Through the Casentino with Hints for the Traveller

By Author	[ A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z \| Other Symbols ]
By Title	[ A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z \| Other Symbols ]
By Language

Download this book: [ ASCII ]

Look for this book on Amazon

We have new books nearly every day.
If you would like a news letter once a week or once a month fill out this form and we will give you a summary of the books for that week or month by email.

Title: Through the Casentino with Hints for the Traveller
Author: Eckenstein, Lina
Language: English
As this book started as an ASCII text book there are no pictures available.

*** Start of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "Through the Casentino with Hints for the Traveller" ***

produced from images generously made available by The
Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries)

_Through the Casentino_

[Illustration: ST FRANCIS BY DELLA ROBBIA (LA VERNA)]

Through the Casentino

_with Hints for the Traveller by_

_Lina Eckenstein_

_Illustrated by Lucy Du Bois-Reymond_

[Illustration: colophon]

_London: J. M. Dent & Co._

_Aldine House, 29 and 30 Bedford Street_

_Covent Garden, W.C._ * * 1902

_All Rights Reserved_

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I

PAGE

_The Casentino_ 1

CHAPTER II

_Bibbiena and Cardinal Bibbiena_ 13

CHAPTER III

_La Verna and St Francis_ 33

CHAPTER IV

_Camaldoli and St Romuald_ 51

CHAPTER V

_In the Apennines_ 77

CHAPTER VI

_Poppi and Counts Guidi_ 90

CHAPTER VII

_Capo d’Arno_ 113

_Hints for the Traveler_ 133

_Index_ 143

ILLUSTRATIONS

PAGE

_St Francis by della Robbia (La Verna)_ _frontispiece_

_Chiesa Maggiore, La Verna_ 3

_Bibbiena Marketplace_ 14

_Situation of La Verna_ 34

_Vine Cultivation (Casentino)_ 36

_Entrance to La Verna_ 43

_Camaldoli (Casentino)_ 53

_Courtyard of Camaldoli_ 73

_Landmark of Camaldoli_ 76

_Castle of Poppi (Casentino)_ 91

_Courtyard of Castle, Poppi_ 99

_Statue of Count Guido, Castle of Poppi_ 109

_Arms of the Guidi_ 112

_Church of Romena (Casentino)_ 114

_Castel San Niccolo_ 123

_Map_ _at the end of the Volume_

THROUGH THE CASENTINO

“col cavallo di San Francesco”

_The Casentino_

“Li ruscelletti, che de’ verdi colli
Del Casentin discendon giuso in Arno,
Facendi i lor canali e freddi e molli
Sempre mi stanno innanzi....”
(_Inf._ 30, 65 ff.)

The Casentino is the name given to the upper valley of the Arno, where
the river, rising in numerous streams on the slopes of the Falterona,
flows southwards for about forty miles before it swings round in its
course and runs north-westwards in the direction of Florence. The
district, to use the words of a modern Italian writer, is “formed by
nature in the shape of a basket”--those oval flower-baskets we see
carried about the streets of Florence--“with its lowest part green with
meadows, fields and vineyards, and encircled and, so to say, closed in
by lofty mountains.” It is a district rich in memories of Dante and
other associations. The halo of early Christian life, the gloom and
splendour of feudal times, and the glow of the Renaissance, all linger
here. And many beauties of nature, many feasts of the imagination here
await the traveller who foregoes for a time the hasty temper of the
tourist.

It was late one afternoon in April when we left the train at Bibbiena,
and, shouldering our knapsacks, wended our way up from the station to
the town. We were well in the land of the ancient Etruscans, that
mysterious and visionary people whose fleet swept the Tyrrhenian Sea at
a time when the greatness of Rome was not. Like other Etruscan cities,
Bibbiena lies on the summit of a hill, and many examples of Etruscan art
industry have been discovered in its neighbourhood.

It had been cold and cheerless in the noisy Italian train rattling up
from Arezzo. A dull, stormy sky gave a desolate aspect to the irregular
country and cast a shadow over the rugged mountains. But as we climbed
the hill of Bibbiena our spirits rose. Side valleys opening up in
different directions revealed winding roads and castle-crowned
elevations; Poppi, with its soaring tower, stood up in bold outline; the
higher mountains, many of them snow-capped, seemed to unite in one bold,
forcible sweep. Which of these heights sheltered Camaldoli,

[Illustration: CHIESA MAGGIORE, LA VERNA]

with its reminiscences of St Romuald?--which the retreat of La Verna,
with its thoughts of St Francis? Our anticipations were in no way damped
when we found ourselves half an hour later sitting in the little
dining-room of the Albergo Amorosi. Certainly the chief merit of the
broth was its warmth,--the pigeon was not drawn, though it was
tender,--and the cheese could never have suggested the difference
between this commodity and chalk. But the delicious fried artichokes,
and the assurance of mine host that to-morrow he could procure anything
we pleased, went far to restoring our confidence. It was Easter Sunday,
visitors could hardly have been expected at this late hour. Besides, the
bedrooms and general appurtenances of the place were unexceptionable. So
we made the best of our meal, examined the visitors’ book with
deliberate curiosity, and then we sat down by the window and watched the
fading light of day across a bit of old-fashioned garden, with its
blossoming almond tree, the tender green of the budding fig, and the
rusty black of a row of cypresses between us and the distant mountains.

Looking back to the time when the Casentino as such emerges from the
dimness of the unrecorded past, we find obscurity hanging over this
district longer than over adjacent parts of Tuscany. The circle of its
enclosing mountains gave the Casentino a remoteness, which qualified
its fate in the past as it adds a special colour to its life of to-day.
The period of Etruscan independence and the period of Roman rule have
left few obvious traces; it is of the times following the barbarian
invasion that the district chiefly speaks. When men are thrown into new
surroundings, new qualities come into play. There is something
fascinating in analysing the influence which race has had upon race, and
the results of bringing peoples of different degrees of culture into
juxtaposition. All that survived of Roman culture and learning after the
advent of the barbarians was to be found in the towns. The German
invaders on the banks of the Arno, as on those of the Rhine, were
impatient of the restraints of mutual dependence--they avoided life in
cities. Once in possession of new lands, the leaders of the conquering
host divided, each leader sought a centre of authority for himself, and
the lesser military chiefs strove to equal the autonomy of the greater.
Solitary and as reserved towards compeers as the eagle, these men made
their homes by preference on rocky heights, which nature protected
against surprise, and which the art of defence succeeded in rendering
almost impregnable.

History chronicled at least four distinct barbarian descents into
Northern Italy in the fifth and sixth centuries. Different races and
different branches of the same race ousted one another from possession
of the land. When the tumult of contrary tides subsided, the Langobards
held the sway, which they retained for over two hundred years. The
Langobard’s spirit is that of the hunter--it lives to this day in the
architectural decorations of North Italian churches, where the bristling
boar and the leashed hound, the fierce wolf and the rampant lion, the
flying deer and the hungry bird, with nondescript monsters of various
kinds, do service in ornamenting façades, supporting columns and
relieving capitals.

We know little concerning the settling of Langobard chiefs in the
Casentino, but the district, with its fruitful upland tracts, its rocky
elevations and wooded side valleys, had great attractions for the
invaders, since it favoured the mode of life they held dear. When
authentic records begin, many strongholds of the district were in the
hands of men who were Langobards by descent, and who became progenitors
of some of the most distinguished families of Tuscany. Among these the
Guidi claim special attention. For the history of this family decided
the history of the Casentino for over four hundred years. No family
attained a power at all equalled by theirs, no family so deeply
impressed the mind of Dante, and none is so frequently mentioned in the
Divine Comedy.

It was against the further advance of the Langobards that the Pope in
the eighth century called upon the loyal Franks to interfere in behalf
of the temporal estates of the Church. Once again the fertile plains of
Italy were overrun by Germans, but in this case by Germans who had
grasped the idea of a centralised system of government. Before the unity
of the Franks the scattered and divided nobles of Italy were as chaff
before the wind. The greater number of her dukes, counts and barons
recognised Frankish over-lordship, and in due course became feudatories
to the Empire. This relation eventually secured to the Emperor his
staunchest allies against the growing Italian communes--it in no way
debarred the Italian nobles from living as independent chiefs, warring
against one another as personal hatred, jealousy and private revenge
prompted. The distinguishing qualities of these men--they may well be
called virtues--were audacity, enterprise and a boundless self-reliance.
But they were qualities unseparated as yet from the revolting contempt
for life and limb of a rough barbarian age, a contempt that found
expression in wanton stabbing, poisoning and mutilation as a convenient
mode of retaliation on enemies.

