Naples Past and Present Part 15

RIVIERA D'AMALFI, AND ITS LONG-DEAD GREATNESS

Loath as every traveller must be to turn his back on Capri and lose sight of Sorrento lying on its black cliff by the sea, yet it is a rare moment when first one tops the mountain barrier and sees the Gulf of Salerno far spreading at one's feet, with the Islands of the Sirens just below, and away over the blue distance the plain of Paestum, once a rose garden, now a fever-stricken flat, hemmed in between the mountains and the sea. The road, traversing the plain as far as Meta, in the shadow of St. Angelo, commences to ascend by long convolutions, winding perpetually through orange groves and orchards of amazing richness and fertility, mounting continually, gaining every moment wider views over plain and mountain. Directly in the path rises the sharp cone of Vico Alvano, precipitous and rugged. It seems to block the way, but suddenly the road sweeps towards the right, the ridge is gained at last, and all the Gulf of Salerno lies spread out below.

"So I turned to the sea, and there slumbered As greenly as ever Those Isles of the Sirens, your Galli; No ages can sever The three, nor enable the sister To join them--half-way On the voyage, she looked at Ulysses."

There is no escaping the spell of this ancient legend. At every turn it confronts one, testifying to the pa.s.sage of unnumbered years since the first s.h.i.+ps sailed upon this lovely gulf which in its time has seen such mighty armaments. It was s.h.i.+pping which made the power of the cities on the gulf. By the sea they rose, and by the sea the n.o.blest of them fell. For Amalfi has been torn away yard by yard; wharf and palace have been alike engulfed; and now there remains so little of the ancient city that one must guess and guess again before discovering where its splendour lay. Its greatness has departed as utterly as that of Paestum, and though it still teems with people, while the city of Neptune is desolate and silent, there seems no more chance for one than for the other that the spirit of old days will return to animate the present, or set the modern energies towards a goal which fits their past. What is it, in Heaven's name, which filches from so many splendid cities the desire to excel, and leaves them content to see the weeds grow over their past achievements?

I have said already that the mountains of the peninsula show their sternest face towards Salerno. The road which is carried along these precipices is of astonis.h.i.+ng grandeur. From the very summit of the mountains the cliffs fall by wide steep slopes to the deep water was.h.i.+ng round their feet. Farms or cottages scarcely exist; the ravines seem inaccessible. Beaches there are none, save at three or four points in the long distance to Amalfi; few fishermen dwell on this barren coast. Only at one or two points are the tunny nets spread upon the sea; and one may trudge for miles without meeting any soul but travellers whisked along by their quick-trotting ponies, or here and there a knot of soldiers lounging, rifle in hand, outside a guardhouse. The cliff is red and yellow; the gra.s.s slopes and the jutting crags which break them are odorous with rosemary. The road follows a course meant only for the sea-birds, now b.u.t.tressed out over the very face of the abyss, guarded only by a low, crumbling wall, now driven through the flank of some great headland which could not be turned. Every yard reminds one that the road is modern, that no trodden way led along the faces of these cliffs in mediaeval times, and when one comes at last to the ravine of Positano and looks down on the old brown town, clinging like a hawk's nest to the steep sides of the gulley which gives access to the sea, the first thought which occurs is that here was a site of wondrous strength, secure from all attack save that which came across the ocean, and faced the perils of a landing on the narrow beach.

Positano feared nothing from the ocean so long as the banner of Amalfi flew. For this strange cl.u.s.ter of half abandoned houses, looking now as if some giant had gone through the streets poking holes in the baked clay of the walls, was a member of that group of towns and havens which to the world outside the gulf called itself Amalfi.

Positano, Prajano, Conca, Pontone, Scala, Ravello, Minori, Majori, Cetara--all these and other communes supplied the hardy sailors and keen merchants who packed the city with the silks and spices of the East, who, though traders, retained their n.o.bility, like the gentlemen of Venice, and whose regard for discipline and social obligations was so keen that the sea laws they had evolved in their two centuries of admiralty became the wonder and the pattern of the world.

The standing puzzle on the Riviera d'Amalfi is to discover the original impulse which gave birth to this commonalty. Whence came the high spirit and the desire of greatness which burnt so brightly, and flickered out so utterly, these many centuries ago? If the belief of some historians be true, Positano, which originally was a monks' town, a mere cl.u.s.ter of houses in the shadow of a monastery, was made populous by an influx of refugees from Paestum, fleeing across the gulf from the pirates who, in the ninth century, gave the _coup de grace_ to that dying city. The tale is not improbable, and it may be that men born in the shadow of the splendid ruins which we see to-day carried with them to their new settlement some tradition of past greatness, which was stung to life again by the shock of their misfortunes. But the virile energy which made Paestum feared upon the sea must have been almost a forgotten memory even then, and doubtless one should search elsewhere for the spirit which breathed life into the growing state.

