An Armchair Traveller's History Of Apulia Part 1

An Armchair Traveller's History of Apulia.

Desmond Seward.

and Susan Mountgarret.

Author Biographies.

DESMOND SEWARD, born in Paris, was educated at Ampleforth and Cambridge. He is the author of many books, including The Monks of War: The Military Religious Orders and The Wars of the Roses. His latest, Wings over the Desert: in Action with an RFC Pilot in Palestine 191618, is based on his father's experiences.

SUSAN MOUNTGARRET, educated at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art, is co-author (with Desmond Seward) of Byzantium: A Journey and Guide. Among the reasons that drew her to Apulia was a wish to study the Byzantine frescoes in its cave churches.

Foreword: Old Apulia.

It is clear that the G.o.d of the Jews did not know Puglia, or He would not have given His people Palestine as the Promised Land.

The Emperor Frederick II.

APULIA (OR PUGLIA) is the heel of Italy, stretching down from the spur of the Italian boot. Its landscape is often very beautiful and it has wonderful old cities with Romanesque cathedrals, Gothic castles and a great wealth of Baroque architecture, together with 'rupestrian' churches that contain Byzantine frescoes. But, although far from inaccessible, until quite recently it was seldom visited by English-speaking tourists. Today, however, Apulia is becoming fas.h.i.+onable, "an alternative to Tuscany". It is featured on radio and television; travel supplements describe its beaches and its cooking, supermarkets stock Apulian wine, oil, bread and pasta. Yet almost nothing about the region has been published in English since the days of Norman Douglas and the Sitwells. And there is no popular introduction to Apulian history, not even in Italian. Our book has been written to fill this gap.

Both of us believe that to understand the present you must know the past, and this is a portrait of the old Apulia, concentrating on its people, its heroes and its shrines. Whenever possible, we have made a point of using accounts by early travellers, since the landscape has changed surprisingly little. You can still see it with eighteenth or nineteenth century eyes.

Geographically, in northern Apulia the mountainous Gargano contrasts starkly with the flat Tavoliere, while going south and west the stony plateau of the Alta Murgia, Apulia Petrosa, has little in common with either. On the western border great wheat-fields sweep up to the hills of Basilicata. Much of the ground is limestone karst, the Apulian Platform, through which rain-water seeps down so quickly that there are virtually no streams or lakes. The rest, which a million years ago was under the sea, is mainly soft tufa filled with fossilised sh.e.l.ls, and gashed by long ravines (gravine) riddled with caves; many of the ravines are choked by p.r.i.c.kly pear, especially in coastal areas. Everywhere the fields are divided by dry-stone walls. There are innumerable orchards; in spring you can drive through mile upon mile of blossom almond, peach or cherry while the ground is covered by an almost vulgar profusion of wild flowers. But the most characteristic and most prized tree in Apulia is the olive, that lives for five hundred years (some say for two thousand) and whose silver-green groves cover vast tracts of dark-red Apulian soil.

The landscape is not only unlike Northern Italy, it is unlike the rest of the Mezzogiorno. There is no resemblance to mountainous Calabria or harsh Basilicata. Much of the soil is extremely fertile, so that there has always been great wealth for those who own the land, while the seaports are ideally placed for trade with the Levant. The people, too, are subtly different from other Southerners, although they are no less secretive and have the same beautiful manners.

Apulia's history is one of repeated invasion and conquest. The first known settlers were the Messapians from the Balkans, followed by the Greeks in about 800 BC, both absorbed and Latinised by the Romans. Goths arrived in the fifth century AD, soon evicted by a Byzantine reconquest, but followed by a further wave of Germans, the Lombards. After this, Saracens laid the region to waste, enslaving its inhabitants and establis.h.i.+ng short-lived emirates at Bari and Taranto. Then came a Byzantine revival, accompanied by Greek re-colonisation.

