Chapter XIV

THE ABBEY OF TRINITA DELLA CAVA, SALERNO, AND THE RUINED MAJESTY OF
PAESTUM

The arms of the ancient city of Majori are the most apt that could possibly be devised. Upon an azure field the city bears a sprig of marjoram--in token, surely it must have been in token, of the rare and memorable beauty of its mountain-sides, where a sea so blue that nothing out of heaven can surpass it laps about the base of cliffs which in spring-time are from top to bottom and from end to end one fragrant field of aromatic and delicious odours. The scented myrtle is knee-deep. The rosemary and marjoram root themselves in every cleft, and a thousand other herbs growing rank along the mountain-side catch every breeze that blows and fill the air, especially in the morning when the shadows are still wet and the day has not yet grown languorous, with thymy fragrances blown out of every hollow and ravine. Meantime among the grass and herbage of the cliffs the flowers glow like an Eastern carpet. The white gum-cistus stars the hillside thickly, and the anemones cluster in soft banks of colour, while up and down the banks crimson cyclamens burn little tongues of flame, and over all waves the graceful asphodel.

It is when one climbs the hill on the Salerno road beyond Majori that these sweet sights and odours are encountered. But first the way passes through Minori, dipping down to the sea-level at the marina of that little town, which now has no industry but fishing, yet once harboured ships and traders from the East. No one of these townlets is devoid of interest, yet when a man travels by this road he is afire to reach the greater beauty further on, and will not tarry to collect the broken fragments of an old tradition at this point. The road emerges from the houses, and in a little way it frees itself from the hills and enters the wider valley of Majori, running out on a wide, pleasant beach, where an avenue of trees gives shelter from the sun. On the right-hand the fishers are drawing up their nets, women hauling with the men, while on the left the ancient town lies open in a broad, straight street, surmounted by the castle which in old days could not save it from the Pisan onslaught, and in modern ones has nothing left to guard. It is not, however, this landward castle which lingers in the memory of the traveller as he turns his memory back upon this beautiful and breezy beach. It is rather the tower, not near so ancient, which juts out to the sea at the very point of the cliff formed by the downward slope of the Monte dell'Avvocata. That vast mountain wall descends so steeply that it seems to forbid access to this pleasant valley from the outer world; and just where the dark and shadowy rock touches the blue sea the castle is approached by three high and slender arches carrying a bridge. It is one of the coast towers erected as a refuge from the incursions of sea-rovers, belonging to the same group of fortifications as the Castello di Conca, or the Torre dello Ziro at Atrani.

The castle stands out finely in the shadow of the hill. The blue sea is warm and soft. Far away towards Salerno a dim gleam from time to time betrays the mountains of Cilento, snow-capped and wreathed in clouds. The road climbs upward from the beach, winding round the headland with continually growing beauty. The rock forms are superb; and as the way rises on the flank of the sweet-scented mountain it passes ravine upon ravine, each one cleft down to the blue water's edge, a shadowy precipice fringed by the soft spring sunshine. The road mounts. The ravines grow deeper. The washing of the sea dies away to a pleasant far-off murmur; and at last one attains the summit of the Capo d'Orso, and pauses to absorb the immense beauty of the prospect.

As one stands upon this height one perceives that the creek upon which Amalfi is built has receded into its true position as no more than a single inlet in a wide bay which extends from Capo di Conca to Capo d'Orso, at least five miles as the crow flies, and includes other indentations of no less size.

It is by the size and importance of this bay that the old consequence of Amalfi should be measured rather than by what stood upon the city site itself. The historian Hallam, when he visited this coast, doubted the tradition of commercial greatness, remarking that the nature of the ground and the proximity of the mountains to the sea can never have admitted the growth of a city whose transactions were really vast. He does not seem to have realised that Amalfi was a group of cities, of which, perhaps, no one was very large, but each had its own vigorous life, each one contributed some distinct element to the strength and valour of the commonwealth. Doubtless, also, all vied together to promote the glory of the whole.