Whencesoever it came, there was once a high audacity among the seamen of this small port, little as it counts among the harbours of Italy to-day. It is here that Flavio Gioja dwelt, by whom, as is boasted at Amalfi, the mariner's compa.s.s was given to the world. It is quite certain that the polarity of the magnet was known before Gioja lived, if live he did; but though he was a.s.suredly not the first of mankind to observe the properties of the needle, it may well be that he did bring back the knowledge from some trading voyage to the East, and make it known in his own portion of the earth. If so, was he not ent.i.tled to the honour which his country claims for him? At the end of the thirteenth century, to which his lifetime is ascribed, discoveries of science were not noised about the world as they are to-day. The knowledge of one man radiated only a short distance round his birthplace. Those strangers who had the wit to appreciate it and carry it elsewhere earned scarcely less honour, and by as just a t.i.tle.

The priests have their own legend in explanation of the name which the town bears. Over the high altar of the church is a picture of the Virgin and Child painted on a panel of cedar wood. This picture was rescued--so the story goes--from the fury of the Iconoclasts; and when the s.h.i.+p which bore it from Greece was nearing Positano, on its way, I suppose, to Rome, a miraculous voice was heard upon the sea, saying over and over again, "Posa, posa!" till at last the sailors heeded, and brought the s.h.i.+p to land, and called the place Positano in memory of the event.

The road goes down the ravine beside the town of Positano, yet the old houses go on lower still, to the very edge of the blue sea, where the water laps in shadow on the beach. There is a fine cascade rus.h.i.+ng down the hillside opposite the town, and high up on the towering skyline the crag of rock is pierced by a natural arch. The road, always grand and beautiful, becomes still wilder when the town is pa.s.sed, and for a great way it hangs like a ridge of swallows' nests midway on the face of such precipices as defy description. The villages come rarely, and the jutting headlands which cut off all prospect of the different towns increase the solitude of this wilderness of mountains. When one has pa.s.sed Vettica Maggiore, where the women sit plying distaff and spindle in their doorways, one comes in contact with the degraded and persistent beggary which makes the peasants of this coast abhorred of strangers; and having rounded the great cliff of Capo Sottile, one sees far down in a beautiful gorge the small beach of Prajano, where two or three boats hauled up on the gravel, with a cottage under the cliff, make a picture of homely industry which is indescribably refres.h.i.+ng after the savage grandeur through which one has come for hours. Ere long one sees the beautiful headland of Conca, with its castle on the cliff. That point is one of the boundaries of the Bay of Amalfi; and when it has been rounded one comes ere long to a bridge thrown across the deep gulley of Furore, so named, it is said, from the wild surging of the waves through its rocky hollow in rough weather; and so, pa.s.sing by many a grotto and overhanging rock, which seems to totter to its fall, one attains at last to the ancient city of Amalfi.

A long beach of white and grey gravel, facing full south, lies sparkling in the suns.h.i.+ne. Here and there the strand is littered by great boulders which have fallen from the cliff, and the sea washes in among them, cool and translucent. Long lines of net, brown and red, are extended on the gravel, and here and there a man sits patching it, while great numbers more sprawl idle on the warm stones. The main road, descending the hill through a long tunnel in the cliffs, crosses the Marina. Half the width between the houses and the beach is occupied by sheets of sacking, on which yellow rice and macaroni are spread out to bleach. A couple of brown-legged boys in brilliant scarlet caps sprawl over the half-dried goods, spreading them to catch the sun more freely; while all the throng of sailors, women going to the fountain, children pestering visitors for alms, carriages rattling at quick pace across the stones, crowd up and down the narrow remnant of the way as best they can.

The mountains drop so steeply on either side of the ravine, and form with the sea-front a triangle so narrow, that there is but little s.p.a.ce left for the city. The houses are crowded in strange confusion.

It is a town of long vaulted staircases, branching into dark alleys, out of which the houses are approached by flights of steps. For several hundred feet one may climb up these eyries, now tasting the fresh air and catching a glimpse of the blue sea or the many-coloured campanile rising out of the huddled town below, now dodging to avoid the refuse flung from some high window on the stair, till at last a breastwork is attained which sweeps round a corner of the ravine, lined with houses and protected by a low wall. On a level s.p.a.ce below are orange trees, growing freely among the housetops; and over all tower the vast mountains, cramping the s.p.a.ce on every hand.