The Norman conquest of the eleventh century established a kingdom that endured for seven hundred years. The Regno was medieval Italy's most feudal state and Apulia possessed its most lordly fiefdoms, with vast estates whose lords dominated the cities. The kingdom was inherited in 1194 by the Hohenstaufen, brutally displaced seventy years later by the Angevins, who reigned until 1442. Then followed the Aragonese kings, dethroned in 1501, after which Southern Italy was governed by Spanish viceroys until 1713, briefly succeeded by Austrians. From 1734 to 1860 the Regno was ruled by a branch of the Bourbons. The Borboni's reign was interrupted in 1799 by the Neapolitan Republic, and again from 180615 by a French occupation under Joseph Bonaparte and Marshal Murat.

The Risorgimento of 1860 was far from being a "liberation". During the late nineteenth century new speculator landlords reduced Apulian labourers to near slavery, one in ten emigrating during the decade before 1915 and many others leaving after the Second World War. During modern times, however, life here has been transformed by "the coming of the water". Formerly in desperately short supply, it came first from the Abruzzi through the Great Aqueduct completed in 1939 and then from wells sunk deep into the tufa after 1945.

The Apulians have always possessed a genius for survival. They escaped from the Goths and later the Saracens by living in cave-cities, hewing grotto churches out of the rock. In spite of their Norman conquerors' harsh rule, they ama.s.sed so much wealth from exporting oil, wine, almonds and wool to the Levant that they were able to build gleaming white towns above ground, while during the seventeenth century, despite plague and Spanish taxation they created the lovely Baroque city of Lecce. They warded off brigands or corsairs with ma.s.serie, fortified farms where entire communities and their flocks could take refuge.

They have learned, too, how to make an invader's culture their own, especially the Byzantine and the Norman. In many churches Ma.s.s was said in the Greek rite until the seventeenth century and, even if the Greek language is now almost extinct in Apulia, other Italians still regard certain Apulian qualities as Byzantine, whilst Norman cathedrals continue to be the most treasured feature of the Apulian landscape.

Suffering and privation, from the fire and sword of barbarian invasions to the Risorgimento, have also played a large part in shaping the Apulian character, instilling the endurance and adaptability that has made the economic achievement of the last half century possible.

In our book we link Apulia's history to its topography. We know the terrain well and we write from personal experience besides living in a small Apulian town for several months we have made many visits over the years, systematically tracing the footsteps of early travellers. We would like to share not only our fascination with this beautiful land and its history, but also our admiration for its people.

1.

Introduction.

The Early Travellers.

In the past, Apulia was largely avoided by sight-seeing travellers. In 1883 Augustus Hare wrote that "the bareness and filth of the inns, the roughness of the natives, the torment of zinzare (mosquitoes), the terror of earthquakes, the insecurity of the roads from brigands, and the far more serious risk of malarial or typhoid fever from bad water, are natural causes which have hitherto frightened strangers away from the south." None the less, a few came, and some of these recorded their impressions.

The Abate Giovanni Battista Pacich.e.l.li (164195), born in Rome though by origin from Pistoia, was an indefatigable traveller who went as far as Ireland. During the 1680s he visited every town in Apulia, however small, describing each with gusto in "Il Regno di Napoli in Prospettiva", which was not published until 1703. Antiquary, jurist, theologian, hagiographer, letter writer and a member of the Royal Society at London, Pacich.e.l.li seems to have been the only priest for whom Norman Douglas ever felt any sympathy. "I like this amiable and loquacious creature, restlessly gad-ding about Europe, gloriously complacent, hopelessly absorbed in trivialities, and credulous beyond belief," he wrote. No doubt, the Abate's obvious love of wine was one of the reasons that endeared him.

For over a century the literary visitors who followed Pacich.e.l.li came in search of Roman remains, presumably inspired by Livy's account of the battle of Cannae or by Horace's journey to Brindisi. The first was an Anglo-Irishman, Bishop George Berkeley (16831753), then Dean of Derry, later famous for his 'immaterialist' philosophy that matter exists only in so far as it is perceived which Dr Johnson ridiculed by kicking a stone. He came here in the course of an extended Grand Tour in 1734, when he was companion to the Bishop of Clogher's son, writing down his impressions of Apulia in terse notes, very different from his usual stately prose. He also sent letters to his friend Sir John Percival, enthusing over Lecce, which he considered the most beautiful city in Italy, amazed to come across such impressive architecture in so remote an area. He says that he has seen in a single day five fine cities built in marble "whereof the names are not known to Englishmen."