After crossing Capo d'Orso the road descends, and its beauty decreases, until one sees Cetara, the old cliff town which was the limit of the Duchy of Amalfi, and for many years a nest of Saracens; and further on Vietri, standing quaint and beautiful upon the sea.

At Vietri we must turn inland, for though the greater beauty of the sea coast has led us away from the high valley of La Cava, yet the ancient abbey on the mountain-side above that summer resort is famous by too many titles for us to pass it by. A pleasant road leads inland from the pretty little port. Ere long the highway up the valley is abandoned for a winding lane, which climbs and climbs till it comes out at last on a small white village, nestling under the slopes of higher hills. The air is keen upon this lofty ground. Spring has not yet advanced so far as on the coast, but all the brown coppice on the mountain slopes is flushing into green, and the serrated ridge that jags the skyline is lit and obscured by flying light and shadow.

All the air is musical with streams and fragrant with the scent of fresh-sawn wood. Plodding cautiously along the mountain path come the mules laden with sawn boughs for vine-poles; and on a stair which mounts to the level of the abbey out of the deep valley-bottom children are carrying up long bundles of fresh-smelling laths. The abbey stands half-way down the narrow valley, a solitude of wood and mountain. The church is of the period when piety proved its zeal by destroying fine building which it was unable to replace, but beneath it are many remnants of the ancient beauty, and even in the church itself, glittering with gold and undistinguished paintings, one may see in the south-east chapel a fragment of primaeval rock covered with rough frescoes, which recalls strangely the memory of an age in which the monks sought heaven by a ruder path than that which they tread now. If one descends into the crypt, that austere impression grows the deeper. Here is nothing splendid, but construction which is simple, solid, and severe. There is a noble courtyard and a cavernous crypt, in which lie the bones of Lombard princes loosely stacked with those of others of less note, all equal now, the greater undistinguished from the less. Some came hither humbly clad as pilgrims; and indeed in early days, when faith impelled men forth on pilgrimage from every land, this great abbey, lying so near both to Amalfi and Salerno, must have heard the orisons of those who spoke in many tongues.

Pilgrims who sought the Holy Land travelled very frequently on ships belonging to this coast. They came sometimes in penance and sometimes in love. Some travelled laden with fetters made of the steel with which they had slain a neighbour, some bore no other burden than the staff and scrip; but both alike came over the Alps from northern countries in astonishing numbers, and all were cared for as they came or went by that abounding charity which is the great glory of the Middle Ages. "In richer places," declared an ordinance of the Emperor Lewis the Pious in the year 816, "two-thirds of the wealth given to the clergy shall be set aside for the poor; in poorer places one-half." Out of these funds hospitals to shelter pilgrims were placed on every lonely tract where they might be stayed by the necessities of travel, on mountain roads where night might overtake them far from hospitable dwellings, by bridgeless rivers which might be made impassable by flood. Churchmen and laity vied with each other to ease the way of these wanderers of God, and the care with which edicts were issued relating to the maintenance of the hospices testifies to the greatness of the numbers which, but for the piety of the faithful, must have perished in the wilderness.

In this passionate devotion to the sacred places originated the kingdom of the Normans in southern Italy and Sicily. For a band of Normans returning from the Holy Land on a ship of Salerno were still in that city, then a Lombard duchy, when the Saracens landed to exact the tribute which they extorted at certain or uncertain intervals. The proud pilgrims resented the insolent demand, and at the permission of the duke attacked the followers of Mahomet and drove them off. Then followed the usual tale of profuse gratitude, territorial concessions, and ultimate subjection to the stranger. Thus it is not for nothing that Norman pilgrims are recalled to our memory at La Cava.

The abbey has rendered to the world priceless services by the careful preservation of its records. Manuscripts of inestimable value lie stored in the long presses of its library; and for the last two centuries have formed the chief resource of historians of southern Italy. Lying as La Cava does on the edge of the ground over which Lombards, Saracens, and Normans wrestled for dominion, her records have an absolutely vital interest, and many a scholar turns his mind towards that quiet library among the mountains with reverence almost as deep as the ancient pilgrims felt for the abbey church.