Where, one asks oneself, is old Amalfi? In what region of this dirty, squalid town of idlers are we to seek the relics of that proud city for the accommodation of whose Oriental trade, brought out of Asia by the ancient trade route up the Volga and down the Don, a whole quarter of Constantinople was an emporium not too large. The banner of Amalfi floated over hospitals for pilgrims in Jerusalem long ere any other Christian power was able to protect them, and for the better defence of the sacred places she called into life the n.o.blest of all military orders, the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem, who first at Acre, then at Rhodes, and lastly on the rocks of Malta, sustained the cause of Europe against the Turk with a pa.s.sionate devotion which might well have shamed the monarchs into imitation. Where are the palaces of those senators and doges, the council halls, the exchanges, the n.o.ble colonnades such as one sees in other cities not more famous? What has happened to the churches, and the monasteries? And where in this small harbour, fit only for the accommodation of a few coasting schooners, could anchorage have been found for the fleets which sought out the furthest corner of the East, and flaunted the banner of Amalfi in every port from Alexandria to Trebizond?

There is no doubt about the answer. All those splendours, all the apparatus of this once great city, lie beneath the sea. That which we look upon to-day is not Amalfi, but a shred of it, only the small segment which the sea has not yet taken, and the crumbling cliff has spared from the ruin of its landslips. Look at the western point of the small harbour. There is just room for the road to climb round between the mountain and the sea. When one stands at the curve of the highway, underneath the ancient watchtower that guards the entrance, one sees the deep creek of Atrani, a town continuous in these days with Amalfi; and beyond the limits of that creek a wider, broader indent into the mountain wall, making an open valley, on the further side of which the town of Majori lies under the vast shadow of the Monte dell'Avvocato. Such is the aspect of the coast to-day, and one watches the boats plying in deep water from one point to another of the cliff. But the chronicle of Minori tells us there was once a beach from Amalfi to Majori! If that be so, if an alteration so immense has occurred in the aspect of the coast-line, of what use is it for us to marvel where the argosies lay, or to guess what may have been reft from us by the encroaching sea?

It is futile to ponder over what is lost. That which remains is rarely beautiful, a miracle of colour, and of noisy, seething life. Under the watchtower of which I spoke there is a broad stone seat, which makes a pleasant resting-place, if only the greedy beggars of the town will be content to hunt their prey at the Marina, where the crowd is thickest, and to leave a moment's peace to the traveller who desires nothing less than their obtrusive help in discovering what it is worth while to see. From this point one looks across the beach from hill to hill, and sidewards up the ravine to the brown mountain-tops. In the very centre of the town rises the campanile of the cathedral, having a small cupola roofed with green tiles; and on the hill which closes down on the further side of the town, approached by a stair of many flights, stand the long, low buildings of the Cappuccini convent, now a home for saints no longer, but for sinful tourists, a noisy hostelry alive with the tongues of many nations, all caring more for cookery than heaven.

The convent was the work of Cardinal Capuano, a noted ecclesiastic of Amalfi, on whose name one may pause awhile, if only to recall the fact that it was he who found the body of St. Andrew the apostle, and brought it from the East to the cathedral, where it rests beneath a gorgeous shrine--for ever, we may hope, since the days are past in which even dead cities are rifled of the bones of saints. It is a strange fate which gives tombs to two apostles on this coast at so short a distance from each other as Amalfi and Salerno! The good Cardinal was at Constantinople shortly after the Crusaders sacked it.

All his life he had been eager to find the body of St. Andrew, patron saint of his native city. He knew it rested in the city on the Bosphorus, whither it had been carried from Patras centuries before; but where the shrine lay no man could tell him. At length, after many fruitless searches, going one day to the Church of the Holy Apostles to pray, he was approached by an old priest, who revealed himself to be his fellow-townsman, and declared the treasure which he sought was in that very church.