The next visitor to put pen to paper was an Englishman, Henry Swinburne (17431803), the son of Sir John Swinburne of Capheaton in Northumberland. "A little genteel young man", was how he struck the philanthropist Hannah More: "He is modest and agreeable; not wise and heavy like his books." This is unfair even if his "Travels in the Two Sicilies" is strong on facts, it is written with a caustic wit and a keen sense of the ridiculous.

No other British travellers of this sort visited Apulia during the eighteenth century. The Swiss Baron von Riedesel, who came in 1767, looking for cla.s.sical remains, was sometimes unintentionally comical as when he thought trulli were Roman tombs or mistook quarries for ancient baths. Another Swiss, Count Charles Ulysses de Salis Marschalins, who toured the region in 1789 was a friend of Giuseppe Capecelatro, the free-thinking Archbishop of Taranto. Capecelatro organised de Salis's tour, providing him with a guide and accompanying him from Naples to Taranto. The resulting book gives a vivid picture of Pugliese rural life.

Jean-Claude Richard, Abbe de Saint-Non, who visited Apulia during the 1770s, had not much to say but commissioned a number of famous artists to ill.u.s.trate his sumptuous "Voyages pittor-esques ou descriptions du Royaume de Naples et de Sicile", published in 178186. The beautiful plates show how comparatively little Apulia has changed. Another Frenchman, the mysterious Paul-Louis Courier, who was afterwards murdered by his game-keeper, was garrisoned at Foggia and Lecce as a gunner officer from 18057. Although brief, his letters convey the bloodthirsty mood of the period.

In the winter of 181617 a young Scot rode alone through Apulia, which he later revisited with his friend the Prince of Ischitella, who had estates in the Gargano. Charles Macfarlane is described by the "Dictionary of National Biography" as "a miscellaneous writer"; in 1856 he lamented that "literature no longer affords me the ample income I derived from it during more than quarter of a century" and he died as a Poor Brother of the Charter-house. If clumsily written, Macfarlane's accounts of shepherds and brigands in "The Lives and Exploits of Banditti and Robbers" (1833) are of considerable interest.

As a young man, the Hon Richard Keppel Craven settled in Naples, where he was famous for coloured waistcoats and his hospitality at the Palazzo Craven. "A Tour through the Southern Provinces of Italy" recounts his adventures in Apulia in 1818 with ponderous humour. Ten years later the extraordinary Crauford Tait Ramage, tutor to the sons of the British Consul at Naples, walked or rode a mule through the region, travelling along the coast by felucca; he wore a white frock-coat and shoes, and carried an umbrella for protection from the sun and rain. His "Nooks and By-ways of Italy" (subt.i.tled "Wanderings in Search of its Ancient Remains and Modern Superst.i.tions") was not published until 1868, a cla.s.sic of travel admired by Norman Douglas and Harold Acton. Edward Lear confined himself to the western border during his painting tour of 1848 but his description of Venosa, in "Journals of a Landscape Painter in Southern Calabria and the Kingdom of Naples" is well worth reading. He also composed a limerick: There was an Old Man of Apulia, Whose conduct was very peculiar.

He fed twenty sons.

Upon nothing but buns, That whimsical Man of Apulia.

This appears to be the only English verse inspired by the region.

"A Handbook for Travellers in Southern Italy being a guide to the continental portion of the Two Sicilies" appeared in 1853. Not very much is known about the author, Octavian Blewitt, save that for many years he was Secretary to the Royal Literary Fund (the charity for indigent writers) and catalogued its archives. He spent the 1830s wandering through Greece, the Levant, and Italy, often returning to the Mezzogiorno, and certainly knew his history besides having a good eye for topography. Published by John Murray, his pioneering study went into many editions, being heavily plagiarised by Augustus Hare.