There is not very much of interest upon the way from the abbey to Salerno, saving only the exquisite beauty of the sea, which grows bluer as the day increases. But in approaching the old city, which was once so famed among physicians, one passes by the arches of an ancient aqueduct, which reminds me that I undertook to explain why the Isles of the Sirens are called "I Galli." You think the moment has gone by for speaking of the islets? By no means. This is the proper place, for in this city of Salerno dwelt an enchanter who knew more about their origin than any other man.

This enchanter was called Pietro Bajalardo--there are other forms of his name, but we need not be exact. The aqueduct reminded me of him because he is said to have built it by his magic powers just as Virgil with the same black art constructed the Grotto of Posilipo. It may have been the success of this great feat which inspired him with the idea of rendering to Salerno a service even more important, and providing it with a good safe harbour. This is a thing which all Salernitans have desired ardently from very early days, and on the possible construction of which they have based such hopes of eminence that, as they say--

"Si Salierno avesse 'o puorte
Napule sarria muorte!"

This neighbourly aspiration it was which Pietro set himself to encourage; and he asked of the eager townsmen one thing only, namely, that they should forthwith slaughter all the cocks in the city, so that when his legions of fiends were engaged in their gigantic task they might not be disturbed and frightened by that sound which all sinners have loathed since the days of the Apostle Peter. So light a condition was complied with gladly. All day Salerno was filled with the sound of expiring cackles; and night descended with the comfortable belief that for once her stillness would reign unbroken by the officious trumpeting which bade her go.

Pietro was at work in the window of his high tower. Through the dark air legions of devils came and went to do his bidding. Fast they sped over the silent sea, carrying huge blocks of limestone from the Punta di Campanella. The sky was crossed and recrossed thickly with wondrous potencies and powers, while all the city lay and held its breath. All, that is to say, save one old woman, who loved her cock too much to slaughter him. The harbour was very little to her, the cock was much. So she hid him under an old pan, and went to bed hoping he would be discreet. But the bird smelt the approach of dawn in his confinement, and announced it with an indignant screech. Away flew the demons, tumbling over each other in their fright. In their haste to be gone they let drop into the sea the big blocks they were carrying, and never by any art could be induced to take up their task again. The blocks they dropped are now the islands of "I Galli," that is to say, "The Cocks," and if any man is so incredulous as to doubt this tale, he may very fairly be asked to keep his incredulity to himself until he has found another explanation of the name.

In the cathedral of Salerno many men will be interested in many things. Some will delight in its beautiful forecourt, arcaded with antique pillars and adorned with marbles brought from Paestum. Some will marvel at the fine mosaic of the pulpit, others at the ancient chest of ivory kept in the sacristy, while some will even take pleasure in the gorgeous decoration of the lower church, with its huge statue of St. Matthew, or rather its two statues set back to back, so that the apostle turns a face toward either altar, thus giving point to the local gibe, "He is double faced (tene doje facce) like San Matteo." But I set aside these things and others with a passing glance, and go straight up to a chapel in the eastern end of the great church, on the south side of the choir, where, slumbering in a peace which rarely blessed him while he lived, lies the greatest of all popes, Gregory the Seventh.

In the Duomo at Naples we paused before the tomb of Innocent the Fourth, who fought and won the last battle between Papacy and Empire, the last, that is to say, which really counted in that long and awful rivalry. Never after the victory of Innocent did the Emperor, the great world Sovereign, occupy the same pinnacle in men's minds again. The theory of his position was not altered; but in practice the Pope had demonstrated its futility, and set himself, Christ's Vicar upon earth, supreme at the head of all mankind. Once or twice the Empire flickered into life, but the issue was unchanged.