At this point the historian Pansa, from whose learned work I extract this pious tale, is less precise than could be wished. The Cardinal, he tells us, watched his opportunity, and got the body of the saint, with several other bodies, more or less complete in their several parts. But how? Churches rarely give up relics willingly, and it must have cost much trouble to abstract so many bones. Some interesting act of theft is here glossed over. One would like to be quite sure, moreover, that the relics were authentic, though after all there cannot really be much doubt of that, for St. Andrew had lain at Amalfi scarce three centuries and a half when he did the town most signal service. The corsair Barbarossa, often mentioned in these pages, having been driven off from Pozzuoli by the Viceroy of Naples, conceived the idea of revenging himself at Amalfi; and would certainly have accomplished his fell purpose, the sea power of the city being long since dead, had not St. Andrew, out of a clear summer sky, raised such a tempest as taught the pirate once for all that he could not flout a saint with safety.

I wish that the powers which scattered Barbarossa's s.h.i.+ps had been exerted to hold back the ruin which crashed down on the end of the long buildings of the Cappuccini some six months ago. As I sit looking across the harbour to the hillside where the convent stands, my sight is drawn continually by a ghastly scar in the rock at the further end of the buildings, and beyond it, down to the very level of the sea, is a hideous ruin--a wild confusion of gigantic boulders projecting from steep slopes of rubble and debris. One might look at the wreck of this evident convulsion a hundred times without guessing what was there six months ago--indeed, what lies there still, crushed and hidden by the fall of the overhanging cliff.

Just at the entrance of the town the road pa.s.ses through the Grotto of St. Christopher. At the mouth of the grotto is a signboard, bearing the words, "Hotel e Pensione Santa Caterina," with an arrow pointing to a narrow path cut round the cliff towards the face of the projecting headland. The path goes nowhere now; after a few yards it ends in nothing.

At that point one can see no more; but from this seat on the opposite side of the harbour one looks towards the headland, formerly most beautiful. For the overhanging cliff was topped with brushwood; it was chiselled into slopes and hollows, where the shadows lay superbly.

Midway up its height stood the white buildings of the Pensione Caterina, with its terraced garden; and a winding footway cut below the Pensione was the access for sailors to a quay and a pretty strip of beach, where a few boats were hauled up and the larger barks of fishermen lay moored in safety. So it looked on that December morning, when, with little warning, all the face of the headland slipped away and crashed down upon the sh.o.r.e, carrying with it nearly a third part of the Cappuccini Convent, and burying the whole of the "Santa Caterina" as completely as if it had never been.

Since that awful catastrophe, in which two ladies and several fishermen lost their lives, the ruin has lain untouched. Probably it will continue so, until time has covered up the scars with moss and lichen, and softened the piteous tale of the two lost ladies with all the grace and charm of folklore. Landslips and encroachments of the sea have dealt hardly with Amalfi. Perhaps it is scarcely strange that a people so buffeted by fate should lose their hope of greatness, and conceive no interest save the pillage of their guests. Returning to the centre of the town, I turn off from the marina by the first archway leading to the piazza, just where a tablet on the wall calls on Mary by the name of Stella Maris, "Star of the Sea," to aid all sailors in peril of the deep; and ere quitting the shadow for the sunlight, I stand in wonder at the beauty of the prospect. The piazza is irregular in shape, roughly triangular, following the conformation of the ground. In its midst is an ancient statue round whose base the pavement is stacked high with vegetables, piles of lettuces and carrots lighting up the grey shadowy s.p.a.ce, round which stand the high, irregular houses, with quaint alcoves and dark stairs climbing to the higher stories. There is a deafening babble of tongues, swarthy, broad-browed women kneeling by their baskets and screaming ceaselessly at the purchasers, who themselves are no less voluble, while the confusion is increased by bawling children, of whom some one is every moment at the traveller's elbow, pestering him with "Signur, u' sold'," and clinging like a leech, in spite of the angriest "Vatten" which stranger-lips can speak.

It is a striking, many-coloured scene of full and vivid life, material, not to say degraded, in its aspect. But beyond this crowd of unaspiring humanity, pa.s.sionate of gain rather than of any unsubstantial thing, rises the splendid front of the cathedral, set upon a height, as the temple of the Lord should be. A long and n.o.ble flight of steps, the haunt of squalid beggar children, gives access to a portico of many arches, rebuilt in recent years, but resting still on some of its antique pillars; while on the left rises the many-coloured campanile, its four small turrets cl.u.s.tered about the central lantern like the apostles standing round the Incarnate Word, so Volpicella puts it. Ruined and restored, altered by hands of men who could not comprehend the strivings of the ancient builders, this lovely structure still bears witness to the spirituality which dwelt here, as elsewhere in Italy, seven centuries ago. High over the babble of the degraded town it towers in its old majesty of form and colour; while higher still the mountain-slopes behind it rise in terrace beyond terrace into the silent regions of pure sunlight and fresh, untainted air.

