do not find, nor the heavi-
ness ; and the male Southerner will not so often apply
the words of praise, " bel pezzo" to a woman of these
parts. They are a slender, wiry, agile race, dark for the
most part, with quick-moving eyes, not a little mysterious,
and now and then just a little sinister. I speak more
of the hill people than of those of Avezzano, who are
thicker and sleeker, perhaps owing to their recent
prosperity.
As for Avezzano, we used it only as a lodging for
the night, though it is by no means an ungenial place.
There are no slums, and it is restful after climbing the
ladder streets of other places. It is very ancient, but
has done its best to hide all traces of its history, and,
save the fine facade of San Bartolommeo, built on the
CH. IX.] ROUND ABOUT FUCINO 185
site of a temple of Augustus, and the strong, squat
fortress of the Colonnas, built by Gentile Virginio Orsini,
and strengthened by Marc- Antonio Colonna, which now
drags on a dowdy, meritorious existence as a school,
there is little to arrest the seeker of the picturesque.
The town is growing after an ugly fashion, and looks
distinctly prosperous.
Febonio says his native place was made from the
ruins of Albe. It probably grew, like Tagliacozzo, out
of a conglomeration of villages. The name of one of
these has been interpreted as Pantheon Jani. Hence,
Ara Jani, Ara di Giano, Aveano, Avezzano. This sounds
doubtful ; but that there was a temple of Janus here is
attested by many coins and medals found, with Janus
Bifrons on one side, and a ship, which is called Noah's
ark, on the other. In the people's belief, Noah and
Janus were one, because the patriarch looked before the
Flood and after ! Noah came twice to Italy, they say.
If the town offers little of great interest, the wild
upper valley of the Liris, reached by train from this point ;
the dead cities of Fucino ; the ruins of Albe, and, if he
be a climber, Monte Velino — will keep the traveller for
some time in the neighbourhood, which is enchanting,
even with Lake Fucino turned into a vast field for
agricultural experiments.
Avezzano is now the chief town of the Marsica. As
the residence of the Dukes of the Marsi and of Tagliacozzo,
it gained official dignity early ; but its position on the
verge of the drained lake, now turned to fruitful fields, has
developed it at the expense of its neighbours during the
last thirty years or so. But even in its prosperity
Avezzano does not take itself very seriously as a lodging-
place for travellers. This fact was emphasized to us by
the extreme depression of a waiter at our inn. He was
a Roman, and his standard was doubtless too lofty.
Still, we owned he had reason for lowness of spirits.
1 86 IN THE ABRUZZI [pt. ii.
when we found him hour after hour, day after day, sitting
in a dark passage on the landing, that he might be ready
to calm the fury of guests rushing out of bedroom doors
after trying for the twentieth time to ring bells that had
never rung within any one's memory. " Tutt' h rotto
qui ! " he moaned, in a voice that might have heralded
the death of an empire. Now, the native waiter down-
stairs was a more philosophic person. When, morning
after morning, you could get no coffee, because the
coffee-pot was broken and the new one expected from
Rome every day, he announced the fact as a simple
happening of nature. The leaves fall in autumn ; and do
not coffee-pots, too, have their seasons of decay and
death ? He was sympathetic, but not so to any lowering
degree. Thus did he disarm complaints, and was almost
as good a stimulant as the missing coffee.
I should be telling of ruined Albe instead of ruined
coffee-pots, and I shall do so presently. But even my
great exemplar, Mr. Keppel Craven, was not above the
mentioning of trifling topics. He would have read the
downstairs waiter a seemly lecture ; condoled, and, I
hope, handsomely tipped, the melancholy Roman on the
dark landing. Mr. Craven liked Avezzano, but, on his
departure, he made the following sententious reflections :
" The inhabitants of Abruzzo, though considered a
hard-working, laborious race, appear totally insensible to
that avidity towards gain which characterizes those of
the northern districts, and which supplies in some degree
the deficiency of better-regulated habits of speculation
and industry : this, I apprehend, is attributable to a
constitutional slowness of organs, both physical and
mental, which assimilates them to some portions of our
northern tribes, and renders an intercourse with them in
the ordinary matters of life far from agreeable."
This, because he couldn't get all the mules and
muleteers he wanted — though it would have been
CH. IX.] ROUND ABOUT FUCINO 187
profitable to the inhabitants to leave their own miserable
avocations to serve a gentleman like him ! It is annoy-
ing, of course, when you rattle the money in your pocket,
and find no one eager to run for the sixpences. But
why expect the shopkeeping instinct in the Marsica of
all places ?
Albe lies four miles north of Avezzano. A road at
the east end of the public gardens leads you to the railway,
which you should cross to the west of the station. The
way after that is little more than a cart-track, and when
you have cut the upper high-road, it continues as a
mountain-path. We footed it one early morning in the
time of harvest ; but the yellow corn was still standing
in the uplands, and the world was resplendent and
singing to itself and the birds. We met only one little
band of outlandish mountaineers riding down on their
mules to their reaping in the plain. Their coloured
jackets were thrown over their shoulders like the rem-
nants of an ancient mantle, and their feet were encased
in sandals of hairy skin, turned up at the toes and tied
with leathern thongs. Dark, mysterious eyes questioned
us from under the battered sombreros as we passed.
Ancient Albe (Alba Fucensis) stood on three hills.
On the first of these, Monte d'Oro, an oblong mound,
planted with corn and almond trees — probably an earth-
work— makes a magnificent outlook, or a place for
meditation on the ruin of things. In front, on the
neighbouring hill, stands the little Albe of to-day, superbly
placed under the twin peaks of Velino, that change, as
we watch, from blue to dove colour and opal. Set high
and steep, it commands all the country round, and the
plain that once was Fucino, whose waters of old came up
nearly to its rocks. Left of the golden hill is a third,
with San Pietro on its height. All round is a solemn
circle of great mountains that darken as we sit, for a
i88 IN THE ABRUZZI [PT. ii.
wind from the north rises and blows through the gaps a
cold breath from regions of unmelted snow.
After all their digging and searching, the archaeo-
logists are not very sure yet about the history of Alba
Fucensis — the white town on Fucino. Were its people
Equi or Marsi ? It lay on the borderland. Says Strabo,
" Alba Marsis finitima in excelso locato saxo." It is
said to have been founded by the Pelasgi, whoever they
were, an uncountable number of years B.C. At least,
it probably had a long history before the Romans made
it a colony and one of the strongest fortresses in Southern
Italy. This was after its revolt in the Samnite War.
The Roman colony consisted of six thousand persons ;
but, according to one computation, its inhabitants
numbered ten times six thousand. It had an amphi-
theatre, and baths, and aqueducts, and temples, and
statues, and all the dignity of a highly developed city.
Its walls, built by the Pelasgians or the Romans, are
still a wonder. There are few finer specimens anywhere
of these cyclopean walls, and the traces of the triple line
of the vast circuit are still plain and formidable. Even
to-day they strike into one a kind of fear of the men
who built like that, of the giant world that needed such
masonry. Nor is it strength alone they suggest, but
sumptuous beauty, too, by their choice of material.
Poor dismantled Albe, like a dead king, was good to
steal from. When it had been sacked and burnt by
Goths and Saracens, there was still enough left of its
ancient grandeur to tempt the greedy ; and Charles of
Anjou found it a rich quarry from which to dig marble
and granite to build his abbey and church of Santa
Maria della Vittoria. The great statues of Hannibal
and of Scipio Africanus were taken to Rome by the
Colonnas for their palace ; and the contadini have had
their pickings too.
CH. IX.] ROUND ABOUT FUCINO 189
There is something sinister in the memories of Albe
in its strongest days. When these walls rose high and
formidable, they shut in dark tragedies. The place was
used as a state jail for Rome, and ruined captive kings
came here and looked up to the great free hills from
behind these grim stones. Here were brought Bituitus
King of the Arverni, Syphax King of Numidia ; and here
came Perseus of Macedonia with his young son Alexander,
after they had graced a Roman triumph in the year of
the City, 583. According to some, Perseus survived his
disgrace and exile four years ; others say only two.
Diodorus Siculus declares that a dream came to him
that his kingdom should be restored ; whereupon his
guardians said he must dream no more. So they would
not let him sleep ; and of this he died. They gave him
a great funeral. His son Alexander was a humble-
minded person of nice quiet tastes, who gave no trouble.
He was content to serve as a clerk in the office of the
magistracy at Alba, and did metalwork in his leisure
hours.
In the wars between Octavius Csesar and Mark
Antony it favoured the latter ; and a marble statue of
him, set up in Alba, sweated, and continued to do so
however much it was wiped dry, as warning to him of
coming disaster. Alba was always independent, and
not a little capricious ; it turned against Mark Antony
later, and in revenge he killed the centurions of the
Marsica who were in Brindisi. But it won the praise of
Julius Caesar.
Albe lost importance after the third century of our
era, though in the eleventh and twelfth it was good
enough to shelter the decayed fortunes of the anti-Pope
Gilberto and of Pasquale II. Many envious lords
struggled for it, Guelfs and Ghibellines, Aragonese and
Angevins, ere it fell into the fief of Tagliacozzo. To-day
190 IN THE ABRUZZI [pt. it.
there is hardly a poorer village in the Marsica. All that
is left of it, apart from the cyclopean walls -and San
Pietro, runs along the ridge of the hill nearest Velino.
The church, San Nicola, is set on strong walls that have
served an ancient secular purpose. The apse gives on
a cobbled threshing-ground, where men and women are
wielding the flail as we pass. Through a great arch we
come into a little piazza that has lost all pride in itself.
The church has a fine rose window and a fresco on its
fagade, but inside is the poorest of humble places. I
only remember a strangely pagan picture of a gaudily
attired lady, with an arrow in her hand, to whom cherubs
are -bringing an anchor and other gifts. No Madonna,
I warrant. The one street is broken, irregular, insuffi-
cient ; yet something relieves it from squalor. It is a
bit of patchwork. The material is worn, but not shoddy ;
and at every step you are conscious of the great site and
the majesty of the setting. It is Sunday afternoon. All
the world is out of doors ; but it is the scantiest world.
Once past the old dismantled castle, you strike on some
round towers, and that is the end. There the rock runs
sheer down.
We have a guide to San Pietro, in the person of the
keeper of the keys, one of the ancient Marsi come to
life. Nearly sixty, and his hair tinged with grey, slender,
graceful, well-knit and sinewy, lithe as some wild thing,
he steps lightly and swiftly in his leathern sandals worn
over linen hose. His head is well-shaped, and his
features finely cut ; the large, dark eyes are deep set in
a strong-lined face. An austere person, very silent and
mysterious. His movement over the stones, down one
rocky path and up another, is a light run. But once on
the top of the third hill, and near San Pietro, he thrills
with enthusiasm and finds words. He can tell us about
it. He has books, and at his fireside of an evening he
reads and reads.
en. IX.] ROUND ABOUT FUCINO 191
He has brought us, indeed, to a strange and wonderful
place. Even purists in architecture who will gasp at the
marriage of incongruous elements, must breathe deep
and thrill at the history written here, each chapter
incisive and alive. Not even ''n the Pantheon of Rome
have diverse ages and fashions dared so boldly to clash
as here. The foundations of San Pietro are cyclopean.
They are like the fortress walls below in material,
strength, and probably date. On these were raised a
Roman temple which exists substantially to-day, almost
unique in its state of preservation. The naves are
upheld by eight fluted Corinthian columns of the
original sixteen, stately and beautiful. The richly
carved door is fine twelfth-century work. The apse
is of the thirteenth. Frescoes of every Christian
age are on the walls, half obliterated. The hands of
the primitives have worked here ; and some that have
learnt in a Sienese school ; and others of late date.
There are no masterpieces, but many fragments of
charm. The pulpit is a splendid specimen of inlaid
Gothic work, marble and gilt, porphyry and serpentine —
" a not inelegant kind of labour," says Mr. Keppel
Craven, in a fit of expansiveness. The eighteenth
century has added altars to Saint Francis and Saint
Bernardino of Siena — for the convent attached to the
great church, originally Benedictine, has often changed
hands, and the Franciscan Conventuals have had it
From the prehistoric to the rococo, all is here ; but the
dominating things are still the great columns. The
marble mosaic and the delicate fresco fragments fill up
the picture lightly. The rest, whatever space it takes, is
nowhere in the memory.
The place is a national monument, and is well cared
for. Since 1866 or 1867, on the suppression of the con-
vent, it has been the property of Count Pace. The
convent buildings are now a farm. In the cloisters are
192 IN THE ABRUZZI [pt. ii.
ancient inscriptions set into the wall, and old carved
stones, by no means all of a Christian pattern. What a
strange subject of meditation must that siren have been
to the frati! In the tiny neglected garden we were
given roses. The rest of the flowers have died since
the brothers ceased to tend the place.
Our companion preserved an attitude of rapt devotion
in the church. But it was not the simple devotion he
feels in San Nicola. This peasant of a little ruined
hamlet in the hills is thrilled by the great stones. San
Pietro, and the ancient fragments all about, have been his
only school. He loves them all, touches every bit with
reverence, knows every corner, every inch of storied
carving within and without. His name is Carmine
Santacasa ; he is the sacristan of San Nicola, and his
sandals are very worn. But he has the instincts of an
artist and a scholar. Once outside the holy place, he
runs us up and down the hills pitilessly ; for he is not of
those who say difficult roads are not for signore. Signore
who come here must see Albe. Albe is worth seeing.
So, then, up and down, to see the walls. He has studied
their plan in his book by the fireside, the aqueduct, the
traces of the Valerian Way, the places of the gates, with the
marks where they hung still to be seen on the stones.
What an antiquary this peasant would have made ! His
dark eyes gleam and flash as he revivifies old dramas,
made out of his book and his own strong imagination.
Curious, he makes no apology for poor Albe of to-day,
as his like are wont to do. Albe is rich to him — rich in
great stones and memories. He has the self-forgetting
look on his face of the born enthusiast. Carmine loves
his country-side, too ; and he is almost the first we have
met who openly regrets the draining of the lake. He
regrets the fishing ; for he is old enough to have fished
in it ; but he also regrets its beauty. It has brought
riches, we suggest. Riches ! Riches ! He values riches
CH. IX.] ROUND ABOUT FUCINO 193
coolly, this peasant of the threadbare coat and the worn
sandals. " Yes. Torlonia got riches. And then he died."
He seemed to be weighing wealth and death together
for a moment or two ; and he concluded, " The best gift
the good God gave to this world was death ; and that He
gave to poor and rich alike."
Carmine has a son in America, who wears a black
coat, and sits at a desk, and gets good pay, and sends
some of it home to Albe. But I can hardly imagine him
the equal of his threadbare father, the free man of the
hills, with his entry into another world through the ancient
stones and his book. By " threadbare " I do not mean
poverty-stricken. Carmine owns his own house and some
land. His picturesque threadbareness is but the sign
of a man distracted from himself by impersonal things.
Did he never think of going to America .'' No, the idea
had never come into his head. When one is " appassionato
pella famiglia "
It is very easy to miss S. Maria della Valle, for it lies
far away from the high-road to anywhere, and cannot
be "taken with" other monuments of importance. It is
known to archaeologists and some architects, but guide-
books dare not star anything so inconveniently placed.
The road to it lies through Cappelle, which you reach by
train from Avezzano, and thence by the posta to Magliano.
Magliano de' Marsi is an ancient place set on a hill to the
west of Albe, much the worse for wear, but imposing still,
and cheery ; and its inhabitants keep up their old reputa-
tion for strength. The air is inspiriting, and the view of
the beautiful Valley of Porcaneta draws us on. We leave
many stares behind us at our refusal of a carrozzella to
Rosciolo ; but it is good to foot it upwards through this
golden country, exuberant and suave, the bare hills on
each hand softened by the shady trees that walk along
and keep us company. In the porch of the. /rati' s church
o
194 IN THE ABRUZZI [pt. II.
we can rest and take possession of the valley beneath.
The road to the temple of the Guardian of the Vale lies
under, not through, the village, and thus we never saw
the fine church there. Rosciolo is the place from which
climbers start by night for the ascent of Monte Velino.
Monte Velino is a favourite and a kindly mountain.
The German climber we met at Sulmona, who had
" done " all the Alps, scoffed at the Apennines, pronounced
the Gran Sasso and Majella puny and dull, had still a
good word for Monte Velino. Easy, of course, a thing
to be sauntered up ; but he owned the beauty and charm
of the surroundings. To all the folks round about Velino
is a friend. They gather medicinal herbs on its slopes,
and look up to it for guidance. If the first snows of
the year cover only the three peaks (Velino, Cafornia,
and Sevice), a stern winter is to be looked for ; a mild one
if the snow comes halfway down. And so the old
rhyme —
" Quando il Velino si mette il capello,
Vendi le capre ed acquista il mantello,
Quando il Velino le brache si mette,
Vendi il mantello e compra le caprette."
["When Velino puts on his hat, sell your goats and get you a cloak.
When Velino puts on his hosen, sell your cloak and buy little goats. "]
From Rosciolo the road is rough, but not shadeless,
and just when we seem to be running against the back
wall of the valley, we find our Santa Maria. There it
lies, close under the steep, wooded hill, at the end of the
world, and very solitary. There are not more than two
houses near it, where once was a flourishing town, the
Villa Maggiore, rased by Charles of Anjou, presumably
for the support it gave to Conradin. Its people fled to
Magliano. All that is left of the church looks little
remarkable, a barn-like structure with a pretty apse and
a window looking to the south. The porch is open, and
seems to be used as a casual stable. A most convenient
CH. IX.] ROUND ABOUT FUCINO 195
shelter in the storm, doubtless, is this " national monu-
ment." Above the door, in a lunette, is a delightful fresco
of Our Lady with an angel on each side, of the early
fourteenth century. A travelling Englishman passing
here thought it wasted in this wilderness, and offered
to buy it. He bid quite high, and was surprised he did
not have his way. One might well be alarmed for its
safety ; yet the herds who stable the cows and mules
underneath have respected it. The door of the church is
locked ; the houses near are empty ; but far down in the
fields we see some peasants working, and we make for
them. Yes, there used to be a key here, but not now.
There is a volunteer, however, to fetch the one at
Rosciolo. Little Antonietta jumps on her shabby donkey
and jolts over rough craggy fields and stony paths, and
is back in an hour. The family, father and four daughters,
convoy us back to the church ; and on the strength of
the lira earned by Antonietta, they all feel dispensed
from further labour that day. We have their company
for the rest of the time.
What is left of the interior is little and exquisite.
The place was begun in 1048 by Berardo, Count of
the Marsi, who made it rich by giving it the castle
and town of Rosciolo before he gave the whole to the
Benedictines of Monte Cassino, in 1080. From the begin-
ning of the fifteenth century it began to decay ; but the
decay was very gradual, and Febonio says in his time
it was still unharmed. Even now Mass is said several
times a year, and at Easter a procession comes up to
greet Our Lady of the Vale. It is very broken. A
blessed poverty, and its remoteness in these wilds, have
hindered restoration. The floor is gone. The walls are
crumbling. Now it looks like an old wan and shrunken
face, with the glamour of beauty still about it : chastened,
rarified, menaced by death, but serene. Menaced it has
been, indeed. It is cracked and seamed by earthquakes,
196 IN THE ABRUZZI [rx. ii.
the latest fissures but three years old. On a column
of the porch is an inscription in honour of the founder.
Opposite is a rough Latin verse to the glory of the
architect Nicolo —
"hoc opus est clari
manibus factu nicolai
gui laus viventi
gui sit reqes morienti
vivus onoretur
moriens sup astra lo
cetu . vos quoque psentes
et fag tu tale videntes
lugiter oretis . quod
regnet in rge qetis."
["This work was made by the hands of the famous Nicholas, to whom be
praise in life, to whom be rest in death. Alive let him be honoured. Dead
he shall win his place above the stars. And you here seeing this deed, pray
without ceasing that he may reign in the city of peace."]
Nicholas found in the Vale his entry into peace, and
was laid to rest in the church. His tomb is in the right-
hand corner. The efifigy is gone. Only the half-ruined
inscription remains —
" HOC OPUS EST . . . FATUM NICOLAUS QUI JAGET HIC."
What is left is probably of the twelfth century.
There is now but one aisle with mutilated arches ; but
the pulpit of white stone is a masterpiece. The carving,
of intertwined designs, with grotesques, and a vigorous
presentment of the story of Jonah, is nearly the same as
that of the ambone in Santa Maria del Lago in Moscufo,
though not so well preserved. Bindi says both are the
work of one Nicodemus, an Abruzzese sculptor of re-
nown, and that his name is to be read in a mutilated
verse in the pulpit. The pillared screen is from the
same hand. The little place is not quite stripped bare
of objects of devotion, nor reduced to the cold condition
CH. IX.] ROUND ABOUT FUCINO 197
of a specimen. It is still a much-loved sanctuary.
Between the columns on the right of the screen hangs
the Crucified, young, slender-limbed, patient ; not think-
ing any more of earthly pain. To the left stands a red-
robed Santa Constanza wreathed with flowers, a thing
of no artistic worth, but graceful and warm in this old
white place. The hand of the mysterious Nicodemus is
perhaps to be seen in the canopy over the altar-piece,
above the late and faded picture of St. Luke painting
the Virgin. The walls are tinted with the remains of
frescoes ; and where these have not been completely
mutilated, the colour has kept well. Antonietta, an
active cicerone, shows me what she calls the fratis
prison, under the altar, where they did penance. She
knows the place as her own father's house, and is full of
stories of the " molte grazie," done by the Madonna di
fuori — the lady of the lunette, whom the Englishman
wished to carry away — to those in peril of death. But
still more potent is she of the side chapel, whose
miraculous image was dug up in 18 14, and has had
many devotees ever since. Antonietta shows me some
brown stains in the vault underneath, where the blood
of Christ was shed. I cannot follow the legend, but
divine that when the blood was dispersa qui, it was not
as a relic, but in some visitation of the Man of Sorrows
to His brethren in this remote valley of Porcaneta. No
use questioning her. She is definite about her main
facts, but to minor circumstances and ramifications she
is indifferent.
She lies very lonely, St. Mary of the Valley. Not
very often is her lamp lit now, since the key is gone from
the cottage hard by. The peasants speak to her in the
porch, looking up at her image in the lunette above ;
and the porch is very hospitable to the shepherds, the
cowherds, and the swineherds of the hills, who have a
favourite rendezvous just above at the well of clear cold
198 IN THE ABRUZZI [ft. ii.
water from the rocks ; hospitable to their beasts, too, and
doubtless to the prowling wolves that come down in the
time of the snows from the steep beech-covered hill
above.
There is some talk of bringing the railway up this
road from Avezzano to Rieti. Meanwhile let the
pilgrim take his staff in his hand and go up the lovely-
valley, and its Lady will give him what she has, beauty
and peace, while these are left to her.
CHAPTER X
CELANO
A splendid ruin — Old disasters — The story of the Castle — The Church as
hospice — S, Francis in Celano — Our padrona — Deserted Ovindoli —
Rocca di Mezzo — A nightmare of light and of stones — Wolves — Bettina
Serena.
Above the lake towers Celano, Celano claimed a great
part in the lake, to which it gave its name except in
ancient and in quite modern times. " The fishy lake of
Celano," says Mazella. Once it was the chief place in
all the Marsica, and it bears the signs of past grandeur,
still rearing itself proudly aloft in its tattered russet and
gold. Avezzano has stepped well in front of it ; and
there are few signs of its deriving any benefit from the
cultivation of the lake. If it deigned to compete, one
would think it might throw out some new sprouts below
the rock near the railroad ; but it holds aloof and rots in
splendid scorn. There is a low wall in the Piazza, where
beggars and philosophers, or both rolled in one, are wont
to loll and meditate. And here in Celano we should be
driven to philosophy lest the tragedy of the place should
overcome us utterly. A pungent scorn is helpful, too ;
and among the loungers by the parapet are some one
may imagine as having taken a great vow never to go
down to the plain that cannot use their noble Celano —
the plain once a far-spreading mirror for mountain and
sky, now laid out with the teasing regularity of a chess-
board. The careless beggars and philosophers are
reasonably protected from the north winds by the slopes
199
200 IN THE ABRUZZI [pt. ii.
of the Sirente chain ; they face the sunny southern
fields ; and have, for setting to their dreaming or their
dreamless content, the glorious amphitheatre of hills,
double and triple lines of these, serrated, crested, and
changing from dove colour and dim peach-bloom to the
purple of the storm. For closer incident there lie the
little dots and patches that once were fishing towns
round Fucino, and, nearer, the tree-clad slopes and
gardens — for Celano, hanging on the edge of the wild,
has yet its soft and kindly aspect.
More than once after fell disaster it has begun again
a new career ; and the philosophers of the parapet can
tell themselves that their city was thought much of in
better days than ours, and may yet have its revival,
even its revenge, in the whirligig of time. Here in old
Roman days was probably Cliternia, and the flourishing
colony may have replaced an Italian city recalcitrant to
Rome in the wars of independence. The Lombards
occupied it as a strong place, and it was the chief seat
of the Counts of the Marsi. As it sided with the
Guelfs, Frederic II. sacked it ruthlessly, and expelled
its inhabitants, banishing them with characteristic
thoroughness to Malta, Sicily, and Calabria. But they
were hard to exile ; the Pope intervened, and a good
number of the banished came back. Meanwhile
Frederic was building up a new city on the ruins of the
old, whose name he determined should never be heard
any more. This city was to be Caesarea. But the new
name dropped from it lightly, and Celano it became
again, under its old inhabitants. It was involved, too,
in Masaniello's revolution in the seventeenth century,
yet again survived sacking and burning, only to be
shaken to its foundations about fifty years later in the
earthquake of 1695.
The castle that stands now is of the fifteenth century,
the chief portion built by Leonello Acclozamora. It has
» 3 3 ) i ^, 3 . J , ,' , 5,3 3 3,'
^.,5^%r3 3? i >3' 3 S' '5 ''
o
<
u
CH. X.] CELANO 201
known many fickle changes and chances of fortune, and
there are dark stories cHnging to its walls. Even now it
is the finest in the Abruzzi, substantial still, of bulk to
keep a province in awe, and with its main walls intact.
On the western side of the town it is piled, looking
down on the beautiful Valle Verde, on the drained lake,
and over all the country which once it ruled, golden
brown in colour, and glorious in the evening sun. The
battlements remain, and, seen from the vineyards on the
hillsides, it cheats you into a belief that it is still alive
and dangerous. The houses fall from its sides like
humble vassals to be trampled on, or used as props,
according to its temper. Now it is very easy of
access. Thread the steep street from the Piazza, and
you will find the great gates open, and no one to
challenge your entry. To all appearance the place is
restorable, and Prince Torlonia tried to buy it for a
residence ; but it belongs to several owners, who all
neglect it, and evidently cannot combine to sell it profit-
ably. So now it is let out in tenements, and houses
besides a boys' elementary school. In the great vaulted
chambers poor folks lead their humble lives, and in the
huge chimney-places make their frugal blaze of twigs ;
their children swarm and wrangle below round the well
in the pillared, arcaded courtyard ; and little boys
scribble over the frescoes in the galleries. Nobody, save
it be a rare visitor, ever mounts to the battlements. An
eerie place it must be when the children and their tired
elders are asleep. There should be unquiet ghosts there,
and some of them ugly. Rugerotto, for instance, greedy
and dispossessed. He belongs to the Covella story.