But a safeguard necessary to the very existence of these men now lay in
their recognition of the claims of the Church. The Pope, as a temporal
ruler, might be defied; as a spiritual ruler, who had hosts untold at
his command, he was a power and a strength to be respected. Turbulent
barons, whose play often ended in bloodshed, began to defer to the
priest and to patronise the monk. The ascent to the stronghold was
flanked by a chapel, and monastic colonies were invited to settle in the
most fruitful districts.

There can be no doubt that the men who, thus prompted, accepted Mother
Church, accepted her from purely utilitarian motives. But Mother Church
was apparently content to dwell with them on the terms proposed, for she
blessed them with many blessings. Exactly those dynasties prospered
whose piety is borne out by the numerous endowments which they made.
Certainly these were made on conditions which left a loophole for
interference on the part of those who made them. But the greater
prevails over the lesser, whatever terms the lesser may make. The Church
entered into the alliance in obedience to a call from the barons, but in
course of time she shook herself free from their control.

The history of the Casentino illustrates the sequence of these changes.
Few rocky heights but are crowned by the ruins of a stronghold, few
upland expanses but preserve the remembrance of an ancient monastery.
The word _badia_, the ancient term for monastery, survives in a number
of local names, such as Badia a Tega, Badia a Prataglia. These
monasteries went through stormy experiences towards the close of the
tenth century, and all owing to the high-handed manner in which their
patrons dealt with them. The Church was defiled by iniquity of traffic.
On the one side laymen sold Church property and privileges, simony in
the wider sense of the word. On the other, ecclesiastics themselves
traded in benefices, simony in its narrower sense.

One of the important movements set on foot to oppose this evil is
associated with the name of St Romuald, and through him with the
Casentino, where the monastery of Camaldoli most directly embodied and
most religiously preserved the spirit of one of Christianity’s most
zealous champions. Camaldoli in the course of centuries has attracted
visitors of many tempers from many countries. In Dante’s estimation
Romuald was so important a person that he pictured him in Paradise as
one of the chosen two whom St Benedict pointed out to him by name.

Among those whom the fame of Romuald brought to the Casentino was St
Francis of Assisi. On his journey he passed La Verna, that solitary
mountain height in the Apennines which appeared to him as a chosen spot
for meditation. Many visitors come to see La Verna in the Casentino who
come there to see nothing else, especially of late years, since a less
prejudiced view of the saints has helped to restore the importance of St
Francis on a wider basis than that of a purely devotional interest.

But not only the votaries of St Francis find a shrine at which to pay
homage in the Casentino. Since the publication of the _Voyages
Dantesques_ by Ampère, every student of Dante longs to wander among
these hills, for here the poet stayed at different periods of his life,
and here his admirers are especially able to appreciate those occasional
references to the beauties of nature, which are as manna in the
wilderness among the terrible descriptions of Hell and Purgatory. In the
Casentino Dante fought in his youth, hither he came in his manhood to
stay with the Counts Guidi when Florence had closed her gates to him.
And again the revived study of Dante’s works during the Renaissance was
directly associated with the Casentino. Cristofero Landini, who first
published a commentary on Dante, was from there; and Bandini, who wrote
a famous work on the revival of learning in Italy, describes this
revival in connection with Landini, and prefaces his work by an account
of the numerous distinguished men to whom the Casentino gave birth.

Thus on the very point of entering the Casentino were we made to pause
and call to remembrance some of those periods which associated the
district with so much that is worthy of recollection. If knowledge be
the wing wherewith we fly to heaven, it is also the key wherewith to
unlock the treasures of this earth. And it seemed the more needful to
recall the distinguishing features of the past as the different periods
gained in importance when seen on a wider historical background. But
discursiveness too has its limits. Wisely were the words spoken, “a time
to break down and a time to build up.” It so happened that we had each
brought a copy of Dante, though books are not a pleasant burden on a
walking tour. But the trouble of carrying them was well repaid by the
enjoyment we derived from studying them during the evening hours while
in the land in which we were so frequently reminded of the poet.

_Bibbiena and Cardinal Bibbiena_

“Bibbiena ‘che una terra è sopr’ Arno molto amena.”
(Berni: _Orlando Innamorato_, 3, 7, 1.)

The town of Bibbiena boasts of no special architecture and of no great
works of art, but it has all the characteristic charm of a Tuscan hill
city. Looked at from without, the remains of its great walls and the
substructure of its buildings suggest line upon line of successive ages
of builders; within, there are the usual open spaces and narrow streets,
with sudden changes from dazzling sunlight to dim coolness. Apparently
the town has not spread since it was dismantled at the beginning of the
sixteenth century; its limits are still marked by the remains of its
walls. And, as in all walled cities, its buildings, churches, palaces,
dwelling-houses and store-houses stand shoulder to shoulder, the more
important buildings stretching to greater height and overlooking the
less important ones.

On ordinary days the town was quiet enough. Few people were seen abroad
and the noise of a vehicle was an event. But inside the houses

[Illustration: BIBBIENA MARKET-PLACE]

various trades were plied. The main streets of the place were lined with
vaulted cavernous shops, the doors of which were thrown open, and in the
deep, shady recesses men were busy at work. As usual in hill cities,
blacksmiths’ shops were numerous, and the owners of all seemed well
employed. And as one passed along the street--those narrow, stony
Italian streets--one’s attention was arrested by the sound of
hammering. Presently the hammering ceased, the bellows stirred up a rush
of sparks, and for a moment a ruddy light fell on the bending cyclopean
figures at work, or perhaps on the bellows themselves, a panting monster
couchant on the hearth. From the braziers’ shops sounded the din of the
strokes falling on the metal. These shops too were numerous, and their
roofs could hardly be seen for the number of large-bellied copper water
pots hanging there. The roof too of the shop of smoked wares was almost
invisible from rows upon rows of suspended sausages and hams, each
tightly confined in a close network of string. There was the weaver’s
workshop, from which sounded the regular thud of the beam thrown back on
the woof, and there was the wheelwright’s, with its smell of stored
timber and its floor strewn with crisp shavings as they were taken off
by the plane. The greengrocer’s store was but a poor one as yet; there
were lumps of boiled spinage and bunches of young artichokes, no other
green-meats, but there were lemons, oranges, nuts and dried figs in
plenty. There was the drug store too, with its clean, cool, deserted
look. The apothecary and a friend were sitting down to a game of cards
one day when we passed, and looked up in surprise as we entered in the
hope of coming upon some pots of Savona ware--a desire for which was
strong in the new-fledged M.D. Then there was the barber’s shop, with
its nimble master, who could be seen operating on a customer, and the
small window with panes of glass behind which the watchmaker sat bending
over his work.

On market-days the town assumed a look of greater liveliness.
Two-wheeled country carts came toiling up the hill. They were left on
the terrace below or on one side of the market-place, and their inmates
stood about in groups with the men of the town who had stopped work for
the day. A number of stalls were set up on the market-place and wares of
many kinds were displayed. There were stalls of butchers’ meat, loaded
with the tiniest of lambkins, a sorry sight; there were stalls with a
show of ribbons and laces, all of the cheapest; stalls with bales of
homespun; stalls with hats and caps of felt. And on the ground brown and
yellow and red earthenware was heaped up or spread about, jars and
platters, and pots and pans, in the plainest of forms but most
decorative in colour.

On such a day selling extended down the side streets. And the vendor of
cheap literature was seen suspending tracts and booklets in rows by
means of bits of string, while the hawker of cheap jewellery took
advantage of a projecting window-ledge to set out his little trays. The
display of outlandish wares invariably causes one’s money to burn, and
one of us was tempted to buy a silver finger-ring with a crucified
Christ--a pattern peculiar to Tuscany, I believe--while the other, from
a mass of twopenny romances and stories of the saints, picked out the
romance of Pia dei Tolomei, the story of a faithful wife’s cruel
treatment and violent death. This was she, unforgotten in popular
literature as it seemed, who started up before Dante in Purgatory and
prayed him to recall her memory on earth.

But it was at night, when the dark of the evening filled the streets
with gloom, when the last carts had rattled down the steep streets and
were speeding away along the white country roads in the darkness, when
men passed along the walls like shadows, and silence had laid her hold
on the concerns of this world, that fancy began to stir and breathe more
freely, and stepped forth to take her pleasure with the figures of the
past.

One evening I had stayed in the Franciscan church looking at the
altar-pieces of the Della Robbias, the Nativity and the Deposition--the
latter a gift to the church from Cardinal Bibbiena--till the twilight
drove me out and I went to walk on the terrace of the town, which
commanded a view of the panorama of the hills. There had been a
thunderstorm, and heavy rain-clouds hung over the Apennines. Their
lower slopes were shrouded in mist, but spanned from side to side by a
rainbow. Towards the south the skyline above the valley of the Arno was
piled with masses upon masses of clouds. Further yet, towards the west,
the sun had just set behind a rocky height, but its reflection was
caught by the white vapour that filled the undulating plain and extended
upwards into the numerous branching valleys beneath the snow-capped
heights of the Pratomagno, revealing line upon line of rocky crag and
sloping hillside. It was a sight that stirred emotion and roused the
imagination. And wandering back through the dark, solitary streets, I
seemed to see some of the figures of the shadowy past, whose mortal
remains long ago had fallen to dust and decay, nay, for aught we knew,
had gone to build up new forms of life again and again under the
transforming agency of time.