That odd figure Charles Yriarte went to the Capitanata with the Piedmontese army in 1861, going on to Lecce and Otranto fifteen years later. A journalist and painter, he was inspector of France's lunatic asylums and then of the Paris Opera while contributing articles to the Press under such pseudonyms as "Marquis de Villemer", ill.u.s.trating the Monde Ill.u.s.tree, and writing a life of Cesare Borgia. From "Les Bords de I'Adriatique et de Montenegro" (1878) he obviously liked the Pugliesi.

Mme Louis Figuier, born Juliette Bouscarren at Montpellier, was the first woman to record her impressions. She also wrote novels and plays, with t.i.tles such as "La dame aux lilas blancs", which enjoyed modest success. Escorted by her husband, a distinguished scientist, she paid a brief visit to Apulia during the winter of 186465, at the end of the Brigands' War, seeing only Foggia and Trani. Throughout, the couple appear to have been terrified. In "L'Italie d' apres nature" she gives a gruesome account of the sheer horror of Apulian inns, which goes a long way towards explaining why the region had so few visitors.

The magisterial author of lengthy studies of the Emperor Hadrian, Pope Urban VIII and Lucrezia Borgia, Ferdinand Gregorovius - a Prussian with a square head, shovel beard and pince-nez - rode over all Apulia during 187475, on a series of expeditions which he describes with Teutonic thoroughness in "Wanderjahre in Italien".

Augustus Hare travelled by rail at the end of the 1870s when researching here for his "Cities of Southern Italy and Sicily". Acid about Apulia's beggars and discomfort, the fussy old bachelor was warmly enthusiastic about its "wonderful old cities" and even pitied the labour gangs slaving in the fields. He complained bitterly about his accommodation, however: at Manfredonia, "Inn, Locanda di Donna Pepina, very miserable"; at Bari, "Hotel del Risorgimento, clean and tolerable but very dear"; and at Taranto, "Albergo di Roma, poor and dirty, but endurable."

A blue-stocking virago rumoured to have the names of her lovers tattooed on her thighs, Janet Ross explored Apulia in 1888, collecting material for her book "The Land of Manfred", which to some extent plagiarised de Salis-Marschlins. Her reminiscences, "The Fourth Generation" (1912) are better value. "Our Tuscan friends were much excited and rather alarmed at our daring to go to such an unknown region", she recalls when describing how she first decided to visit Apulia. "I was advised by several people to leave my earrings and gold watch at home 'those Meridionali are all thieves and robbers, you may very likely be captured by brigands and murdered. It is a dangerous expedition on which you are bound.' Few of them knew where Apulia was... The Northern Italians hardly regard them as fellow-countrymen." She got to know the Apulians well and was impressed by their honesty and gaiety.

Franois Lenormant, who saw Apulia shortly before Janet Ross, lectured on archaeology at the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris. His " travers l'Apulie et la Lucanie" (1883) and "La Grande Grece" (188184) not only emphasise the region's h.e.l.lenistic links but are fiercely indignant at the plight of the miserable labourers on the ma.s.serie. The two books persuaded Charles Diehl to visit the Apulian grottoes in search of Byzantine frescoes, and then publish a pioneering study, "L'Art Byzantin dans I'Italie Meridionale" (1894). They aroused so much enthusiasm in that forgotten "psychological novelist" Paul Bourget that in 1890 he spent his honeymoon here, describing what he saw in "Sensations d'Italie". A would-be disciple of Henry James, a fat, red-faced little man too fond of his food and wine, he fell genuinely in love with the Apulian landscape, urging that Lenormant's books should be made compulsory reading in French schools.