Giovanna, or Covella, of Celano, was its mistress, a
woman of strong passions and of strong will. She had
married a Colonna, the nephew of a Pope ; but she gave
him up, and without a by-your-leave to his uncle,
Martin V., she wedded her own nephew, Leonello
202 IN THE ABRUZZI [PT. II.
Acclozamora. After his death their son Rugerotto
quarrelled with his mother, disputed her rights, took
the other side in the dynastic struggles of the time, he
favouring the Angevins, she the Aragonese, and de-
manded to rule at Celano as master. " Not till my death,"
said she. Finally Rugerotto besieged the town and
castle ; and found a formidable ally in the great Con-
dottiere Piccinino. For months she held out with
bravery and skill in the citadel ; and in the meanwhile
her son had his will of the lands, though the Celanese
sympathies went with the lady, as genial as she was
stout hearted. She cheered her men, telling them Ferdi-
nand was at hand with help. Now he was at Chieti
with troops, she said ; or now at Sulmona. But
Ferdinand delayed ; Piccinino was an obstinate besieger,
and Rugerotto was merciless. At last she had to
surrender. The walls of the Rocca were thrown down
on November 25, the palace sacked ; and not a little of
the spoil, jewels and money, and raiment and wool, fell
to Piccinino's share. The wool alone was sold at
Aquila for 4000 ducats. Giovanna was thrown into the
dungeons below, and there she lay for long dark years.
It was the Piccolomini Pope who intervened at last, and
procured her release ; and she ruled again in her own
castle. Before her death she willed the place away from
all her kin to the Piccolomini, who were masters here
till they died out.
Other houses famous in the annals of Rome and of
the Marsica held the castle, the Peretti, the Savelli —
whose escutcheon is still fresh on the walls — and the
Bovadilla, who lingered on to a hideous close. The last
of them, in the eighteenth century, was a monster,
physically and mentally. Yet his kindred married
him, by proxy, to a little Sicilian princess ! When
she rode up to the castle, she was without a thought
of ill to come. As soon as she set eyes on her
CH. X.] CELANO 203
husband, she called for the horse that had brought
her, and rode away on the instant straight to Rome,
to the Pope's feet. He listened, good man, in horror,
and prohibited the Bovadilla's marrying ; -which did
not prevent a certain Cardinal Arezzo from persuading
his niece to take the monster for husband — with her
eyes open — and all the lands and fortune in his keeping.
When he died, as he had never had wits enough to make
a will, there was endless confusion. The property, was
divided. The Arezzos got one part, the Torres of
Aquila another. But the place was abandoned ; and there
are still several owners whose claims and disputes bar
the way to the restoration of the grand old place, fast
running to decay within its stout outer shell.
And so is the town. A little faubourg running round
the hill is half deserted, and there seems to be no
prosperous quarter at all. The market-place, where the
beggars and the fruit-stall women and the philosophers
congregate, has bright spots, but there is no general
gaiety. Yet the place has a life of its own, and its own
joys. As we sit in the vineyards under the castle, up
the road from the plain comes the sound of singing.
It is the pilgrims from a shrine in the valley of the
Liris, coming home to Celano, and to Ovindoli, and San
Petito, and Rovere, in the mountains behind. They
have been two days on the way, long bands of them,
on foot, or packed into market carts. Through the trees
comes up an interminable song to the Virgin. Now
the men sing apart, and now the women answer in
chorus —
" Evviva Maria,
Maria evviva ! "
The town is soon full of them. In the caf^s or the
churches, according as they have soldi or not, they take
their rest.
The churches of Celano have been great. To-day,
204 IN THE ABRUZZI [pt. ii.
if you thread your way among the heavy rubbish under
which later ages have buried their ancient beauty, you
do not seek in vain for gems of a purer day — the door of
the Celestines' church, for instance, though inside you
find a gilded parlour with the audacious inscription,
" Restored and beautified by the Celanese in 1903."
But our aesthetic standards are for ourselves, and answer
to no needs of the people who come to pray here. These
gilded parlours are homes of ecstasy. Our horror and
indignation, our thrill of interest in some trace of past
simplicity, still faintly descried through the heavy
trimmings, have no power to call back the spirits of the
suppliants kneeling here. Nay more, the gilded parlours
are very hospitable. One of them at least, which we
find swarming with women and children, has served as
refuge for the night. It has been a station on the
pilgrims' road. The children play about the floor with
a discreet but confident cheerfulness. Others are sitting
on the altar steps eating their breakfast, near a mother
suckling her infant ; and the respectable citizens and
citizenesses who come in for their devotions, show no
repugnance or impatience. . . . As I write, a bitter
wind has been blowing for a week past, and the news-
papers tell of the wandering, shivering shadows on the
embankment, and of crowded lodging-houses shutting
their doors fast against them. But the churches and
the chapels do not give the shelter of their roof-trees
to these guests of Christ. If they were only clean, we
murmur. But the guests of Christ are often not clean
• — and our English cleanliness is very cruel.
As for beauty, crude hearts find it in strange places.
We are dragged round the town by an eager woman,
who tells us Celano has one thing we must not miss.
Oh, but it is beautiful and famous ! And she plants
us before an awful black-walled chapel decked with
skulls, a hideous pile of iiioviento niori's, a ghoulish
CH. X.] ' CELANO 205
altar to King Death. But she transmutes the horror
into something great. This awful show of dead bones
she has faced, till she has grown to love it, as the nether
side of peace. And as we move off, we are touched
by a gaunt woman who, without preface, bids us, if we
are bound for Rome, go to Queen Margherita and beg
for the release of her son lying now in a German prison.
Yes, he did use his knife ; there is no denying that,
he being quick tempered, and his provocation great.
And the other man has died since. But of what good
is it to anybody that her son should waste his days in
jail while his wife and children starve ? Margherita will
understand. She is good, and a mother ; and she has
suffered herself.
The devotee of the chapel of the skulls and the
mother of the homicide, give the old brown place a
sombre hue. Celano, with the trees growing gracefully
about its feet, but hanging on the edge of a fearsome
wild country, has ever been a mark for disaster, and
known close acquaintanceship with death. It was
Thomas of this town who, looking back on past con-
vulsions, and foreseeing those to come, read the warning
to the world, and sang the hymn of judgment. Dies Ircz.
The poor have always been in Celano, and one of
their best friends, he who aspired to be poorer than
themselves, once stayed in the town. It may have been
then that Thomas, perhaps the son of the Count of the
place, first set eyes on the Poverello. He tells one
incident of the visit in his " Second Life of S. Francis."
" It happened at Celano in winter time that S.
Francis was wearing a cloth folded like a cloak, which a
friend of the brethren, a man of Tivoli, had lent him ; and
when he was in the palace of the Bishop of the Marsica,
he met an old woman asking alms. Immediately he
unfastened the cloth from his neck, and though it did
not belong to him, gave it to the poor old woman.
2o6 IN THE ABRUZZI [pt. ii.
saying, ' Go and make thyself a gown, for thou art in
sore need of one.' The old woman smiled, being over-
come either by shyness or joy, took the cloth from
his hands, hurried off, and fearing that it might
be asked for again if she delayed, cut it up with her
scissors. But finding that the cloth she had cut would
not be enough for a gown, she was encouraged by his
former kindness to go back to the holy man and point
out that there was too little cloth. He looked round
at his companion, who had just such another cloth on his
back, and said, ' Hearest thou, brother, what this poor
woman is saying ? Let us bear the cold for the love of
God, and do thou give her cloth to finish her gown with.'
Whereupon his companion gave, even as he had given,
and both remained naked that the old woman might be
clothed." 1
I would not have you believe that all the Celanesi
walk about with tragedy in their eyes. There are the
philosophers of the parapet ; and there are the proud —
the haughtily and the complacently proud. Of the latter
was the padrona of the inn. I gather that she believed
the fact of the existence of her inn to be known in Rome
and Jericho and even to the uttermost parts of the earth.
At least she would not stoop to emphasize it to the
ignorant. What was the name of her inn } Name ? It
had no name. It was the inn. Why should it have a
name .? There were no recognizable signs of a hostelry
outside — nor anywhere else for that matter — not even
a bunch of shrivelled twigs stuck out of the first-floor
window. Well ? Everybody knew it was the inn. But
were a passing traveller to demand accommodation as a
matter of course, there was a volte-face. Inn ? Yes, it
was an inn in a manner of speaking — but not an inn
for everybody. She was willing to convenience certain
' Celano Vita II. 53. Trans. Ferrers Howell.
CH. X.] CELANO 207
persons — ingegneri e signori, now. Always quite willing
to do them a favour. We inferred that a marchesa from
Rome on her way to " take the air " of Rocca di Mezzo
— a frequent occurrence, evidently — would not be refused
lightly ; and we were honoured by her not rejecting us.
As for her favours — it is better to dwell on her bearing,
which almost hypnotized us into humble gratitude for
the least and the worst of them ; on her manner,
betokening boundless leisure in which to bask in the
sunshine of her own beneficence ; on her unruffled dignity,
which squalor could not stain. Her point of view is that
of many innkeepers in the Abruzzi. Innkeepers — but
they can hardly be said to keep an inn. (And why
should they, they might reply, as their inns do not keep
them T) As for their attitude of selection, real or feigned
— the " engineers or gentlemen " test, or that of " persons
whose faces please me " — it is a survival of the time when
travellers in the province were guests all along their route.
In those days the native nobility were starved of society
in their mountains, and were said to fight for the honour
of showing hospitality to the stranger.
The pride of our padrona was a personal, not a local
matter. Her house, not Celano ; and herself, her large,
portly, unkempt self, were its sources. But she was
independent of our patronage, and sped us willingly
enough to Rocca di Mezzo — where all Rome — noble
Rome — went in villeggiatura. With a word or two — she
was not voluble — she built up in our minds an imposing,
an alarming idea of the grandeur of this new health-
station. We felt our pockets anxiously, but " the inn of
Celano " was calculated to give us a hunger after some
place and some enterprise new enough to be forced to
make an effort.
From the box of the little diligence we feel pity for
the eight persons squeezed inside ; but as they are not
7narchese or contesse, not even signori or ingegneri, they
2o8 IN THE ABRUZZI [pt. ii.
bear it cheerfully. The coachman has gathered us a good
hour too soon, perhaps more from a love of ceremony
than from any delay of the postman in handing us
the letter-bags. A large portion of the inhabitants of
Celano gather round, give us messages and packets,
examine the skinny horses, and hold a kind of social club
all about us, bidding us long and leisurely farewell — for
unless we are to be dropped very soon we cannot catch
the return coach that day. Aquila is the goal of the
diligence, and ithere our coachman will spend the night.
Jingling and cracking, a scurry of children, last messages
and precautions, and we are off by half-past seven.
Round we swing to a full view of the great old castle ;
and Celano, russet-brown, stands 'Out in its frame of
mountains and green plain. On and up, above the
beautiful Valle Verde, climbing, climbing, till below us is
a dim fairyland of glinting torrent and toy feathery trees.
Above, the mountains grow in bulk, giant walls of furnace
red and slaty blue. The sky is of an infinite height that
flees the world and draws it on. San Petito is passed.
Our meagre horses show their mettle, and our driver
proves himself a famous whip. The fairyland below has
vanished ; there is only the abyss, and we are clinging
like flies to the side of Sirente, and across the gulf lies a
long bulwark still spotted and streaked with snow. Here
begin the tales of the road, tales of days when the summer
sun is not whirling there aloft. For three months last
winter the posta never ventured, so deep and lasting were
the snows. Letters were delivered by an occasional
horseman. With December winds sweeping down these
gullies and driving the snow to a smothering mist, the
postman has need to be hardy and venturesome. And
here at this point a great rock, loosened in some earth-
quake, fell down last year, and — the saints be praised ! —
missed the postd, but only by a hair's breadth. So
cheerfully do we beguile the wa}-, telling of ventures and
CH. X.] CELANO 209
escapes, till the road becomes a sharp-angled wriggle,
fivefold at least ; and all, save the old and very patient,
get out and climb up the face of the mountain, cutting
the road over and over again by a path which is a ladder
of uncertain footholes and loose stones. Far below, the
diligence crawls like a beetle on its winding way.
At the top we are in Ovindoli, a grey, forsaken place
of the dead, surely. In the nearer houses there is no one.
Even the approach of the posta calls nobody out. Where
are they all t Son' tiitti ftwri. And " fuori " does not
mean in the harvest-fields below, but across the sea, in
America. What is there to do here t Life is at its barest
in this grey village at the top of the world, girt on three
sides by the mountains, and with the great upland stony
plain in front stretching away to Aquila. There are a
few women in the street as we penetrate further, a young
sleepy priest, and some boys driving cows to pasture.
Why did people ever choose such a place, 4800 feet
high, wrapped for more than half the year in snow }
This year the snow lay well into June ; and in the winter
it was sometimes ten feet deep. A usual mode of
entrance to your house was by the first-floor window.
When the posta did not come you were left to your own
resources. What resources ! The town is topped by an
old tower, called Roman. Once it was a strong place,
commanding the pass to Celano and the upland plain and
the road to Aquila. Its terrible barrenness is a thing of
yesterday and to-day. Its flocks and herds were famous,
and there were woods to give shelter and some gracious-
ness to life, beside winter fuel, which now has to be
fetched from a considerable distance. Ovindoli woods
were all cut down because they gave cover to wolves and
brigands. Were there brigands now, they would surely
be in a piteous case did they see anything worth robbing
here. But the wolves have not died out ; and in the
winter they are daring and clamorous enough to require
P
210 IN THE ABRUZZI [pt. ii.
to be kept in check ; and a wolf-hunt presents some
sport to the few adventurous men-folk left in the neigh-
bourhood. But even in its frozen decrepitude Ovindoli
makes efforts. In what stands for a piazza we saw a few
shaky poles, from which hung meagre coloured rags, in
evidence of a recent festa. Even ruined Ovindoli says
it is a poor heart that never rejoices.
On, and a little downwards, over the bare plain, past
Rovere to Rocca di Mezzo. We are on the alert for
touting porters from the new hotels, and other signs of
the villeggiatura of the Roman nobility. They seem
rather remiss in coming to meet the posta, though we
swing in in fine style, with great cracking of whip and
jingling of bells. Hotels ? The driver points to a non-
descript tumble-down place, evidently in the hands of
the masons. With some persuasion a lad takes a hod of
bricks from his head, and hoists our baggage instead.
Carried inside, it brings consternation. Travellers!
Inn ? Yes, this is the inn — if it was only rest or food
we wanted— but, to tell the truth, the town had had a
misfortune in the winter. The snowfall had been so
great that the municipio had fallen under its weight, and
was now a useless ruin. And so the inn was housing the
municipio, and the mayor, and the councillors ; and of
spare room it had none. But the town afforded a choice
of the best accommodation. We had never come across
more amiable hosts. Up in this wild plain, open to all
the winds of heaven, we find tempers of almost flower-
like sweetness. We eat our macaroni with the contadini,
and set off with our genial landlord as guide. The
streets we climbed and the stairs in search of the perfect
quarters recommended by the Roman doctors ! As for
the town, the catastrophe of the winter that befell the
municipio was plainly a visitation of God on the mayor
and councillors for the condition of the streets — and they
have not recognized it ! A slum or two in such air is of
CH. X.] CELANO 211
little consequence ; and the contesse and inarchese, if ever
they are anywhere about, probably take little harm. But
that is an after-reflection. On the spot we must have
felt differently, for, not on account of interior defects, but
for the outlook on ancient grime, we declined all. There
seemed to be nothing for it but the sign of the Belle
Etoile, and up here the night accommodation is chilly.
Then mine host cried " Bettina ! " And mine hostess
echoed " Bettina ! " To Bettina we were led.
Bettina lives outside the area of muck, and with
nothing- between her little house and the mountains.
She keeps a cafe of a humble kind, where homely folks
of an evening come and talk over her fire on the hearth,
and take a hand at cards, and sing a bit, and tell old
stories, and drink a penn'orth of wine, and then go home
to an early bed. By day she tends a little shop, sells
hap'orths of groceries, or oil, and spoils the children of
her customers. Our guide introduced us as Inglese from
London. " Londra ! " said Bettina, opening wide her
blue eyes, " Cosa c'^, Londra ? " " Inglese ! Cosa c'e."
London having been defined as a bundle of houses
somewhere over the mountains, beyond Naples even,
and ourselves more vaguely explained, we were passed
into the sweet, serene atmosphere of Bettina's home, and
to the spotless purity of Bettina's upper chambers. We
are strange museum specimens to her for a little quarter
of an hour, and then her curiosity melts in her humanity,
and we are guests not only to be served with the fine
capacity that lodges in her blonde, blue-eyed person, but
to be spoiled and made much of in return for our opening
a few chinks into an unknown world.
And thus the imposing hotels of Rocca di Mezzo
resolved themselves, and very gratefully, into well-
scrubbed, sweet-smelling cottage garrets. If Rocca di
Mezzo desires success as a health resort, let it make
Bettina mayor !
212 IN THE ABRUZZI [pt. ii.
All round is a vast clean plain, walled to the west
by Velino and Puzzello, to the east and south by
Sirente. It ends far away to the north at Aquila in
the jagged range of the Gran Sasso, its horn clear
cut and blue — blue, in the dazzling air. Great meadows,
thick with mountain flowers, stretch on to Rocca di
Cambio and to Fontecchio. In one of them a troop
of ponies are scampering wild and free. The sun sinks
behind Monte d'Ocre. Keen winds blow. Here in the
highlands the summer nights are austere ; and the stars
come out like steelly gems. On the road asses and
mules, shapeless under their loads of scented hay that
stretch from marge to marge, move on their slow
way home. The driver stops his song, and sends them
off at a heavy trot. The clatter of hoofs in your ears,
and the falling night about you, an old tale becomes a
reality of yesterday, the tale of the Angevin riding fast
and furious along this road through the starlight, the
looming horn of Monte Corno his guide, on to Aquila
to test the faith of the Aquilesi. Was it his, or
Conradin's ? And following fast on his returning foot-
steps come the men and women of Aquila, a wild, dis-
ordered band, on foot, on muleback, laden with stores,
filled with a sudden fury of help to the Angevin, and of
hate to the unknown gallant young grandson of the
founder of the greatness of their city.
At night, from our windows, we see lights up in the
near wooded hills above us, and they are still there just
before dawn. They are shepherds' fires, not for warmth
alone, but to keep off the wolves.
Next day's walk is still a nightmare of light and of
stones. Our way lay about the hillsides above the town,
low spurs of Sirente. From a point here and there we
see the whole range of the Gran Sasso, so clear defined,
it seemed as if we could touch every crag and summit.
cii. X.] CELANO 213
Not a cloud ! Were there ever any clouds ? With
Bettina, we say, " Cloud ? Cosa c'e ? " The light intoxi-
cates. The sun is not yet high, yet it dazzles us into
restlessness, and we must on, from rock to rock. There
are points where the great range with its uplifting force
is lost, and we look out on an endless waste of stones —
stones — stones ; and the light above is like myriads of
circling piercing discs and wheels. A terrible land, its
aridity mocked by the sun that has split itself into
glinting diamonds whirled in space. The beech copses
behind are almost too steep to give a footing, but on the
margin we sit, glad of the slightest shade to veil us from
the mighty light and the wide waste of stones. Some
peasants pass down with their loads of wood. Two men
w ith a gun are challenged by the giiardia. This rural
guard, a gay, jaunty young fellow, with a meek, aged
attendant, satisfied his immense curiosity about us, and
then waxed rhapsodical on the glories of his life. There
never was such a life 1 Ever in the woods and on the
hills ! Indoors — it would be death ! " Wolves .^ Oh,
yes, no end of them. Why, yesterday, where you are
sitting, they killed a donkey. But they don't want you
now, and would run if they saw you. In the summer
there are plenty of sheep in the mountains. In winter
it would be another thing."
Back to Rocca di Mezzo by a precipitous path. We
stumble down, glad to look to our feet, for the
whirling intoxication is up there again, and the endless
outlook on stones, stones. The world is stripped very
bare here. You see its skeleton. If you could live at
all, you might live lustily. But something like madness
might seize on you in this air that has the purity of
spears, where the face of day has no overhanging
shade of locks, no lashes on its gleaming eye.
Bettina's little home is as a cool cavern, and we rest
in her serenity. Her own light burns low at times, and
214 IN THE ABRUZZI [pt. ii.
she sits in the shadow of a living sorrow. There is a
son very far away across the seas, who has lain month
after month in prison without trial, a suspect, accused
of having taken life — the gentle creature, she says, he
who never hurt any one. It is so far, so far ; Rome
from where help might come, is far, too. Giovanni, her
husband, has gone there twice ; but Rome forgets.
Meanwhile there is a busy life to be lived, and old habits
of cheeriness and duty to help the day along. And
strangers now and then do not come amiss. Besides,
they widen your experience. " I am glad," says Bettina,
" to see the English before I die. I always thought
they were black."
j' J ) J 3
0 3,) 3 3 3
o
CHAPTER XI
SULMONA
Ifortus inclusus — Mellow Sulmona — A stormy past — Legend of San Pan-
filo — Market-day — Badia of Pope Celestine- — The Santone in the
Abruzzi — San Spirito in Majella — Sant' Onofrio— Rienzi as hermit—
Ovid's villa — Ovid as magician — Celestine and the treasure — Cor-
finium to-day — Rajano — The trattiiro.
The Valley of Sulmona lies, in summer, soft and smiling,
half asleep, caressed by dreams, as if confident in its
guardians, the giant hills, that make for it a world apart.
Its eastern boundary is the long wall of Majella and
Morrone, stretching with hardly a break to the Gran
Sasso. West is the range that shuts out the Marsica
from this Pelignian country, with the lower hills that join
Monte Sirente to Monte Grande. The slopes of Genzano,
with Pettorano on their face, close it to the south. The
valley is watered by the little Gizio and the turbulent
Sagittario, which give themselves up to the greater
Aterno, near Popoli. It lies here, a long oval cup, made
as if by two different artificers, the sides rough-hewn and
of barbaric pattern, the hollow of fine and exquisite
detail, and soft and rich of surface. Winter lasts long,
for the valley is high set — more than thirteen hundred
feet above the sea ; but the snows form a warm protective
covering. When they melt in the sun of the late spring
the flowers below are eager for release, and they rise up
with quick joy like blessed souls on the Resurrection
morn.
I hardly know from which point the valley looks its
215
2i6 IN THE ABRUZZI [pt. ii.
best ; but two views of enchantment I remember. One
is seen as the train tumbles down out of the mountains
from Aquila. Then, beyond Rajano, the eyeballs, hot
with gazing on the red rocks, rest and bathe in a soft
mist of green, in long vine-slopes, on verdant lawns and
festooned hedges, in trees set out in ordered lines of
beauty. The Sulmona Valley is an old, mellow, high-
walled garden — a Jiortiis incliisiis for the softer senses to
expand in after the savage grandeur of the mountain
country round about. Another meets you coming back
from Pettorano, looking north along the grassy vale of
the Gizio across Sulmona to the far blue peaks of the
Gran Sasso. The sense of the garden is lost ; but the
eye revels in the great sweep of the hills, in the bounding
road, with its green margin of sheep-walk. Here beauty
does not sit and brood in groves and gardens, but is
swift and has wings.
The town of Sulmona is set on a little height above
the valley in the midst of orchards and vineyards — an
old-modish place of discreet and unassuming charm.
Fifty other places in the Abruzzi give you keener sen-
sations at first sight by their bold piling and grouping.
Sulmona, despoiled of most of its towers, has no jagged
edges left ; and, anyway, set right under Morrone as it
is — for the mountain seems to rise sheer out of the public
gardens — it would have little chance of wearing a tower-
ing aspect. It has grown to a fitting harmony with the
valley round. Long ages have smoothed it, and turned
it to soft old hues, ivories, ochres, rosy browns. It is still
nearly all set within its gates, though the walls are mostly
down. There is no rich quarter ; and if there are slums,
they are on the edge of the green country, and swept by
the winds from the mountains. No obvious picturesque-
ness meets your eye. Earthquakes have destroyed all its
finest monuments, save the Annunziata, and the beauty
is everywhere of a shy discretion — almost unconscious.
CH. XL] SULMONA 217
There is something cloistered about it, something aristo-
cratic ; and though it be threadbare and out-at-elbows, yet
prosperous Aquila seems plebeian by comparison. You
imagine to yourself how in this hidden house or that, up
a dark alley, or in some first floor overlooking one of the
piazzas, live the elderly barons and the counts who have
never found their place in the new regime, who dream
away their days here, or do a little archseological digging
about Corfinium, or once a month add a paragraph or
two to the work on the ancient Peligni, which is never
quite ready to see the light.
What the place lives on it is not easy to make out.
Its staple industry is sugar-plums. Every other shop-
window in the Corso is full of huge bouquets, thick chap-
lets, and crosses, and garlands made of gaudily coloured
sweet-stuff. These are not for the delectation of children.
On birthdays, christenings, weddings, and all anniversaries,
compliments take this form ; and a bouquet made of
globulous scarlet and yellow sugar-flowers, tricked out
with green, spiky foliage, is an elegant gift to a lady,
especially if accompanied by a sonnet. Is it this industry
that feeds the not very buoyant life which flows through
its veins, and keeps alive its numerous clergy, its semi-
nary, its college, and its markets .''
Sulmona in its time has endured many knocks and
blows of fortune, for it is a very ancient place indeed.
Ovid, its most brilliant son, says it was founded by a
companion of ^neas, one " Solymus, who, quitting
Phrygian Ida, came here and gave his name to cold
Sulmo, our birthplace." It has barely escaped a hundred
deaths, suffering in the wars of the Italian confederates,
at the passing of Hannibal, in the struggles between Marius
and Silla, between Caesar and Pompey. It opened its
gates to Caesar after a stiff siege. In spite of all, it grew
into a place of importance, and in the twelfth century was
2i8 IN THE ABRUZZI [pt. ii.
the seat of justice in the Abruzzi. From its defiance
of the Papal army under Jean de Brienne it found
favour with Frederic II., who founded here a chair of
canon law ; but this was abolished in 1308, owing to the
jealousy of Naples. Nevertheless, it opposed Conradin,
and, in return, Charles of Anjou endowed its Franciscan
convent. Still it continued to attract misfortune, ever
involved in dynastic strife, or in the quarrels of neighbour-
ing nobles like the Caldora and Cantelmi, or the squabbles
of its own rival houses, or at the hands of the condottieri,
Braccio da Montone, and Piccinino. The last became
Prince of Sulmona. In the wars between Louis d' Anjou
and Carlo di Durazzo it upheld the latter, who made it
his favourite residence, and granted it the privilege of a
mint. Its coins had on one side, " S.M.P.E. " {Sulmo mihi
patria est), and on the reverse the head of Pope Celestine.
Minting ceased when the town passed to its new prince,
Lannoy, the hero of Pavia — passed only in name, for he
never enjoyed its ownership. The all-absorbing Colonnas,
into whose house he had married, got it ; and to-day you
see the double arms of Lannoy and Colonna cut in the
brilliant ochre- coloured stone of the picturesque Porta di
Napoli.
Sulmona in its best days was a home of artists and
skilled craftsmen, and its goldsmiths were famous through-
out Europe. The names of Barbato, Di Meo, Maestro
Masio, Andrea di Sulmona, makers of processional crosses,
croziers, and chiselled chalices, stood for noble and ex-
quisite design, and some of their work is still identifiable.