Had they not all walked and talked here, the Etruscan potter, cunning of
hand, worthy forerunner of the Tuscan painter of the Quattrocento?--The
Roman centurion, proud of a system of government which embraced the
known world, never equalled before, never since?--The Langobard
hunter--the soft-treading monk--the sister of charity--had they not all
walked and talked in sight of the surrounding hills? And had not these
streets seen some of those feuds between commune and commune, very
thorns in the eyes of Italian liberty in the fourteenth and fifteenth
centuries, when the hope of national unification was shattered, and that
for centuries to come, by the rise of the _condottieri_, those upstart
rulers, spoilt children of fortune, to whom Italian history owes some of
its most sombre and also some of its brightest pages? There is no
English equivalent for the word _condottiere_, the thing and the term
for it are unknown outside Italy. For in Italy alone a combination of
peculiar circumstances made it possible for men, who were gifted with
unlimited determination, to watch their opportunity inside the separate
townships and to snatch at the reins of independent government by the
help of mercenary troops, a tool, dangerous in itself, which they
handled with consummate ability.

The development of communal life in the cities of northern Italy had
been early. But placed between Emperor and Pope the citizens of
different towns split into factions; some preferred allegiance to an
Emperor who was on the other side of the Alps, others, more national in
feeling, sided with the Pope. But when the respective authority of Pope
and Emperor became a matter of dispute, and each sought to support his
claims by introducing foreign armies into Italy, all alike were thrown
off their balance.

Under these circumstances the joint action of citizens was
inconceivable, much more the joint action of different cities, to the
common end of national consolidation. Worn out by party conflicts,
townships at last succumbed to the high-handed government of a military
leader who brought security if nothing else, and the Republican
Government of city after city fell a prey to men whose attitude recalled
that of the tyrants of classical antiquity. For among the _condottieri_
also there were men famous for their misdeeds, yet whose despotism was
relieved by a trait of grandeur. Among them also there were men who held
the prosperity of their subjects dear at heart and who made their courts
into centres of learning and polite intercourse. A stormy period was
followed by comparative quiet, and the arts of peace found their best
patrons among parvenu princes.

The town of Bibbiena had experienced her share of these vicissitudes.
Subject at one time to the Prince Bishop of Arezzo, the town was
besieged and appropriated by the Republic of Florence, snatched back by
members of the powerful Tarlati family, and reconquered by Florence
thirty years later. For its vicinity to Florence, combined with its
comparative remoteness, made Bibbiena a dangerous neighbour in times of
warfare. This was especially the case after the expulsion from Florence
of the Medici in 1494, when Piero, the eldest son and successor of
Lorenzo the Magnificent, with his brothers and others, sought the help
of Venice. An army of Venetians invaded the Casentino, and made Bibbiena
its headquarters. The Florentines, having secured the help of the Sforza
of Milan, in their turn invaded the Casentino, laying siege to Bibbiena,
and the Venetian army was caught as in a trap. Bibbiena fell, and all
possibility of her harbouring the enemies of Florence in the future was
removed by the entire demolition of her town walls.

The Medici escaped. Piero, whom his father designated as the “fool,”
threw himself into the arms of the Borgia and perished a few years
later; Giovanni, Lorenzo’s “clever” son, who was a cardinal at the age
of thirteen, and afterwards Pope Leo X., left Italy to seek solace by
travelling in Germany, Flanders and France; and the third brother, the
spirited and gifted Giuliano, called by his father the “good,” a few
years later was staying at the Court of Urbino, together with the
devoted friend of the family, Bernardo Divizio, afterwards Cardinal
Bibbiena.

And these streets had seen him often, in obscure youth and again in the
pride of successful manhood, Bernardo Divizio, surnamed Bibbiena, true
representative of the spirit of the late Italian Renaissance, with its
boundless faith in its own wisdom. Author of that most spirited and
most licentious comedy, the _Calandra_, _maître-de-plaisir_ at the court
of Leo X., patron of Rafael, self-conscious, versatile, handsome, with
glowing eye and scornful lip, he lives in the portrait which Rafael
painted of him. Count Baldassare Castiglione, in his famous analysis of
the _Perfect Courtier_, introduced Bibbiena as the man of mirth and wit.
Paolo Giovio, the historian, to whose facile pen posterity owes so many
biographies, says much in praise of him. Bembo addressed to him some of
his most pleasing letters, and all accounts corroborate the impression
produced by Bibbiena’s writings as they lie before us, and by the man’s
portrait as it hangs in the Pitti, painted by one of the greatest
artists the world has known.

Bernardo Divizio was of an obscure family of Bibbiena. The story that
the Divizi had changed their name from Tarlati is an obvious invention,
and the boy, at the age of nine, was sent to Florence, where his brother
was secretary to Lorenzo the Magnificent. He was an able letter-writer
at seventeen, and was the constant companion of Lorenzo’s son Giovanni,
his junior by five years. The two young men rivalled each other in
studying literature and the classics, but apparently there was never a
cloud between them. Before the Medici went into exile Bibbiena acted as
their envoy, and a letter of his addressed to Piero throws a curious
side-light on the kind of love-adventure in which these young men found
diversion. At a later period Bibbiena acted as secretary to Giovanni,
advocating his cause at the Papal Court with Julius II. Later still he
joined Giuliano at the Court of Urbino, which had become the
rallying-place of many men of distinction.

For the Montefeltre of Urbino, _condottieri_ by origin, belonged to
those princes who set before them a high degree of excellence. Duke
Federigo, whose boast it was never to have lost a battle, acted as
patron to the translators and commentators on the Greek classics; he
collected a library at Urbino and built a magnificent palace there.
There is something pathetic in the fact that Federigo’s son Guidobaldo,
himself a confirmed invalid, presided in person over the games by which
the young men perfected their physical training. For athletic exercises,
no less than culture and good breeding, were the object of attention at
Urbino, where the best aspirations of the age, intellectual, artistic
and social, found protection. Bramante, who designed St Peter’s at Rome,
was from Urbino. Rafael was born here, and he always retained an
affection for the home of his childhood, which he frequently visited.
Several of his earlier pictures, including Christ on the Mount of
Olives, were painted for Duke Guidobaldo. Guidobaldo’s wife, Elisabetta,
was a Gonzaga of Mantua, a family of origin and ambitions similar to
those of the Montefeltre at Urbino. And when her delicate husband had
retired to rest, the Duchess, with the witty Lady Emilia Pia,
entertained the company in her apartments, where social accomplishments
and literary talents were fully displayed.

It was at these reunions that the discussions took place which Count
Castiglione has immortalised in the _Cortegiano_, a book famous in its
time, which has been translated into English more than once under the
title, _The Courtier, or the Perfect Gentleman and Gentlewoman_. A
number of distinguished visitors are represented as being assembled in
the rooms of the Duchess, and among them are the names of several whose
fame has descended through other channels. Here Count Lodovico Canossa
spoke of the courtier’s outward bearing and behaviour, pursuing the
questions into such byeways as, How far self-praise was commendable,
and, How negligence could be affected without becoming unpleasant. When
he had spoken Bibbiena was called upon to analyse how far facetiousness
was compatible with good breeding, and he illustrated his argument by
witticisms, _bon-mots_, and accounts of practical jokes in endless
variety, a collection which forms a valuable addition to our knowledge
of the _facetiæ_ of the Renaissance. Bibbiena’s plea for fun was founded
on the observation, I do not know if originally due to him, to
Castiglione, or to some older writer, that man is the only living being
capable of laughter. The company fully appreciated his jokes and the way
he told them. To us, many of them seem rather out of date. One wonders
that men of culture should have cared for humour that was so broad, and
especially, that they should have thought fit to enlarge on it in the
presence of ladies. Not that the stories in themselves have any of the
offensiveness of those tales with which Boccaccio’s company amused
themselves a century and a half earlier. On the contrary, Bibbiena
maintained that in good society no pleasantry was acceptable which
detracted from a woman’s honour, a remark which led up to the discussion
of the perfect lady and of the nature of love. Giuliano de’ Medici, a
known champion of women, espoused their cause in a spirit which cannot
fail to delight all women who read the work. In the animated discussion
which followed, Octaviano Fregoso, afterwards doge of Genoa, Bembo,
Aretino and the Lady Emilia Pia all took part.