This overthrow of the Empire by the Pope is one of those events which have profoundly modified the history of Europe and the world. If Innocent completed it, Gregory began it. He, first of all popes, dared to initiate the fight. His clear brain, his high, stern courage, planned the complete release of the Papacy from dependence upon the Empire. With a quick perception of the legal weakness of his cause, he linked the support of privilege with that of chastity, and thus appealing to that which mediaeval men esteemed the loftiest and most saintly of all virtues, gave his attitude a moral greatness which it did not derive from inherent principle. He attacked the Empire while it was still near its highest power, clothed in the traditions of Charlemagne and Otho the Great. He did not fear to question the prerogative of the lord of the world, the King of the Romans, who made or unmade popes. When the Emperor resisted, he dared to declare him dethroned; and ere long after the issue of that declaration the great Caesar had crossed the Alps a suppliant for pardon, and stood bareheaded, clothed in the woollen garment of a penitent, in the courtyard of the castle at Canossa, waiting humbly till the Pope should admit him to his presence.

There, prostrate in the snow, lay the only power which could measure itself against the Pope. There fell, once and for all, the supreme dominion of the Empire. Three days and nights the Emperor waited upon Gregory's will. It was an awful victory, the humiliation of the lord of kings, the temporal head of all mankind became the footstool of his spiritual brother. In vain that very Emperor ere long abandoned his humility, and drove Gregory to exile in Salerno, where he died. In vain many another Emperor fought and struggled for the old supremacy. The world had seen the Emperor a suppliant waiting in the snow, and could not forget it. This, for good or evil, was the deed of Gregory who sleeps here at Salerno. "I have loved justice and hated iniquity," he said in dying, "therefore I die in exile." Did he in truth act only from those pure motives? It may be so, for indeed he and other popes of the same age were great idealists. He died in exile thinking his cause lost, when in fact it was absolutely won. There are those among us who look on the Papacy with fear, and some with hope; but all alike, if they think at all, regard it as big with destiny, and charged with most potent influences on the future of mankind. Therefore this tomb in the Duomo of Salerno is one of the most interesting upon earth. In days far distant from our own the bones of him who first lifted St. Peter's chair to world-wide supremacy may be cursed or blessed, but forgotten they can never be.

We men and women of to-day, regardful only of the accomplished fact, contemptuous of the power of ideals, and profoundly careless of the teachings of history, dismiss these matters very lightly from our minds as having been settled in the "Settanta" when the Italians entered Rome. This is a mere error bred of ignorance. The old strife of Guelf and Ghibelline is raging still. Once again the Papacy is at war with a monarchy, with one, moreover, which is by no means founded on the rock of Christ, as was the Holy Roman Empire, nor supported by the prescriptive glories of Charlemagne or of the Caesars. The rival which possessed those vast advantages was brought to stand humbly in the snow at Canossa. What will be the issue of the present contest? It is idle to speculate. Faith and asceticism, two strong weapons of the mediaeval popes, no longer stir mankind to action. We can only sit and watch, remembering that thirty years are but as a day in the judgment of the oldest of all human institutions. Kingdoms rise and fall. They change their form and develop into other constitutions. The Church of Rome is the only organism on earth which neither changes nor develops. How should it do either, when it claims to be a mere expression of eternal law?

It was a weary journey which one made in old days from Salerno through Battipaglia to Paestum. The plain which in Greek hands overflowed with fertility has long been but roughly cultivated, and fever has wrought its fatal work with little check among the dwellers on the neglected flats. It was an unsafe journey too, for the main road through the lonely country was infested by brigands who, though they practised chiefly among the native proprietors, yet rejoiced greatly when they met a wealthy stranger unattended by carabineers. The years following the expulsion of the Bourbons in 1860 witnessed a terrible recrudescence of the scourge. Manzi was the most ferocious of the bandits in this region. He haunted chiefly the oak forest of Persano, on the further side of Paestum, and on any alarm his band used to disperse to hiding-places which they only knew among the mountains. But now the brigands have been hunted down, and the land sleeps in peace. The fever, too, is less, thanks to the eucalyptus, whose red stems and glossy foliage spread far and wide across the swampy ground beside the milky rivers. The time may yet come when Paestum will be a rose garden again, though never more, so far as human intelligence can make a forecast, will the crafts or eager life of a crowded city displace the husbandmen from the wide plains between the mountains and the sea. The Italian races, compact into one strong people, have fixed the centre of their life on other spots, and the day of Paestum will no more return.