The place was rich enough to employ artists and architects
from outside, and at one time a colony of them came
here from Lombardy. Above the Chapel of St. Elizabeth,
in San Francesco, was this inscription : " Sacellum Visi-
tationis Deiparae ad Elisabeth a Lombardoru natione
A.D. MDVIII. constructum."
Now the monuments are sadly broken, for the earth-
CH. XL] SULMONA 219
quake of 1703 was specially disastrous at Sulmona, and
the restoration has been as unhappy here as elsewhere.
The cathedral stands outside the town proper, above the
steep banks of the Gizio, and near the bridge that leads
to the Badia of Celestine. It is built on the site, and its
foundations are the remains, of an ancient temple of
Apollo and Vesta. The first Christian church was
dedicated to the Virgin ; but, later, a local saint, San
Panfilo, was chosen as patron of the town. This is the
legend of the bishop-saint and the building of his church —
" San Panfilo, protector of Sulmona, was born at
Pacino, which is a place between Sulmona, Petterano,
and Canzano. San Panfilo had embraced the religion
of Christ, but his father was a heathen. And so they
didn't agree in the family. The father hated the son,
and thought how he could make him perish. He ordered
him to mount on a waggon, and from Pacino, which
stands on a steep rock, he had to go down to the valley
in the direction of the Gizio, The son obeyed. The
father thought, * Now he'll tumble down that rock,
waggon and oxen and all, and so much the better ! '
But the angels guided Panfilo. Slowly, slowly he came
down on the waggon, without any hurt. On the rocks
are still to be seen the imprint of the oxen's feet and the
ruts made by the wheels.
" Panfilo was made Bishop of Sulmona, but he had
to stay six months at Sulmona and six months at
Pentima, among the ruins of Corfinium. When he
died, he was at Pentima, and four canons of Sulmona
were with him. Said one of these canons, ' Ah ! but we
are unlucky ! Now the body of our holy bishop will
remain at Pentima ! Why should we not take it back to
Sulmona .-' It is night, and no one will see us.' And
the other three answered, ' Yes, yes ! Put him on our
shoulders and let us go.'
" And so they did. They were near the city, when
220 IN THE ABRUZZI [pt. ii.
in the Ficoroni's place they could go no further, for their
great thirst. One of them touched the earth with his
hands, and said, ' Ah ! if only there were a fountain
here ! ' Hardly had he said it when he found his hand
wet. A fountain of fresh water had sprung up. And
that fountain is there still to-day, and it is called the
fountain of San Panfilo.
"When it had passed the Ponte della Vella, the
corpse became heavy as lead, and they could get it no
farther. So they stopped, and in that spot was built the
church." 1
The story of the rivalry between San Panfilo and
San Pellino of Corfinio is not mere legend. For ages
there raged a bitter war between the two chapters as to
which church had authority in the district. Finally it
was decided in favour of Sulmona. To-day, San Panfilo,
with its little red domes, and without a tower, has not
much to show outside save its beautiful doors. Inside
it has been modernized in the usual barbarous fashion.
But there is something in it to tempt you to linger. It
is a church of beautiful proportions, with fine choir and
ambulatory, and interesting crypt. Here the eighteenth
century has offended, but in its grandiose style. Our
own mean quarter of an hour has done worse. In what
purgatorial fires can be expiated the ecclesiastical
decorations of the modern Catholic .'' The eighteenth
century made a state-room for its God, if not a sanctuary.
The nineteenth has for its model the front parlour of the
little grocer's wife, or the local linen-draper's advertise-
ment. There are some treasures left, however, which
have had narrow escapes in the various burnings and
restorations : the tombs on each side of the central door, for
instance, especially that of the bishop. Only at Mass do
the poor folk linger long under the brand-new simpering
' De Nino, Usi e Costumi, vol. iv. p. 227.
CH. XL] SULMONA 221
angels of the choir. Their place of recollection is below
in the crypt, where the shabby old things are kept that
are not good enough for the best parlour above. Here
the heart of the old cathedral still abides. The curious
old (Byzantine .'') Virgin has her adorers now, as for ages
and ages past ; but it is the Crucified the poor folks
come for. The person of refined sensibilities will turn
away in horror from this representation of Christ, which
is a very common one in the Abruzzi. It is a terrible
realization of physical pain. The artist's whole soul has
gone out into the expression of the marks of pain ; the
emaciation, the stretched tendons, the bleeding sides,
the falling mouth, the dishevelled hair, the sweat upon
the brow, the head that cannot hold evenly the crown of
thorns. This Christ cannot help, but knows all pain,
and so is companionable to souls in agony. He is utterly
pitiable, and so they can be friends with Him. A young
thing is there as I enter. Her figure tells her youth.
She clings so close about His feet I cannot see her
face. Every time I go back to the dim crypt she is
there. I cannot see her face, so close she clings to
His feet.
Past the narrow green strip of public gardens, where
the fountains play so prettily, pitter-patter all day and
all night long about the feet of Giant Morrone, you reach
the town gate. The narrow Corso leads you to the
Annunziata, now mostly turned into the municipio, with
its beautiful fifteenth-century carved fagade — the best
specimen of civic architecture left in the Abruzzi. In
front of the college is the so-called statue of Ovid, a
crude figure of uncertain date, but no antique. Once it
stood against the wall of the Praetorian palace, now
destroyed, and there, in old days, it used to be decked
with garlands every St. John's Day. Some say the
statue is that of Petrarch's Sulmonese friend, Marco
Barbato, the Angevin courtier and man of letters ; some,
222 ' IN THE ABRUZZI [pt. ii.
Remigio Fiorentini, translator of the Heroides ; others
declare it to be a genuine, if worthless, antique.
Onwards, to the left, is the thirteenth-century aqueduct,
one of the most picturesque features of the town. It
still serves its ancient purpose, and its row of Gothic
arches forms the western boundary of the great piazza,
the centre of the life of Sulmona. On summer market-
days the piazza is like a vast garden of blooming flowers
of every hue. The site is magnificent — topped to the
west by the old distowered, earthquake-riven church of
San Francesco, railed by the Gothic arches, from which
fall a wide flight of steps ; and, to the east, snow-capped
Morrone. Santa Chiara at one end, San Martino at the
other, have the place in their special keeping. Here,
twice a week, the folks pour in from all the country
round. Nowadays the Sulmonese have mostly given
up their costume ; but the women of the mountains and
the valley come still in their traditional splendour —
women of Pettorano, of Pacentro, of Introdacqua, of
Roccapia. The Saturday market here is one of the
gayest, the most coloured sights in the Abruzzi. The
place swarms with life and swims in light, and the hum
of the selling and chaffering rises to the terrace of Santa
Chiara like a chorus. Round the playing fountains in
the centre gather the horses, the asses, and the mules.
At the western end, so spacious is the place, there is
room for out-of-door smithies and rope-walks, and for all
kinds of occupations and industries to be carried on
irrespective of the market, which is concentrated near
the steps and the aqueduct. Petterano lends the
greatest magnificence to the scene. The white head-
dresses of the women falling down behind below the
waist ; the green and the red and the purple of bodice
and apron are splendid and brave. There is a dash of
orange or yellow in ribbons or embroideries, and some
other vivid note in stocking or stay-lace. Red corals or
CH. XL] SULMONA 223
thick gold beads, and the heavy, massive, barbaric ear-
rines set off the dark faces, the bare throats and bosoms.
The Introdacqua dress is handsome, but Pettorano is
always the best. The local male costume — known as the
Spanish dress — once general in the Abruzzi, now fast
disappearing, but still seen on market-days, and often in
the fields, consists of a blue coat, red waistcoat — or, if none
be worn, a red sash, and white knee-breeches. The shirt
is wide open at the neck, and its deep collar falls about
the shoulders. The stockings are of a vivid blue. Buckled
shoes replace the sandals left behind in the Marsica.
The fruit-stalls are splendid with cherries or golden
apricots, or ruddy " nespoli," or green and purple figs ; or
they are hung with the sashes and the handkerchiefs and
the apron stuffs which the country-folk throng to buy.
But indeed, as the sun gleams on the great space, it gives
value to mere nothings. A pedlar carries a long stick,
from which is hung what seems a waving rainbow. It is
but a bunch of long gay stay-laces, green, and blue, and
pink, and red, and yellow. Or a stall-keeper has hoisted
the tricolor, and beneath it he stands like a splendid
figure in a pageant.
The famous Badia of San Spirito, founded by Pope
Celestine, lies rather more than two miles north of the
town. You reach it by the road to the right at the back
of San Panfilo. Now the place is a penitentiary. You
cannot enter it without a very special permission ; and it
is doubtful whether this be worth any effort to obtain.
Outside, were it not for the soldiers clustering about the
door, and the edifying inscription above it, " Parum im-
probos incarcere nisi probos efiicies disciplina," there is
little to suggest a prison. The walls of a golden yellow,
the green shutters, the noise of the warders' family life,
and the faces of children at the window, give it a cheerful
front to the world.
224 IN THE ABRUZZI [pt. ii.
This is not Celestine's first San Spirito. Let us trace
shortly his wanderings in the province.
The Santone, the big saint, so is he called throughout
the Abruzzi, was a native of the neighbouring province
of Molise, born near Isernia, about i2i5,Pietro de' Ange-
lerii by name. He entered the Benedictine Order, but
while still a youth he felt the need of greater isolation
to gain a knowledge of his own soul. So he crossed the
river Sangro, and his after-history, save for the few
unhappy months when he was Pope, is mostly concerned
with the Abruzzi. He sojourned a little at the church
of San Nicola, which stands still near the bridge at
Castel del Sangro ; then mounted the steep hillsides
above, where the lust of the world tempted him in the
shape of demons of lovely form. They fled before his
spiritual valour, and he knew peace. In his next cell, on
Monte Palena, he was wakened every morning to Matins
by a mystic bell. An old woman gave him a cock. It
crowed him awake ; but he heard no more the mystic
bell. It was on Monte Palena, too, that he was seen
hanging his cowl upon a sunbeam. In 1238 he went to
Rome to be made a priest ; but ere two years had passed
he was in the Abruzzi again. This time he made his
cell above Sulmona, just below the present hermitage of
Sant' Onofrio. Brethren gathered round him. They
worked and prayed ; and under their care the barren
hillside blossomed. Again his soul said, " Away — away
— and higher! " and he fared off to Majella. Up there in
the wild mountain, the haunt of wolf and bear and wild
cat — and not in his days only — he built himself a cell on
the spot where a dove alighted that had guided his
steps. It was here he dreamt of the great Reform
of St. Damian and of the Dove. The friends of
his soul gathered about him ; and so dear did the
place become to him, and so loud grew its call, " Lift
up your hearts ! " that he was moved to build a
CH. XL] SULMONA 225
church and abbey. The scheme was approved in signal
fashion.
This is the legend —
" While the Holy Father was thinking of consecrating
his church, already a beautiful and spacious place, the
Lord, who was its Architect, signified His desire that
it should, with all due ceremony, be dedicated to the
Holy Spirit. . . . Our Father the Pope then was at the
window at dawn, reading in a spiritual book . . . when
he saw a numerous company of angels and of blessed
ones, clad in shining and glorious raiment. Among
them he perceived an old man, whom he divined to be
King David, who announced it to be God's will it should
be dedicated to the Holy Spirit. All the company
followed him, and sang the songs and the office of the
dedication. Said Peter, ' What is this ? Now I do not
sleep. . . . These are no dream visions.' Then the
glorious company entered the church, going round and
round several times, and with resounding voices sang,
* This is a terrible place ! This is the House of God,
and the Gate of Heaven ! It shall be called the Court
of the Holy Spirit. The work of God's hands it is, and
cannot be taken away.' Then St. John the Evangelist
served the Mass ; and at the beginning of the sacrifice
appeared in a great light all the glorious host of Heaven,
and the omnipotent majesty of the Son of God, with the
Blessed Virgin and St. John the Baptist. The benedic-
tion was given by God the Father Himself, and the
multitude of angels sang, ' This church is consecrated to
the Holy Spirit, as a medicine to the sick, as a light to
the blind ; and here all the faithful contrite of Christ
shall have their sins taken away ! "
Peter was rapt. When he woke from his ecstasy he
found his garment changed to a shining white one. An
angel took it off, and the vision faded.
After Peter's day, this temple and convent, built on
Q
226 IN THE ABRUZZI [pt. ii.
the terraced crag and out of it, grew in fame. A blessing
had descended on Majella, the home of the old pagan
gods, the haunt of demons. Pilgrims came for many
ages to the wild spot, tamed by the resting of the Holy
Dove ; and privileges were granted to the place equal to
those given to Subiaco and Monte Cassino. Only a
little remains now — some broken walls, one arch of the
portico. The pilgrims have long ceased coming. Long
since, whatever was left of value has been housed in the
neighbouring church of Rocca Morice.
It was on Majella he planned the great home for his
Order. Nearer the world it must be. The Majella
house would remain for the contemplatives. His fame
as a teacher, administrator, and saint had grown. Money
poured in, and the great Badia, near Sulmona, was built.
He was here, setting the place in order, teaching his
monks to be good farmers as well as men of prayer,
when word came to them that his congregations were
in danger from the decree of Pope Gregory X., which
suppressed many new orders and communities. From
Sulmona, the sturdy old mountaineer of fifty-eight went
on foot to Lyons, received the Pope's reassurance, and
walked back. In 1293, an old tired man — he was
seventy-eight, and had earned his rest — he went up
above the Badia to Sant' Onofrio with his dear disciple,
Roberto di Salle. The path to Sant' Onofrio is steep
to-day, and strait and rough. You will find it to the
right at the top of the Badia village ; and it will land
you, if you persevere, on a narrow ledge of rock, with a
steep precipice on one side. His rocky cell is still there
behind the little hermitage, which, of recent years, is
deserted. A stern place in itself, and terrible when
Monte Morrone has its white mantle on, and storms cut
it off from the world below. But once Spring comes,
she brings a smile even here, and leaves it. The rocky
path has a flowery margin. Sulmona and its pleasant
CH. XL] SULMONA 227
vale and the great Badia lie below. The kindly world
of men is not so far away ; and if too near, by moments,
then the great ranges lift the hermit's eyes to Heaven.
They never blundered, those old hermit builders ; and
Peter Celestine, whom they have treated as an idiot, had
the soul of a great poet.
It was up in Sant' Onofrio that he said farewell to
peace. It was for the visions of peace he had known
here that he made // gran rifiiito. A ragged, unkempt,
and most happy saint, he was here when the dispute
about the papacy was being fought out at Rome and at
Perugia. The conclave sat and sat, full of bitter envy
and hatred ; and then a cry arose, " Peter of Morrone
shall be Pope ! " It sounded like a jest. It was no
jest. It was an affair of politics ; and to his rocky cell
came up two kings, Charles of Anjou and his son, and
cardinals and bishops ; and, against his will, dragged
the old hermit down to be crowned. The crowning, a
ceremony of uncommon splendour, took place at Aquila,
at the Badia of Collemaggio ; and at Aquila, in his own
Abruzzi, he would fain have stayed. But Charles forced
him away to Naples, to be tormented by the rival factions,
the prisoner of the king, and the butt of Gaetani. For a
little time, nevertheless, he was the hope of the Spirituals
and of the simple, the giver of liberty to the Franciscan
zelanti, who said, " Lo, the fall of the kingdom of the
proud is at hand ! " Then Gaetani's machinations had
their way, and he made il gran I'ifiuto. To Monte
Morrone he would fain have fled back at once ; but
Gaetani, now Boniface VIII., sent him elsewhere under
guard. He escaped, however, to his rocky cell, where
prayer grew like a flower ; but warned that harm was
meant him, he left it, purposing to go beyond seas. For
two months he wandered about the secret desert places
of the Abruzzi, this old frail man of eighty, who only
desired peace. In Apulia he was taken, when his boat
228 IN THE ABRUZZI [pt. ii.
ran ashore near Viesti. " Let him go back to Morrone,"
said some of the pitying cardinals ; but Boniface, who
would not believe himself safe while an old man prayed
in the freedom of the mountain-side, gave him a fortress
for a cell. Then followed the tragedy of Fumone. But
Aquila that had crowned him got back the bones of the
Santone, the treasure of Collemaggio.
To return for a moment to the Majella sanctuary.
In the year 1 349 there were living there a little company
of remarkable men, Franciscan Spirituals, Fraticelli, all
of them ascetics, contemplatives, visionaries, with the
daily prospect before their eyes of being dragged away
from their solitude, and imprisoned or exiled beyond
seas for daring to conceive of the Church as a spiritual
power, and visible signs and symbols and pomps as
time-ruined things, soon to drop away like a worn
garment. In that year there came to them a wanderer,
sick, distraught, dejected, to do penance, to find shelter i|
and peace in their wild retreat. He gave no name, but
his name was Cola di Rienzi. The name of Rienzi is,
by the way, a common one in the province. Had Cola 1
fled back to the home of his race when he sought for '
peace among these mountains 1 Rome behind him was
a nightmare. He, the dreamer, had made his dream a
reality for one glorious hour. He had been the tribunal
who was to bring back the great age and kindle the
soul of Romans to a new and nobler life. But after the
miracle of his first success the dream was shattered.
The great age was still afar, and he a fugitive from
shame, craving only the peace of the mountains and the
cell.
At San Spirito he found the home of his sick heart's
desire ; and all that year he lived there, an unknown
penitent, his eyes turned from Rome to the towers of the
New Jerusalem. Was he really unknown } He believed
CH. XL] SULMONA 229
so, when Frate Angelo one day called him by his name,
and said, "Thou hast lived long enough in solitude.
Thou art not of us. Thy place is out in the world,
which the Lord God calls thee to regenerate. Once it
was nearly saved by Francis and Dominic ; but their
successors have been only as other men ; and the world
is sick and under a ban. One is wanted to lead men
into light. Thou art the man ! " And Rienzi's mind
swung back again from the New Jerusalem to Rome.
But the chosen of the Lord must work with the
Emperor ; and both combine to cleanse the Church and
the world. Men would rise from the dead to help —
martyrs of wicked Popes and despotic kings. And the
new pastor, the new Francis, should build a great temple
called Jerusalem, and there should be none on earth,
Christian or heathen, but should come there to worship
and adore. All Cola's visions returned, and were fed
by the fiery minds of Frati Andrea and Angelo. But
he loved the peace of Majella, and they would have
him out. " Thou art the man ! " they said ; and when
he told of his doubts, they fortified him with prophecies,
Joachim's, the Carmelite Cyril's, and — Merlin's ! But,
indeed, the hand of destiny was thrusting him out. His
enemies, once his friends, the Orsini, had got wind of
his retreat. At any moment he might be seized and
imprisoned. Giovanni Orsini urged him to come to
Rome for the Jubilee and the absolution of Clement.
His keen-sighted hermit friends persuaded him against
this ; and he made his way to Prag to the Emperor
Charles IV., to whom he prophesied strange things,
pouring out to him the visions that had visited him on
Majella. The present Pope would die. In 1357 there
would be but one religion on the earth. Then the new
Pope, the Emperor, and himself would be a Trinity,
representing the Godhead to men. No question what
person of the Trinity Cola was to represent, seeing
230 IN THE ABRUZZI [pt. ii.
where he had been Hving — though afterwards he de-
clared he had but claimed to be the " white-clad
defender of the Holy Ghost."
The Emperor stared ; said he didn't want to be a
third in any such Trinity ; that Rienzi was a dangerous
man, and his advisers in the Abruzzi were most repre-
hensible persons. If he would only give them up. But
he hotly declared their holy inspiration. As proof, had
they not emancipated him from all hate .-* But Charles
clapped him into prison to please Clement ; and from
there it was that Rienzi wrote his Responsoria Oratio
Tribimi ad Ccssm'em, in defence of the hermits who had
rekindled his visions and his hopes for the remaking of
Rome and of the world. It is a noble defence.
The dreams dreamt on Majella haunted him in
prison ; when he was set free they followed him to
Rome, and brooded about him in his new lease of
power. But these dreams of the reign of the Holy
Ghost are ill to translate to the understanding of a
carnal world. Other visions more earthly strove with
them. Frate Angelo was far ; and to the world the
"white-robed defender of the Holy Spirit" was but
an upstart tribune fighting for his life with a capricious
populace. They killed him like a dog on the steps
of the Capitol. The visions whirled before his eyes
and dazzled him. Yet perhaps no more than Petrarch,
who had earlier looked to Rienzi with hope, was Frate
Angelo of Monte Majella deceived when he looked
in his eyes and said, " Thou art the man ! "
Beyond and to the left of the Badia lies the little
village Lof Bagnidura. Through it, and just under
Morrone, runs the old mule-track to Roccacasale. It
remains in my memory as unforgettably lovely. Above,
all the way along, rise the steep mountain, dark blue
and craggy. On each side of the stony track is a
CH. XL] SULMONA 231
fringe of oaks, widening here and there into Httle
groves. Hedges hang with honeysuckle and wild roses,
and summer lies about our feet, holds out hands to
us as we pass, and dangles garlands above our heads.
Below are the sunny vineyards, where bronzed men
and women in cool white raiment are working, and
singing at their work, and beyond is the soft valley
swimming in light. In front, on the mountain-side, is
Roccacasale, the shaft of its castle lifted high into the
air. Above this track, on a little conical hill, an
excrescence of the lower slopes of Morrone, lies what
is known as Ovid's Villa. Every one knows the " villa "
and the " Fonte d'Amore." The ruins are the remains
of a Roman settlement. From below they are imposing ;
seen from above they are of some extent and interest.
They might be Roccacasale, or many another town in
the country-side, left neglected for a few score years.
Below them, near the path, sits a little farm, near the
oak groves and at the gate of the vineyards. Who
would not desire it for a hermitage .<• The path here
is made for meditative pacing. It was this path surely
the poet saw and yearned after in his Scythian exile.
Ovid was born at Sulmona, and if there be anything
in persistent tradition, near this spot, in B.C. 43, the
second son of a minor noble of the province, a country
squire of no great fortune. "The first of my house,"
he says, " was a knight. My fields are not turned up by
innumerable ploughs. My father and my mother were
both perforce of frugal habit." Again, " I am of ancient
equestrian nobility. ... It is not in the tumult of arms
I have gained my rank as knight." He left Sulmona
early, when he was nine years old, to be educated at
Rome ; but he often returned, perhaps to recruit after
the pleasures of the capital ; and he never forgot it.
Again and again he describes it, not in very precise
terms, perhaps, but he is eloquent on the beauty of
232 IN THE ABRUZZI [pt. ii.
its fertile slopes and limpid streams, and very insistent
on the coldness of its winters. " Sulmona retains me,
one of the three cantons of the Pelignian country, a little
place, but the streams that water it are health-giving. . . .
Rich grows the corn here, richer still are the grapes ; nor
is there wanting the olive dear to Pallas. The running
waters give yet another harvest after the hay has been
mown."
Sulmona's chief claim to respect, he held, was that it
had given him birth. " Sulmo mihi patria est." " Lucky
Sulmona ! " is his burden. " I am the nursling of the
Pelignian land. Mantua vaunts Virgil, Verona Catullus.
They shall call me the glory of the Pelignian nation. . . .
Some day, contemplating the walls of Sulmona, a
stranger will say, ' City which could give birth to such a
poet, little though you are, I proclaim you great amongst
cities ! ' "
The fame of Ovid has left deep traces round Sulmona.
As he foretold, he is the Pelignian pride and glory. He
was not as other men, and so they have made of him
a demi-god, or the greatest of the magicians. Every
peasant knows his name and legendary history ; and to
swear by him is one of the oldest and strongest of the
local oaths. " When the Sulmonese peasant," says
Finamore, " wants to bring out a big blasphemy, worse
than cursing San Panfilo, he throws his hat on the ground
and cries, ' Mann' aggia Uiddiu ! ' (Abbia un malanno
Ovidio !)." Here is the local legend of " II gran Mago
Uiddiu":—
" Ovid fled away from home and disappeared. At
last he was found in the wood of Angizia — that is, in the
mystic grove of the sorceress near Luco, on Lake Fucino.
There he was learning magic from an astrologer, or a
witch of the Marsica. When they had brought him home
he began to work wonders unspeakable. Hardly had he
opened his mouth when all were enchanted at his words,
CH. XL] SULMONA 233
for he knew how to imitate the singing of birds ; and each
heard the song that pleased him best. When he grew
up he resolved to be a great magician. In one night he
built on Morrone a magnificent villa, surrounded by-
gardens, vineyards, and orchards, and watered by a
spring which to this day is called the Fount of Love.
The villa was very beautiful. It had porticos, loggias,
terraces, baths, and the loveliest pictures. And because
the place had before been a rocky hillside, with jagged
peaks and precipices, a great many people now ran to
see the marvel. So, to punish their curiosity, Ovid by a
single word changed the men into birds, and the maidens
into a long file of poplars. When this was known, the
whole countryside was seized with terror ; and many
people went and prayed his mother to beg Ovid to have
pity on the place where he was born. Then Ovid caused
a great chariot to appear with horses of fire, and mount-
ing in it, he was at Rome in a trice. There he worked
his magic for a long time. From the teeth of a great
monster, and from sparks of fire, he created warriors,
gave living breath to statues, changed men into flowers,
and stags into black swine. One woman's hair he changed
to snakes, and turned the legs of others into fish's tails ;
and some there were he made into islands. At his word
stones spake, and all he touched was transmuted to gold.
Plres devoured the land ; and the sea was peopled with
lovely ladies. But one day the daughter of the king fell
in love with the wizard, and the wizard with her ; and her
father was not pleased about it. Then Ovid said to the
king, ' If you do not consent I'll turn you into a great
billy-goat with seven horns.' The king made no answer ;
but one night he sent his soldiers to the wizard's house,
where they stole his magic wand. Then they chained
him and took him away to a far, far land, where there
were only wolves and bears, where the snow always lay
in the woods and on the mountains, and where it was
234 IN THE ABRUZZI [pt. ii.
never warm. There the poor wizard died. But after his
death he came back here to his villa ; and every Saturday
night he goes off with the witches to the nut tree of
Benevento." ^
This is an uncommonly complete legend, which
contains a version of all the main circumstances of the
poet's life.
There are other stories of him of a more broken kind.
For instance, he foretold the coming of Christ — though
he also professed Christian doctrine in the Church of the
Tomb, and liked hearing Mass in San Francesco. Per-
haps that was towards the end of his life, when he forsook
wizardry, and made his villa into a hermitage. He could
read with his feet, and when he wished to extract the
marrow of a book he stood on it, and that is why in his
statue he is represented as standing on a big volume.
All his writings are lost. One that survived was borrowed
by a French general of Napoleon's army, who never gave
it back. And the French have done pretty things by its
help ! It was by the Fonte d'Amore he met his love.
Opinions differ whether she was Caesar's daughter or an
enchantress from Santa Lucia. All the wealth he amassed
by magic he hid somewhere about his villa. It has been
seen sometimes on the Eve of the Annunciation ; but
evidently only one man has ever had the efficacious libro
del commando ; and that was St. Peter Celestine. And
he, after all, did not exhaust the treasure.
This is the legend of the hermit Pope and the treasure
of Ovid the magician —
" While he was Pope, San Pietro Celestino studied the
works of Ovid ; and he learned that amongst the ruins
of the poet's villa on the slopes of Monte Morrone was
hidden a great treasure. He thought of building the
Badia di San Spirito near Sulmona, and had a very fine
plan of it made. People who saw the d^ign said, ' Holy
■ Finamore, Archiv. per le Trad. Pop., iv. p. 293.