Another novelist, George Gissing, stayed at Taranto in 1897, but his "By the Ionian Sea" is disappointing. The eccentric, red-bearded Sir George Sitwell came down from his Tuscan castle to explore in the early 1900s, perhaps inspired by Mrs Ross's "Land of Manfred" there was a copy in his library at Montegufoni. He may have been the first to tell his sons...o...b..rt and Sacheverell about Apulia, although they seem to have derived their pa.s.sion for Lecce from Martin Shaw Briggs, a Leeds architect, who in 1910 published a glowing description of the city, "In the Heel of Italy", which extolled its Baroque architecture. The brothers would often visit Lecce during the 1920s, Sir Osbert Sitwell praising it almost too extravagantly in "Discursions on Travel, Art and Life".

Edward Hutton was a minor Edwardian 'man of letters' (his preferred description of himself), and once well known for his Italian travel books. A young friend of Janet Ross, he came here just before the Great War. He did not particularly enjoy the experience, described in his pedestrian if still useful "Naples and Southern Italy" (1915). However, Norman Douglas's "Old Calabria", published the same year, contains some magnificent chapters on Apulia. The author was a deplorable figure, a sponger and a paedophile, but he was undeniably amusing and learned, his beautifully written books ranging from "South Wind" surely the funniest novel about Capri to a monograph on the lizards of Paestum.

Brought up to read the Greek and Latin historians, all our travellers took for granted a familiarity with Apulia in cla.s.sical times (especially of the battle of Cannae, of Taras and Brundisium), which today's visitors rarely possess. On the other hand, they had certain handicaps. They were unable to appreciate Byzantine art, considered barbarous before the twentieth century, and, apart from Diehl and Lenormant, did not bother to visit the grotto churches, if they were even aware of their existence. Only the very early and the very late comers among them admired Apulian architecture, Romanesque or Baroque. They also lacked the insights that have been provided by modern archaeology. All save a handful ignored the wretched life led by the poor, such horrors as the labour gangs in the fields and why there were so many beggars. Where possible, we have tried to illuminate any blind spots of this sort.

Part I.

The Gargano.

2.

The Gargano.

A strong people with simple customs live in these mountains...

Gregorovius, "Apulische Landschaften"

THE THREE PROVINCES of Apulia are the Capitanata, the Terra di Bari and the Terra d'Otranto, also known as the Salento north, centre and south. In cla.s.sical times the inhabitants were all known as Iapygians but were divided into three tribes Daunians, Peucetians and Messapians. Although they were almost certainly Illyrians from the Balkans across the Adriatic, legend claims that they came from Greece in groups led by three fugitive sons of Lycaon, King of Arcadia: Daunus, Peucetius and Iapyx. Lycaon, together with fifty of his sons, had sacrificed a child (or a plate of human flesh) to Zeus, for which they had been changed into wolves. Only these three brothers escaped. Until recently, lycanthropy belief in werewolves, men who change into wolves at night was prevalent throughout the wilder regions here. None could be wilder than the inner Gargano.

In the extreme north of the Capitanata, the Gargano is the 'spur" of the Italian boot, but totally different from the rest of Apulia. Since ancient times it has had a sinister name, Horace writing of fearsome north winds that strip the trees of leaves and drown men off its coast. They still blow, so curiously that winter seems to linger long after it is over. "Spring hesitates to smile upon these chill uplands" was Norman Douglas's impression. Its woods and caves have attracted pagan deities, witches and saints, and even today the Gargano remains among the mysterious places of Italy, despite the holiday makers on its enchanting sh.o.r.es.

One of the Tremiti Islands long ago, it is now joined to the mainland, a great mountainous promontory about thirty-five miles by twenty-five, 3,400 feet above sea-level at its highest, that juts out into the Adriatic, with the same geological structure and configuration as those of the Dalmatian mountains. There are dense forests, mainly of chestnut, and wild, steep-sided glens, deep gullies, bleached cliffs and sandy beaches, many of which are only accessible from the sea. The western half consists of stony fields and lime-stone pavements, with pockets of good grazing in little valleys, where the grey cattle's bells sound mournfully through the mist.

In spring, the Gargano's limestone pavements are full of blue, white and yellow dwarf-irises, while orchids grow everywhere, cross-pollenating to an alarming degree. The sheer number of rare plants creates a botanist's paradise in the area, where 2,000 species have been recorded. Four of these, including the charming campanula garganic, are found nowhere else in the world.