It is the only spot in Amalfi where soul still triumphs over sense.

The interior has been badly modernised, and is less striking. The sub-church, as happens so often in south Italy, is but little changed, and its five apses suggest tolerably clearly that the upper church must at one time have had double aisles. Indeed, one of those aisles exists still on the north side, though walled off so as to form a distinct church.

There are many things worth notice in this church, but I shall speak chiefly of the doors of the main entrance, the great bronze doors of workmans.h.i.+p so fine that the most careless visitor cannot pa.s.s them by unnoticed. These doors were given to the cathedral by the great family of Pantaleone, before the year 1066. They are not of Italian workmans.h.i.+p, but were wrought in Constantinople, with which town, as I have said before, Amalfi traders held a constant intercourse. It is not a bad way of realising the extent and importance of that trade to stand in front of these very beautiful doors, to consider what their value must have been, and then to reflect that the family of Pantaleone gave to Italian churches no less than five pairs of similar doors. These were their first gift. Others were presented to the Church of San Salvatore a Bireta at Atrani, where the doges of Amalfi were elected. It is interesting to compare them with these of the cathedral. Another set went to Rome, but do not now exist; another to Monte Ca.s.sino; while for another benefaction still the Pantaleoni reached across the peninsula to the Adriatic sh.o.r.e, and presented bronze doors to the Church of the Archangel upon Monte Gargano, that great and solitary mountain shrine which in mediaeval days was all and more than all that Monte Ca.s.sino and Monte Vergine are to-day, visited with at least as much rapture of devotion and far more famous in the remotest parts of Christian Europe, being indeed the mother church of Mont St. Michel and our own St. Michael's Mount.

Monte Gargano looks down on the Apulian coast towns, Trani, Bari, Barletta, and half a dozen more, all of which, by their situation facing to the east, are and have always been the chief gates of Oriental trade pa.s.sing into Italy. Travellers of to-day are apt to forget the importance of the Adriatic coast throughout Italian history. It may well be that a great part of the trade between Amalfi and Constantinople was conducted by sea; but certainly also much traffic must have pa.s.sed across the country from coast to coast; and it is certain that Ravello and Scala traded chiefly with the Apulian coast towns, maintaining important settlements in every one, and so securing a share in the Eastern trade at second hand. Thus it is not surprising to see in the cathedral at Ravello another pair of bronze gates, about which there is this interesting fact to be noted, namely that they are not of Constantinople workmans.h.i.+p, though of that school, but were wrought by Barisa.n.u.s of Trani, who also made a similar pair of gates for the cathedral of his own city, and another for that of Monreale.

Thus the art practised in Constantinople had pa.s.sed over sea to one of the most important of the Apulian towns, and in its pa.s.sage it had gained n.o.bility. For the work of the Apulian craftsman is finer and more dignified than that of his Greek master, and indeed Schulz, who was no mean critic, declared roundly that the Ravello gates were unmatched save only by those which, by a miracle of craft, Ghiberti wrought for the baptistery of Florence.

Upon the summit of the mountain which rises behind the cathedral stands a very noticeable tower. It is of well-authenticated history, and the guide-books will give all the truth about it. Thus I need concern myself only with the fable, which I do the more gladly since it brings on the scene an old acquaintance, no other, indeed, than "La Regina Giovanna," whom we left behind on the Posilipo. I do not know of any historical warrant for connecting either Queen Joanna with Amalfi, though doubtless both visited a city so important in their day. But the peasants, intent as ever on localising their folklore, repeat upon this spot all the legends of the luckless Queen, her lovers and the fate which she reserved for them. I wish some traveller of leisure would make it his business to collect out of all southern Italy the various traces of this myth. It has bitten deeply into the heart of the people from Sicily to Naples, if not further, and in Provence, which was included in the dominions of the first Joanna, the tradition is said also to exist. "Si' comme 'a Regina Giuvanna!" is a taunt which strips the last rag from a woman's character. In Sicily it is said that the Queen visited her stables nightly and chose her lovers from her grooms. There is in existence the strangest possible dialogue in Latin between the Queen and an enchanter, who conjures up a spirit to foretell her end. It dates from the first half of the fifteenth century, and embodies what were doubtless the current traditions when the dissolute life of the second Joanna had revived and deepened the memory of the failings of the first.