CH. XL] SULMONA 235
Father, how ever will you build so great a building as
that ? ' The Pope answered, ' Stones and lime may fail ;
but we shall not want for money.' Nobody knew that
the Pope had at his disposal a treasure without end.
" The Pope gave up being Pope. He left Rome, and
returned to the slopes of Monte Morrone, where he had
done penance. Then, by night, he went to dig for the
treasure, and began bringing money to the place where
the Badia was to be built. The building commenced.
They needed coins by the shovelful, but they never failed.
Every Saturday, when San Pietro had to pay the labourers,
he went and fetched three bags of gold and three of
silver.
" When the Badia was finished the treasure withdrew
itself from sight. And no one since has ever known the
precise spot where it is, or how to set about getting
possession of it. The Badia finished, what did San Pietro
want with the treasure ? The treasure of the soul he
already possessed, and that sufficed him." ^
From Sulmona, or from the vineyards above on the
way to Introdacqua, you see the valley dotted with little
towns, set remote and isolated on the hillsides, mere
patterns and decorations at this distance, hewn out of
Morrone by a master carver. Some of them reward a
visit, and, in any case, the road to them is always worth
the effort. But the person of sincere archaeological tastes
must go to the ruins of Corfinium. Every one will tell
him so. Every one told us so, and we went prepared for
thrills. We dropped out of the train at Pentima, and
made our way up the hill to the village — a poor and
insignificant place to the eye, but with a high sense of
its position, nevertheless, on the threshold of the sacred
spot. The humble streets, with their cottages and cow-
houses, go by such names as the Via dei Peligni, Via dei
Marrucini, Via (^i Vestini ; in fact, by the names of all
' De Nino, iv. p. 230.
236 IN THE ABRUZZI [pt. il.
the tribes in the ancient confederacy. Our curiosity was
whetted, and we hastened on some half-mile or so to
where, quite isolated, rises San Panfilo's rival, San Pel-
lino. The cathedral has a lonely, incomprehensible look
out here in the open country, with no dependencies near
it to explain its position. But once Corfinio stood round
about it, for Corfinio of the great hopes lingered still
when all its hopes had died. The patron San Pellino
was Bishop of Brindisi, martyred at Rome under Julian.
His disciple Ciprio brought his body here, and the ghost
of the holy man seems not to have been infected with the
rebellious spirit native to his new home. For when a
revolt arose in Valentinian's army there, he appeared to
the Imperial generals besieging it, and announced victory
to them. In thanksgiving a temple was raised to him,
and Valentinian allowed the ruined portions of the city to
be rebuilt. The cathedral has known many vicissitudes.
The earlier church was besieged by the Saracens, and
burnt by the Hungarians. The actual building belongs to
Swabian times, but has been extensively and disastrously
modernized. The eastern portion, however, with its
beautiful apse and fine cornices, is untouched ; the pulpit
is of particular interest ; and, indeed, the ancient cathe-
dral of Valva is still imposing enough to be worth a
pilgrimage.
And Corfinium } We had been saving up our emotion
to spend it there. From the remains we had hoped to
reconstruct a picture of the ancient place, to feel the
thrill of " Italica " come out to us from the old stones of
the birthplace of Italian unity and liberty. But one might
as well make the effort sitting comfortably at home, for
all the help the stones give. Such stones as are there are
concentrated in two tall, fairly massive blocks, one on
each side of the high-road. That is Corfinium to-day !
There are bits, perhaps, in the neighbouring fields, but
nothing more for the general passer-by.
CH. XL] SULMONA 237
If you have come out by the very slow train from
Sulmona on a burning day, and are not a sincere
archaeologist, your wrath may be roused. There is one
way of appeasing it, if San Pellino fails to satisfy you.
Make your way onward to Rajano, not for the sake of that
forlornest of villages — which will account for your presence
on the supposition that you are some new kind of pedlar,
or will not account for you at all, and possibly view you
with morose suspicion. But the walk back to Sulmona
along the trattojo is a delight at the time, and a
blessed memory ever after. Just beyond the washing-
place at the stream, where the women gather, you find
yourself in a wide, grassy tract — a kind of never-ending
common, delicious to the tread and to the eye. On each
side the great hills walk in step with you. The strips of
fertile country fringe the green all the way, and along
your path there are singing riders and idle shepherd-boys,
and flocks huddled in the shade, and groups and lines of
decorative trees — for the place is at once a vast avenue,
a pasture, and an eight-mile-long track. You may meet
no one on foot save yourselves and the herds, for none
walk here who can get the sorriest nag to ride, and
mounted on such a contadino will take on the airs of a
D'Artagnan. It was here we met our beplumed yokel
urging his mule to a fiery pace to the tune of " All' America
maladetta, non ritorneremo piu ! "
A little way along this green delicious trattiiro you
will pass a little pond, a favourite bathing-place. It has
been explained variously as the crater of an extinct
volcano, or as the tcrme of Corfinium. But the country-
folks have another tale about it.
The place was once a barn, and one St. Anne's Day a
farmer and his men were threshing there. A passer-by
reproved them, and they laughed and whipped up their
horses again. " Qua-qua," and again " qua " — the sound of
the impious work was heard. The barn sank and became
238 IN THE ABRUZZI [pt. ii.
a lake, and up from the water came the voices of the
drowned men. " Quaqua-ra, qua-quara!" Hence the name
of the lake — La Quaglia. Whoever is without sin may
still hear on St. Anne's Day the voices of the threshers ;
and it is not seemly on that day to disport yourself in
the waters of the lake.
Near Sulmona the wide green road rises and spreads,
then falls. On the edge of the last slope, on the green
lawn, the i^ocks are kept by earth-coloured shepherds, too
old to go up any more to the high pastures. Singing
comes up from the valley, and the old shepherds and
their fierce white dogs under the trees seem the last
guardians of Arcady.
CHAPTER XII
THE VALLEY OF THE SAGITTARIO
A wild glen— Scanno — The beautiful Scannese— The beginning and the
end of life at Scanno— Santa Maria del Lago— The hermits' Rule-
San Domenico di CocuUo, serpent-charmer — Tasso in the Valley^
Anversa and its memories — Italy again !
Even guide-books devote a line or two to the Valley of
the Sagittario. Local patriots cry indignantly to the
travelling Neapolitans and Romans, "Why go all the way
to Switzerland, when you have such scenery near home ? "
Indeed, there is " scenery " here, and no mistake ! My
heart has gone out more to other valleys ; but there is
wonder and terrible beauty in this wild glen. At Sul-
mona they will bid you go to Scanno to admire the
beauty of its women and eat of the trout of its lake ; and
it would be to miss much not to see that curious mountain
town. The Sagittario rises below Monte Godi ; under the
name of the Tasso it tumbles down past Scanno, and in
and out of its lovely lake ; receives some minor streams ;
hurls itself in a cascade over the rocks under Villalago,
where first it is called the Sagittario ; then through a glen
like the very jaws of hell, the Gole del Sagittario, about
four miles long, it pours its turbulent waters down to the
placid Pelignian vale, carrying destruction with it many
a time after the melting of the snows. There it joins the
Gizio, and both fall into the Aterno (the Pescara) near
Popoli. Its course from Villalago to Anversa is one to
strike horror into the beholder, or fill him with a savage
delight.
239
240 IN THE ABRUZZI [pt. ii.
"E bello il Sagittario, sai ? E ronipe
e schiuma, giii per i macigni, mugghia,
trascina tronchi, tetti di capanne,
zangole, anche le pecore e gli agnelli
che ha rapinato alia montagna. E bello,
sai ? "
In a little while this splendid force of water must be
seized by some enterprising financier from Turin or
Milan, and made to turn great mills. Such store of
" white coal " cannot be wasted long in mere " scenery " in
modern Italy. And yet it would be but a narrow strip
of industrial country any number of financiers could
make here. The country is eternally untameable ; and
in the sheer rocks overhead there is everlasting sanctuary.
Should Anversa ever rear giant electric works to make
of Sulmona a little Manchester, the hermits need hardly
shift their cells. To Villalago and the eagle nest of
Castrovalve the smoke would rise but as faint incense,
and on the crags above the loudest din be as a far-ofi"song.
In all the upper valley the only possible place of
sojourn is Scanno, reached by railroad from Sulmona to
Anversa, thence by diligence along ten miles of climbing
road. From your cramped seat in front of the posta you
crane your neck at a sign from the driver, and you are
aware of Scanno. It is broad, crude midday, unless you
come hardily on foot, or like a lord in a carozza, and so
can choose your hours. There is a very blue sky over-
head. There is a very white snow-peak behind. Rocky
hills fall down on each side, with every seam, every cleft,
every bush staring at you relentlessly. The patches of
cultivation, ruddy brown or vivid green, shout at you
details of every furrow, every fence ; and the town itself
seems but another mass of broken brown crags arrested
in their fall into the valley of the rushing Tasso. The
fall, the arrest, were finely guided, you will own all the
winding way along the serpentine road that eases
the steep ascent. One day the sticks and stems by the
^ ^ \ ■> = \
SCANNO
cii. XII.] VALLEY OF THE SAGITTARIO 241
margin will sprout to a graceful shade, but till then,
during a bright midday approach to Scanno, hard facts
will be hurled in your face. Where is kindly Italy with
its mist of olives, its garlands of vines ? This is no play
place, it seems.
The posta winds you round into the one street which
is carrozzabile, and sets you down at the top of a cobbled
ladder. All the youthful and leisurely population of the
town will be your guide, shaming your uncertain and
stumbling footsteps by their graceful agility, to the inn of
Signor Orazio Tanturri, a hostelry that hangs out no
sign, that never expects and never rejects a guest. From
the dark cavern, which forms the entrance to every
Scannese dwelling, you ascend to a level, from which, if
rocky ladders or rock-dwellers scare you, you can hence-
forward survey a good portion of the life of the town. A
stay of several weeks gave us something of the nimble
agility of the black goats, which are as common a feature
of the streets as of the mountain-side.
The last walk through Scanno, as the first, is a sur-
prise. It is not a town of picturesque bits and corners ;
it is all a survival ; and if antiquity be your desire, it is
all ;good. In ithe eighteenth century it was refaced to
some extent, and the fine doorways are mainly of that
date ; but the plan and character of the place were
settled once for all in the Middle Ages ; and when the
Via Paliano, the centre of the old city of Paliano or
Pagliaccio, disappears — it is doomed, they say — there will
still be all the rest to make mediaeval as good a name as
any to apply to this town, so dark, so austere, so apart.
The Renaissance opened out some airy loggias ; the
eighteenth century, with money to spend, destroyed the
churches, and the nineteenth knocked down its walls and
all but the last of its gates. You do not linger for this
or that architectural gem — there are none — but for the
whole. The great high houses in the narrow precipitous
R
242 IN THE ABRUZZI [pt. ii.
streets, the archways spannhig the mysterious alleys, the
balconies under the overhanging eaves, all are sombre,
sunless, and sad, save where a green bit of mountain-side
gleams at the end of a lane. You may shiver there in
June, and the August brands need never smite you.
But in Scanno, sombre and old, there is a constant
hum of life. Life speaks loud here. Children swarm.
Only the footfalls are soft ; for save on festas, the foot-
gear is a sole and a toecap made of skin and sewn to
the stocking. Yet you might spend days there and wake
up to ask, " Where are the men ? " You have a dim notion
that they exist, that they are not all exterminated ; but
their insignificance is astonishing. Says a native anti-
quarian, writing fifty years ago, of the inhabitants, " La
bassa taglia sembra preponderare fra gli uomini ; I'alta
fra le donne." This physical fact is but a shadow of the
moral one. Scanno is a city of women. Their reputa-
tion for beauty is amply deserved. Nearly all are comely.
For nearly every third one it is worth while turning
round ; but she will return your gaze with a haughty
serenity as she trips to the fountain with her copper conca
on her head. The Scannese is dark, or she is fair ; she
is blue-eyed or black-eyed. But dark or fair, her colour
is good and fresh, her eyes wade apart, and if she be
young, wonderfully fearless and serene. Her features
are often cut with special fineness ; her teeth are good,
and her smile fleeting but sweet. She has none of the
obvious, exuberant, sensuous beauty of the Roman
women, and hers appeals more to a Northern eye. Her
reserve has something of mystery, which fits her sombre
clothing and her dark and melancholy streets. She will
give you a quiet welcome ; but behind her smile is no
little indifference. Some curiosity she will display about
the country you have left behind ; but she will rarely
envy a lot that she must know softer than her own.
She is a mountaineer, proud, independent, largely self-
CH. XII.] VALLEY OF THE SAGITTARIO 243
sufficient, a great maintainer of tradition. You may not
like all the ways of her town ; but with a quiet precision
which ends the matter, she answers, " Cosi si fa a
Scanno."
Her peculiar dress — it is now worn nowhere else —
she gives no sign of resigning. It consists of a dark
green, almost black, skirt {casacca) of thick cloth, made
in what women know as accordion pleats. Inside the
hem is a narrow border of red, which shows when the
skirt sways. The bodice {comodind) is of darkest blue,
close fitting, with large sleeves thickly gathered on the
shoulders and at the wrist, and decorated with silver
buttons of various devices — holy symbols being among
the favourite patterns — and arranged in sets with rigorous
precision. The ample apron {mantera) is generally of
some blue woollen stuff; but here variety of colour is
allowed, and green, purple, or brown, are to be seen.
At the sides are slits {carafocce), into which the hands
are thrust in cold weather. At the neck appears the
lace trimming of the chemise, made by the wearer, and
often of delicate design. As in the apron, so in the
stockings, choice of colour is allowed, and to them are
attached the goat-skin soles {scarfiioli). But the head-
gear is the most individual part of the Scannese dress.
First, for the hair. It is divided into two long tresses,
each of which is entwined with a treccia. Correct treccie
are fourteen metres long ! everyday ones of twisted
wool ; those worn on festas of silk, of every conceivable
colour — scarlet, or rose, or green, or blue, or russet, or
purple. So closely are the treccie interwoven with the
tresses that no hair is seen. The twisted ropes are
firmly bound about the head, and then fall with some
amplitude in a coil at the back. Two or three times a
week — never on Friday — are they redone. Above this
fits the turban {cappalletto), worn indoors and out.
Eastern in effect, black, close fitting, flat-topped, with
244 IN THE ABRUZZI [pt. il.
two little peaks in front, showing a patch of white at
each side, and a short tail of the black stuff falling
behind. It is worn tilted ever so little. Examine it,
and you will find it to be of two parts ; first, rolls of
white home-spun linen, made to fit the head, then a
black merino handkerchief (fascia iojo) folded and pinned
so as to cover the front of the brim, the crown, and
make the tail behind. For mourning, the white linen is
veiled by black. An additional sign of woe — perhaps a
remnant of an Eastern veil — is the thick, black handker-
chief (abbruodaUiro) bound round the chin, concealing
the mouth, and tied upwards over the turban — though
this uncomfortable arrangement is also used as a pro-
tection against cold in winter. In this dark guise, which
is de rigueiir from the age of ten or so, winter and
summer, Sunday and weekday — save only at weddings
and on high festivals of the Church — do the Scannese go
about their daily business.
The ancient costume, worn till less than a hundred
years ago, was a much grander affair. One fine sample
I have seen : a dress of scarlet cloth, bordered with
patterned moss-green velvet, the sleeves slashed with
red and green ruches of ribbon, the apron of woven
tapestry, and its strings of rich and beautiful embroidery,
the turban of coloured and tinselled silk. The gold
jewelry of the time, the beads and crucifixes, are massive
and of fine design. To-day the brides, and all the
women on a great festa and at a sposalizio break into
colour in their turbans and aprons ; and the little
maidens at their first communion wear the festal dress
instead of the conventional white frock and veil. Most
of the well-to-do women to-day own a gold pendant
with I.H.S. in the centre surrounded by the sun-rays.
It is often worn under the dress, and by nursing mothers
as a charm. From its design a tradition has arisen that
it was first made in commemoration of San Bernardino
CH. XII.] VALLEY OF THE SAGITTARIO 245
of Siena, who, according to common belief, preached for
a whole Lent in the church of San Rocco here.
For work-a-day purposes they kilt their pleated
skirts high, bunching them about the hips with a long
woven girdle. Their gait along the mountain roads,
faggots on their heads, or along the rocky streets with
their water-pots, is peculiarly their own : erect, hands
on hips, or beneath their aprons, toes inward, with a
swinging, swaying motion. Mites of three will girdle
their pinafores and totter about in imitation of their
elders' elegance. The strength of these women is
astonishing. They carry burdens with ease under which
a London porter would stagger ; and it is a curious first
experience to see your luggage borne to your room on
the head of a lady of advanced age. A full list of the
unlikely objects which I have seen a Scanno woman
carry on her head, moreover, with a gallant bearing,
would be too long ; but it would include bundles of fire-
wood which an ordinary person could not lift half a foot
from the ground, huge sacks of grass, great bales of
home-made linen, enough to fill a large chest, copper
tubs piled high with the family wash, a wheel-barrow,
barrels of wine, a wooden plough, a washing-boiler, a
feather bed, an iron bedstead ! These burdens thicken
the neck ; but there are no bent backs among the women
of Scanno. And thus the hands are left free to carry
a baby, or knit a stocking. It is entirely against
tradition to carry your baby on your head.
If Scanno were cut off from the rest of the world, it
would be sufficient to itself Nay, it is almost true to
say that each household would be self-sufficient. The
amount of imported goods is infinitesimal, to the fastidious
traveller sadly so. Its fuel is grown on its wooded
hillsides, its wheat in the thin soil that coats the rocks.
Each family makes its own bread. The little gardens
running down the hills, the pigs, and hens, and goats,
246 IN THE ABRUZZI [pt. ii.
that are housed mysteriously in dark back alleys, and
wander the streets by day, account for the rest of the
food. The sheep, in Foggia all winter, here in the high
pastures of Monte Godi or the Montagna Grande in
summer, furnish the clothing. At home the wool is
carded, and dyed, and spun, and woven, out of which
are made the clothing, the checked blankets and coverlets,
the stockings, the treccie. Only wine and oil would
Scanno have to forego, if Sulmona stopped supplies, for
up here grow neither vine nor olive. This sufficiency is
due almost entirely to the varied capacities of the
women. The Scanno woman bears children abundantly.
She bakes, she weaves, she knits, she dyes, all as a
matter of course. In summer she gathers the fuel
needed for the long winter — a terrible task ! She works
in the fields ; she keeps sheep or cattle. She is mason
or bricklayer. I used to watch a handsome group of
women masons day after day. Among them were girls
who seemed to find the work as amusing as making
mud pies, bigger ones who scaled ladders as if mounting
thrones, and elderly women, who carried their loads of
bricks and stones with not too great an air of resignation.
Work of slaves, you may say ; and there is something
to be said for the judgment. The wood-carrying from
the mountains is a terrible task, and it begins in child-
hood. But the Scanno women look anything but slaves.
Their air is regal, rather. I have never seen so many
queens. They are fully aware of their worth and their
power in the family. They are the pillars of the place,
and they have the air of knowing it. Extreme poverty
is rare, and good health nearly universal.
Even of the wood-carrying the young ones make a
pleasure. In summer they start off" any time after two
or three in the morning, long before the sun is up ; in
very hot weather, if possible, by moonlight. You wake
in the night alarmed or startled. There is a rat-tat at a
CH. XII.] VALLEY OF THE SAGITTARIO 247
neighbouring door, and a cry of " Giulia ! " or " Maria
Giuseppe ! " loud and strident, and all unconcerned for
the neighbours' slumbers. It is the gathering cry of the
comrades of the quarter. Dark figures are assembling
on the steps below, chattering and laughing, and there is
a concerted teasing of Marias and Antoninas still abed.
Then silence. They are off, armed with their hatchets,
a cheery band of sisters, glad of each other's company ;
for this wild land has its wild stories, and the darkness
has terrors. Up near the snow they cut the wood in the
beech copses, tie it in huge bundles, load it on their
heads, and then down they come in a tripping and
swinging run, singing and chattering, and reaching home
about six or seven. They often make two such journeys
a day ; for the winter is seven months long, and wood is
their only fuel. Back from the mountains, there is much
going to and fro to the wells with the cone he ; there are
the household chores ; there is ceaseless knitting and
spinning and making of pillow-lace, or weaving of treccie
with a spindle. Light is a precious thing in Scanno of
the dark houses ; and in the streets and doorways nearly
all the industries, save cooking, are carried on. The
ladder-ways always provide seats for the family and the
family acquaintances, however numerous. The sexes
keep much apart, and on festas, you can count the
women in turbaned groups of ten or twenty, veritable
clubs of them, on the stone steps, gossiping and telling
tales. Women here do not seek soft dalliance with the
men in their hours of relaxation ; and even when the
gorgeous carabinieri cast amorous eyes from their balcony
opposite the fountain, the answering looks from under
the copper pots are mostly disdainful.
The travels of the hardy are mainly limited by the
distance of a shepherd husband's hut in the mountains,
or by the high beech woods. Sulmona is far. The
diligence costs money, and any vehicle other than a
248 IN THE ABRUZZI [pt. ii.
mule's back is to the elderly too much of an adventure.
Walking takes too much time — save for a pilgrimage.
So that almost the sole diversion is provided by the
church. An evening service in the parish church, or in
San Rocco, is a curious sight. The floor is carpeted
with dark squatting figures. The Scanno women never
use chairs, except at meal-times. Their favourite
attitude when at rest, their universal attitude in church,
is squatting, cross-legged, Turk-fashion, on the floor.
Only the small handful of bourgeoisie, the mayor's and
the doctor's wife, and such like, and the men-folk, of
course, use chairs. From this lowly Oriental posture,
then, the women, assisted by the boys dotted about the
altar steps, assault the Almighty with as strident praise
as it has ever been my lot to hear. Are they Orientals ?
Archaeologists fight over the point. Descendants of
Frederic II.'s Saracens, say some. Others declare their
ancestors to have been a nomadic tribe from Asia Minor.
The infant population has a keen struggle for life at
the beginning, but the survivors wail themselves into a
hardy childhood. Their first steps are a weary pain in
contact with rocky cobbles and broken stony stairways,
for there are no level playgrounds out of doors. But
they come through it straight limbed and active, and
with tempers of sweet serenity. The little soft-eyed
girls, like beguines in their dark dress, deft and active,
are preparing at ten for the life of labour and responsi-
bility which will be their future, learning to balance
the conca, to keep step with the elder sister on the
mountain, or to turn the wheel at home. And the
boys have a native candour and simplicity of much
charm. The tiny ones on Sundays are like little
Romneys, with their long trousers, short jackets, flat
caps, and frills ; while to the dress of all of them to the
age of ten or eleven, the shirt tail sticking out behind
gives a certain piquancy. Good luck to Andrea and
L
CH. XII.] VALLEY OF THE SAGITTARIO 249
Luco, to Gaetano and Filippo, and to Beppino the eight-
year-old charmer ! One evening we looked up for the
bird that chirruped on the rock above us. The chirrup
framed itself articulately into " Von, two, tree, for, fyfe,
sairteen, twenty, Buona sera, signorl ! " and it came
from the mouth of a youngster perched on a crag. It
was our first meeting with Beppino. After that, inter-
course was easy, and he introduced us to his friends, the
above-named Andrea and company, all older than him-
self. They formed our guard up the green prati, and by
the banks of the Tasso many an evening. When twilight
came on, and our faces were still turned from home,
they would find excellent reasons for hurrying back,
which they did not call wolf, or bear, or hipo-mannaro.
But they never all abandoned us to the perils of the
dusk ; and next day the band would be gathered about
the town gate, and would greet us, " Dove tu vai,
Beatrice ? " and " Dove tu vai, Anna ? " Then they
would join on, a cheerful, sturdy, chattering escort.
They were very autobiographical, and bragged much of
their sins. Oh, such sins ! Northern boys would have
shouted in derision of their innocence. Their fathers
were all in America, and their own eyes were already
turning there ; for work begins early — when they have
done their "quinta." To reward us for our company
they scrambled among rocks and boulders, and found us
things "good to eat," handfuls of wild sorrel, grasses
with succulent ends ; or they produced these out of little
pockets, where with much self-restraint they had kept
them against our coming. There are few soldi for
sweet-stuff at Scanno ; and it is only the old who beg.
But the bare life has its compensations. Between
the age of three, when you are already solid on your
legs, and six, when school claims you, there is a golden
time. Life now for Carmel', aged three, is a round of
joy. He lives in a room little better than a cellar with
250 IN THE ABRUZZI [pt. II.
his mother, who earns their bread by weaving coverlets
on a hand loom. He has never seen his father, who went
to America before he was born. The mother is a large,
melancholy-eyed woman, with a voice that always seems
tuned for chanting litanies for the dead. Carmel' is a
miracle of solidity and health ; and, even leashed by his
mother's apron-strings, finds a fine society in the mules
and muleteers that pass the open door, the goats and
goatherds, and the great wandering pig that roams
masterless and free about the Scanno streets, and the
children, and the hummers on half a dozen spinning-
wheels at neighbouring doors. He never speaks, but
his smile is a whole gamut of expression. He breaks
his mother's apron-string at times — and he knew one
glorious hour. Carmel' will make his way. He is only
three years old, but he had read the signs of the times
that morning, and darted off to the sacristan of San
Rocco, and demanded the cross. The sacristan did not
say no. As well Carmel' as another. Then we saw
him tottering down the precipitous street, clasping the
cross, as tall as himself, firmly to his blue pinafore. It
got entangled in his fat legs, and he fell half a dozen
times, but each time he picked himself up bravely, and
without a word to friend or foe, vanished into the Sant'
Anton' quarter. A little later we heard the bells of the
mother-church ring out, and the bells of San Rocco
answer ; and the peal went round the hills, and into their
crevices, and the echoes wandered hither and thither like
a song. Is it a festival ? we ask as we hang over the
parapet in front of the chiesa viadre. In a sense it is : it
is a going home. Amid a monotonous chant come priest
and acolyte, and the banner of the dead man's con-
fraternity. There is no great pomp, for the homegoer
is poor. Then comes the coffin, borne on the shoulders
of four friends, without any signs of woe. A gay
cloth of red and green is thrown over it — a household
CH. XII.] VALLEY OF THE SAGITTARIO 251
property, which covered his father and his father's
fathers. The relatives follow, a handful, mostly old, and
some dozen friends, half of whom drop off at the church
door and go back to work. And amid the mournful
chanting, mocking it, not stridently, but as birds might
mock a sombre passer-by, peal the bells round the
hills and back again, and up and down the valley. An
irregular clatter is heard, and now come a train of very
small boys — the big ones are in school. To this extreme
youth is entrusted a traditional ceremony. They are
headed by Carmel', a fierce frown on his red chubby
face, as he staggers under the cross. Those behind him
carry smaller wooden crosses, to each of which is attached
a gay coloured handkerchief, red, or red and blue, or
green, or orange. Like little flags they float in the air
along the street, and then, still headed by Carmel',
vanish into the church. The bells stop ringing during
the office within, at the end of which the procession
re-forms, and takes the long winding hill path to the
campo santo under the hermitage of Sant' Egidio, As
they wind and wind, the bells are ringing and echoing,
and running about the air in a song, the song of the tired
old man who goes home. There is no pomp, no
solemnity, no inspiring beauty in the ceremony. And
yet one discovered then a little why, though America
be " a fine country," there is a terror of too long a stay
there. They would sleep less well if the bells of Santa
Maria and San Rocco did not ring about the hills in a
song, did not ring them round the hill-path, and under
the sod at San Michele.