To judge from the Cortegiano, Bibbiena was not only handsome, but he was
renowned for taking pride in his good looks, and in an age of
self-consciousness he appeared as most self-conscious. The sentiments
which he aroused and the impression which he made were ever present to
his mind. And his self-consciousness was matched by his self-assurance.
He apparently loved to give the conversation a personal turn, and to
carry off feigned criticism of himself in a spirit of banter. When Count
Lodovico insisted on beauty of feature as necessary to the perfect
courtier, the conversation took an undesired turn. But Bibbiena recalled
it and restored good-humour by drawing attention to himself. “As for
grace and beauty of feature,” he said, appealing to Lodovico, “I know I
have my share, the reason, as you know, why so many ladies fall in love
with me, but as for beauty of person I am somewhat in doubt, especially
regarding my legs, which are not as well shaped as I would have them....
Explain more particularly what you mean by beauty of person that I may
be freed from suspense and my mind set at rest.”

Bibbiena not only entertained the company at Urbino with talk. His great
triumph there was the performance, in 1508, of the _Calandra_, one of
the earliest comedies in Italian prose. It called forth acclamations of
delight among contemporaries; two generations later its flagrant
indecencies had relegated it to oblivion. A full description of the
performance was forwarded to Count Lodovico Canossa by Count
Castiglione, who, judging from the tone of his letter, had a hand in the
_mise-en-scène_. The curious part about this is its striving for
realism. There is the downright realism of a street with palaces and an
octagonal church, a town-wall and fortifications, partly decorated in
stucco, for the comedy, and the affected realism of would-be classical
figures and accessories for the interludes. And this a hundred years
before improvised hoardings did service at the first representations of
Shakespeare, or a hundred and fifty years before Inigo Jones designed
elaborate sceneries for the representation of masques in England.

The _Calandra_ itself was composed on the model of the _Menechmi_ of
Plautus, and is not without likeness to the _Comedy of Errors_. But in
this case the two persons whose likeness gives rise to laughable
mistakes are twins, brother and sister, neither of whom is aware of the
other’s presence in the same town. The brother sometimes dresses up as a
woman to gain access to his mistress, the sister sometimes wears men’s
clothes to avoid detection. In the prologue the spectators are called
upon to decide for themselves who is on the stage, brother or sister, a
mystifying _quid pro quo_ which apparently was a source of endless
discussion and amusement to the perplexed audience. A vulgar husband,
who is said to be drawn from life, and a witty go-between, are the most
individual characters. A necromancer is introduced and is credited with
transforming men into women, and this gives an opportunity for
ridiculing the current belief in magic.

The play was in five acts. At the close of each act came an interlude,
by which the classical taste of the age was gratified. There was Jason
ploughing the field with imitation bulls which snorted real fire; he
sowed dragons’ teeth, which presently started up into men who fell to
performing a morisc or morris-dance. At the close of the second act
Venus appeared in a chariot drawn by cupids, who bore flaming torches;
they set free a number of gallants, who likewise performed a dance. Then
came Neptune seated on a car, surrounded by sea monsters, the account of
whose dance recalls the displays of a modern Christmas pantomime. Later
on Juno appeared surrounded by a bevy of birds--peacocks, eagles,
ostriches, parrots--all so entertaining in their antics that Castiglione
knows no limit to his praise of them. The entire interludes were acted
by children, whose freshness and want of affectation were felt a welcome
change from the conventionality of the professional actors. The
performance closed with an epilogue, in which Cupid spoke of love as the
guiding power of life, and enlarged on the blessings of peace as
opposed to the terrors of war.

The success of the performance was such that six years later (1514),
when Giovanni de’ Medici had become Pope Leo X., and Bibbiena had been
made cardinal by him, the play was repeated at Rome in the Papal Court
for the entertainment of Isabella d’Este, Countess of Mantua. The Pope
was persuaded by his cardinal to be present, and again no trouble was
spared to secure a look of reality to the stage. Its decoration was
entrusted to Perruzzi, who was studying architecture at Rome under
Bramante, and whose marvellous talent for perspective equalled his fame
as an architect. It was he who designed and built the Farnesina, the
ceiling of which Rafael decorated with the history of Cupid and Psyche.

The name of Cardinal Bibbiena is indissolubly connected with the
pontificate of Leo X., a period of which contemporaries spoke as the
Golden Age restored. Giovio has left a most enthusiastic description of
the life at Rome at the time. Art and learning, which had received new
impulses, thanks to the determined policy of Julius II., found as
liberal a patron in Leo. Bramante was at work raising the walls of St
Peter’s, Michael Angelo was painting the Sistine Chapel, Rafael was
devoting his energies to the Stanze and the Loggie of the Vatican. And
at the same time Sadoleto, the famous Latinist, and his friend Bembo,
distinguished alike as historian and art-connoisseur, were attached to
the Papal Court in the capacity of secretaries. Pope Leo was surrounded
by a circle of men of merit, and in this circle Cardinal Bibbiena played
no subordinate part. His advice, we are told, was worth having in
serious and in frivolous matters; and, judging from letters extant, he
inspired Bembo with warm feelings of affection. We are told that his
ready wit made it easy for him at any time to divert Leo, and in the
matter of art his tastes fell in with those of his patron. It was for
Cardinal Bibbiena that Rafael painted a small chamber in the Vatican
Palace which is still known as the Cardinal’s bathroom. It was designed
in the style of the antique wall-paintings which had been discovered in
the _thermæ_ at Rome. Small scenes were introduced among arabesques on
the walls, and the subjects of these scenes were chosen by the Cardinal
and recall the interludes of the _Calandra_. On each picture Cupid was
depicted, driving sometimes birds, sometimes butterflies or other
insects, to show the power of love over the animal world. Cardinal
Bibbiena had taken a great fancy to Rafael; he persuaded him to become
engaged to his niece Maria Antonia. The painter found he could not
refuse though his affections were elsewhere. But he deferred the
marriage from year to year, and his premature death cut off the
possibility of the alliance.

Thanks to the efforts of the men whom Leo assembled about him, Rome
enjoyed a time of undisturbed prosperity--a time of which all who care
for buildings and books think with admiration and approval--a time when,
once again in the history of mankind, all the elements of culture of
which the age seemed capable were developed to their fullest and
completest extent. And this while northern Europe, full of anger and
discontent, was preparing to meet the coming storm, while travellers
returned from Italy chiefly impressed by her vices, while England was
waxing wroth at the thought of Papal extravagance, and Germany welcomed
the charge that the Pope was a monstrosity with acclamation.

But, nevertheless, none but a northern European, sick at heart at the
losses inflicted on his country by the Reformation, could look upon the
men who made the greatness of this period at Rome as whited sepulchres.
For they have all come down to us, drawn from life by Rafael--Pope
Julius and Pope Leo, Count Castiglione and Cardinal Bibbiena, and
Inghirami, the secretary of Julius, who likened his patron to the
Neptune of Virgil, who rose above the waves and the storm was hushed.
Excepting the portrait of Count Castiglione, which is at Paris, all
these portraits are at present in the Pitti. And were it not that famous
pictures disappear in an unaccountable manner, we should be in
possession also of that of the spirited Giuliano de’ Medici, for there
seems no reason to doubt the information that Rafael painted it.

It is said that Pope Leo owed his election greatly to the able policy of
Cardinal Bibbiena; it is said also that, as Leo was troubled with an
internal complaint, the cardinal laid his plans for becoming Pope in his
turn. If this plan ever existed it was cut short by death. Cardinal
Bibbiena died suddenly towards the close of 1520, a few months after
Rafael and a few months before Leo.

The palace of the Divizi still stands at Bibbiena adjoining the
Franciscan church. The abilities which secured the Cardinal and his
brother the goodwill of the Medici, reappeared in the next generation in
Angelo Divizio Bibbiena, who became secretary to Cosimo I., first Duke
of Florence. After him the Divizi seem to have fallen back into
obscurity. Their palace at Bibbiena is now owned by members of a
different family.

III

_La Verna and St Francis_

“Nel crudo sassa infra Tevere ed Arno
Da Cristo prese l’ultimo sigillo
Che le sue membra du’ anni portarno.”
(_Par._ 11, 106 ff.)

Our first expedition from Bibbiena was to La Verna, ever memorable
through its associations with St Francis of Assisi. Here in the depth of
mountain solitude, when the thought of regenerating mankind was strong
within him, St Francis found the spot of his heart’s desire. Hither he
came some ten years later, broken by disappointment and broken in
health, but strong in the joy that comes from bearing all things
patiently in the consciousness of a pure heart. And here, as the legend
tells us, he was quite transformed into Jesus by love and compassion and
received the impress of the most holy stigmata.