How great a day it was! Time, which has dealt so hardly with the cities of the Italian mainland, has preserved here, in solitary grandeur, the evidence of splendours which elsewhere are but a dream. Cumae is a rubbish heap, Sybaris and Croton have perished everlastingly. Taranto is overbuilt into the semblance of a mediaeval if not a modern city. Brindisi is paltry and Otranto dead. At Paestum only on the mainland, thanks to the expulsion of the last handful of its citizens eleven centuries ago, three temples stand erect out of the waste of herbage which has strewn itself over the ruined streets and market-places. There alone we can comprehend the lost greatness of that Hellenic people whose submersion by barbaric onslaught must be counted as the greatest misfortune which has befallen the human race.

It is no great wonder that the Greeks, having once overcome the terrors of the ocean on the night side of the world, crossed over in large numbers to the fair coasts which are in sight from the Albanian mountains. So short a ferry must have been constantly at work. There are still Greeks in Italy--not Greeks by descent alone, nor of Greek origin mixed with other elements, but Greeks of pure blood and speech. No less than twenty thousand of them dwell in two colonies in southern Italy, one in the Terra d'Otranto, the other some twenty miles south-east of Reggio. Neither maintains communications with the other, nor does either possess traditions of its origin. Both maintain themselves apart from the surrounding people, whom they call "Latinoi." Their language is unwritten. It differs from modern Romaic, and is apparently not derived from the Greek spoken in the cities of Magna Grecia. The colonists are probably descendants of immigrants who came from Greece not later than the eleventh century, or perhaps in those earlier days when refugees crowded into Italy for shelter from the fury of the iconoclasts.

But whencesoever these mysterious colonies came, they have shown not a trace of the great heart and spirit which animated the earliest settlers of their race upon Italian shores. Paestum, or rather Poseidonia, to give it its Greek name, was a city less ancient than Cumae. It was not founded by settlers direct from Greece. It was a colony thrown off by Sybaris, that great city of Calabria which became a byword of luxury while Rome was young and counted for little in the Italian land. Five centuries before Christ was born that mighty city was destroyed by its rival Croton, destroyed so utterly that the River Krathis was led over the ruins; yet Poseidonia, its distant colony, still remembered the greatness of her origin, and grew and flourished splendidly, till she became the mightiest town of all this coast, powerful upon sea, potent to thrust back the swarming tribes which looked down enviously from the mountains on her wealth.

All the city's life is lost and forgotten. What we know of her greatness and her beauty is revealed by no records, but by the tangible evidence of indestructible things. Her coins are numerous exceedingly and of the purest beauty. They prove her abounding wealth. Whence that wealth came is suggested by the fact that the city gave her name to the whole gulf, which could scarcely have happened had she not been great upon the sea. Poseidon was the tutelary deity of the city, and on her coins he appears brandishing his trident, a mighty emblem of sea empire. These coins prove, too, the perfection of the art for which the city was renowned. When Phocaean Greeks founded the once famous city of Velia, some twenty miles away, it was to Poseidonia that they came for instruction in the art of building, drawn doubtless by the desire to match the superb temples which we see to-day, the envy of our builders as of theirs, though we, less fortunate, can summon no citizen of Poseidonia to teach us what our hearts and minds cannot of themselves design.

It must have been a proud and splendid life which throbbed itself out upon this spot. At last the savage mountaineers stormed the city. Greek aid from Epirus gave back its liberty, but to no purpose. The mountain warriors returned and were quelled at last only by the onward march of Rome, which imposed on Poseidonia another servitude and changed its name to Paestum. Thenceforwards nothing was left to the Greek citizens but their regrets, which they wept out yearly in a mournful festival, telling over the greatness of the days that had been. Even the mourning has been done these twelve centuries and more, yet still the temples stand there silent and deserted, and the walls mark out the empty circuit of the city.