Up, far up the hillsides, are the cultivated patches ;
and when the snow melts the labourers are but as little
moving specks. It is well there is weaving and spinning
at home ; for field work, either for yourself or a master,
is not very remunerative. Yet there is not too much
252 IN THE ABRUZZI [pt. ii.
depression even about the " Americani " back here and
digging in the rocky soil. Now and again you find a
man who tells you what a poor place is Scanno ; but
rarely one who ever thinks of marrying a woman from
anywhere else. Yet one such bold spirit greeted us as
we passed the steep field where he was digging. It is a
point of honour with them, by the way, always to speak
English to the stranger. It impresses the women work-
ing by their sides as magic would. Here is our con-
versation—
He : Where you go }
We : Up the hill for a walk.
He : It is ver' bad. Go back.
On our return.
He : What country you come ? England .'' Not
New York ? Why not } She — patting his own breast —
she is from five year America. She like that. She not
like this. Too much work.
We: And not so much money. How much a day ?
He: Twenty-two soldi. And wine. Wine too strong.
She like beer. She go back. G^ior si !
We : With a wife from Scanno .-'
He : No. She not like the suit.
We : What .?
He: She not like the suit. She like hat of yours.
(Here it dawned on us he was referring to his dislike of
the costume of his native place.) Have you man over
here .''
We hastily declare our " man " is in England, and
withdraw, lest he should too openly prefer our " suit."
The good road stops at Scanno. After that there
are only mountain tracks to the high beech copses, and
over to the Piano di Cinquemiglia and Roccaraso, these
impassable more than half the year. Wait till you hear
that the cattle have come back from Foggia to the home
pastures before you try the road that by rock and scaur
CH. XII.] VALLEY OF THE SAGITTARIO 253
and torrent, will land you on the other side of Monte
Pratella. There is an isolation in this Valley of the
Sagittario that you will not find in places of higher
altitude. It is very narrow, and you must not let your
heart wander, else the great hills will be as prison walls.
Climb to Sant' Egidio, or on the hillsides above the
Prati, and you will see higher, and ever higher walls.
To have wanderlust and be tied here would be pain
indeed. For the Scanno folk every season has its
distinct toil, and the home crafts pass the long winter
months away. In the summer there are pilgrimages.
The Scannese are much given to these. In July, for
instance, the pious will go to the Santa Casa at Loreto,
and on from there to Assisi for the Indulgence of the
Porziuncola. In August at Gallinaro in the Terra di
Lavoro, there is the feast of San Gerardo, Confessore, an
English saint who dispenses no graces till the Scannese
come. But you are very rich, or very free, or very gad-
about, if you go so far frequently. There are nearer
shrines. There is the special shrine of Scanno, Our
Lady of the Lake.
The little mountain lake of Scanno, something less
than a mile below the town, is a place of enchantment,
and of relief, too, in this wild valley. High set among
the hills, it has stern, towering walls to mirror in its
placid surface ; but it has gathered about it slim feathery
trees and flowery borders, and the southern end has
turned to a bosky fairyland. It is only a few miles
round, but in its smile the narrow valley seems to break
into an infinity of soft opal and blue. Its stillness is
sung by the nightingales that nest on its edge ; and
though the high-road runs along its eastern side, quiet
always remains here. The two hermits sleep on its
banks in the sun. Fishers spend long days dabbling a
rod in its waters, hoping for the prize of one of its famous
trout. The villagers come down and spread out their red
f
254 IN THE ABRUZZI [pt. it.
handkerchiefs for the Httle wriggHng crabs that the boat-
men sell ; and the Scanno women come to pray the
Madonna in her sanctuary that spans the road and hangs
over the water,
A lady of many graces is Santa Maria del Lago ;
and her chapel is never empty of women, prostrate,
adoring, or resting ; and the votive offerings, silver hearts
and hands, or old crutches and bandages, are eloquent
pendants. Madonna was wise to draw the mountain
folk here for prayer and rest ; for, of course, that is what
she did. The story is well known, and was put into
verse by Romualdo Parente, the Scanno poet of the
eighteenth century. Once the rough mule-track from
Anversa ran high above the lake across the towering,
jagged rocks. In wild winter weather there were many
accidents. But the gracious Lady was watching, and
lives were snatched from peril by miracles. So an image
of her was set up on the rock above the present chapel,
in the middle of the sixteenth century. More than a
hundred years later, a herdsman, Forlone by name, was
gathering his cows on the margin of the lake in the dusk,
when he saw a strange light all about the image ; and
the tree-stems were golden with its reflection. Every
evening he saw it, till he told his priest Don Placido.
Others, too, had felt a kindly presence there ; and Don
Placido read the signs to mean that Our Lady desired
to have a home there, to which .she could draw down the
poor folks of the mountain for rest and peace. So the
chapel was built. To-day it is a little over-restored ;
but nothing can spoil the soft grace of the home of
Madonna of the Lake. To her festa in July all the
neighbourhood flocks. Then the lake is gay, and the
little first communicants come in procession, the girls in
their festal turbans and aprons, and before Madonna,
each pledges herself to love and cherish, in the bond of
the covimare, all her sister communicants of that year.
cii. XII.] VALLEY OF THE SAGITTARIO 255
Our Lady had a predecessor, powerful, but less
gracious, a certain maga Angiolina, of uncertain date, a
great magic woman, by common repute ; but I have
failed to find the ancient volume which contains her
story. She is credited with having formed the lake by
her huge bulk falling across the River Tasso. But the
origin of the Lago di' Scanno is suggested a little farther
on the road. Aloft, on the right, on a stony hillside, lies
the half-dead village of Frattura, with no link to the
lower world save the bed of a torrent, wet or dry, accord-
ing to the season. In the cataclysmal " fracture " of the
mountain behind, the ledge was formed on which the
village sits. The rest of the rock was hurled down on
the Tasso.
Beyond the lake the road turns and twines, and then
Villalago throws itself up against the sky. I am glad
that nothing I know of ever happened there. It leaves
it as a place of dreamland. The little town of shepherds
and cowherds drags out a slow and precarious existence
above the world. My most distinct impression of the
inside is that of a churchful of women and children in the
dusk, listening to the exhortations of a little young priest,
who was telling them edifying tales which sounded as if
they had come out of the Gesta Rovianorwn. But I
have heard whispers that there are still some in the place
who are accounted very wise in an ancient wisdom, and
that secret consultation of them is not unknown. Seen
from the opposite hillside, or the high-road below, the
place is of inconceivable sublimity. Sheer up from the
abyss soars its rock, and from its rock it rises like a
flame. What pride was nursed there once, what projects
of revenge ! What loneliness pined, what ecstasy was
bred ! Once see it, and henceforth it remains as the
background of all the ballads of imprisoned ladies
looking out of lonely towers, and of fighting men sped
home from the wars to release them.
256 IN THE ABRUZZI [pt. ii.
Villalago has fame as a holy place, but to reach its
shrine you must pass along the road where the red rocks
tower higher and higher. A little side lane lined by
" stations " leads to the ancient chapel of San Domenico
of Cocullo — more properly San Domenico di' Foligno,
for he was Umbrian by birth, this Benedictine hermit.
But he adopted the Abruzzi as his home of penitence
and retirement ; and there, to this-day, he is one of the
most sought-after of protectors. You meet his statue,
with his emblems of wolf and serpent, throughout
the whole province. His story is in the accredited
authorities ; but his votaries do not read the Acta
Sanctorum. He has come to them out of a far older
time, and with a double sanctity ; the reincarnation, in a
mediaeval hermit, of an ancient priest of the Marsi ;
ascetic and saint, but still more enchanter and thauma-
turgist. The Cocullo folks, across the mountain, have
their own San Domenico festa, and scorn Villalago ; for
they had the saint longer among them. But what does
length of time count ? Is not his rocky cell here, and the
molar tooth he gave to the mayor, and the horseshoe
with which he worked a miracle .-•
The little church is a model of a rustic sanctuary, old
and bare and frugal. There are no votive offerings of
price ; to the statue of the saint only the prayers offered
up about it have given value. From the sacristy a door
opens on a stair in the rock, leading to the cell where
the saint spent years of penitence and exaltation. The
pillared loggia outside is painted with scenes from
the life of the patron, of a delightful absurdity, by
the hand of a hermit. Here are the subjects of some
of these storied chapters.
San Domenico, on his departure, leaves to the mayor
of the Villa his right tooth.
The parish priest with the holy relics of San Domenico
banishes the venomous serpents from the neighbourhood.
CH. XII.] VALLEY OF THE SAGITTARIO 257
San Domenico commands the fierce wolf not to
devour any more mothers' sons.
The outlook from the loggia is on a terrible place —
sheer rock above and roaring torrent below. What
demons the saint must have fought with here ! What
a rage for the sublime must he have had ! The hermits
to-day keep a little garden green in the summer, and
the wilderness blossoms, sparingly. The desolation of
the winter must be unspeakable. In summer they are
not often alone. Folks wait for the posta here. And
the shrine is so famous that many strangers come, and
some of the Villalago women are always at the altar,
pouring out their entreaties. Ah, a shepherd's wife has
need to entreat one who can make wild things tame !
The hermits keep a simple rule, of which these are
the principal injunctions —
"Our hermits of the Desert: (i) Giuseppe B , (2)
Mattia di P , (3) Pietro G , that they may model
themselves on the life of our glorious saint, in whose
name they beg their bread, shall lead a life devout and
retired in God, . . , and to that end they shall attend
scrupulously to these articles. If they transgress them,
they shall be punished by the Most Reverend, the Arci-
prete of Villalago, the first time with the suspension of a
whole week of begging bread, afterwards by expulsion
from the hermitage, for the Place of the Desert is
eminently holy."
There follow rules about hearing mass, receiving the
communion, and confessing in Villalago. From these
sacred duties they must return straightway, since each
hermit " should love his hermitage as the bird loves his
nest."
Every evening they shall recite the rosary in common,
and at the sound of the bell of the parish church, from
May to October, light at least two candles in the church.
S
258 IN THE ABRUZZI [pt. ii.
From November to April, whether they hear the bell or
not, they shall light them in the hermitage.
They are to live like brothers in holy concord ; to
welcome the country-folks and strangers graciously, not
to blaspheme nor to use foul words, to avoid strong
drink, and all such games as are disapproved by honest
men.
They are never to wander far from the romitorio
without precise motive ; and the days for begging in
certain localities are defined.
They are to divide equally the alms in the box on
the altar, unless it should be money for a mass in honour
of the saint.
They are to serve mass, to take care of the grotto and
of all the church furniture, the silver chalice, and other
belongings of the sanctuary, to sweep the place, including
the Holy Stair and the hermitage every Saturday, and
the loggia once a month. They are to ring the bell for
Matins and the Ave Maria.
They are to provide wood for winter, and not to sell
it, even at a profit.
The great day is August 22nd. Then the gorge is full
of folk from the whole valley and far beyond. In the
little chapel, round the statue of the saint, press, but not
too close, a crowd tense with excitement for a spectacle
that never palls. Round the neck of the saint, hanging
over his dark robe, and twined about his arms, are live
serpents, common snakes and adders of the rock. They
are still now, dazed perhaps by the hum of the crowd, or
made torpid by the " wise men." But they draw the eyes,
the cold, mysterious things. There is a sense of shudder-
ing, mingled with exultation in the power of the holy one ;
and through all the office runs something of the old pagan
thrill. This is no Christian festival, instinct with the
sweet spirit of St. Francis towards the creatures, though,
doubtless, the hermit saint won his power, too, from
CH. XII.] VALLEY OF THE SAGITTARIO 259
friendliness and trust in the wild things of the mountain
and rock. There is a dark force present, incarnate in the
cold reptiles ; and were not the saint there to absorb the
adoration and to claim the worship, these might wander
into strange channels. Then the statue, rose-crowned
and serpent-girt, is hoisted on trestles, and borne out
of the chapel. In the open there is a moving and a
writhing ; and people crane and stand on tiptoe to see
the gleaming evil eyes, and then shrink, and peer again.
With cries and with singing the crowd moves on, up to
Villalago, to the church ; and the shuddering thrill never
dies till the ancient rite is all gone through, and the
saint, rose-crowned and serpent-girt, is back again in his
sanctuary. At the end the serpents, are let loose among
the rocks. They creep away to crevices and holes ; and
for all that day in Villalago territory none of them will
do any hurt. Glory be to San Domenico !
Past the little lake of San Domenico the gorge widens
for a space, then narrows fiercesomely. In the " traforetto
delle Capareccie " the unkindly rock is tunnelled by the
road. On a midsummer noon the whole foce is like a
corridor in hell ; and the bridge that crosses the stream
is known as the Ponte dell' Inferno. In the evening
glow, and at dusk, the place takes on a demoniac beauty,
and the torrent has in its voice the music of a world of
battle. When spring bursts the bonds of winter in the
mountains, nothing can control its terrible fury.
" E il fiume
Che mugghia, e il Sagittario che si gonfia
Nelle gole, Si sciolgona le nevi
Ai monti, alia Terrata, all' Argatone ;
e il Sagittario subito s' infuria."
At a turn in the road you lift your eyes, and far, far
aloft soars Castrovalve, once a proud citadel, subject only
26o IN THE ABRUZZI [pt. il
to the king, a nest of proud eagles. Now it is a poor
miners' village almost beyond ken, this " sentinella morta
contro i Samniti." And now the glen is widening.
We are falling to fertile levels. There are glimpses of
green fields ; and soon vineyards will appear. And here
is Anversa.
It is ragged now ; only a faint memory of its past
splendours remains in its churches and its ruined towers.
Santa Maria delle Grazie, with its lovely doorway, its
mingling of rustic Paganism and Renaissance grace, has
distinct interest ; and San Marcello, perhaps the most
untouched church we have met anywhere, is a place of
indescribable charm. The old wooden ceiling remains ;
the walls are whitewashed, the whole framework is of
an austere simplicity ; yet there are treasures of great
beauty. One corner is lit by a mellow fire from the reds
and golds of a fifteenth-century triptych, representing
St. Francis and St. Michael ; and on the main altar is
a magnificent tabernacolo from the chapel of the ruined
castle. A very ancient place is Anversa, and for ages it
was of strategic importance, commanding, as it did, the
opening to the Pelignian Valley. For long it was held by
the proudest of all the Abruzzi noble houses, the Conti
del Sangro. By Antonio of this name the castle was
greatly enlarged and strengthened in 1506. In the six-
teenth century it passed into the hands of the Belprato
family ; and in their time it had a flying visit from Tasso.
More than once in his harassed flights from Ferrara to
Sorrento and back again, Torquato passed through the
wild Abruzzi. These journeys were coincident with times
of sickness and stress of mind, dark fantasies of betrayal.
The poet-courtier, frail of body and distraught, making
his way through the mountains, is a theme for the
imagination to work on. His way from Sulmona should
have lain by Pettorano, Roccapia, the Piano di Cinque-
miglia, and Castel di Sangro, a wild and terrible road.
CH. XII.] VALLEY OF THE SAGITTARIO 261
Legends of his passing lingered long on the Majella.
Of one such journey he wrote to the Duke of Urbino,
that, save in the duke's state, he had found every place
full of "frauds and dangers and violence." He had
made it another time "in the worst season, without a
companion, and experiencing all kinds of fatigue and
many dangers, but then not laden with years and
insults." Perhaps it was while he was young enough to
bear and to hope, that he turned aside from Sulmona up
the valley of the Sagittario, to visit the lord of Anversa.
" The idea that drew me in the direction of Anversa,"
he writes to the count's brother, " was to visit the count,
and perhaps to rest in the shelter of his home, which
though I could not count on from any merit of my
own, his magnanimity nevertheless assured me. Of
this I had everywhere heard, as of the greatness of the
counts, your ancestors, ever most generous patrons of
the arts. But when I was near, I heard he had just
gone off for a tremendous bear hunt, a pastime I believe
your lordships are much enamoured of; and that this
most solemn business might be kept up for several days.
Wherefore, not knowing when to expect him, for I am
all unskilled in such matters, I was forced against my
will to continue my journey, hard as it was."
After the Belprati, the magnificent Macaenases, the
castle fell into the hands of the Di Capua house. The
last of them, a certain Don Titta, has left a sinister
memory. He made friends with one of the Del Fusco
family of Anversa, who was his constant companion.
Del Fusco married ; and, unhappily, the young wife was
pleasing to the lord of the castle. Di Capua made a
feast one night, to which bride and bridegroom were
bidden. In the middle of the banquet the husband was
called out on some pretext ; and ere the feast was over,
his wife saw his head brought into the hall on a silver
dish. As for what followed — a feudal lord had all the
262 IN THE ABRUZZI [pt. ii.
rights. Del Fusco's brother, a learned doctor in Naples,
swore revenge. To Anversa he brought turpentine,
washed the castle walls with it, and set the place on
fire. Di Capua was off on a bear hunt that day in the
forests, and from Monte Portella he saw the flames con-
sume his house. He never returned, but fled to the
Terra di Lavoro ; and Anversa knew him no more.
This story they tell in the neighbourhood. I cannot
vouch for it. The old castle, looking on the mountains,
tottering on the brink of the torrent, and near neighbour
to the awful foci, has other sinister stories told of it, and
D'Annunzio has made it the scene of one of his tragedies.
La Fiaccola sotto il Moggio repeats, in a more terrible
form, the theme of La Cittd, Morta, the degeneration
of a noble family of the Abruzzi, body and mind falling
into decrepitude, while their house tumbles about their
ears.
" La casa magna
dei Sangro, quella delle cento stanze,
tutta crepacci e tutta ragnateli
che da tutte le bande
si sgretola, e nessuno ci rimette
pur una mestolata di calcina."
Tibaldo di Sangro and his step-brother Bertrando
Acclozamora, once of Celano, are both sorry specimens
of worn-out races, decayed in mind and will. The heir
to the house is frail and childish ; and all of them are
but as food for mockery, and opportunity for crime, to
Tibaldo's wife, the vigorous Angizia, half woman of the
people, half sorceress by virtue derived from her father,
the serpent-charmer of Luco. And the women of the
family wait, conscious of destiny, and powerless, listening
to the cracking of the walls, the roar of the torrent
beneath, hearing in all danger, and death, and doom.
A passage in De Nino {Usi e CostumiY suggests
that the sinister associations of Anversa do not cling
* Vol. i. p. 193.
CH. XII.] VALLEY OF THE SAGITTARIO 263
round the old castle only. I was not there on July 25,
and it would have been useless to inquire locally if the
nightly gatherings alluded to take place now. Unless
you were known by long residence they would only
stare and deny. Here, at least, is the passage —
"On the 25th of July, towards three or four of the
night, the women of Anversa, barefooted for the most
part, go in procession, on what is called the Viaggio
di San Giacomo. Silently they make their way out of
the village, and gather in the Church of San Niccola.
Each carries in one hand a rosary, in the other a
wand. They pray for a little on their knees, and then
the leader of the company taps on the ground with her
stick, and the rest rise and go. At the door every one
taps with her wand. Not one of them speaks aloud.
With the same rites they go to San Marcello and Santa
Maria delle Grazie in the village, and to San Vincenzo
without, where is the cavipo safito. This is closed, and
so the tappings are made outside the door. The pro-
cession ends at the church of Our Lady of the Snows,
the door of which is tapped on entering ; there all the
wands are left, and the band retires, still in silence. But
already some groups of young folks and children begin
to disturb the quiet of the night wanderers, and hiding
behind the hedges, or in the cemetery, cry, ' Oh, oh ! '
" And here, with a complacent smile, would Carducci
repeat —
" 'Salute, O Satane!
O ribellione,
O forza indice,
Dolce ragione ! ' "
I give these sinister tales and suggestions of a dark
past, because I have heard them, or find them set down
in printers' ink. But I never shuddered at Anversa.
After three weeks spent in the upper valley of the
Sagittario, which may be described as a cloister for
264 IN THE ABRUZZI [pt. ii.
Titans, each time after threading the dark foci, Anversa
presented to me a gay aspect ; and its people, an old
race of busy and clever potters, seemed neither tragic
nor mysterious. Out of the village, and past the turn
of the road, the view widens down to a slope of exquisite
and noble beauty, to the suave Pelignian vale. A
Sicilian in our company, whose duties in the finance
ministry had kept him a homesick prisoner in the moun-
tains, now laughed with a sudden sense of release,
scrambled for wild roses in the hedges, and brandished
a flowering branch. Our eyes widened, we looked out
and round, and the same words rose to the lips of all,
" Italy again ! This is Italy ! "
CHAPTER XIII
THE ROAD TO CASTEL DI SANGRO
Pacentro and Pettorano — The Caldora and the Cantelmi — Roccaraso —
Pescocostanzo — A weary plain — A village of optimists — Suspicion of
the stranger — Castel di Sangro.
Pacentro lies over there to the south-east of Sulmona,
in a fold of the mountains between Morrone and Majella.
But to see what the place was when it counted for some-
thing, mount to it, thread its narrow streets and view it
from the back. Built in a niche of the hills, it is made
out of the hills ; the battlemented towers of its old
ruined castle are but jagged peaks of rock, and the
houses of the vassals that fall from its sides are but
scooped-out caverns. Here is the very robbers' nest of
old romance. And something of the kind it was ; for
the castle was the home of the Caldora, one of the most
powerful families of the Abruzzi and the Molise. They
were Provengal of origin, from Marseilles, and came here
with Charles d'Anjou. They were all men of valour ;
but the greatest was Jacopo Caldora, the condottiere,
the rival of Braccio, and captain of Rene d'Anjou's
armies in the struggle against Alfonso d'Aragon. Many
princes of Italy poured gold into the great captain's
coffers, not to hire his services, which were hard to win,
but to buy, if they might, his neutrality. Besides Count
of Pacentro, he had fifty other titles ; but he was proud
of only one name, Jacopo Caldora. From his niche in
the hills he swooped and pounced, the noble bandit, the
265
266 IN THE ABRUZZI [pt. ii.
crowned free-lance, and gathered lands and people into
his store. On the saddles of his horses were written the
words, " The heaven, even the heavens, are the Lord's ;
but the earth hath He given to the children of men."
From their rocky nest of Pacentro the Caldora flung
menaces south-westward across the hills to Pettorano,
where dwelt, as firmly seated on their own rock above
the valley of the Gizio, the rival family of Cantelmi, of
still greater fame and riches and feudal power. Princes
of Pettorano were they, and from the sixteenth century
Dukes of Popoli. A great portion of the Valley of
Sulmona was theirs, and of the mountains behind, till
where the lands of the Conti del Sangro began. Like the
Caldora, they came with Charles d'Anjou from Provence ;
and like them, after Tagliacozzo, were rewarded with
fiefs in the Abruzzi and other parts of the kingdom.
But they claimed a prouder descent — from the ancient
kings of Scotland, Duncan, the victim of Macbeth, their
ancestor. With the Stuart dynasty they claimed connec-
tion too, and Charles H. by a patent gave them the
right to bear his family name. Thus in later ages they
were always known as the Cantelmi-Stuarts. At
Pettorano, at Popoli, at Pratola, at Roccacasale, at
Roccaraso, at a score of other places, their castles are in
ruins ; and only the shade of the name remains of a race
that kept a province in awe and used the people as
stufi" for war and faction fights.
Pettorano in its poverty has kept more of the " grand
air " than Pacentro. With its great sweeping view far
along to Monte Corno, and its women with their fine
physique, their gorgeous costume and jewellery, it has
splendour still.
The country from Sulmona to Castel di Sangro is of
peculiar beauty. The land rises from Pettorano up to
mountainous heights. After the dark Valle Scura and
the terrible Piano di Cinquemiglia, the view opens out
, J 1 ' •
• ,■ '^ ^
O
2
I H
CH. XIII.] ROAD TO CASTEL DI SANGRO 267
round Roccaraso to undulating stony moorlands, to high
oak forests, dominated everywhere by spurs of the
Majella ; then falls by gradual, gentle slopes to the
towering fortress place above the rushing river Sangro.
One of the main roads to Naples runs through this tract ;
and the hardy traveller would be well advised to foot it
or ride it — unless he be curious about the construction of
mountain railways. This one from Sulmona to Isernia
and Naples is wonderful enough in the first part of its
course. It takes you smoothly along to Pettorano, then
swings you back almost to Sulmona again, then eastward
far into the Majella, where it seems to lose itself It
burrows, it emerges, it hangs by its teeth on the edge of
the precipice ; it swings up to the bare top of the world
at Campo di Giove, where once stood a temple to Great
Jupiter.
If this be the chosen route, then the goal had best
be Roccaraso, which makes an excellent centre, and —
the traveller will not be sorry to hear it — where awaits
him that comfort, at the Albergo Monte Majella (note
well the exact name), which doubtless he has done with-
out cheerfully up to this moment, but which, perhaps, he
has not grown so hardy as altogether to scorn. Rocca-
raso, the highest point at which the traveller is likely to
take up his quarters for long — it is 4100 feet high —
stands in a splendid tract of country just under Monte
Pratella, and is slowly gaining reputation as a health-
resort. The air is magnificent ; it has sufficient shelter
from the mountains ; the views are superb ; and, what is
a great boon in so high a place, those who do not wish
to climb the hillsides can wander in the delicious oak
woods near at hand. These, with the sloping road
down to Castel di Sangro, the paths through the rocky
valley and over the rough Piano di Leone, will serve
many moods. The air is dancing clear as at Rocca di
Mezzo ; but there is none of the stony nakedness. Nay,
268 IN THE ABRUZZI [pt. ii.
if mountain flowers delight you, here you can have your
fill. Luxuriant hedges of honeysuckle, meadow-sweet
in great bushes, all the old familiar friends, daisies and
poppies, buttercups, kingcups, ragged-robins, grow in
splendid profusion, and among the rocks you will come
on rarer things ; orange tiger-lilies spring at your feet out
of the moorland soil, and graceful pink gladioli. The
prospects are wide, there is none of the cooped-up feeling
of the narrow valley where Scanno lies. Here is a
country with darks and lights. The crosses on the hills
tell of winter tragedies ; but in the summer-time Joy
walks among the mountains. And — one may mention it
again — with summer comes Don Beppino from Naples,
stands at the door of his good house which bears the
sign of the Monte Majella, and welcomes the stranger
to the good cheer within. To the best of my knowledge,
Don Beppino is the prime innkeeper of the Abruzzi.
The town of Roccaraso itself will not long detain you.
It has a commanding site, some scraps of ancient build-
ings, and a general air of decrepitude. Idle folks swarm
about the doors. The old dress has gone ; the old crafts
have gone. The population look harmless, but lifeless
too, and melancholy. One could imagine the place
under a ban. It was long pestered by brigands, and
even bred a few ; perhaps it misses the old trade. At
least, any one of the little towns in the neighbourhood
has more spirit and attraction.