The retreat of La Verna lies at a distance of about eight miles from
Bibbiena, 3720 feet above sea-level, on a plateau that forms a ledge, as
it were, on the southern slope of the precipitous Penna. The road from
Bibbiena

[Illustration: SITUATION OF LA VERNA]

across the mountains into the valley of the Tiber skirts the Penna,
which stands isolated, massive, and beetle-browed, among the loftier but
less commanding heights of the Apennines. It is the “rough rock between
the Tiber and the Arno,” as Dante has called it, a rock which commands a
prospect without bounds. For the mountains of Tuscany, the plains of
Romagna, and the rugged uplands of Umbria are all within sight, fading
away in the blue distance that embraces the Tyrrhenian sea on one side
and the Adriatic on the other. Quite apart from its historical
associations, the spot, with its lofty beeches and pines, has many
attractions; the near distance and the far outlook are both equally
beautiful.

It was on a warm, sunny morning that we descended the hill of Bibbiena.
Beyond the church of the Madonna del Sasso, the road mounted a ridge,
and then descended and crossed the river Corsalone. Then began the
steep, steady ascent of the Apennines. It was a beautiful day. The
heights were lost in the morning haze, the air was laden with the vague
perfume of spring growth. There is an Italian proverb which says that
April calls up the flowers and May rejoices in their colours. As it was,
the sun all around was at work softening sheath and leaf and bud. The
hedge-rows were veiled in tenderest green, while here and there they
were white with the flaky blossoms of the blackthorn. Violets,
primroses, celandine and dark blue bell-hyacinths shone among the
verdure of the roadside. Down by the river the fields were green with
corn and waving herbage; further up the brown earth sloping away from
the road was planted with trees, their trunks wedded to the stems of the
vine. In these parts the vines are trained up pollard trees, over the
stunted tops of which their branches are spread. These branches are then
tightly wound round each other, two and two, tied together and their
ends turned downwards. As we passed along, men were training and binding
the vine, singing snatches of a song that ended with a minor cadence.
From the hanging ends of the vine the shining sap was dropping,
recalling the Italian simile of _piangere a vite tagliata_.

[Illustration: VINE CULTIVATION (CASENTINO)]

In our progress we passed several roadside shrines, but we found them
despoiled of their original contents. We afterwards found that all the
open-air shrines of the Casentino have been dealt with in the same
manner. In some a rude print or a small china figure has been
substituted for the older object of reverence; oftener the niche is
empty and the structure is falling to ruin.

For several miles our road was through land that had been brought under
cultivation. Then it ascended through a wood, and beyond this we
reached the uneven grassland of the mountains. The genial warmth of the
lowland and the unchecked influence of spring were left behind. The
grass on the hillocks was green, but in the hollows it was brown and
sodden, as though the numerous patches of snow had only just shrunk away
from it. Only here and there, close to the edge of the snow, purple
crocuses were bursting through the soft mould of the rifts in the
greensward. The silence of mountain solitude reigned undisturbed except
for the sound of trickling, dripping water.

The plateau, at the end of which the convent of La Verna stands, is
visible from afar. It was between one and two in the afternoon when we
left the main road and soon afterwards reached the little inn that
stands on the confines of the monastic property. Within its walls, at
the foot of the rock, which is here almost perpendicular, a small chapel
commemorates the spot where St Francis and his companions paused to rest
before scaling the height. “And immediately flocks of birds came from
all parts,” the legend tells us, “and with singing and beating of their
wings they showed the greatest joy and gladness, and surrounded St
Francis in such a manner that some perched on his head, some on his
shoulders, some on his arms and some on his legs, and some around his
feet. His companions marvelled, but St Francis, all joyful in his
spirit, said to them--I see that it is pleasing to our Lord that we live
in this solitary mountain, since so much joy is shown at our arrival by
our little sisters and brothers, the birds.”

This incident in the legend of the saint illustrates one of the most
lovable traits in his character--the sense of religious fellowship which
united him to whatever claimed his attention in nature. The beasts of
the earth, and the birds of the air, fire and water, the wind, the sun,
the moon and the clouds--he felt the impress of the divine spirit in
every one of them. In the happiest and in the most trying hours of his
life he was ever ready to recognise the beneficence of the divine
purpose in everything around him. It was this attitude of mind which
enabled him not to shrink when the red-hot iron was drawn across his
temple in the hope of saving his eye-sight. It was this attitude of mind
which inspired him to compose the _Canticle of the Sun_, a hymn which in
its simple framing and passionate utterances bears the stamp of the
religious fervour of a new era.

The personality and influence of St Francis have great attractions under
whatever aspect they be viewed. He is the representative of a new
development of Christianity--of the period when the bearings of
Christian teaching on the concerns of daily and domestic life were first
realised, and when the masses of the laity ceased to look upon
Christianity as a cult, and began to feel it as a living faith by which
conduct could be regulated. It is in this sense that Ruskin, speaking of
St Francis, says that it was he who taught men how to behave. By example
chiefly. For the bearing of the man who would be guided solely by
Christian love and charity had an irresistible charm for those who saw
him, and the tidings of his influence, carried beyond the confines of
his district by enthusiastic followers, acted as the breath by which
latent emotional cravings were everywhere fanned into ardent devotion to
the needs of suffering mankind.

To his companions the _Poverello_ of Assisi appeared as the true
representative of the Lord’s anointed, and it was owing to this that the
movement which he inaugurated had so great an influence on life, on
literature and on art. The measure of the man is not easy to recover.
His companions never tired of drawing parallels between him and Jesus of
Nazareth, and, as in the case of Jesus, a number of miracles wrought by
him were introduced into the descriptions of his life, which throw
darkness rather than light on his personality. But the influence of the
man may well appear miraculous, considering how instantaneous and
far-reaching was the impression which he produced--an impression to
which history offers few parallels. This influence is so marvellous that
the historian who would show it in the light of cause and effect must
needs have a firm hold on the sequence of events that led up to it, and
on the prevalent attitude of mind in the different strata of society
that prepared it.

The influence of the Franciscan movement on literature and art has been
made the subject of a number of interesting inquiries. Ozanam was the
first to analyse it in its bearings on Italian poetry. The _Canticle of
the Sun_ (_Laudes Creaturarum_) by St Francis, is among the earliest
poems in the vernacular, and it led to the composition of numerous poems
and hymns. Apparently St Francis in early days himself sang the songs of
the troubadours, and among his first converts was a troubadour who was
afterwards known as Fra Pacifico. Hence an element in the religious
poems of the Franciscans which reflects the poet’s delight in nature and
the beggar’s freedom from care. Many celebrated hymns were written by
Franciscans, among them the _Dies Irae_, first sung by Thomas of Celano,
and the _Stabat Mater Dolorosa_ written by Jacopone of Todi, a famous
and prolific poet. As a companion to the _Stabat Mater Dolorosa_, the
Hymn of the Virgin at the Cross, Jacopone afterwards wrote the _Stabat
Mater Speciosa_, the Hymn of the Virgin at the cradle; the keynote of
the one is sorrow, the keynote of the other is joy.

The study of Ozanam on the influence of the Franciscans on Italian
literature might be extended to other countries. Some of the earliest
and most beautiful writings in Middle English were the outcome of
Franciscan influence. Wherever the friars gained a foothold they
succeeded in identifying themselves with popular and national interests,
and the Christianity which they preached was as a light by which the
common realities of life appeared more beautiful and more worthy of
praise in sermon and song.

In regard to art, Ruskin long ago drew attention to the spirit which the
friars infused into painting; his keen sense of beauty and his desire
for religious exaltation were soothed by no art so well as by that of
the Quattrocento. In Italian painting the friars inaugurated a new era.
Since the days when Byzantine artists had decorated churches and chapels
with mosaics, practically no attempt had been made to represent
incidents of Biblical history and saint legend in church. The friars
were the first to favour the idea of having the stories of religion set
forth on a large scale in effective and inexpensive frescoes. And
compared to the artists of the Byzantine School, these painters were
animated by the health-giving breath of a new kind of realism. To the
Byzantine, as interpreted by his work, dispassionateness appeared as an
adjunct of holiness in the saint. The fresco painter, on the contrary,
did not hesitate in animating the saints with passion, which appears as
additional strength, since it is passion brought well under control.

The Franciscan churches of Italy have recently been made the subject of
an inquiry by Thode, who enters also into the incidents of the saint’s
life which were there represented. In the choice of these incidents the
painters were apparently guided by the early accounts of the saint’s
life, but there is considerable diversity in the scenes which they chose
for representation and combined together into a series. The early
accounts of St Francis include a life written by Thomas of Celano
between 1228 and 1229, which was afterwards re-written; a life written
by three of the companions of St Francis, which was finished in 1246;
and a life in which St Francis’s great follower, Bonaventura, combined
all that had previously been written of the saint. It was completed in
the year 1260.