Much of the woodland described by ancient writers has disappeared, cleared for agriculture or felled for export to s.h.i.+pbuilders on the far side of the Adriatic. Even so, the Foresta Umbra, now managed by the state, covers 24,000 hectares; most of the trees here are beech or oak instead of chesnut, many as tall as 130 feet, so that the forest lives up to its name of "shady". Until the 1950s it was inhabited by wild boar and wolf, but only a few wild boar remain while the wolves seem to have vanished. During the Middle Ages large areas of Apulia were covered by woodland of this sort, very unlike today's treeless landscape.

"Whoever looks at a map of the Gargano promontory will see that it is besprinkled with Greek names of persons and places Matthew, Mark, Nikander, Onofrius, Pirgiano (Pyrgos) and so forth", comments Norman Douglas, "Small wonder, for these eastern regions were in touch with Constantinople from early days, and the spirit of Byzance still lingers." In less flowery language, the Eastern Emperors were nominal rulers here till the twelfth century.

Until the 1960s funeral rites of great antiquity were observed. No one could leave the house for ten days after a relative's death, or attend the burial, food being sent in by neighbours; men stopped shaving for a month and wore black s.h.i.+rts as well as suits, women wailed and tore at their faces with their nails as the coffin was taken away. At marriages a rope of handkerchiefs barred the church door, the bridegroom untying the knots.

Strange superst.i.tions linger, such as a belief in Laro, the mischievous Apulian Puck. As everywhere in Apulia, there is wide-spread fear of iettatura, the evil eye: a tiny piece of coral, silver or horn is worn as protection against it, while a gesture with the first and fourth finger of the right hand can avert it but only if the iettatore sees you make it. Owls are known as 'birds of death', since to hear one hooting means that somebody in your family will die. An eclipse of the sun will be followed by famine or pestilence. There are countless other ill-omens, such as spilling oil. Spilling wine, however, can only bring good luck.

Even now, the people of the Gargano are credited with practising magic, often very unpleasant. Love potions based on menstrual blood are not unknown and spells are sometimes laid to harm enemies, animals being used as proxies; occasionally the hind feet of a living dog are chopped off for this purpose, the fate of a fine Alsatian encountered in San Giovanni Rotondo. It is said that some women continue to wear a dead mouse as a protection against the wiles of the Devil, hanging the mouse from their belt over the part where the Devil is most likely to enter in.

Among the supernatural gifts of Padre Pio, the great saint of modern Apulia, was that of being able to see angels and demons. He warned that the sky over San Giovanni Rotondo (where he lived) was literally black with demons. Even the most sceptical might easily suspect that they fly over many other places in the Gargano.

3.

Monte Sant' Angelo

...the cave, down some steps, is hallowed by the miraculous apparition of the Archangel Michael... you go in through a metal door: on the altar behind some iron railings is the statue, covered in flowers and crowned with jewels, of the celestial spirit who slew the Dragon from h.e.l.l... It is said that in the silence of the night angels may sometimes be heard singing, symphonies from paradise.

G B Pacich.e.l.li, "Il Regno di Napoli in Prospettiva"

DEVOTION, FIRST PAGAN and then Christian, created the shrine of Monte Sant' Angelo. The mountain is inland, where the inhabitants were famous for their secretiveness and savagery, even among those whom Gregorovius called "the wild men of the Gargano." The cave of St Michael has an eerie atmosphere, and after his visit here during the 1680s the Abate Pacich.e.l.li wrote of dread mingling with reverence. In ancient times it was the home of the Oracle Calchas, once a Greek soothsayer, whose ghost appeared in dreams. Those consulting him slept outside, wrapped in the fleeces of black rams.

In 493 AD a n.o.bleman searching for a lost bull found it hiding in the cave. The bull refused to emerge, so he shot at it, but the arrow turned in flight, wounding him. The Bishop of Siponto was informed and, according to "The Golden Legend", had a visitor soon after. "The man was hurt on my account", he told the bishop. "I am Michael the Archangel and I want this place held in reverence. There must be no more shedding of bull's blood." Michael is commander of the Heavenly Host, thrusting down to h.e.l.l Satan and all wicked spirits who wander through the world for the ruin of souls.