Looking out from your windows in the Albergo Monte
Majella, on the opposite hill you see Rivisondoli spread
out like the model of Ascoli on a tea-tray in Crivelli's
"Annunciation." Cross the meadows, make your way
round the corner of the hill, and mount to reach Pesco-
costanzo. The little paesotto high up in the mountains,
higher even than Roccaraso, a place almost buried in
the snows of winter, now the home of poor peasants and
shepherds, was once a town of fine artist-craftsmen. The
CH. XIII.] ROAD TO CASTEL DI SANGRO 269
women keep up the tradition to some small extent
to-day. They are excellent lacemakers, and have a fine
store of ancient designs. Of old the men were mostly
goldsmiths, busy and far-famed. There is not one in the
place now. The fact of this skilled craftsmanship is
needed to explain its relics of grandeur, and the great
church which still remains its pride. San Felice of
Pescocostanzo — it is dedicated also to Santa Maria
Assumpta — -might be the pride of a far greater town ;
and in all the Abruzzi there are few that rival it for its
unspoiled beauty. San Felice has a sacristan who loves
the church he keeps, loves every corner of the vast place ;
but he will lead the visitor to what is looked on as its
special treasure — the sixteenth-century ironwork of one
of the chapel gates. And wonderful it is, though
perhaps too florid. Iron has been treated here as if it
were gold or silver ; but in the elaboration there is
endless invention and imagination — sea-gods, dolphins,
and lobsters, arabesques and pots of flowers, all arranged
into a complex harmony. It is rich, fantastic, marvellous.
There are other pieces of the same local artist's work in
the church, the door of the baptistery, and some lamp-
brackets, simpler these, more delicate, not such touj's de
force. The sacristan, or any one else in the town, will
tell you the legend of this worker in iron. He was a
contadino, and a sportsman. One day, when he had
been hunting in the forest, he sat down to eat his dinner,
laying his gun by his side. When he took it up again
the metal of it was bent. It had been lying on a certain
rare plant. He went home with the idea he had dis-
covered a secret ; shut himself up in a workshop and
learnt the art of ironwork. To turn and twist and
mould the metal to the shape he desired, he used the
strange plant he had found in the forest ; but he told the
secret to none. Even his wife, who helped him in certain
mechanical portions, was blindfolded at important
2^o IN THE ABRUZZI [pt. ii.
moments. And he died without unfolding the secret.
So goes the local tale. We may surmise that the
strange plant of the forest was genius ; hence many have
looked for it in vain ; and that he was no peasant, but
probably a trained goldsmith of the place, who used his
skill in metalwork on this so much larger scale.
It is not the only treasure of the beautiful church.
From the carved ceiling of the nave the dull gilding glints
down dark and splendid, and the same sombre glory is
about the great crown which hangs above the altar.
There are some delightful painted statues, especially
those of Santa Margherita and Santa Appolonia, in
the niches of the altar to the miraculous Madonna del
Colle. This lady, who, under her barbaric silver crown,
looks 7iralte, was found, says the sacristan, in a tree,
and taken to the little church of Our Lady of the Hill,
perched near the Rocca at the north end of Pesco-
costanzo. But there she would not stop, demanding
instant lodging in San Felice, where she has been of
great service. " Do we want rain ? " says the sacristan.
" Just mention it to her, and lo, a cloud is seen black in
the sky, and down it comes in a blessed shower. Ah !
the favours from her hand ! But, now, if it be a matter
of our sins, you would think she had no eyes, no memory
of them at all ! " She stands in a niche of a fine
sixteenth-century altar, its exquisite Renaissance work
of sombre blue and dull gold touched by no meddling
hand, and not too much by time. The long line of slabs
opposite the Madonna is worn smooth and shining with
the progress of her adorers, who approach her on their
knees. I saw a woman making her slow, utterly abject,
way along. Her baby ran beside her, laughing and
crowing as she shuffled. He laughed aloud when she
kissed the ground, and he rubbed the altar steps with
his toy to show her where to place her most fervent
kisses. Ere her devotions were over, he invited her to
CH. XIII.] ROAD TO CASTEL DI SANGRO 271
sit by him, a little tired of her attentions to the Madonna,
and his babble mingled with her supplications.
The sacristan is eloquent on the treasury of the
church — rich in old silver ; but we are more impressed
by the sacristy, a simple, yellow- washed, vaulted room,
with eighteen oak cupboards for the canons' robes.
Eighteen canons ! And there are eight to-day to sing
Mass in this church of peasants and shepherds ! What
do they do when they are not singing Mass } The
sacristan describes the great fire of logs he makes for
them in the focolare of the sacristy. They spread
themselves before it like barons ! he says proudly, and
he fills braziers for them when they sit in the choir.
They need such comforts, the proud, superfluous ones,
in the winter weather, when, to enter the church, they
have to slide down a great heap of snow.
If you come from Sulmona on foot, via Pettorano,
you will cross the Piano di Cinquemiglia ; if by train,
perhaps curiosity may draw you back on your steps
to see a place of so ill a name. Following, then,
the Sulmona road, which swings to the left near
Rivisondoli, you pass the sixteenth-century hermitage
chapel of Santa Maria della Portella, Here has many
a prayer been uplifted for safety in crossing the plain in
the wild weather. We follow the women of Rivisondoli,
trooping in singing bands on their way up to the high
forests for their faggots. Hardly one passes the chapel
without a word to the Madonna within. We enter after
one group. Led by an old woman, they say their
prayers aloud, then visit the various shrines. St. Antony
is kissed again and again ; and when the rest are gone
an old woman murmurs her private grief to him in an
expostulatory tone.
The band goes on, cheerful and singing, but we lose
them soon, as they cross the southern end of the plain
272 IN THE ABRUZZI [pt. ii.
and climb the hillside, while we turn northward along
the endless, straight road in the train of shepherds and
muleteers. Endless, indeed, it seems, for they are
Neapolitan miles those of the Five Mile Plain. In the
hard, clear morning light it is hideous and unimpressive.
There is dazzling snow on the mountains on either hand,
and the sun beats mercilessly on our heads and on the
dead level tract. We have heard of whole armies perish-
ing in the snow here. How many have perished in the
heat ? Flocks across the plain are but as specks, and
when the shepherds have dispersed and the muleteers
have passed us, the monotony of the desert, without its
grandeur, hangs on us like an unbearable burden, till we
conceive a dull, strong hate for the Piano di Cinque-
miglia. Only one house is there along the whole
route, a kind of farm. Wild people look out from
the open loggia, and the dogs are far from civil. Not
another sign of life or humanity is there till near the
end, where the mountain path from Scanno to Roccapia
comes out near the chapel of the Madonna del Carmine.
The waste was in sore need of her blessing, and housed
her sternly. But she lies off the main road, and her
blessing does not reach us. There is no speech left in
us ; and our walk becomes a lifeless trudge, a stupid
counting of the stone pillars which mark the edge of
the road for travellers in the winter snows. Then, where
the old track turns down to Roccapia, we come on the
Fountain of Mascatena, a very fount of life. There
should be a shrine there. Once there was one, perhaps
to St. Antony, for it is his well ; but we drink and drink,
and pick a flower from the crevice of a rock and give it
to the naiad of the spring.
By the people the plain is called the Mare Secco,
the dry sea. But it was not always deserted. For
long ages there were four villages here, and vestiges of
them exist still. During the disturbances in the reign
CH. XIII.] ROAD TO CASTEL DI SANGRO 273
of Queen Giovanna they were continually attacked, and
the Cantelmi, lords of Pettorano, forced them to unite
and to migrate. Thus was founded Rocca Valle Scura
(Roccapia). Then the plain was left to the snow, the
winds, the wolves, the robbers, and the evil spirits. In
February, 1528, three hundred foot soldiers of the
Venetian Lega Santissima against Charles V. perished
here. In March, 1529, five hundred Germans, soldiers
of the Prince of Orange, on their way to Aquila, lost
their lives. Of the single victims, or the bands of
peasants, that have fallen by the way, the number has
never been counted. The danger is a peculiar one, and
arises from the configuration of the place. The winds
rebound from side to side, acquire an incredible force,
toss the snow, which whirls in great vortices. There is
no light. The world is hidden in wild, black, hurricane
whirlwinds ; and death does not ensue merely, or chiefly,
from cold and exposure, but from suffocation. After
the loss of the five hundred Germans, Charles had five
great towers built along the plain, and for a time they
were kept stored with fuel and food. But they became
shelters for wolves and brigands, and veritable death-
traps. In July, 1787, three brigands despoiled seventeen
persons, only a few of whom escaped with their lives, in
one of these torrioni. Now they are utterly demolished.
The popular explanation of the suffocating vortices is
that under the plain are great vaults, vast chambers of
the winds. You can hear them rumbling below, they
say, even before they emerge through the undiscernible
openings to whirl the snows in a dance of death.
We sink down rapidly to Rocca Valle Scura. The
Rock of the Dark Valley it must be, in truth, in the
winter, when daylight is the rarest and briefest of bless-
ings. The mountains rise sheer up on both sides, and
the opening is narrow indeed through which comes the
exquisite glimpse of the valley of the Gizio and of the
T
274 IN THE ABRUZZI [pt. ii.
far horn of Monte Corno. A few weeks ago the snow
lay deep here, and yet the paesotto is bright and gay,
with its red roofs and its green toy trees in the miniature
piazza, as if it were the veriest favourite of the sun.
Dauntless and debonair, and of a ridiculous optimism, is
the little township, and so are its people. It had borne
the name of Rocca Valle Scura for ages, but in 1815 it
made up its mind it would bear it no longer. Rocca
Letizia it should be — the Rock of Joy. The habit of
changing names grew on the inhabitants, and in i860,
at the passage of Victor Emmanuel, they called it
Roccapia, in honour of the Princess Pia, afterwards
Queen of Portugal. And Roccapia it remains. Sing-
ing comes from all the hillsides. The bells make merry
carillon among the mountains, and matrons of seventy
fare back from a long day of sun and toil on the heights
with the high spirits of seventeen.
Through Roccapia runs the road to Pettorano and
Sulmona. Ours lies backward. We reach the blessed
fountain again, where the cattle and the mules and the
mountain ponies are gathered in the evening light. Now
for the long road back. But the dull hard plain of the
morning has vanished, and in its place is a vast expanse of
dim gold. A few great flocks lie somewhere in the mist
over there. There is a low hum in the grasses, the faint
stir of the winds in the vaults below. Then silence and the
night, with soft guiding stars. The road is long, but our
steps are light, the footsteps of those that walk in a dream.
Because you have seized on the characteristics of
one of these little mountain towns, never infer that its
neighbour will share them. The reverse is more likely
to be the case. Here the people are gay, open-minded,
welcoming ; a mile away they will view your approach
with suspicion. Here they are busy and skilful ; there,
out of work, vacant, melancholy. Nowhere is there
o
D
a
z
u
<
o
u
o
CH. XIII.] ROAD TO CASTEL DI SANGRO 275
more variety in human nature than in the little towns
about Roccaraso and Castel di Sangro,
My reception at Roccacinquemiglia was embarrassing.
The place, by the way, is not on the Five Mile Plain,
but well to the south, and stands out gallantly from a
hilly moorland above the Sangro Valley. I left the
artist outside making her picture of it, and climbed up
the steep steps that lead to the top of the town where
the church stands. The church has a good deal of
shabby attractiveness for the casual wanderer. I suppose
I was " the first that ever burst " into it ; and ere I
had examined half of it, the whole idle population of
the upper town — women, girls, boys, and a few men —
were gathering round me. I received their attentions
smilingly, as a matter of policy ; tried conversation, which
was received with long, stony stares. I shifted my
position. So did they. I sat down in front of their
Madonna. So did they ; but they did not look at her.
I retired to a chapel. They followed. I tried light
banter. It melted not a single stare. I thought silence
was perhaps the better part ; but it was not. They only
closed round me the more. I engaged the sacristan in
conversation. He was gracious ; and when I suggested
that the crowd rather hindered a view of his church, he
chased them out. In two minutes they had returned
with reinforcements. Three times did the good man
shoo them forth like fluttered flowls, and three times
did they come back. But during the third sortie they
must have filled his mind with dark suspicions, and on
his return I felt I had lost a friend. It was with a voice
trembling between sternness and some other emotion —
was it feari* — that he asked me to give an account of
myself Where had I come from ? For what purpose ?
Had I no friend in the town to answer for me .? " Takine
the air at Roccaraso ? Sola ! Sola ! " Not for a moment
did he believe in the artist sitting outside there on the
2/6 IN THE ABRUZZI [pt. ii.
moorland, whose sex I had left vague. He gazed long
at me, and his suspicion seemed to melt into a great
pity. He misunderstood my intention when I sought
his hand to give him a gratuity. The coin dropped to
the floor ; he seized my hand and wrung it with force
and warmth, and the tears were in his eyes as he asked
God to keep me ! He thought I stood in great need of
it. On my exit, there they all were in serried ranks by
the door ; and who knows how long I should have had a
sullen, staring procession behind me, had not a little old
woman come out of a door in the upper town, and by
sheer moral force persuaded them of their folly, and
dispersed them as thistledown in the wind. Of what
criminal intentions was I suspected ? I shall never
know.
In the valley below, on the banks of the Sangro, one
laughs at such a remembrance as impossible. Here the
world is gay and open-hearted, and Castel di Sangro is
one of the most picturesque and the most coloured towns
in the Abruzzi. It stands near the southern frontier, its
lower portion on a high-pitched plain that simulates the
lowlands. Near the old bridge over the wide, rushing
Sangro, you enter the town, passing the ancient and
beautiful little church of San Nicola. The Corso is a
winding, many-coloured narrow street, where all the
work is done at the doors. The piazza is a bright and
spirited place, with cafes and chatting people about
their steps ; and mingling with them are the troupe of
travelling players who are to act DAnnunzio in the
theatre in the evening. Fountains play, and the shops
hang out bright-coloured blinds ; and life permits itself
to be more amusing than is usual in the smaller towns of
this stern, dark province. Down in the green poplar-
fringed flats by the river, where the flocks are feeding,
there is more .softness than even in the suave Sulmona
Valley, more movement, more gaiety. Gipsy vans make
CH. XIII.] ROAD TO CASTEL DI SANGRO 277
a bright encampment. Their cosmopolitan inmates beg
from us in French ; and a swarthy queen of sixty-five,
with great play of a red fan, would fain tell us our
fortunes. The evening sun spreads a golden haze over
the wide valley, and round about stand the mountains
of the Molise like great dim-perceived gods. The air
and the scene are of a majestic calm.
We have but turned our back for a moment on the
wild. Castel di Sangro is two. Sheer up from the lower
town of busy chattering Corso and piazza rises the high
bourg, carved out of the rock. Up, up, we mount, by
streets of stairs, under old arches, threading old arcades,
under old loggias, but ever with a back look on the
shining plain, to the great church of Santa Maria, a
grandiose building, with links to its grand time still
remaining in cloister and Romanesque arch. We are
high on this upper piazza here, but the rock still towers
over our heads. Far above still are the ruins of the
oldest castello, that of the first Conti dei Sangro, lords of
many mountains and wide plains. Once Counts of the
Marsi were they too, of the race of Charlemagne. Here
in the high town the people have already lost some of
the genial air of the town below. They are of the
mountain ; and children and grandchildren of those who
swooped down in armed bands, some forty years ago,
with the name of the Bourbons in their mouths, singing —
"Andiam' a spass', a spass',
Viva ru re e ru popol' bass'."
On the topmost height there is a long ridge, and there
aloft lies the Campo Sattto ; and Castel di Sangro still
carries its dead up there, and puts them to rest among
the hills.
CHAPTER XIV
FROM SULMONA TO THE SEA
San Clemente di Casauria— Chieti— Castellamare the sordid— The
pageant of Pescara — Sforza — Gabriele D'Annunzio Pescarese —
Francavilla, the high town — The lovely Sultana — Francavilla-al-
Mare — St. John's morning by the sea.
Our route to the sea lies now along the river Pescara.
The real Pescara is a very little stream, which rises near
PopoH, and has hardly begun to be before it joins with
the Aterno from Montereale, and with the Gizio from
the Piano di Cinquemiglia. The three then flow together,
under the name of the smallest, to the port of Pescara
on the Adriatic. Popoli, with its ruined castle of the
Cantelmi, lies on the hillside to the right, called after
the peoples flying from Corfinium. (Or is it Castrum
Pauperum, after these or other refugees .?) Popoli past —
and I don't know any good reason for stopping there
nowadays — we shall soon be out of the mountains ; but
ere we emerge from them we pass through gorges of the
wildest. In one of these, the Vado, between Popoli and
Tocco, occurs the curious air-current that passes to and
fro at regular intervals in the stillest of weather, a kind
of aerial tide.
At Torre de' Passeri there is something worth alight-
ing for. About a mile and a quarter from here lies
perhaps the greatest architectural treasure of the Abruzzi,
the church of the ancient Abbey of San Clemente di
Casauria. The river has changed its course considerably.
278
cii. XIV.] FROM SULMONA TO THE SEA 279
But once it split here and formed an island, on which
was built the famous abbey — insula PiscaricB paradisi
floridus horhis. In its first form it was a thank-offering
of the Emperor Lewis 11. , in 871, for the defeat of the
Saracens and their disappearance from Italy. This was
l^remature, for his own foundation was to suffer many
times from the assaults of the same enemy. To give
value to his new church, the Emperor got from Pope
Hadrian III. the body of St. Clement Martyr, third
successor of St. Peter, drowned under Trajan for the
Faith. The Pescara has always been turbulent about
this spot ; and when the procession with the relics
reached the river, the bridge had been swept away, and
great boulders were being hurled down by the force of
the torrent. But the Emperor ordered the body of the
martyr to be placed on a mule ; he struck the beast, and
sent it forward, crying, " Let Clement guide you ! " The
tumultuous waves became " like rocks " under the mule's
feet, and the procession passed safely over. Since that
day St. Clement the Martyr has been called on many
times by men in peril near this spot.
The place was richly endowed ; and its abbots had for
long the privilege of holding the imperial sceptre in their
right hands instead of the pastoral staff. Of the ninth-
century building only the crypt remains, with its twelve
antique columns. It was rebuilt and restored so often
that the place, even in its greatest days, was something
of a hybrid ; but beauty always ruled. The fortifications
and the abbey buildings have disappeared ; and now
only the church stands, built mainly in the eleventh and
twelfth centuries by its two great abbots, Trasimondo and
Leonato. It has still much precious workmanship left.
The sculptured story of the building on the architrave ;
the sarcophagus under the altar with the bones of St.
Clement ; the richly carved pulpit ; the base of the
Easter candlestick ; the bronze doors once inlaid with
28o IN THE ABRUZZI [pt. ii.
patterns in gold ; the west end with its fine arches and
columns, make it a treasure-house of beauty ; and the
effect is enhanced by its isolation in the lonely valley.
Various architectural influences have been at work in it,
Byzantine certainly, and French, according to some
authorities ; yet, in the main, it is typically Abruzzese ;
and the vigorous sculpture is mostly by local hands.
Of all the architectural treasures of the Abruzzi San
Clemente di Casauria is the best known, and detailed
descriptions of it have been written by various travellers.
Also, it is well cared for now. Says Mr. Keppel Craven
of a certain bas-relief of the church, " If it does not
establish a very favourable idea of sculpture in the year
866 [the date is wrong], it is not deficient in attraction
to those who make the history of the dark and middle
ages their particular study." Hear, on the other hand,
what a distinguished Abruzzese has to say of the place.
In the Trionfo della Morte the hero recalls a visit to
Casauria with his uncle Demetrio —
" He and Demetrio made their way down by a sheep-
walk towards the abbey, which the trees still hid. An
infinite calm was spread about over the solitary and
majestic places, over the wide deserted track of grass
and stones, uneven and stamped, as it were, with the
steps of giants, all silent, its beginning lost in the mystery
of the far and holy mountains. A feeling of primitive
sanctity still pervaded it, as if lately the grass and stones
had been trodden by a long migration of patriarchal
flocks seeking the seaward horizon. Down there in the
plain appeared the basilica, all but a ruin. The ground
about was encumbered with rubbish and undergrowth ;
fragments of sculptured stones were heaped up against
the pilasters ; from every chink hung ragged weeds ;
recent masonry of brick and plaster closed the ample
apertures of the side arches ; the doors were falling.
And a compan}' of pilgrims were resting in a brute
CH. XIV.] FROM SULMONA TO THE SEA 281
slumber under the most noble portico erected by the
magnificent Leonato. But the three arches still intact
rose out of their divine capitols with a haughty grace ;
and the September sun gave to the pale pietra gentile so
rich a hue that both he and Demetrio felt themselves in
the presence of a sovereign beauty. Nay, the closer
their contemplation of it, the clearer and purer seemed
to grow the harmony of the lines. Little by little, from
that inconceivable and daring concordance made by the
arches of every order — pointed arches, horseshoe arches —
by the various mouldings, the bosses, the lozenges, the
palms, the repeated rosettes, the sinuous foliage, the
symbolic monsters ; from every detail of the work was
revealed, through the eyes to the spirit, that unique and
absolute rhythmic law, obeyed alike by the great masses
and the lesser ornaments. Such was the secret force of
the rhythm that it overcame all the surrounding discords,
and presented a fantastic vision of the whole work, as it
had risen in the twelfth century by the high will of the
Abbot Leonato, in a fertile island ringed about and fed
by a mighty river. Both carried away this vision with
them. It was September, and the country all about in
the dying summer had a mingled aspect of grace and
severity, as if in mystic harmony with the spirit of the
Christian monument. The quiet valley was circled by
two crowns, the first of olive and vine-clad hills, the
second of naked, sharp rocks ; and in the scene Demetrio
found the same obscure sentiment which animated that
canvas of Leonardo, where above a background of
desolate rocks there sits and smiles a lady, an
enchantress. Moreover, to render more acute the
contrasting feelings working in them both, from a far
vineyard rose a song, prelude of the early vintage, and
behind them, in response, came the litany of the pilgrims,
now going on their way again. And the two cadences,
the sacred and the profane, mingled and were confounded.
282 IN THE ABRUZZI [pt. il.
" Fascinated by the remembrance, the survivor had
but one chimerical desire — to go back there, to see the
basilica once again, to live there and save it from ruin, to
revive its primitive beauty, re-establish the great cult,
and after so long an interval of neglect and oblivion,
renew once more the CJironicon Casauriense. Was it not,
indeed, the most glorious temple of the Abruzzi soil,
built on an island of the parent river ; the most ancient
seat of temporal and spiritual power ? Had it not been
the centre of a vast and proud life, for age after age ?
The Clementine soul still reigned there, lasting, pro-
found ; and in that summer afternoon of long ago it had
revealed itself to him and Demetrio through the medium
of the divine, rhythmic thought expressed in a consum-
mate harmony of the parts."
Chieti shows nothing of itself from the station as you
pass, (But do not pass.) It stands three miles off and
far up, eleven hundred feet, above the plain ; and you
reach it by a tramway. It is a large, busy, attractive
town, considerably greater than Sulmona, a good deal
refaced in modern times, but not replanned, and with
vestiges still of the time when it was Theate, the ancient
capital of the Marrucini. Now, as in former days, it is
one of the most stirring centres of intelligence in the
Abruzzi. It merits more notice here ; but my space
gives out, and I am hurrying to the sea. Let my one
word be at least emphatic. For its site Chieti is fit to
be the capital of a great empire. I have never seen a
position of greater grandeur. It commands the whole of
the Central Apennines. Choose your day well, and an
hour when the mists have rolled away, and the whole
Majella group and the whole Gran Sasso range will be
discovered to you. It commands the Adriatic and the
great wide-stretching plain, through which the Pescara
winds and twists its shining pattern to the sea.
CH. XIV.] FROM SULMONA TO THE SEA 283
But seen from below it is a dull, flat plain that lies
between Chieti and the Adriatic shore. Now and then a
reach of river gives one a hope of something more in-
spiring ; but the train drones on and you lose it. Nor
do you feel keenly the approaching sea, even when you
steam into the railway station in the back slums of
Pescara. There, if the traveller be wise, he will turn
southward to Francavilla without delay. We turned
northward, a mile or so, to Castellamare Adriatico ; and
an hour afterwards were wondering, with dusty despair
in our eyes and hearts, why we had ever come.
In a book published just seventy years ago, I read of
Castellamare as a place " much frequented in the summer
for the convenience of sea-bathing and the benefit of
a cool and healthy air." What has it been doing in the
meanwhile .'' Whether it be much or little frequented
I cannot tell, for the workmen were hammering up the
" stabilimento " for the coming season in leisurely fashion
when we were there ; but that it could ever be ready for
visitors, or capable of attracting them, seems impossible.
Nearly all seaside resorts are sordid. The contact of
humanity with the sea, otherwise than as sailors, fishers,
or boat-builders, seems mostly to debase both. But
there are degrees of sordidness. I remember with a
sinking of the spirits a wet Bank-holiday once spent at
Heme Bay, also the back streets of Berck. But Cas-
tellamare Adriatico touches lower depths of ugliness and
dulness. A hot, white, dusty high-road runs by the inn ;
noisy, too, but the noise is associated with the only
amusing feature of the place, the fly-drivers. They are
a lively, bright-spirited crew, and in constant demand,
though probably they make very modest fortunes. Here
you see the true Neapolitan delight in sitting behind any
kind of horse, and the Neapolitan dislike of padding the
hoof ; and so the down-at-heel pedlar, or the gentleman
in search of umbrellas to mend, when tired of the high-
284 IN THE ABRUZZI [pt. ii.
road takes a carriage. Along here, too, come the
painted country carts, pretty enough everywhere through
the province, but nowhere more so than at Castellamare
— Hght, graceful things, their body and shafts and wheels
painted with dainty floral patterns, garlands and bouquets
of red and blue on a white ground. Save for such
incidents, the high-road is a glaring horror; the character-
less piazza is little improvement on it, nor do the shabby
and pretentious villas lift your mind. The little fisher
cottages are lost now among the new excretions ; and the
inhabitants, at least on the eve of the season, are not
very attractive. They have a cynical slatternliness bred
perhaps of disappointment ; and, indeed, they have not
had much of a chance since hygienic standards have
gone up. Nowadays they have to import their good
drinking-water by train from Popoli. Till the train
comes in you may go thirsty.
Another hot dusty road from the piazza takes you to
a poor little strip of beach, bordering what, at first sight,
seems a very ordinary sea, whatever it be called. Turn-
ing southward along the shore, however, the flowers
begin to interest us. We have been so long in the
mountains we have forgotten that we are after all in the
South ; now we learn it, not only from the varieties of
broom, of pink furze, of luxuriant sea-holly, the giant
clumps of crimson vetch, but also from a red-flowered
cactus. Thunder is rumbling, and it rains down there at
Ortona. A veil is over the sky, but through it, faintly
descried, rise the mountains, our Majella from its eastern
side, and the familiar horned peaks of the Gran Sasso.
Farther on, at the mouth of the Pescara, we are conquered
and captured, but by the simplest means. The scene—
a placid river giving itself to a placid silvery sea, some
slender trees lining the banks that lead to the flat river
port — has nothing for the moment to offer but tranquillity.
In the days that followed it bred keener sensations.
CH. XIV.] FROM SULMONA TO THE SEA 285
Looking down on the mouth of the Pescara River,
and far up and down the Adriatic, and inland to the
mountain walls, stands a high, white, flat-roofed old
mansion-house, girt about by a grove of pines and
olives. It has seen better days, and now shelters very
various tenants. It is the kind of place one passes by
with regret, because there is no chance of stopping, and
then pays one's self by making it the background of a
romantic tale. But this time we did not pass on ; and
for a week at least we owned a villa on the Adriatic,
or as much of it as we desired, its topmost floor, its flat
terrace roof, and its outlook perched on that. From
there there was so much to see that we forgot Castella-
mare and all its new squalor.
Every evening there is a pageant here.