Virgil, when he came near the end of his poem upon husbandry, and, perceiving the limits of his space, sketched out briefly what other subjects he might have treated, spoke of the twice-flowering roses of Paestum as if the gardens where they bloomed were the loveliest he knew. There are none now. Only such flowers grow at Paestum still as flourish in a rough, coarse soil, or can exist in the scant foothold of mould which has collected on the friezes of the temples. High up, where the shattered reddish stone seems to touch the cloudless sky, the blossoming weeds run riot. The mallow flaunts its blood-red flowers on the architrave, and the ruddy snap-dragon looks down into the inmost places of the temple. Over all there is a constant twittering of little birds. The lizards, green and brown, flash in and out among the vast shadows of the columns. They will stop and listen if you whistle to them, raising their heads and peering round in delight with any noise which breaks the long, deathly silence of the city. Beyond the shadow white oxen are ploughing languidly in the thick heat, and across two fields the sea is breaking on a shore as lonely as it was when the Greeks from Sybaris first beached their galleys there. Perhaps they found a city there already. Lenormant was inclined to think so; and it is certainly strange that the Greek name was so completely driven out by the Roman, unless the latter be an older name revived. But though all men use the Latin appellation, and though their scanty knowledge of the city is largely gained from Latin writers, yet the glory of the place is Greek, and neither Roman nor barbarian added to its lustre. Some day men will excavate upon this ground, of which the surface has been barely scratched. They will unearth the tombs outside the city gate, in some of which remarkable paintings have been found already. They will lay bare the foundations of all the crowded city, houses, streets, and temples, and declare once more in the clear sunlight how great and splendid was this city of Neptune, which the course of time has reduced to three vast temples standing in a lonely waste.

The grandest of the three temples is that assigned, probably enough, to Poseidon. It cannot be much less ancient than the city itself, and out of Athens there is not a nobler example of Greek architecture, unless it be at Girgenti, where the Temple of Concord is perhaps as fine and somewhat more perfect. It is Doric in style. Its fluted pillars, somewhat short in proportion to their mass, give the building an aspect of gigantic bulk; its heavy architrave, the austerity of its design, the dull red hues with which rain and storm have stained the travertine, all combine to leave a rare impression on the mind. The space within seems strangely narrow. One realises why the early Christians rejected the Greek form of temple, designed for acts of worship paid by individuals singly, and took the model of their churches from the Basilica, in whose spacious hall the congregation which professed to be a brotherhood might assemble at its ease. No congregation could have met in this vast Neptune temple. From the busy market-place outside, the central spot of all the crowded city, worshippers slipped in one by one beneath the shadowy colonnade.

There is a so-called Basilica here, but the name is of no authority, and the building is probably a temple. Wide differences of opinion exist about its date, but none about its beauty. The third temple shows marks of differing styles, and while in part it may be coeval with the foundation of the city, it was probably retouched during the period of Roman rule.

Such are the visible remains of Paestum. In all Italy there is no more interesting spot. Not Rome itself, which ruled the habitable world, has cast over mankind a spell so mighty as these Greek cities, which scarcely aimed at rule beyond their walls, and cared nothing for the lust of wide dominion. Conquest was not in their hearts, but the desire of beauty burned there more passionately than ever before or after, creating loveliness which has gone on breeding loveliness and wisdom which has not ceased begetting wisdom, while kingdoms have crumbled into dust and conquerors have earned no better guerdon than forgetfulness; so that still men look back on the life of the Greek cities as the very flower of human culture, the finest expression of what may be achieved by heart and soul and brain aspiring together. The cities perished, but the heritage to mankind remains, kindling still the desire for that beauty in form, thought, and word which was attained upon these coasts more than twenty centuries ago. And if the heritage was for mankind, it was first of all for Italy, that noble land which has been the scene of every kind of greatness, which has been burdened with every shame and sorrow that can afflict mankind, yet is rising once more into strength which will surely dismay her slanderers and shame those who seek to work her ruin. And so I lay down my pen, with a faith in the future which turns ever back to the noblest song yet sung of Italy:--

"Salve magna parens frugum, Saturnia tellus,
Magna virum; tibi res antiquae laudis et artis
Ingredior...."