The bull in the story is significant. Gregorovius, who rode up here in 1874, suspected that devotion to St Michael had been superimposed on a bull-cult. Ninety years later, a mithraeum (caves of wors.h.i.+p used by the followers of the ancient religion, Mithraism) was discovered beneath the floor, where once the blood of bulls was sacrificed to the sun-G.o.d Mithras.

Not until Michael had been seen three times did Monte Gargano become his shrine. Shortly after his first appearance he came to save the citizens of Siponto from a barbarian army. The third vision was to the bishop at the moment when he was about to consecrate the cave. Michael announced that he had already done so, and an altar was found inside, covered by a vermilion cloth with the archangel's footprint on its altar stone.

The archangel in armour who escorted souls to Heaven through swarms of ravening demons, and frightened even the Devil himself, was venerated throughout medieval times with the dread felt by Pacich.e.l.li. Over the shrine's entrance are the words: "Terribilis est locus iste: hic domus Dei est, et porta coeli" "This place is fearsome: here is the house of G.o.d, and the gate of Heaven." Even today, you feel in the grotto that you are in the presence of some overwhelming, elemental force.

The Byzantine Emperor Constans II came in 683 with rich gifts, lost after the Emir of Bari sacked the shrine two hundred years later. When the Holy Roman Emperor Henry II prayed here in 1022, not only St Michael but Christ appeared in a blaze of light, the archangel presenting a missal to the Lord. Kissing the book, Christ told Michael to give it to the terrified Henry. Having lifted the emperor up to kiss the missal, the archangel threw him to the ground, laming him for life.

In 867 Bernard the Wise, monk of Mont St Michel in northern France, saw the shrine just before its destruction by Saracens. His own monastery was on a rock, where a bull had been discovered in a cave by a bishop, whom the archangel then ordered (this time in a dream) to build a sanctuary. This very similar story helps explain why Norman pilgrims started coming to Monte Sant' Angelo.

Bernard says that in his day the ground above the shrine was covered by oak trees. In 1274, however, a great white campanile (bell tower) was built. After going down fifty-five steps cut in the rock, you are confronted by jade-green doors of bronze inlaid with silver, bearing panels with scenes from the Bible; they were made at Constantinople in 1076 and paid for by Pantaleone, merchant of Amalfi. Inside the cave church, the names of pilgrims down the centuries are scratched on its walls and floors, some written in the earliest runes known in Italy. During the Crusades, pilgrims often drew a hand or a foot before leaving for the Holy land, vowing to draw its pair on returning safely. Holy water said to cure anything is still distributed in a little silver bucket from a well behind Michael's statue.

Keppel Craven, who came in 1818, writes "The cave... is low but of considerable extent, branching out into various recesses on different levels, so that the steps are frequent, and the surface is rugged, irregular, and very slippery, from the constant dripping of the vaults... A few gla.s.s lamps, suspended from the rock, which have replaced the silver ones of richer times, cast a faint glimmer of uncertain light." Even Craven was impressed by the pilgrims moving like shadows in the darkness and the hum of prayer.

"The men walked with the air of conquerors", wrote Janet Ross of the pilgrims who she saw in 1888: "Their dress was jaunty and picturesque short brown velveteen jackets, brown cloth waist-coats with bright b.u.t.tons, black velveteen breeches, and black worsted stockings tied under the knee with a bunch of black rib-bons; while round their waists were dark blue girdles. This costume was crowned with a dark-blue knitted cap, with a sky-blue floss-silk ta.s.sel worn quite on the back of the head."

As for the cavern itself, "When we saw it the irregular rock above the high altar was lit by hundreds of wax candles, whose flickering light seemed to make the statue of St Michael, about three feet high with pink cheeks and flaxen curls, move its large white wings, tipped with gold. A priest told me it was a wonderful work of art; he could not remember whether Donatello, Raphael or Michelangelo made it, but probably the latter, 'because of the name'."