A far sky, infinitely far, a space of mauve and violet
that changes one knows not where, and stretches blue
above. The sea is a great path softly patterned in
turquoise and pale green ; and the laughing white teeth
of the surf edges the shore. The river mouth is fringed
by green dancing poplars, and on the nearer side by dark
stone pines. And from the sea, or from somewhere
between sea and sky, come boats, like great birds of
gorgeous plumage, crimson and russet, flaming orange
and pale lemon, parti-coloured, too, the russet dashed
with indigo, or painted with saffron, the yellow patterned
with faded green, the orange with tiger stripes of black.
Surely these red-and-gold creatures will never light on
these shores ! Yet they come on silently, drawn by the
eyes of the women sitting in the sand near the bar ; and
the wings turn to swelling sails of heaving barks, proud
as if they bore an emperor and his suite for freight.
There is a wild joy in their dance over the strip of surf.
Now for the grand entry up the river, which is disposed
with order and ceremony. They come in pairs, each
pair alike in colour and design ; and the designs of the
286 IN THE ABRUZZI [pt. ii.
sails are varied and wonderful. The sun, the moon, the
stars, are there, of course. The artists of some have
had a grotesque touch, and have caricatured humanity
with a splash of bark ; but the others are mostly pious,
and have made crosses, or emblazoned " I.H.S." like a
mighty charm, or the symbol of the host. One pair
is patterned like a rich Indian web ; and even the mere
patches have their unconscious artistry. On they come,
the ruddy and the pale, the scarlet wings and the yellow,
the tiger-striped and the white, sending down their
colours into the water athwart the bows as they advance ;
and never a king's pageant, paid for by gold, and
arranged by a lord marshal, was, or could be, so splendid
and fine. Behind the colour and the pride there is peril
and there is penury ; and many a home-coming to poor
hearths ; but the splendour is not for that mocking or
unreal. These boats of Pescara belong to an age when
labour had its ritual and pageant ; and labour will be
real and sound when it has them again. The spirit of
the old industries of the strong hand and the fine hand
dies when dies the beauty that was their companion
from of old. On they come — not for a moment can you
look aside — up the river, past the little low huts that
mean home to the men on board, and anchor among the
trees. Nor is the pageant over yet. There they lie,
their sails still hung out among the leaves, and now they
are banners of crimson and gold ; and behind them
rises blue Majella, snow-streaked and snow-capped.
This is what the little town has to show every evening.
This river mouth was the scene of the death of Sforza,
first and greatest of the name. He had come from Ortona,
where he had dreamt a vivid dream of struggling in deep
water, of calling on a tall man, who looked like St.
Christopher, to help him, but in vain. His generals
would have had him wait. But speed, he said, was his
CH. XIV.] FROM SULMONA TO THE SEA 287
best policy ; and he sped on till he reached the Pescara
estuary. His opponents, the Bracceschi, had staked the
ford of the river, and sunk boats to hinder as much as
possible the passage of Sforza's men. The leaders
crossed easily enough, however, and four hundred horses
after them. But by that time the wind had risen, the
water was rough, and the soldiers were nervous. Besides ,
Braccio's men in the castle heard them and came out.
While Francesco drove them back, the elder Sforza
called to his men to come on, and to encourage them he
went into the water again. A young page struggling in
the waves called for help. Sforza went to his aid, and
his horse slipped and fell. Says the chronicle, " Twice
his mailed hands were raised above the water together,
as if praying for help ; but his men feared the depth of
the waters and the enemy's arrows, and the weight of
his armour doomed him." The body of the great Sforza
was swept out to the sea that never gave it up.
The town, very insignificant to-day, has had a long
and rather sombre history. In ancient times, when it
was Aterno — the Lombards first called it Pescara — it
was a place of importance as on the frontier between the
Frentani and the Vestini. Here ended the Valerian
Way. It always remained a fortress, one of the most
important in the Abruzzi. Its chief fortifications were
built by the Emperor Charles V. and the Duke of Alva ;
and in 1566 it beat off a determined Turkish attack.
The place gave the title of Marquis to Ferrante Francesco
d'Avalos, the husband of Vittoria Colonna. Till 1867
it was an important military station, and its prison had
a gloomy name. During the struggle for liberty it was
never long empty of chained prisoners. The prison is
still there, but the galleys are gone.
The town is sunk low on the sea-level, and the great
flats about it had formerly a very bad reputation, and
288 IN THE ABRUZZI [pt. ii.
soldiers dreaded a long station in its malarious air. But
the flats have been well drained ; and so secure does the
place now feel in its healthfulness that it is making some
efforts to develop itself into a bathing resort. There
are odd bits and corners in the old town that have their
attraction, and the church of San Nicola is one. It is
a simple, whitewashed place, with quaint old wooden
statues in its niches, a church of fishers and sea-faring
folk. We were there on Sant' Antonio's Day ; and the
saint received much honour. They had decked his
statue round with splendid white lilies ; and the tall
candles rose among them only as rival lights. Whole
families came to pay him their respects, as they might
to a favourite young cousin on his birthday. Babies
were lifted to kiss his cord or his frock. Old women
stroked his hand, touched delicately his sleeve, and
then kissed their own hand that had touched his. It
was a pretty family scene, full of simple sincerity. One
good lady said her prayers near him with warmth and
intensity, fanning herself the while with elegant gestures.
Somewhere, hidden from the stranger's eye, is, doubt-
less, the life of old-modish gentility that has been depicted
in the Novelle della Pescara and in Sa7i Patiialeone. For
Pescara has a distinguished interpreter, a son of whom
it is inordinately proud, Gabriele D'Annunzio.
In 1880 — he was sixteen then — from the College
of Prato he sent to the critic Chiarini his first book of
poems, already published, Priino Vere. In the accom-
panying letter he wrote, " I am an Abruzzese of Pescara.
I love my sea with all the force of my soul ; and here in
this valley, on the banks of this muddy river, I suffer
not a little from homesickness." Chiarini reviewed the
book in the Fanfulla della Domenica. It was taken
seriously, and the young author became a lion. He
was Gaetano Rapagnetto then. The name he afterwards
adopted, which he took from some family connections,
CH. XIV.] FROM SULMONA TO THE SEA 289
had been preceded by various fanciful ones ; among them
was Floro Bruzio.
The " Abruzzian flower " bore other precocious
blossoms ; and in 1882, when he went to Rome, he was
received with wild enthusiasm. After three years of
fame, of spoiling, of luxury, and some scandal, he wrote
to a friend in a fit of weariness, " Oh, if but the snow
could fall here from Majella and from Monte Corno ! I
should invoke it with the passion of a lover ! " And he
came back to recuperate in body and mind. From 1885
to 1900 he was living mostly in the Abruzzi, among the
mountains, and with his friend Michetti by the sea. To
this time belong // Piacere, II Trionfo della Morte,
Le Vergine delle Roccie, the Odi Navali, two volumes
of Laiidi^ and many tales. And, moreover, these years,
in which he gained a fresh impression of his home
province, have given much matter and much character
to his later work. In spite of all that is exotic in him
there is no question of his love for his native soil. ''Alia
Terra d'Abriizzi, alia mia inadre, alle mie sorelle, al into
fratello estcle, al inio padre sepolito, a tiitti i miei inorti,
a tiitta la mia genie, fra la montagna e il mare, qiiesto
canto dell' antico sangue consacro." So runs the dedication
of La Figlia di Jorio.
Do not look to him as a topographical guide through
the province, though Pescara and San Vito and Guardia-
grele and other places serve him as backgrounds. Guide-
book details are not to be gathered from him. But the
general character of his race and country he has under-
stood, intellectually and sensuously. He has maladies
of the spirit which his people have not ; but the Abruzzesi
are not mere simple folk of the hills. They are a very
old race, and by no means simple. They have long and
unquiet memories ; and out of the past there are survivals
and dreams that to-day does not readily understand.
And D'Annunzio has done his best to shatter the frequent
U
290 IN THE ABRUZZI [pt. ii.
impression of the passing traveller that they are an
unemotional race. The fire is always there underneath,
and he has shown it alight and of explosive force. He
has interpreted their religious spirit in its naked simplicity,
in its passion of abjectness before the divine, and in its
traditional and pagan exaltation, as in his magnificent
Figlia di Jorio, that " song of the ancient blood." The
life of the fisher on the sea and the reaper in the sunny
fields he has set to melodious verse. He has sung of the
mystic Majella that rises behind his native shores. The
heart of his people he has not interpreted — or I do not
think so. However close he watches, he watches ever
from the outside. But when he has sung of his sea, he
has revealed the very heart of it.
" A'l mare, a'l mare, Ospite, a'l mio libero
tristo, fragrante verde Adriatico,
A'l mar' de' poeti, a'l presente
dio che mi tempra nervi e canzoni."
My gentleman traveller, Mr. Keppel Craven, wrote
in 1823, " My departure from Pescara was attended with
indescribable feelings of relief and satisfaction." But he
never watched the daily pageant from the roof of the
Villa de R . Had we not done so, we might have
echoed him. It was Castellamare that we turned our
backs on with readiness. But the stranger seeking a
haven on the coast of the Abruzzi, should direct his steps
as soon as possible to Francavilla. From Pescara
you see its spires towering aloft four miles to the
south, inward somewhat from the bulging headland
beyond, where stands Ortona. By crossing some
shallow streams you can reach it along the flats near
the shore. The high-road lies parallel with the railway
(to Brindisi), and is not very attractive, save at the
point where it runs through a beautiful little pineta
CH. XIV.] FROM SULMONA TO THE SEA 291
of dark, wind-blown stone pines, set among the low sand-
hills.
Francavilla is two — the old town, piled high on its
rock above the sea, compact, and, of necessity, isolated ;
and the new one, a narrow strip of bathing-station
fringing the beach. As yet they do not interfere with
each other at all, but tend to each other's profit ; and
their contrast is amusing. Francavilla, the town of the
Franks, so called because it has been again and again in
the possession of the French, is a very ancient place,
in a situation of wonderful beauty. The Adriatic lies
at its feet ; low fertile hills stretch on each side ; and
the southern and eastern slopes are almost of tropical
luxuriance. Behind it the ground falls gradually to
the plain of the Pescara, dotted with peaks and points
on which are jauntily poised the little gleaming hamlets.
Back of these rise the great blue ranges. The town
runs sheer up, with here and there a flat space for
outlook, east or west, north or south, whence the eye can
sweep the land and sea from the Gran Sasso down to
the Punta della Penna. Santa Liberata's rosy minaret
shoots up at the north end, and the minaret and dome
of Santa Maria Maggiore to the south. The old convent
of the latter, lying in its gardens and vineyards sloping
to the sea, has been for years the home of the painter
Michetti. (A dependency lies below on the shore, which
you may mistake for a powder magazine, or a Turkish
fort, or a giant camera in stone, with lenses set in
capriciously here and there — for anything, in fact, save
what it is, a painter's studio.) Nearly all the fine detail
and ornament that ever existed in the streets of the
town have gone ; but the plan is still strictly mediseval,
a labyrinth of narrow, climbing wa}-s, running up into
sloping piazzas, a place of surprising vistas, and eager
for vistas, seemingly, so many are the loggias pitched
aloft for views of the sea in front or the mountains
292 IN THE ABRUZZI [pt. ii.
behind. Most of its twelve old towers exist in part,
though only a few now overtop the walls. One ancient
house in the principal street has kept its Gothic windows ;
and the women sitting on the steps opposite call it the
"palazzo," and, perhaps satirically, advise us to buy it.
Once it was the house of a queen, they say. What
queen ? Oh, a queen that lived long, long ago. Is this
some remembrance of Margaret of Austria, who lived
beyond there at Ortona, who rode about the country in
male attire, and may have had a residence here ? Or
was it the birthplace of that Francavilla lady with the
romantic history, of her who was stolen away and
became Sultana .-'
During the Saracen invasion under the renegade
Pialy Bassa, there was a series of determined attacks on
the coast here, and Francavilla suffered most of all. The
inhabitants, seized with panic, fled for their lives. They
had no treasure like that of the Ortonesi, the body of
the Apostle Thomas ; but they had their holy San Franco,
and the heathens scattered his bones, leaving only a fore-
arm, and took away his silver chdsse to the ships ; every-
thing else, too, they could lay their hands on. Several
men and women, who had been unable to escape, were
seized as well. There is a legend that a very beautiful
girl, one Domenica Catena, was offered to the Sultan,
as among the best things in the booty. The lovely
Francavillese was taken to his harem, where she became
the prime favourite, gained an ascendancy over the mind
of the Sultan, and bore him a son, who was afterwards
Selim II. After twenty-two years she persuaded her
lord to let her go back to Italy ; and, laden with rich
gifts, she set sail for her native land. It is said that her
mother and her brothers left Francavilla and joined her
in Rome, but only to follow her example and enter the
cloister. The rest of her life she spent in austerit)' and
exemplary devotion.
CH. XIV.] FROM SULMONA TO THE SEA 293
The paths are entrancing that wind around the upper
town, in and out of the hills. Over the olives the sea
is of an ineffable blue. The wild Abruzzi is far away,
behind Majella to the west, and you move in a maze of
beauty, the path bordered with love-in-a-mist, with hedges
of high purple thistles and banks of giant scabious.
Silver and gold are the olives and the corn ; and the little
white houses gleam like precious marble in the sun. A
strong note is struck here and there by a group of black
cypresses or a flame-coloured oleander ; and seaward the
glimpses of turquoise rouse and exhilarate like a song.
It is the South. Out of the wild Abruzzi to summer by
a southern sea !
Francavilla-al-Mare — that is, the little mushroom
bathing-station — is beginning to take itself seriously. At
present it is a toy place, and at the end of the season
you expect to see it packed up neatly and put away in
its box for the winter. To-morrow some of the charm
may be gone from this strip of sun-baked beach bound-
ing a tideless sea. Just before the season opens, the sea
and shore swarm with water-babies, amphibious, golden-
brown-skinned creatures of infinite agility and grace,
who swim and dabble in the green water, and race and
frisk and roll in the sand like pigmy gods. Trans-
formed by ragged garments into the urchins of the high
town, they are unrecognizable. The season banishes
them a little to the north and south ; and then the main
promenade becomes a haunt of white arabs, who stalk
in dignified anonymity against the sky, or lounge by the
red-and-yellow wooden bathing-booths, or crowd about
the fishing-boats, with their sails of gorgeous hue, that
moor right up to the sandy shore ; for Francavilla has
no harbour. Such is their land life. For their water life,
they may make it out of long days, if they will, for even
at dawn the water has no chill.
294 IN THE ABRUZZI [pt. ti.
To every place its hour. And here on the edge of
this wide, soft-heaving, Eastern sea there is an hour
that calls even the air-drugged out of far-away fields
of sleep, by the poignant force of its beauty and ecstasy ;
the hour when the morning star sings the new day and
the sea to fresh embrace. Dawn here has its festivals. We
saw one, not planned by a conscious poet, but a survival
out of the antique world when men sang praises to the
god of day as the best of all the gods. It was St.
John's morning ; and the rose of the dawn was opening
when we neared the mouth of the little Drontolo, which
trickles through the sands to the south of Francavilla.
There are no houses very near the shore at this point ;
but a company of people were gathered, more than a
dozen of them, peasants from some seaboard farm,
perhaps all of one family.
The youths went out to the sea in a boat, and dived
from it, and swam to and fro in the fresh water. The
rest dabbled with the waves on the shore, and stood
looking out to the horizon. As the red sun started up
into sight there was a low cry, and then singing ; and
from the water here and there, the lifting of a hand and
arm. All hail ! We were not near enough to hear the
name of the god they invoked ; and perhaps they called
him Phcebus Apollo, and perhaps San Giovanni. Then
on the shore they made a feast. Still looking seaward
they ate their bread and fruit and drank their wine,
and gave pledges, and spoke of next St. John's morning ;
and the old ones told of the many they remembered in
the past. The elders were serenely gay, while the
children strayed and picked up the treasures of the
sea. A long, quiet sunning on the golden beach ;
then a slow procession homeward, the old folks and
the little ones, the youths and the maidens. They
carry back the tune of the festa into the fields of
their labour. "Viva San Giovanni! San Giovanni, be
CH. XIV.] FROM SULMONA TO THE SEA 295
propitious ! " They vanish ; and the sounds of their
stornelll come down to us from the vineyards. We
Hnger for a space. But our way lies inland. We turn
our backs on the sea, and face westward and upwards
to the mountains.
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTES
Chap. I., p. 5. — To these writers of travel-books dealing with the
Abruzzi may be added Gregorovius, who wrote of the
country, in general terms, in his Wandcrjahtr, vol. 4, and
Hare, Cities of S. Italy. Native guide-books hardly
exist, though Abbate'S Giiida al Gran Sasso is indispen-
sable to climbers.
P. 24. — Signor Nitti states the case for the South in his
Nord e Sjid, 1900.
Chap. II,, pp. 26 d seq. — In addition to the usual authorities on
Roman history, Cramer's Description of Ancient Italy,
1826, will be found useful for the early history of the
province. The special historian of the Abruzzi is
Antinori, Raccolta di Memorie isto7-icJie delle tre
provincie degli Abruzzi, 1781-83. For the history of the
Kingdom of Naples there are Giannone and Colletta,
likewise the volumes of the Societa Napoletana di Storia
Patria.
P. 38. — Very little of the material for the history of the Abruzzi
in the Risorgimento is available for English readers ; but
the following books may be mentioned : Castagna, La
Sollevazione d'Abruzzo neW anno 1814 (1884); General
Pepe's Memoirs, 1846; and Constantini, Azione e
Reazione, 1902. Details concerning the censorship are
to be found in Marc-Monnier'S U Italic^ est-clle la terre
des marts ? 1 860.
Chap. III. — For brigandage, see Marc-Monnier, Histoire du
Brigandage dans V Italic Mdridionale, 1862; also the
anonymous Notice Historiqne sjir Charles-Antoine, Comte
Manhcs. I have found Co^'i>i:K'^'T\'^\^'S> Azione c Reazione
of special service.
296
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 297
Chap. IV., pp.74 ^/i-^^. — See Notes to Chap. XI. for Pope Celestine
and Rienzi. San Bernardino's wanderings in the province
are described in his Hfe by Thureau-Dangin, also his
relations with St. John of Capestrano. For the latter
consult the A.SS. and Wadding. All my information
about Don Oreste comes from De Nino's // Messia delP
Abruzso^ 1890.
P. 86. — Representations. See T. Bruni, Feste Religiose nella
provificia di Chieti, 1907.
Chap. V. — The principal authorities for the folk-lore of the Abruzzi
are G. Finaimore, Tradizioni Popolari Abrnzzcsi,^)^^^^-,
1882-86, and A. De Nino, Usie Costumi Abnizzesi, 6 vols.,
1879-97.
Chap. VI. — The various arts and crafts of the province have been
described exhaustively by V. Bindi, Momimenti storici
ed artistici degli Abruzzi, 2 vols., 1889. See also Schulz,
Kiinst des Mittelalters in Unteritalien, and Perkins,
Italian Sculptors, 1868.
Chap. VII. — For folk-songs, see Finamore, Melodic popolari
Abruzzesi J E. LEVI, Fiorita di Canti Tradizionali, 1895 ;
and Canti popolari delle Provincie Meridionali. Ed.
Casetti and Imbriani.
Chap. VI 1 1. — There is a good guide to Tagliacozzo and the
neighbourhood by G. Gattinara.
Pp. 167 et seq. — For Conradin, consult Rauimer'S and
Schirrmacher's works on the Hohenstaufen.
Chap. IX. — The historians of the Marsica are Febonio (Phebonius
Mutius), Historice Marsortcni, 1678, and Corsignani,
Reggia Marsica, 1738.
Pp. 187 ct seq. — For Albe, see C. Promis, Lc Antichita di
Alba Fucense J and for S. Maria in Valle, Bindi, op. cit.
Chap. XL, p. 224. — For Pope Celestine, consult Celestino V. ed il
VI. centenario delta sua incoronazione. Aquila, 1894.
P. 228. — Papencordt, Cola di Rienzo e il suo tempo (Ital.
transl., 1844), tells of the tribune's sojourn in the Abruzzi.
P. 231. — For the legends of Ovid, see De Nino and Finamore,
op. cit.; also De Nino, Ovidio nella Trad. Pop. di
Stcbnona, 1886.
298 BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTES
Chap. XII. — There is a small guide to the whole valley by
SCACCHI.
Chap. XIII. — G. Liberatore'S Ragionamcnto sul Piano Cinque
7iiglia deals also, cursorily, with the surrounding district.
Chap. XIV.— For S. Clemente di Casauria, see Bindi, op. cit.,
and SCHULZ, op. cit.; also JaCKSON'S Shores of the
Adriatic, 1906.
INDEX
Abdate, E., 296
Abruzzesi, characteristics of the, 5,
6, 7, 8, 46, 47, 48, 163, 186, 289,
290
Abruzzi, tlie : agriculture, 6, 18,
164, 165, 175; art, 4, 116-121 ;
Church in, 37 ; climate, 4, 24 ;
education, 24 ; frontiers, 29, 39,
50, 53, 64, 161 ; as health resort,
7, 9 ; history of, 26-43 » industry,
prospects of, 6, 7, 11 ; as the La
Vendee of New Italy, 38, 43 ;
picturesqueness, 4 ; poverty, 24 ;
railways, 2, 267 ; religion, 6,
70-94 ; in the Risorgiviento, 38-
43. 63-65, 68, 69 ; rivers, 10 ;
roads, 2 ; secret societies, 60 ;
shepherds, 6, n-17 ; situation
and topography, i, 2, 10 ; as
tourist ground, 3 ; travellers in,
5 ; women, 9, 20-22
Abruzzo, origin of name, 27
Abruzzo, Citeriore, 10
Abruzzo, Ulteriore Primo, 10
Abruzzo, Ulteriore Secondo, 10
Acclozamora, Bertrando, 262
Acclozamora, Leonello, 200, 201,
202
Acquaviva, Count, 51
Acta Sa?ictoru>n, 256, 297
Adriatic, 2, 10, 12, 18, 28, 30, 87,
103, 104, 122, 123, 143, 278, 282,
283, 284, 285, 290, 291, 293,294,
295
/Eneas, 217
/Eneas Sylvius, 79
yEneid, 181
/Equi, the, 27, 29, 188
/Equiculi, the, 29, 35
^sernia. See Isernia
Agrippina, Empress, 176, 177, 178
Alardo, See De Valery, Erard
Albe, also Alba Fucensis or
Fucentia, 29, 32, 33, 116, 144,
164, 169, 170, 173, 177, 185, 186,
187-193
Aldobrandini, 51, 52
Aleardi, 19, 172
Alento, 98
Alexander VII., Pope, 130
Alexander of Macedonia, 189
Alfedena, 130
Alfonso of Aragon, King, 12, 178,
265
Alva, Duke of, 22, 287
America, 6, 19, 20, 22, 23, 24, 129,
193, 209
Americani, 20, 23, 252
Amiterno, 35
Ancona, 83
Andrea of San Spirito, Brother, 75,
229
Andrea dell' Aquila, 117, 118
Andrea di Sulmona, 218
Angelo of San Spirito, Brother, 75,
229, 230
Angevins, 37, 1S9, 202
Angiolina, maga, 255
Angitia, also Angizia, 96, 181, 183,
232, 262
Annibaldi, the, 168
Antinori, A. L., 170
Antioch, 73
Antonelli, bandit, 54, 55
Antonelli, Cardinal, 64
Antrodoco, 67, 78
Antrosano, 164, 169
Anversa, 117, 240, 254, 260-264
Apennines, 3, 10, 12, 27, 194, 282
Apollo, 180 ; temple of, 98, 219
Aprutium, 27
Apulia, 12, 13, 17, 47, 227
299
300
INDEX
Apulian shepherds, 12, 13
Aquila, 2, 10, 27, 36, 39, 40, 62,
68, 75. 76, 78, 79. 102, 116, 117,
"8, 155, 157, 170, 202, 203,
208, 209, 212, 216, 217, 227, 228,
273
Aquila, province of (Ulteriore II.),
67
Ara Cceli, 79
Aragonese dynasty, the, 37, 189, 202
Archippe, 180
Archippus, 181
Architecture, I16-118, 221, 278-
282
Arezzo, Cardinal, 203
Ariosto, 51, 127, 130
Arlotti, Giovanni, 168
Art, 4, I16-121, 218, 269, 270
Ascanio de' Mari, 162-164
Ascolani, 32
Ascoli Piceno, 27, 31, 34, 26S
Asia Minor, 32
Aspromonte, 65
Assisi, 92, 93, 253
Astura, 172
Aterno, 2S7
Aterno, River, 10, 169, 215, 239,
278
Atria, 29, 32
Atria Veneta, 30
Atri Piceno, 117
Augustus, 177, 185
Aurillac, 55, 57
Australia, 23
Austrians, 36, 39, 40
Avezzano, 62, 99, 156, 157, 159,
160, 175, 176, 179, 184-187, 193,
198, 199
Bagnidura, 230
Barbato, Marco, 221
Barbato, goldsmith, 21S
Barberini, the, 149, 150
Bari, 67, 92, 93
Barletta, 52
Barrea, 16, 67, 104
Basilicata, the, 158
Basso-Tomeo, 54, 55
Batistello, 52
Beaulieu, 164
Belgrade, So
Belprati, the, 260, 261
Benedict XIII., Pope, 80
Benevento, 168, 234
Berardi, Count, 53
Berardus, Count, 149, 195
Berenson, B., 4
Bergia, Chiaffredo, 66, 67, 68
Bindi, V., 116, 119, 297, 298
Bisaccio, 129
Bisignano, 183
Bituitus, King, 189
Bomba. See Ferdinand II., of Two
Sicilies
Bonaparte, Joseph, 40, 54
Boniface VIII., Pope, 74, 227, 228
Borgia, Caesar, 128
Borjes, Jose, 65, 158-160
Bourbon dynasty, the, 24, 37, 38,
40, 41, 82, 133, 155, 156, 158,
159, 277
Bourbons, as patrons of brigands,
47. 54, 57, 58, 6j, 64
Bovadilla, the, 202, 203
Bovianum, 34
Bracceschi, the, 287
Braccio da Montone, 46, 218, 265
Brienne, Jean de, 218
Brigandage, 43, 44-69, 161, 209
Brigands, 40, 132, 133, 273
Brindisi, 189, 236, 290
Bruni, Dr., 16
Bruni, T., 86, 87
Brussels, 43
Bucchianico, 98
Byron, Lord, 38, 140
C^SAR Augustus, 234
Caesar, C, Julius, 176, 178, 189,
217
Cffisar, L. Julius, 32, 33
Calabria, 56, 158, 169, 200
Calabria, Duke of, 87
Calabrians, 46, 57
Calaturo, 57
Calderai, the, 132
Caldora, the, 46, 218, 265, 266
Caldora, Jacopo, 265
Calvin, 42
Cammorra, 60, 68
Campagna, the, I, 13, 19, 50, 172
Campania, 33
Campi Palenlini, 122, 144, 166, 167,
176
Campobasso, province of. See
Molise
INDEX
^01
Campo di Giove, 45, 267
Candia, 52
Cannone, 65
Cantelmi, the, 46, 218, 266, 273,
278
Cantelmi, Jacopo, i6g, 170
Canzano Peligno, 102, 219
Capestrano, 67, 75
Capestrano, John of. See S, John
ofC.