But the development of the legend of St Francis did not stop here. The
_Little Flowers of St Francis_, which were put into writing in the
course of the fourteenth century, describe such incidents in the life of
the saint as appealed to popular fancy, set down in a popular form. The
thread of historical truth in this book is of the slenderest, and the
incidents

[Illustration: ENTRANCE TO LA VERNA]

as they stand cannot claim to have happened. And yet the _Little
Flowers_, in their bluntness and simplicity, have all the charm of an
unreflective and uncritical belief in the beauty of the new teaching.
They give a true picture of humble life in mediæval Italy and show us
the early Franciscans in the light in which they saw themselves. The
book was widely read, and the first part, which dealt with St Francis
among his followers, was amplified by accounts of the mad and saintly
freaks of Fra Ginepro, and of the steadfastness with which Fra Egidio
kept to his resolve of living by the labour of his hands. The influence
of the _Poverello_ of Assisi was, in fact, felt by the highest and the
lowest alike. While current fables made popular heroes of him and his
followers, Giotto at Assisi represented the decisive incidents of his
life in a series of paintings, which have been likened to an epic, and
Dante devoted an entire canto of the _Paradiso_ to his praise. In the
_Paradiso_ the praise of St Francis is sung by St Thomas Aquinas, the
greatest of the followers of St Dominic, while the praise of St Dominic
is sung by St Bonaventura, the most influential of Franciscans, a proof
of the bond which united the two orders in Dante’s mind. The jealousy
which afterwards estranged them was never as pronounced in Italy as
north of the Alps. In many churches the figures of St Francis and St
Dominic still stand side by side. And Andrea della Robbia, in a most
charming relief in the Piazza Santa Maria Novella at Florence, gave
expression to the affection of the two orders by representing their
founders embracing as they meet.

And how shall we picture him in the flesh, the man who was so close to
the best side of the religion and the morality of his age? In the year
1222 St Francis, attracted by the thought of St Benedict, went to stay
at the ancient monastery at Subiaco, and here, in memory of his visit,
his portrait was painted on the wall of a chapel which was completed
before 1228. On this picture St Francis is represented without the
stigmata and without a halo. He wears the penitent’s rough garb with a
cord round his waist, and he is designated simply as Frater Franciscus.
The _Poverello_ is seen full face. His figure is slim, his hair and
beard are crisp and fair, his face is long and thin. In spite of a
certain awkwardness, due no doubt to the painter, he has an appearance
of refinement and delicacy well in keeping with the stock from which he
had sprung. His large eyes and parted lips suggest the enthusiast; his
thin neck and slender hands belong to a physique which might well
contract phthisis. There are other early pictures of St Francis. But the
great painters who set forth his life’s history do not appear to have
been directly influenced by them. Thode has shown how, in some parts of
Italy, a bearded type of the saint is traditional, in others a beardless
type. Sometimes he was painted dark, sometimes fair, sometimes comely in
figure, sometimes emaciated. Even Giotto, judging by the two series of
pictures he painted, the one at Assisi, the other in the church of Santa
Croce in Florence, had before him different ideal types of the saint.

Were it not for the ravages of time, the convent at La Verna would
possess one of the early cycles of pictures representing the story of St
Francis. A chapel was erected in 1264 on the spot where St Francis
received the most holy stigmata, and Taddeo Gaddi, the godson and pupil
of Giotto, was summoned to decorate it. No trace of the work remains.
Taddeo’s stay at La Verna was however productive of other results. A
youth from the neighbouring Pratovecchio, Jacopo Landini, was sent to
work under him, and he afterwards went to Florence and gained
considerable renown as Jacopo del Casentino. In later life he returned
to his native district, where some paintings of his are extant. Vasari
includes an account of him in his _Lives of the Painters_, and he tells
us that it was due to Jacopo that the painters of Florence first
combined together in a guild (_compania e fraternita_) in 1350.

As it stands at present the retreat of La Verna is distinguished chiefly
by the large number of its altar-pieces in glazed terra cotta by the
della Robbias. Except in the museum at Florence there are nowhere so
many fine examples of their work to be found together. They are gifts
for the most part from distinguished Florentine families. They include a
large altar-piece, on which the Virgin is seen handing her girdle to St
Thomas; a Transfiguration, on a large scale, with the figures of the
twelve Apostles standing below in beautiful grouping and the most
varied expression. There is a Nativity with the figures of St Francis
and St Anthony of Padua behind the Virgin and St Joseph, and an
Annunciation; both of these are of exquisite grace. All these
altar-pieces and other single figures, such as St Francis, are in the
usual style of blue and white. I find them variously attributed to Luca
and to Andrea della Robbia. In the gallery on the way to the chapel
there is a large Pietà in polychrome. The most beautiful, however, of
all is a large altar-piece of the Crucifixion, the sole decoration of
the Chapel of the Stigmata.

Slowly we ascended the steep path which led up to the convent. We passed
under an archway and found ourselves before the entrance to the main
church. The site of La Verna was granted to St Francis by Count Orlando
of Chiusi in the year 1213; it was the only gift of a site ever accepted
by the saint, who held himself betrothed to poverty. Probably a small
church was erected under his direction; but when the fame spread of his
having here received the impress of the stigmata, a special interest
attached to the site. Pope Alexander IV. took the “Mons Alvernus” under
his protection; in 1260 a church was consecrated in the presence of
Bonaventura and six bishops; and a few years later the Chapel of the
Stigmata was built through the munificence of Count Simone of
Battifolle. The chief church is now a large one; it was begun in 1348,
but it was not completed till some time in the fifteenth century, when
the whole settlement of La Verna, the “Seraphicus Mons,” as it was
called, had passed under the protectorate of the Signory of Florence.

The churches at La Verna form part of a vast mass of buildings. We were
told that the convent affords accommodation for five hundred friars. As
we were about to enter the main church we met some of them walking in a
procession, two and two. They had been celebrating service in church,
and now they walked down the gallery to conclude it in the chapel,
chanting as they went along. We afterwards met them again coming out.
There were forty of them, vigorous men for the most part, wearing the
rough brown frock and cord, with sandals on their bare feet. It was
difficult to tell at a glance from what class they were drawn; certainly
not from the higher and more refined. They greatly differed as to age,
and the older men had the better appearance. On the whole they were not
dignified in bearing, and in person did not look as clean as they might
have done.

We spent a long time in church, looking at the altar-piece and reading
what the guide-book to the Casentino of Beni had to say of La Verna.
This is the only guide-book to the district as far as I know. It was our
constant companion, but we found that it required close and repeated
reading, for it is a queer jumble of all kinds of information. We then
wandered along the gallery which bridges the abyss between the
settlement and the isolated bit of rock on which stands the Chapel of
the Stigmata. With its dark panelling and its one large altar-piece this
chapel is a true place of rest. Its large della Robbia represents the
Crucifixion, with the figures of the Virgin, St John the Baptist, St
Jerome and St Francis standing and kneeling below. This association of
saints of later date with the characters of Scripture comes at first as
a shock to the historical mind; to the Middle Ages it appeared natural.
St Anthony of Padua, in a vision, saw the child Christ sitting on his
prayer-book. St Bernard, in a vision, saw the Virgin standing before
him. When these scenes came to be represented in art they assumed the
form of real incidents. And by a further development, St Francis and
other holy men and women of the Middle Ages were pictured in
contemplation of the Nativity, the Crucifixion and other decisive
moments in Biblical history as though they had been present at them in
the flesh.

There were other sights to be seen at La Verna: the rocky chasm where
St Francis hurled aside the devil, and the Luoghi Santi, a number of
grottoes and rock-hewn chambers where the saint once lived. Visitors
from all parts of the world come to La Verna, and on Sundays they say
there are crowds of country people all eager for the sights. For myself,
I was content with what I had seen and glad to rest in the convent,
where an old friar gave us wine and water to drink. He chatted about the
convent and about himself. How long had he stayed there--forty years?
Yes, quite that. Fifty? Quite likely, it came to much the same thing. I
had recently been reading the _Life of St Francis_ by Sabatier, a
charming writer, who makes the joyful side of the saint’s nature very
real. The old friar remembered his stay at La Verna, but he would not
say much about him.

Then we sat outside under the huge beeches, as yet bare of foliage,
listening to the birds, which seemed as numerous and as tuneful as they
were seven hundred years ago. With the sun shining brilliantly we
started homewards to Bibbiena. The ascent of the Penna, and a walk over
to Chiusi, which lay below in a streak of blue mist, are expeditions I
should wish to make if I ever again visit the district.