The way to the mountain fastness of Ravello is wild and beautiful. It turns up across the hill beyond Atrani, and having surmounted the ridge, drops down again into the valley of the mills, a silent, shadowy ravine, between the brooding mountains, through which a pretty brook splashes down from leap to leap. The road winds upwards steadily till at last the old brown town of Scala is seen on the further side of the ravine, and a little later the towers of Ravello face it on the nearer hill. Both are inland villages, deserted in these days by almost all save peasants. But when Amalfi was great these mountain cities were great also; and of Ravello a tale is set down by Boccaccio, which sheds a flood of light on the pursuits of the dwellers on this coast five centuries ago.

"Near Salerno," says the prince of storytellers, "is a hill country looking on the sea, named by its inhabitants 'La Costa d'Amalfi,' full of little cities, of gardens and of fountains, as well as of rich men, eager in the pursuit of commerce. Among these cities is one named Ravello, wherein, just as there are rich men in it now, once dwelt Landolfo Rufolo, who was more than rich, but, not content with his wealth, tried to double it, and went near to lose the whole."

Landolfo, it appears, had conceived the idea that a large market lay open in Cyprus for certain kinds of wares, and accordingly he realised all the capital he could command, bought a large s.h.i.+p, laded it deep with goods, and set sail from home, but when he reached Cyprus he found the markets glutted. Prices fell to almost nothing, and he had almost to give the goods away. Thus he was cast down in a single day from wealth to poverty, and saw no course open to him but to die or to turn corsair.

Of these alternatives the natural man would choose the last, and Landolfo was frankly natural in all his acts. He sold his heavy s.h.i.+p, bought a light one, fitted it with all things needful for the trade of piracy, and set sail once more, intent on pillage,--of Turks especially, but by no means only those, for pirates must be practical.

In this vocation Heaven helped him who helped himself, so that within a year he had not only regained what Boccaccio quaintly calls "his own," but much more also; and being minded not to push his luck too far, set sail for home, where he meant to live in peace.

He had got as far as the Greek archipelago when he met a storm, and put into a small creek for shelter. In that creek two Genoese s.h.i.+ps were lying, and the Genoese, being of like profession to Landolfo, made a prize of him, sacked his s.h.i.+p, and scuttled it.

These Genoese were G.o.d-fearing men, and having got Landolfo's goods, by no means desired to deprive him of his life. Thus when the storm abated the citizen of Ravello, now once more a beggar, set sail for Genoa on his captors' s.h.i.+p. For a whole day the sea was kind and smooth; but the storm came back, the two s.h.i.+ps were driven far apart, and the one in which Landolfo was a prisoner, driving on a reef off the island of Cephalonia, was shattered like a gla.s.s bottle flung at a wall.

The s.h.i.+p was gone; it was dark night; the sea was strewn with floating wreckage; and Landolfo, who had been calling all day for death to relieve his sorrows, saw the grisly shape awaiting him and did not like it. Accordingly he caught at a table which went swimming by, and getting astride of it as best he could, held on with a grip of desperation. So he went on, up and down the hills and valleys of the sea, till at last he became aware of a huge chest floating near him, which threatened every moment to surge up against his frail raft and sink it utterly. He fended the chest off with his hand as best he could, but presently there came a mighty squall of wind, raising a sea so great that the chest drove down and over the luckless merchant, tore him from his perch, and sank him in the sea.

When he came up, gasping and half drowned, his raft was so far off that he feared to make for it. But the chest was close at hand, and across it he cast himself, and so was tossed up and down all that day and the next night. But when the light returned, either the will of G.o.d or the force of the wind drove him to the sh.o.r.e of the Island of Gurfo, where a poor woman happened to be polis.h.i.+ng her household pots among the sand; and she, seeing a shapeless thing tossing up and down in the surf a little way from sh.o.r.e, waded out and dragged it ash.o.r.e.

Much warm water and judicious rubbing brought back the departing life to Landolfo's body, and in a day or two he thought himself well enough to go. The old woman thought so too, and gave him a broad hint to be off. So the ruined merchant gathered up his rags, and being in no want of the chest, thought of giving it to his hostess in return for her Christian care of him. But like a prudent merchant he first took the precaution of opening it when alone, and found it filled with precious stones, set and unset, of great value.

Landolfo, though somewhat stunned by this fresh caprice of fortune, yet saw clearly how improper it would be to give all this wealth to the old woman. So he packed the whole of it about his person, gave her the empty chest, and departed with tears and blessings. On some fisherman's boat he got across to Brindisi, and so up the coast to Trani, where he found merchants of his own town. Note once more the close relations between Ravello and the Apulian cities. These friendly merchants clothed him, gave him a horse, and sent him home, where he realised his wealth and lived in honour all his days.