"A wretched morning was disclosed as I drew open the shutters gusts of rain and sleet beating again the window-panes", wrote Norman Douglas, recalling how he set out to visit Monte Sant' Angelo from Manfredonia, just before the Great War. "I tried to picture to myself the Norman princes, the emperors, popes, and other ten thousand pilgrims of celebrity crawling up these rocky slopes barefoot on such a day as this. It must have tried the patience even of St Francis of a.s.sisi, who pilgrimaged with the rest of them and, according to Ponta.n.u.s, performed a little miracle here en pa.s.sant [in pa.s.sing], as was his wont."

No friend to the Catholic religion, he was less than charitable about the shrine and its pilgrims: Having entered the portal, you climb down a long stairway amid swarms of pious, foul cl.u.s.tering beggars to a vast cavern, the archangel's abode. It is a natural recess in the rock, illuminated by candles. Here divine service is proceeding to the accompaniment of cheerful operatic airs from an asthmatic organ; the water drops ceaselessly from the rocky vault on to the devout heads of kneeling wors.h.i.+ppers that cover the floor, lighted candle in hand, rocking themselves ecstatically and droning and chanting. A weird scene, in truth... It is hot down here, damply hot, as in an orchid-house. But the aroma cannot be described as a floral emanation: it is the bouquet, rather, of thirteen centuries of unwashed and perspiring pilgrims... in places like these one understands the uses, and possibly the origin, of incense.

Douglas's pilgrims sound little different from those seen by Mrs Ross: "travel-stained old women, understudies for the witch of Endor; dishevelled, anaemic and dazed-looking girls; boys too weak to handle a spade at home, pathetically uncouth, with mouths agape and eyes expressing every grade of uncontrolled emotion from wildest joy to downright idiocy... And here they kneel, candle in hand, on the wet flags of this foetid and malodorous cave, gazing in rapture upon the blandly beaming idol, their sensibilities tickled by resplendent priests reciting full-mouthed Latin phrases, while the organ overhead plays wheezy extracts from 'La Forza del Destino'."

"The way down the great flight of steps was... lined with the lame, the maimed, and the afflicted, all of whom exhibited their wounds with a dreadful and almost brutal insistence which was more than one could bear", shuddered Edward Hutton in the early 1900s. "But the scene in the church beggars description. The mere noise was incredible. Ma.s.s was being sung at the high altar, but all around us other devotions were in progress, litanies and prayers were being chanted, and moans and groans rising on all sides. It was impossible to remain for long. Our curiosity seemed more shameful than any superst.i.tion."

None of the travellers really understood why the pilgrims had come. "Their existence is almost b.e.s.t.i.a.l in its blankness", was Norman Douglas's opinion. "For four months in the year they are cooped up in damp dens, not to be called chambers, where an Englishman would deem it infamous to keep a dog cooped up amid squalor that must to be seen to be believed; for the rest of the time they struggle, in the sweat of their brow, to wrest a few blades of corn from the ungrateful limestone. Their visits to the archangel these vernal and autumnal picnics are their sole form of amus.e.m.e.nt." But this does not tell us what brought them to the shrine.

The pilgrims saw him as intercessor and defender. At his feast-days on 8 May and 29 September the choir sang "Holy archangel Michael, be our s.h.i.+eld in battle; so we shall not be lost at the dread Day of Judgement." First among the archangels, he was greater than the saints; after G.o.d and the Holy Virgin, they were accustomed to confessing their sins to him when seeking absolution. Night and day he defended them against the onslaught of the Devil and his demons, giving patience to bear trials and sorrows. They also firmly believed that St Michael could save them from natural disasters from droughts, crop-failures, cattle-murrains and earthquakes, from famine and pestilence. He would protect them too against wicked landlords and their cruel stewards, against brigands and house-breakers; they hung a picture of this ultimate guardian angel in their homes to ward off burglars many of them still do. And, understandably, in that eerie, awe-inspiring cave they felt closest to him.