_Camaldoli and St Romuald_

“Qui è Romualdo
Qui son’ li frati miei che dentro il chiostro
Fermar li piedi e tennero il cuor saldo.”
(_Par._ 22, 49 ff.)

A day’s walking and we were removed to a very different atmosphere, and
to associations widely separated from those connected with the high
retreat of La Verna. A wide gulf divides the temper of a man like St
Francis from that of a St Romuald. Both are accepted saints of the
Church, but while the one taught men how to be guided by love through
the example of his own gentleness and forbearance, the other
emphatically denounced those who interpreted the religious life
differently from himself. St Francis is the gentle soul of the
thirteenth century, that yields that it may conquer; St Romuald is the
rough-and-ready champion of the tenth century, ever ready to start up in
defence of Mother Church.

Camaldoli is a pearl among the many pearls of the Casentino. I have seen
it in spring-time only; the Italians tell you that it is even more
beautiful in summer, when its shady chestnut groves and dark pine
forest give a sense of restored energy and renewed vigour to those who
come here from the arid plains of Tuscany and the blinding heat of the
streets of Florence. Camaldoli may be conveniently reached by a good
driving road or by paths from the east or the west. We decided on
striking into the former of these two paths, and on a genial day we bid
adieu to Bibbiena, descending first and then mounting with the driving
road which afterwards followed an even ridge for several miles.

The views from this ridge were extensive and varied. In the distance the
panorama of the hills was slowly unfolding. Nearer at hand our attention
was caught now by a peach-tree with its purple blossoms, then by a
cherry-tree, its downy white branches swaying with the breeze. We passed
several country-houses, always somewhat removed from the road and always
flanked by a group of dark cypresses, which sometimes extended into an
avenue down the slope of the hill. These old country-houses of Tuscany
consist of a dwelling-house and a farm, which sometimes stand a little
way apart, the dwelling-house marked by a look of greater trimness and
reserve; sometimes they are brought closer together with an increased
look of orderliness to the one and of homeliness to the other. Both
houses are built of stone,

[Illustration: CAMALDOLI (CASENTINO)]

usually two storeys high. And both are covered with red rough-tiled
roofs that lie flat and broad over the entire dwelling and project on
all sides into wide eaves.

We passed through Camprena, a _posto_ which also had its peculiarity.
The houses neither fronted the street nor stood at right angles to it, a
want of arrangement not accounted for by any apparent irregularity of
the ground. Such an Italian village has none of the neat clustering of
its English or German namesake. There is no village church standing
aloof to watch over the entrance and exit from life of suffering
humanity; no village green with ancient oak suggesting a living
protection to rights and liberties; no well-appointed inn betokening the
love of an evening’s good cheer. The houses have come together anyhow,
and few are the attempts made to brighten a portico or a window with a
row of flower-pots. Sometimes the house itself is washed over with pink
or yellow, but there is never a scrap of flower-garden to add a bright
spot of colour to its surroundings.

Further along the road lay Soci, a place which went through stormy
experiences in the early Middle Ages. Remains of its own castle walls
and remains of the castles of Gressa and Marciano, which frown from
heights above and beyond it, recall the times when might made havoc
with right. At one time the Prince Bishop of Arezzo owned the place and
made it over to the monks of Camaldoli. But, apparently on account of
its insecurity, they parted with it to one of the Counts Guidi in
exchange for rights of ownership at Bagno on the further side of the
Apennines. However, the Guidi did not long remain in possession of the
castle; they lost it to their enemies, the Tarlati of Pietramala.

Soci is now a growing centre of industry, and boasts of several
factories. The high chimney of one of these figures is the attractive
feature on the local picture post card. The thought often arises in
these days at what a terrible cost to itself mankind is securing greater
cheapness in goods--raising the standard of comfort, as economists put
it; the thought was brought home in this outlying district. For the men
and women we met in other parts of the district were robust in health
and decently, if poorly, clad; the children were chubby, well-fed and
full of buoyancy. But in places like Soci a blight seemed to have fallen
on mankind. Men and women, girls and boys, all had the same look of
mixed listlessness and craving, and the children were pale and
neglected. No doubt here, as elsewhere, the people who flocked to the
factories were impatient of the restraints and the penury of home; they
escaped from the toil of home, but they did so at the cost of the
home’s regularity of habit. Stranded in a strange place, bound by no
responsibilities but those they chose to recognise, these men and women
soon fell into irregular ways and formed illicit connections, with a
consequent loss of physique to themselves and a deterioration of the
race in a couple of generations.

Beyond Soci the mountains began to draw closer together. The road
followed the river Archiano, which flowed in a narrower bed and assumed
the character of a torrent. Only the land that was near the river was
brought under cultivation. The slopes above were covered with a thin
scrub of stunted oaks bearing only the sere foliage of last year’s
growth. These mountains were chiefly of a brown mud-rock that had
crumbled away along the water-courses, or else, undermined by them, had
fallen in masses of soft earth, forming the gentler slopes. Side-valleys
opened and closed as we passed onwards. The characteristics of the plain
were disappearing more and more. We were entering the region of the
Apennines.

At one point of the road we were doubtful if we should leave the valley,
and seeing a man under a hay-stack munching bread and cheese we
consulted him. But his look was interested, and he was so positive that
the diverging path not being ours, we should never reach Camaldoli
unless we consented to his guidance, that we became equally positive the
map should be our only guide. We cut short further parleying by saying
that we could but return if we missed the way altogether. Of this there
was no chance. A short distance further and we sighted Serravalle,
towering high on a steep eminence that fronted all quarters. On one side
it commanded the bend in the road that led onwards across the Apennines
into Romagna; on the other it stood well above a dip in the hills, and
overlooked the side-valley down which the Fosso of Camaldoli flowed to
join the Archiano. The mountain streams throughout the Casentino are
spoken of as _fossi_, though not generally so designated on the map--a
peculiar use of the word which suggests affinity to the northern _fos_
rather than to the Latin _fossa_. In sight of Serravalle we sat for a
while and feasted on our usual lunch of bread, eggs and wine. After that
we followed the stream for a time, and then, parting company with it, we
began the ascent up the steep winding slope.

On a clear day such as this, the steeper the ascent the more striking
the observation how the nearer mountains sink into insignificance before
the higher ranges that rise on the skyline beyond. Under the dome of
blue, with its few sailing clouds, the air was of absolute transparency,
and every detail of the level we had left, every detail of the level to
which we were attaining, stood out in shining clearness. Each special
portion of the world above, below, around had its distinguishing
feature, from the flock of sheep grazing by the stream below to the man
carrying stakes up the opposite slope, and to the dark birds hanging
over Serravalle. But the observing faculty soon wearied with watching
for new impressions. With the brighter sunshine, the keener air and the
more fragrant vegetation of the height, a dreamy consciousness took
possession of the mind--a consciousness of being nearer heaven--heaven,
a fictitious limitation of space indeed, but a limitation the thought of
which brought one’s own concerns into an amended relation to those of
the world generally. After all, it is by drawing imaginary circles that
the mind attains to a conception of relative size. The greater the
height, the wider the outlook; the stronger the consciousness of the
world we possess not, the clearer the conception of that part of the
world which we have made our own.

Higher up patches of snow lay here and there on the shady side of the
path. The shrubs and plants became stunted and nipped, with the
exception of the flowering giant spurge that stood up from the stony
ground vigorous and brilliantly decorative. We passed a cluster of
dwellings, built of rock and founded on rock, grey and weather-worn,
quite Alpine in character, where the necessities of life are wrung from
nature in a close hand-to-hand fight. For a long time our path was rocky
and uneven and lay between thorny undergrowth. Then it led down at a
gentle gradient and drew nearer to the bed of the Fosso. Within a few
minutes’ walk the character of the surroundings entirely changed. From a
stony wilderness we had passed into an enchanted grove. The slopes lost
their steepness, and the ground lost its bareness. We walked under high
chestnuts along a moss-grown path that was soft to the tread, and then
over a carpet of verdure bright with spring flowers, which recalled the
emerald meadow dotted with shining flowers over which angels lead
mortals to heaven in the painting of Fra Angelico. It was late in the
afternoon, and the slanting sun-rays made golden lights on the trunks of
the trees and set aglow the patches of primroses. The call of the cuckoo
sounded at intervals, and there was the distant warbling of many
woodland birds. One wished for the path to lengthen out indefinitely;
all too soon the massive settlement of Camaldoli, set against a forest
of pines, closed in the head of the valley.

There is a graceful legend concerning a monk (I forget his name) who was
one day tempted to stray from the path of life; he was sore perplexed
in his mind by the words of the Psalmist, “A thousand years in God’s
sight are but as yesterday.” How could time, that uniform flow
“unaffected by the speed or the motion of material things,” be robbed of
the conception of its length? How could time ever cease to exist to one
who was endowed with consciousness?