This Rufolo family of Amalfi was one of the greatest in all Italy, though unhappily it has been extinct these many centuries. So far as can be ascertained, the name of Landolfo does not occur among their records. But Boccaccio's story has the marks of truth. It is all quite possible, and its incidents entirely in keeping with the manners of the age. One writer, I see, calls it a "brutta storia," but we need not use hard names about what we ourselves should certainly have done had we lived in the twelfth century. The greedy vulture Charles of Anjou was often indebted to the wealth of the Rufoli for loans. In 1275 Matteo Rufolo and fifteen other n.o.bles of this neighbourhood held the royal crown in pledge! What wealth there must have been in the decaying palaces of these hillsides! The Rufoli had a villa on the seash.o.r.e at a spot called "La Marmorata," set by a stream which flows down through groves of oranges and lemons to the sea. In this villa they feasted the monarchs of the House of Anjou right royally; and the peasants still say that at the end of every course the silver dishes were flung out of the window into the sea, to show how little the wealthy Rufoli recked even of such precious wares as those. But it is added that the canny n.o.bles did not really lose the dishes, for nets had been laid carefully beneath the sea, into which the silver fell, and out of which it was recovered when the guests had gone.

This tale sounds too remarkable to be invented. Yet it is in fact only a variant of a myth localised also in Sicily, and doubtless in many other places. The Palermo version is worth noting. It is a pendant, of course quite unhistorical, to one of the traditions of the Sicilian Vespers. After the ma.s.sacre, the Pope laid an interdict on Sicily. The churches were closed and the bells silent. The people could not live so; something must be done. So they built a s.h.i.+p, and a group of gentlemen went on board, carrying with them all the silver cups and dishes which they possessed. They sailed to Rome, and having reached the Tiber, they feigned the speech and manners of some strange country, and on the deck of their s.h.i.+p they sat banqueting, while as each precious vessel served its turn they flung it overboard, where it fell into a net concealed about the vessel's keel. The fame of these reckless strangers soon reached the Pope, who came down to see the marvel, and, being very curious about the matter, was easily induced to step on board. Whereupon the strangers shot out their oars and, rowing quickly off, carried the Pope to Palermo, where he was soon persuaded to relieve Sicily of the interdict.

Such tales as these blow about the world like b.a.l.l.s of thistledown, lighting now here, now there, and securing at each resting-place a pa.s.sionate belief. What is the truth of the fact common to both these tales, and in what age and place are we to seek for it? The age of Mediterranean folklore is past guessing, and the variety of races which have dwelt upon the sh.o.r.es of the great inland sea should make it the richest in the world.

Whilst we have been discoursing of the Rufoli the road, having climbed over the shoulder of the hill above Atrani, has been slowly mounting the valley of the Dragone, and at last it emerges on the small piazza fronting the Cathedral of Ravello. By the time he attains this plateau on the mountain-top the traveller will have seen enough of the approach to set him pondering by what fact it happened that Ravello ever grew into an important city. For nothing is more certain than that the course of trade is not determined by caprice. Chance has no part in it, and any man who wishes to understand the causes of the rise or fall of cities must ask himself in every case what convenience brought trade thither, or what inconvenience checked it. Now the inconvenience of the situation in which Ravello lies is manifest, and as the existing road was made out of a rough muletrack only in the present generation, the difficulty of access either to Ravello or La Scala must have been immense. Yet that difficulty did not deflect the trade. Both cities were undoubtedly rich. La Scala is said to have possessed one hundred and thirty churches, a statement which seems incredible to-day, even if the outlying towns of Pontone and Minuto be included in the number. D'Engenio enumerates no less than twenty-five families of undoubted n.o.bility at Ravello, and adds to his list the words "et alii." At Scala he mentions only twelve. All abandoned these hilltops centuries ago, leaving their palaces to decay. That is scarcely strange. It is easy to understand why trade left this half-inaccessible eyrie. The wonder is what brought it here. The city had a great reputation for the dyeing of stuffs. Why did not the dyers establish their vats at the foot of the hill, profiting by the constant intercourse of Amalfi with other cities? I can see no other reason for the growth of Ravello and La Scala than the paramount necessity in the early Middle Ages of safety from sea rovers. It will be impossible to verify this guess until some really scholarly man, probably a German, elects to spend his learning in elucidating the dim and tangled history of this most interesting coast. It would be a n.o.ble task, and it is strange that some fine scholar has not been attracted to the work ere now.