Capistrello, 176, 179
Capitanata, 14, 50
Caponeschi, Count Lalli, 118
Caponeschi, Maria, iiS
Cappadocia, 165, 166
Cappelle-Magliano, 152, 156, 159,
170, 193
Cappelle-Monte Silvano, Si, 82,
83. 85
Cappucini, the, 83
Capua, 156
Carabinieri, the, 25, 44, 66, 67, 68
Caramanico, 63, 64
Carbonari, the, 38, 39, 40, 132,
133
Carbone, 53
Carducci, G., 263
Carlo di Durazzo, 218
Caroline, Queen, 41
Carsioli, 29, 32, 144, 147
Carsoli, 29, 144, 156, 169
Casalbordino, 86
Casauria, San Clemente di, 117,
278-282
Casetti, A., 297
Castagna, N., 296
Castel di Sangro, 2, 6t„ 69, 266,
267, 275, 276, 277
Castellamare Adriatico, 9, 84, 283,
284, 285, 290
Castelli, 120
Castel Saracinesco, 172
Castrovalve, 240, 259, 260
Catalonia, 158
Catanzano, 103
Catanzaro, 58
Catena, Domenica, 292
Cato, L. Portias, 34
Catullus, 232
Caudine Forks, the, 28
Cavour, 82,
Celano, 36, 71, 72, 149, 175, 199-
208, 262
Celano, Giovanna di, 201, 202
Celano, Rugerotto di, 201, 202
Celano, B. Thomas of, 71, 72,
148, 149, 205
Celano, Lake of. See Fucino
Celestine, Pope. See S. Peter
Celestine
Celestine Order, 226
Cellini, Benvenuto, 162, 163
Censorship in Abruzzi, 42, 43
Ceres, 90
Cese, 164, 174
Cesenatico, 50
Charlemagne, 149, 277
Charles IV., Emperor, 75, 229,
230
Charles V., Emperor, 273, 287
Charles of Anjou, 36, 37, 117, 152,
168-173, 1S8, 194,212,218,227,
266
Charles of Bourbon, 12
Charles VIII. of France, 150
Charles II. of England, 266
Charms, 73, loi
Chiarini, G., 288
Chieti, 10, 39, 41, 43, 49, 54, 55,
57, 66, 67, 82, 84, 98, 116, 117,
118, 120, 121, 140, 141, 144, 156,
282, 283
Chieti, province of (Ab. Citeriore),
54, S6
Chronico7i Casauriejise, 282
Churches, 118, 119, 204
Ciarallo, Don P., 183
Cicolano, 29, 35
Ciprio, 236
Circe, 96, 181
Cistercians, 173
Cittaducale, 67, 78
Civita di Penna, 61
Civita di Roveto, 62
Civitella del Tronto, 21, 62
Claudian Emissary, 176
Claudius, Emperor, 176, 177, 178
Clement IV., Pope, 168, 171
Clement VI., 229, 230
Clement VIII., 51
Chternia, 177, 200
CocuUo, 91, 183, 256
Colafello, 64
Colamarino, 67
CoUemaggio, Badia of, 117, 227,
22S
302
INDEX
Colletta, P., 55, 296
Colonna, the, 46, 149, 150, 154, 167,
180, 185, 188, 201, 218
Colonna, Marc Antonio, 150, 185
Colonna, Vittoria, 287
Conca, Prince of, 129
Conrad of Swabia, 16S
Conradin, 36, 37, 152, 164, 16S-
172, 194, 212, 218
Constantini, B., 296
Constantinople, 73, 80
Corfinium, 32, 34, 35, 143, 144,
217,219, 235, 236, 278
Corsignani, P. A., 173, 297
Cosenza, Enrico da, 169, 170
Costume, 222, 223, 243, 244
Courier, Paul-Louis, 52, 53
Cramer, J. A., 296
Craven, Hon. Keppel, 5, 14, 186,
191, 280, 290
Cristina, Apostoless, 85
Crivelli, C, 268
Crocco, Donatello, 159, 160, 161
Croce di Tola, 67, 69
Cybele, 85, 180, 181
Cyril of Alexandria, 229
Da Monte, 50
D'Annunzio, Gabriele, 86, 121,
141, 142, 183, 262, 276, 2S0-
282, 288-290
Dante, 74, 135, 138, 140, 170
De Amicis, Oresle, 81-S5
De Amicis, Rosalia, 82
De Angelerii, P. See S. Peter
Celestine
De Cesari, 52
Delfico, Melchiorc, 39
Del Fusco, the, 262
Del Guzzo, 67, 69
Delia Robbia, the, 164
Delle Guardia, the, 131
Demons, 96-99, 139
De Nino, A., 17, 85, 262, 263, 297
De Valery, Erard, 170
Diana Trivia, 99, 116
Di Capua, the, 261, 262
Dies IrcE, 72
Di Grue, the, 120
Di Meo, 218
Diodorus Siculus, 189
Di Salle, Roberto, 226
Dolcino, Era, 84
Donatello, 117
Drusus, 31
Dumas, Alex., 180
Duncan of Scotland, 266
Earthquakes, 73, 74, nS, 200,
219
Elba, 157
Embroidery, 120
Etruria, 31, 34, 182
Etruscans, 28
Eustace, J. C, 5
Evocation of the Dead, 104, 105
Exiles, Abruzzesi, 135, 136
Febonio, Muzio, 1S2, 185, 195,
297
Feltro, 51
Ferdinand the Catholic, 37
Ferdinand II. of Aragon, 87
Ferdinand I. of Two Sicilies, 13,
4i> 134
Ferdinand II. of Two Sicilies, 40,
^ 42, 57, 82
Ferrara, 51, 260
Festivals, religious, S6-91
Finamore, G., 96, 97, 113, 122,
232, 297
Fiorentini, Remigio, 222
Flogy, General, 81
Florence, 50, 135
Foce di Caruso, 72
Foce del Sinello, 87
Foggia, 12, 13, 61, 169, 246, 252
Foligno, 256
Folk-legends, 92, 105-115, 232-235
Folk-songs, 77, 122-127
Fontecchio, 67
Foscolo, Ugo, 81
Fossasecca, 54, 55
Fra Diavolo, 52
Francavilla, 86, 88, 283, 290-295
Francis II., 42, 62, 63, 64, 156,
160
Franciscans, 41, 52, 71, 76, Si
Fran9ois I., 163
Frangipani, G., 172
Franks, 36
Fraticelli, 80, 228, 230
Frattura, 103, 255
Frederic of Aragon, 37, 128
INDEX
303
Frederic II., Emperor, 36, 149,
168, 178, 200, 212, 218, 248
Frederic Duke of Austria, 168,
170, 171, 172
French in the Abruzzi, 21, 22, 36,
37, 38, 52, 53. 55, 58, 132, 155,
234, 291
French Revolution, 38, 40, 130
Frentani, the, 27, 28, 31, 2S7
Frere, John Hookham, 134
Fucine territory, 34,62, 149, 175
Fucino, Lake, 10, l8, 27, 29, 34,
71, 164, 175-180, 181, 182, 185,
18S, 192, 199, 200, 232
Fumone, 228
Gaeta, 62, 156, 158
Gaetani, Cardinal. See Boniface
VIII.
Gallinaro, 253
Gallucci, Niccolo, 119
Garfagnana, the, 51
Garibaldi, 65, 156
Garibaldians, 47, 61, 65
Gattinara, G., 297
Geofgics, 6
Gesta Romanorum, 255
Ghibellines, 168, 169, 171
Giacomo da Sulmona, 118
Giannone, P., 296
Gilberto, Anti-Pope, 189
Gioberti, V., 40
Giorgi, G., 62, 65, 155-158
Giovanna, Queen, 273
Giovanna da Celano, 201, 202
Gissi, 62, 67
Gizio, River, 215, 216, 219, 239,
266, 273, 278
Goldsmiths, 119, 120, 162, 2i8
Goriano Siculi, 144
Goths, 36, 149, 188
Gracchus, Caius, 31
Grand Companies, the, 46
Gran Sasso, 3, 10, 27, 117, 194,
212, 214, 216, 282, 284, 291
Greece, 32, 182
Greeks, 28
Gregorovius, F., 296
Gregory IX., 71, 72
Gregory X., 226
Guardiagrele, 1 19, 289
Guelfs, 200
Guerino, Prete, 50
Guilia-Nova, 52
Guise, Duke of, 21
Hadrian, Emperor, 29
Hadrian III., Pope, 279
Hannibal, 30, 188, 217
Hare, A. J., 296
Heliogabalus, 181
Henri II., 164
Hermitages and hermits, 93, 94,
99. 153. 154, 256-258
Hernican Mis., 10
Herdides, 222
Hoare, Sir R. C, 5
Hohenstaufen, the, 297
Holy Ghost, heresy of, 74, 82, 83,
85, 230
Hugo, Victor, 140, 160
Hunyadi, Janos, 80
Hussites, 80
II Piacere, 289
// Trionfo della Morte, 86, 280,
289
Imbriani, V., 297
Imele, River, 166, 167
Improvisatori, 128- 1 42
Innkeepers, 206, 207, 268
Introdacqua, 104, 222, 223, 235
Invaders, 46, 47, 133
Italians, ancient, 26-34
Italica, 32, 33, 34
Italy, North, 23, 24, 38
Italy, South, 23, 24, 38, 60, loi,
120, 128, 142, 154
Italy, Young, 6, 122, 164
Jackson, F, II., 298
James of the Marches, 79
James Francis, 119
Janus, 185
Joachim da Floris, 74, 229
John of Austria, Don, 87
Judacilius, 34
Jugurtha, 33
Julian, Emperor, 236
Juvanum, 97
La Cittb. Morta^ 262
Ladislas, King, 75, 164
304
INDEX
La Fiaccolo sotto il Moggio, 141,
142, 183, 262
La Figlia di Jorio (picture), 121
La Figlia di Jorio (play), 121, 141,
289, 290
La Grance, General, 156
Lanciano, 10, 53, 54, 55, 57, 98
L'Anglois, 159, 160
Lannoy, 21S
La Plaja, 104
Latins, 27, 28
Laiidi, 289
Lear, Edward, 5
Leo, Emperor, 167
Leo, Minorite, 72
Leonardo da Vinci, 281
Leonato, Abbot, 279, 281
Leonessa, 16
Leopardi, G., 81, 82
Lepanto, Battle of, 87, 150
Le Vergine delle Roccie, 289
Levi, E., 297
Lewis II. , Emperor, 279
Liberatore, G., 298
Liris, River, 28, 62, 66, 166, 176,
177, 185, 203
Liscio, 62
Lombards, 36, 149, 200, 218, 2S7
Loreto, 52, 92, 93, 253
Louis d'Anjou, 218
Loyola, Ignatius, 42, 130
Luco, 99, 181, 183, 232, 262
Luparelli, 62
Lupus, Rutilius, 32, 33
Lyons, 226
Macchia Carasale, 67
Madonna deir Oriente, 9, 153, 167,
174
Magic, iSi
Magliano, 156, 193, 194
Majella. Sec Monte Majella
Malta, 134, 200
Mammone, 52
Manfred, 168
Manhes, General, 55-57
Manso, Marchese, 51, 129
Mantua, 232
Marches, the, 10, 27, 52
Marc-Monnier, 296
Maremma, the, 19
Margaret of Austria, 292
Margherita, Queen, 205
Maria Sofia, Queen, 64
Marius, 33, 34, 217
Mark Antony, 189
Marmore, River, 166
Marrucini, the, 27, 33, 34, 282
Marruvium, 180
Mars, 26, 27
Marsi, the, 27, 28, 29, 31, 32, 33,
34, 35, 150, 176, 180, 181-183,
188, 190
Marsi, Counts of the, 200, 277
Marsian enchanters, 85, 181, 256
Marsica, the, 4, 12, 35, 61, 62, 65,
127, 146, 148, 149, 155, 160,
164, 172, 184-198, 199, 202, 232
Marsica, Bishop of, 205
Marsus, 181
Marsyas, 180, 181
Martin, V., Pope, 201
Masaniello, 200
Masio, 218
Matese range, 26, 59
Mazarin, Cardinal, 180
Mazella, 18 1
Mazzini, G., 40, 61, 155
Merlin, 229
Merlin, General, 54
Messiah of the Abruzzi, the. See
De Amicis, O.
Michetti, F. P., 120, 121, 141, 2S9,
291
Milan, 7, 128
Mithridatic War, 34
Mola di Gaeta, 51
Molise, 10, 26, 49, 59, 224, 265,
277
Monte Arunzo, 166
Bove, 164
■ Capo-Cancelli, 10
■ Caruso, 144
Cassino, 195, 226
• Corno, 10, 98, 212, 266, 274,
289. See also Gran Sasso
Felice, 169
Gargano, 12
Genzano, 215
Godi, 239, 246
Grande, 27, 215, 246
Majella, 2, 4, 10, 11, 27, 64,
70, 74, 75, 95, 96, 97, 104, 194,
215, 224, 226, 228, 229, 230, 261,
265, 267, 282, 284, 286, 2S9, 290,
293
INDEX
305
Monte Mario, 168
Midia, 154, 165
Morrone, 10, 74, 98, 99, 215,
216, 221, 222, 224, 226, 227, 228j
230, 233, 234, 235, 265
d'Ocre, 212
Palena, 224
Pallotieri, 67
Penna, 182
Pizzalto, 98
Porraro, 98
Portella, 262
Pratella, 253, 267
Puzzello, 212
Salviano, 99, 176
Sirente, 164, 20S, 212, 215
Velino, i, 4, 164, 185, 187,
190, 194, 212
Montefeltro, Guido da, 169
Montenerodomo, 97
Monteodorisio, 62
Montereale, 272
Moreschi, P,, 66, 69
Moscufo, S. Maria in, 117
Murat, Joachim, 16, 40, 54, 55,
133.
Musolino, 44
Mutilus, Q. JPapius, 32, 33
Mysticism, 135, 137, 138, 139
Naples, 8, 37, 39, 51, 60, 83, 102,
131, 132, 133, 134, 139, 141, 150,
172, 211, 218, 227, 262, 267, 268
Naples, kingdom of, 37, 52, 53, 55,
78, 81, 161, 168, 183
Napoleon I., 39, 234
Narcissus, engineer, 176, 17S
Nera, River, 176
Niccol6 Pisano, 117, 173
Nicholas V., Pope, 79
Nicodemus, sculptor, 196, 197
Nicolo, architect, 196
Ninco-Nanco, 161
Nitti, F. S., 24, 296
Nolli, Baron, 54
Novelle della Fescara, 288
Nucera, 33
OCTAVIUS C^SAR, 189
Odi Navali, 289
Orange, Prince of, 273
Orsini, the, 46, 149, 150, 154, 164,
229
Orsini, Gentile, 185
Orsini, Giovanni, 229
Orsini, Jacopo Napoleone, 150, 168
Orsini, Roberto, 150
Orsini, Virginio, 50, 150
Orta, 130
Ortona, ii, 53, 88, 117, 284, 290,
292
Ortucchio, 176
Oscans, 26
Otranto, %^
Otto IV., Emperor, 149
Ovid, 35, 99, 181, 217, 221, 231-
234
Ovindoli, 72, 146, 169, 170, 203,
209
Oxyntas, 33
Pace, Count, 191
Pacentro, 222, 265, 266
Paesana, 66
Paganism, 71, 95- 1 04, 1 84
Painters, 120, 121
Palena, 73
Palestrina, 150
Paliano, 241
Palombieri, 67
Papal States, 36, 51, 64, 68, 159,
161
Parente, Romualdo, 254
Parthenopeian Republic, 40
Pasquale II., Pope, 189
Patriot priests and friars, 41
Pavia, Battle of, 218
Peasants, 18-20
Pedacciata, 55
Pediciano, 67
Pelasgi, 188
Peligni, the, 27, 28, 31, 32, 33, 34,
35. 70, 217, 235
Pelignian Vale, 215, 232, 239, 260,
264
Penne, 10, 40, 82
Penne (Marsica), 180
Pentima, 32, 35, 144, 219, 235
Pepe, General, 39, 40, 296
Pepin II., 149
Pereira, Maria, 118
Peretti, the, 202
Perkins, C. €., 297
X
3o6
INDEX
Perseus of Macedonia, 189
Perugia, 75, 227
Pescara, 2, 10, il, 42, 98, 141, 143,
144, 250, 278, 283, 284, 286-288,
289, 290
Pescara, River, 10, 27, 278, 279,
282, 283, 284, 285-287, 291
Pescara, Marchese di, 287
Pescina, 180
Pescocostanzo, 98, 103, 117, 124,
268-271
Peter of Morrone. See S. Peler
Celestine
Petrarch, 221, 230
Pettorano, 17, 67, 73, 215, 216,
219, 222, 223, 260, 266, 267, 271,
.273. 274
Pia, Princess, 274
Pialy Bassa, 87, 292
Piano di Cinquemiglia, 94, 122,
159, 252, 260, 266, 271-274, 27s,
278
Piano di Leone, 69, 267
Pica, Giuseppe, 68
Pica Law, The, 68
Piccinino, Condottiere, 46, 202,
218
Piccione, 62
Piccolomini, the, 202
Piccolomini, Alfonso, 50
Piceni, 27, 28, 32
Picenum, 33, 34
Picerone, Don P., 41
Piediluco, 78
Piedmontese, 64, 154
Pierces, the, 136, 138
Pietrocola-Rossetti, T., 136, 140
Pilgrimages, 9, 86, 92, 93, 167,
.253,. 258, 259, 280, 281
Pinelli, General, 62
Pisa, 168, 169, 171
Pius v., 87
Pius IX., 82, 140
Plebiscite, the, 63
Poerio, C., 38
Poggio Filippo, 164
Poiidori, the, 138
Pompey, 217
Pontine Marshes, 18
Popoli, 39, 73, 215, 239, 266, 278,
284
Porcaneta, Valley of, 1 93, 197
Potters, 120
Prague, 75, 229
Prato, 288
Pratola Peligna, 35, 63, 266
Pre-Raphaelite movement, the, 138
Pretutii, the, 27
Promis, C., 297
Proni, 52
Provence, 266
Punic War, the, 30
Punta della Penna, 87, 291
QuAGLiA, La, 238
Quici, Fulvio, 54
Quintini, 157
Rajano, 9, 20, 216, 237
Rapagnetto, Gaetano. See D'An-
nunzio
Raumer, F. L., 297
Ravenna, 167
Religion, 71-94, 184
Rene d'Anjou, 265
Representations, 82, 86-89
Rienzi, Cola di, 75, 228-230
Rienzi, Sulpicio di. Si
Rieti, 40, 78, 198
Ripattone, 49
Risorgimento, the, 38, 43, 139,
.^55
Rivisondoli, 268, 271
Roccacasale, 5, 230, 231
Roccacinquemiglia, 69, 73, 275,
276
Rocca di Cambio, 67, 212
di Corno, 45
di Mezzo, 8, 67, 146, 170, 207,
210-214, 267
Morice, 226
Roccapia, 73, 104, 222, 260, 272,
273. 274
Roccaraso, 7, 67, 69, 141, 146, 252,
266, 267, 268, 275
Roman remains, 1 16, 19 1
Rome, Ancient, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32,
33. 34, 35, 143. 144
Rome, City, i, 2, 3, 8, 10, 26, 27,
45, 46, 50, 64, 72, 75, 76, 79, 82,
116, 120, 12S, 144, 148, 154, 157,
15S, 160, 165, 168, 169, 171, 172,
177, 179, 190, 205, 224, 228, 229,
233, 2S9, 292
Rosciolo, 193, 194, 195
Rosmini, Antonio, 81
INDEX
307
Rossetti, Andrea, 131, 133 ; An-
tonio, 131, 132 ; Christina, 139 ;
Dante Gabriel, 135, 136, 137-
139; Domenico, 131; Gabriele,
38, 81, 130-136 ; Maria Fran-
cesca, the elder, 131 ; the
younger, 136, 139; Nicola,
131, 132, 133 ; Vincenzo, 135 ;
William Michael, 132, 135, 136,
140
Rovere, 203, 210
RufFolone, 44
Rugerotto of Celano, 201
Rulli, 135
Sabellians, the, 28
Sabine Mts., the, 10, 35, 150
Sabines, the, 26
Sagittario, River, 215, 239, 240,
259, 261
Sagittario, Focidi, 239, 262, 264
Sagittario, Valley of, 6, 67, 146,
239-264
Saints, legends of, 92, 95
S. Augustine, 82, 182
S. Bernardino of Siena, 76, 77-79,
80, 191, 244
S. Buono, 67
S. Catherine of Siena, 92
S. Clement, Martyr, 279
S. Dominic, 229
S. Dominic of Cocullo, 91, 93, 121,
183, 256-259
S. Francis, 71, 72, 148, 191, 205,
206, 229
S. Franco, 292
S. Gerardo, 253
S. John of Capestrano, 75-80
S. Panfilo, 219, 220, 232
S. Peter, 92
S. Peter Celestine, 74, 75, 82, 99,
218, 223, 224-228, 234, 235
S. Thomas, Apostle, 292
^Flace-7iames —
S. Benedetto, 180
S. Domenico, Lago di, 259
S. Lucia, 234
S. Maria in Valle, 117, 193-198
S. Maria della Vittoria, 117, 173,
174, 188
S. Onofrio, 74, 99, 224, 226, 227
S. Pellino, 220, 236, 237
S. Peter's, Rome, 79, 85, 154
S. Petito, 203, 208
S. Sebastiano, 164, 166, 167
S. Silvestro, 78
S. Spirito di Majella, 15, 74, 75,
82, 224-226, 228-230
S. Spirito di Morronc, 74,219, 223,
226, 227, 234, 235
S. Stefano in Riva, 87. 88
S. Valentino, 144
S. Vito, 289
Miscella?!eons —
S. Damian and the Dove, Reform
of, 74, 224
S. Eustachio, Count of, 16S
S. Giacomo, Viaggio di, 263
S. John's Day celebrations, 103,
221, 294, 295
Salerno, 49
Sallust, 35
Salto, River, 166, 169, 170, 173,
176
Saluzzo, 66
Samnites, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31,
32, 33, 34
Samnite War, 28, 29, 30, 35, 147,
188
Samnium, 29, 34
Sangro, Conti di, 46, 260, 262, 266
Sangro, River, 224, 267, 276
San Fantaleone, 86, 288
Santacasa, Carmine, 192, 193
Santariga, A., 153
Sante Marie, 159
Saracens, 86-89, I49> 1S8, 236,
248, 279, 292
Savelli, the, 202
Savoy rule, 48, 63
Scanno, 18, 66, 69, 77-91, 103,
122, 124, 125, 239, 240-253, 268,
272
Scanno, Lago di, 10, 253, 254, 255
Scanzano, 149
Scacchi, 298
Scato, P. Vettius, 33
Schirrmacher, F. W., 297
Schulz, H. W., 297
Sciarra Marco, 48-52
Sculpture, 117, 118
Scurcola, 144, 146, 156, 157, 159,
164, 167, 169, 173, 174
Secret Societies, 60
Segharelli, 84
Selim 11. , 292
X 2
?o8
INDEX
Serafino Aquilano, 128
Serpent-charming, 91, 1 81-183, 258
Servilius, Gaius, 31
Settembrini, Luigi, 130, 137
Sforza, Condottiere, 46, 286, 287
Sforza, Francesco, 287
Sheep-dogs, 17, 18
Shepherds, 6, 11-16, 47, 50, 212
Shepherd-poets, 16, 17
Sicily, 44, 56, 60, 168, 169, 200
Siena, 78, 168
Silius Italicus, 33
Silla, 217
Silo, Q. Pompidius, 31, 32, 33, 34
Silvestro Aquilano, 79, 1 18
Smargiasse, G., 135
Social War, 31-34, 180
Solerti, A., 51
Solymus, 217
Songs, brigands', 63 ; folk, lOl,
122-127; patriotic, 81, 131
Sora, 23
Sorrento, 260
Speculum Perfectionis , 72
Spinelli, Carlo, 49
Spirituals, 226, 228
Stornelli, 122
Strabo, 33, 34, 188
Subiaco, 226
Sulmona, 2, 8, 10, 20, 32, 35, 73,
74. 75. 99. 103. 104, 118, 141,
194, 215-223, 239, 240, 261, 266,
267, 271, 274, 282
Sulmona, Valley of, iS, 35, 63, 122,
215, 223-238, 260, 276
Sulpicius Servius, 33, 34
Swabians, 36, 169
Swinburne, Henry, 5
Syphax, King, 189
Tacitus, 177, 178
Tagliacozzo, 5, 36, 39, 99, 144-
166, 167, 169, 173, 185, 189
Tagliacozzo, Battle of, 164, 167-
171, 172, 266
Talaini, 89-91
Tallarico, G., 57
Tamburrini, 66, 69
Tarantum, 29
Tasso, Torquato, 16, 51, 127, 129,
130, 260, 261
Tasso, River, 239, 240, 249, 255
Tavoli&re, the. Sec Apulian Plain
Teramo, lo, 27, 49, 62
Teramo, province of (Ulteriore I.),
57,81
Terni, 2, 78, 167
Terracina, 19
Terra di Lavoro, 10, 23, 159, 169,
253, 262
Teverone, River, 176
Theate (mod. Chieti), 34, 144,
282
Thomas of Celano, B. See Celano
Thureau-Dangin, P., 297
Tiber, River, 169, 176, 177
Tiberius Claudius, 143
Tiburtines, 164
Tivoli, 143, 144, 169
Tocco, 120, 278
Tocco, Duke of, 84
Tollo, 86, 88
Torlonia, Prince, 175, 179, 180,
193, 201
Torre de' Passeri, 278
Trajan, 178, 279
Trasimondo, Abbot, 279
Trave, River, 132
Travellers in Abruzzo, 5
Treasure-hunting, 84, 97-99
Tremiti, Isles, 87, 88
Tricalle, the, 98, 116
Trigno, River, 27, 55
Turano, River, 33
Turin, 39, 66
Turks, 80, 86, 87-89, 287
Tuscany, Grand-Duke of, 50
Two Sicilies, kingdom of, 42, 57,
63
Tyrrhenian Sea, 154
Umbria, 10, 31, 78, 93
Umbrians, 26
Umbro, 181
Urbino, 120
Urbino, Duke of, 261
Valentinian, Emperor, 236
Valeria, 180
Valerian Way, 143, 144, 147, 150,
151, 157, 166, 169, 192, 287
Valerius, Dictator, 143
Valle Oscura. See Roccapia
Siciliana, 120
di Varri, 148
• — - Verde, 201, 208
INDEX
309
Valva, 236
Vandarelli, 61
Vastese, the, 96, 123
Vastesi, the, 57, 136
Vasto, 10, II, 53, "57, 61, 67, 131,
132, 133. 135. 136
Vasto, Marchese del, 133
Vehno, River, 176
Venetian Republic, 50, 51
Venti Settembre, 68
Verona, 232
Verrecchie, 166
Ver sacrum, 26
Vestini, the, 27, 28, 31, 33, 287
Via Tiburtina, 143
Victor Emmanuel I., 63, 82, 141, 274
Viesti, 228
ViUach, 80
Villalago, 5, 93, 1S3, 239, 240, 255,
256-259
Villamagna, 86, 88
Virgil, 130, 181, 232
Virgilii, Benedetto de', 16, 129, 130
, Pasquale de', 140, 141
Viterbo, 44
Volscians, 27
Wadding, Luke, 297
Waldschmidt, W., 138
Witches, 96, 100-102, 263
Wolves, 18, 212, 213
Women, 9, 20-22, 245-248
Zelanti, 227
Zilli, 57,
Zilli, P., 62
Zingaro, II, 120
Zopinone, 62
THE END
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