Probably the visitor who has just arrived in the cathedral piazza may not immediately see with how great beauty Ravello has been adorned. It is certainly no more than the wreck of what it once was. But this can be said of so many Italian towns that the point may be scarcely worth making. The cathedral once possessed a beautiful porch, approached from the piazza by a double flight of seventeen white marble steps. It has none now. Within is a lamentable scene of desolation, a church once filled with glorious works of art among which rather more than a century ago a bishop was allowed to work his will. An Anglican rector with a pa.s.sion for encaustic tiles could not have wrought more mischief. The bishop's conception of beauty lay in the whitewash pot.

This simple ideal he worked out with such thoroughness that in all the church only two half-figures remain of the n.o.ble frescoes which were once its pride. The bishop looked round, saw that it was well, and began on the mosaics, which were priceless and beyond all praise. The most beautiful of these was probably the baldacchino which surmounted the high altar. This the energetic bishop got rid of altogether, unless it be the fact, as some suppose, that a few sc.r.a.ps of it are embedded in the bishops throne. There were fifty-two choir stalls of carved walnut wood. They dated from the year 1320, and anyone who surveys the relics of the great beauty with which the founders of the church equipped it may guess that the choir stalls were rarely lovely.

Not one chip remains of them. By the time he had done all this the bishop had made much progress towards bringing his lovely cathedral to the condition of some Bible Christian chapel in a country village.

But the church was full of marbles. Out they went, no one knows where.

The pulpit was among the most exquisite of man's works. He began to deface it, but something stayed his hand, I cannot guess what, for such a man must have been impenetrable to remorse. The man who did us this intolerable wrong was called Tafuri, and I hope visitors to Ravello will not forget him.

By some providential accident the pulpit remains but little hurt. Its western end is carried on six slender spiral pillars, each a twist of exquisite mosaic, and supported on the backs of lions and lionesses of strong, fine workmans.h.i.+p. The body of the pulpit is a marvel, a superb blend of rich soft colour with the purest carving in white marble. It is wrought with the most delicate fancy and restraint. It lights up the whole desolated church, and makes one's heart burn for the rare beauty which was shattered and destroyed by the ignorant Bishop Tafuri. And, more than that, this pulpit is an object which sets one pondering whether southern Italy in the great age of the Hohenstaufen, or their first successors, can have been so dest.i.tute of great artists as is maintained by certain critics, among the rest by Crowe and Cavalcaselle. It is true that scarce any paintings in Naples can be attributed to the native artists of that period save those which have been retouched so often as to be of no value to the argument. But granting this, it is surely fair to say that the existence of this pulpit proves the possession of a sense of form and colour so n.o.ble that it must have produced fine painters. The craftsman was Nicolo di Foggia, again an Apulian town, unless it be the fact, as I see some say, that a family named De Foggia was settled in Ravello. But art so beautiful as this is begotten of a long tradition; it is an inheritance from many predecessors of less merit. It does not leap into existence in the full blossom of its beauty. The ideals of Nicolo, and in some measure his attainments also, must have been those of others in his day, and it cannot be that some of them did not express their conceptions with the brush. The last four centuries have wrought almost as much mischief in southern Italy as a barbarian invasion, yet the cathedral at Ravello remains one of the spots at which we can best perceive the greatness of that which once was; and few men who ponder on the grandeur of the doors and the soft wealth of colour on the pulpit, the ambo, and the bishop's throne, will be disposed to deny that there was once a tribe of artists in these regions who earned immortality of fame, though destiny has s.n.a.t.c.hed away their crown.

It is but a stone's-throw from the cathedral to the gate of the Palazzo Rufolo, which, by the unselfish courtesy of the late Mr. Reid and his widow, is freely opened to the inspection of any stranger anxious to examine its rare beauty. The palace, though lovingly repaired and tended by Mr. Reid, is but the wreck of itself, having suffered sorely not only by the waste of time, but also by cruel barbarity in the last century. Yet it remains a most important example of the Saracenic taste which crept into this country from the middle of the ninth century, affecting profoundly both its life and art, and perhaps carrying with it the seed of ultimate destruction. It is true, at all events, that the rulers of this coast began in the eleventh or twelfth century to lay such stress on purity of blood as to suggest that they discovered peril in the blending of Italian blood with Moorish. It is not easy to realise in what degree Saracens dwelt freely in the land. It was in the year 842 that a rival claimant for the great Lombard Duchy of Benevento called in the aid of Saracens.