To the monk, as to many another, failing to see was failing to believe.
With a heavy heart he wandered forth into the convent garden carrying
his problem with him. _Quod erat demonstrandum_: would a greater
intercede in his behalf? Time slipped by unawares. It was late at night
when he regained the convent gate, but those who opened in answer to his
call knew him not. His talk, his appearance, his manner were strange to
them, and yet there was that in him which commanded attention--he was
like as well as unlike. They admitted him, and after a while the memory
of an old, old story came to one of the monks who listened to him--how
long ago a member of the fraternity had been troubled in his mind and
had wandered forth and never returned, but it had always been believed
by some that he was still among the living. After much seeking his name
was found in an old convent register. It was the name of the monk who
had returned after a thousand years. Then they saw him as one of
themselves. The miracle was accomplished. And the monk understood that
eternities which are the products of human conception hold good for man
only. God’s eternities may be different. It is said that a short time
afterwards he passed away from life in peace.

And would it be very different if that monk had been one of the
companions of St Romuald here at Camaldoli, nay not quite a thousand,
just nine hundred years ago? If he came back now would he know these
surroundings for those he had left? Would he feel it the same world as
it was then, ruled by the same ideas--that a simple life is conducive to
elevation of mind, and that the air of the heights and the pure water of
undefiled springs make the body strong to withstand evil? And would they
too know him as one of themselves, those venerable monks, bent with age
and dignified in bearing, who were approaching the monastery along the
upper road as we neared it along the lower? Their woollen robes of many
folds were white, such as Romuald in his dream beheld his companions
wearing, when, like Jacob, he saw a ladder set up on the earth and
reaching up to heaven, and his monks were the angels ascending and
descending on it. These men had drawn their hoods over their heads, and
over them they wore large, wide-brimmed Tuscan straw hats. They were
neatly stockinged and shoed, and most of them had flowing beards and a
complexion that reminded one of the delicate tints of crumpled
rose-leaves. To us they were figures of a distant past, and it was
wonderful to think that if one of the old monks of Romuald’s time were
to come among them, the great difference in them would be the first
thing to strike him.

The monastic settlement of Camaldoli consisted of a monastery placed
near a famous spring, Fonte Buona, and of a hermitage, the Eremo, which
was situated further up among the mountains. One of the reasons of
Romuald’s success lay in his refounding hermit life on a new basis--it
is one mark of a genius to turn existing tendencies to new and
profitable account. In the monastery all were made welcome; to the
hermitage those were promoted whose temper proved their fitness for a
solitary life. At the present time only a small wing of the monastery
was inhabited by the monks, who rented it from the Government, the vast
conglomerate of buildings having been turned into a hotel. But the
hermitage up among the mountains was still entirely occupied by them. Up
there lived those who were able to endure the privations of hermit life;
up there they remained till, weakened by old age, they came down to the
monastery to be tended in sickness, and after death their mortal remains
were carried back to the Eremo to be buried in the ancient
burial-ground.

The account of the life of St Romuald, which was written by St Peter
Damian, who belonged to the following generation, gives curious glimpses
of the attitude of men’s minds in a far-distant past. It is never easy
to transport one’s self to the moral and ethical standard of another
age, for the actions of the men who then stirred up the emotions and
aroused enthusiasm can be very differently interpreted; in one aspect
they are heroes, in another they are faddists. It is in this respect
with Romuald as with the holy man of another age, Diogenes the Cynic.
Looked at from one point of view, the courage with which Diogenes acted
up to his convictions, the cheerfulness with which he bore the hardships
of slavery, and the simplicity of life which he affected, bear the stamp
of grandeur. Looked at from another side, he is a man of oddities and
eccentricities. Prompted in a like direction, Romuald launched forth
against misdeeds, discarded every comfort, and commanded respect from
the most powerful. But his behaviour also appears absurd if we fix our
minds on the way he courted dirt, weakened himself by fasting, and wore
himself out by imaginary conflicts with the devil. And there are other
points of similarity between the cynic of classical antiquity and the
saint of early Christianity. The cynic called himself a citizen of the
world, and the word cosmopolitan is held to be his invention; while the
saint exaggerated the power of his efforts so vastly that “he looked
forward to the time when the whole world would be transformed into a
hermitage, and the mass of the nations united in one monastic order.”
Both men were praised for their undisturbed serenity under tribulation,
and both in unabated vigour reached the extreme limits of old age.

Let us look more closely into the account of Romuald’s life, an account
written by a great man and telling of a great man is surely worth
analysis. Romuald was a native of Ravenna, and was born early in the
tenth century of a noble family. As a youth he was witness to how his
father killed a relative; and he went to St Apollinare in Classe, to
expiate the crime by forty days’ penance. The church of St Apollinare is
little changed from what it was then, and visitors to Ravenna will
recall with delight the simple proportions of the roomy basilica, and
its brilliant mosaics, with St Apollinare preaching with his flock of
sheep around him. A monk of the church proposed that Romuald should join
the fraternity, and the young man agreed to do so, after spending a
night in church, when St Apollinare himself appeared as the monk had
foretold--a proof, as Romuald declared and as Peter Damian believed,
that the saint really lay buried here. But Romuald’s innate spirit of
restlessness and want of consideration for the shortcomings of others
cut short his stay after three years’ noviciate. The monks would lie in
bed when it was time to be in church singing, and Romuald, finding the
church closed, sang in the dormitory. The monks decided to rid
themselves of the inconvenient enthusiast by throwing him out of the
window. Romuald, however, escaped to the woods, and there he found a
companion to his heart’s desire in the unlearned but ardent Marinus.
This holy hermit chanted through the entire psalter every day; he would
repeat twenty verses under one tree, twenty under the next, and so on
till his task was accomplished. Romuald joined him in his exercises, and
mistakes in his performance were punished by a blow on the ear from the
hermit’s staff. When his hearing became impaired in consequence, he
turned his other ear for castigation, and his stern master was touched.
On three days of the week the two hermits lived on a bit of bread and a
handful of beans; on the other four, crushed corn, _pulmentum_,
constituted their food. Their conduct was evidently considered
unexceptionable, and in 978 when, in consequence of an insurrection in
Venice, Count Petro Orseolo, who had headed it, was advised to seek
refuge in a convent, Romuald and Marinus were among those chosen to
escort him to a monastery near Perpignan in the south of France. There
they resumed the old life, and were credited with great holiness.
Romuald’s fame increased owing to incidents such as this. A lord of the
neighbourhood, _impeto barbarico_, stole a cow from a peasant. The
peasant begged Romuald to ask for the cow, but the lord laughed his
request to scorn; the cow was roasted for the feast. However, the holy
man’s interference was not wasted. When the lord came to eat of the cow,
a bit of meat stuck in his throat and he died a wretched death. No
wonder that the people of the neighbourhood, when they heard that
Romuald was about to leave for Italy, as they could not retain him,
decided to kill him so as at least to secure his corpse. It was a time
when relics, especially on the further side of the Alps, commanded a
high price in the market. Kings and emperors gave gold and jewels in
exchange for them, ecclesiastics of the higher grades did not hesitate
from stealing where they could not procure them otherwise. And the
relics did not lose by being transferred; on the contrary, their
wonder-working properties if anything increased. Romuald, however, was
apprised of the country folk’s intention, and knew how to meet it. He
rapidly shaved his head, and when they came, intending to kill him, they
found him eating immoderately. This was contrary to all accepted ideas
of saintliness; they thought he had gone mad and went away. The holy
man was left to depart in peace for Italy, where he found a new work
awaiting him. His father was about to leave the convent he had entered.
This had to be prevented. Romuald fastened his father’s feet in stocks,
loaded him with chains and whipped him till the old man’s senses
returned. Romuald’s career as a reformer now began, but, as his
biographer says, “the zeal was so great that glowed in this man’s breast
that he was never satisfied with what he had accomplished, and ever
turned to new undertakings.”

Thus we find him at one time dwelling in a solitary cell in the marshes,
where, like St Guthlac in the fens of Lincolnshire, he was endlessly
worried through the lawless agency of bad spirits. After that, thanks to
the protection of Ugo, margrave of Tuscany, he collected about him a
number of monks at Bagno, in Romagna. But he so incensed them by sending
money to the relief of a distant monastery which had been consumed by
fire that he had to flee before their rage. Some years later, Romuald
became for a time abbot at St Apollinare in Classe, where he had stayed
in his youth. The Emperor Otto III., when he crossed the Alps in 996,
heard that this monastery was going to ruin, and he persuaded Romuald to
reform the monks. The influence which Romuald exerted on the melancholy
young emperor is full of interesting particulars. Otto went on a
pilgrimage on foot from Monte Gargano to Rome, and he spent some time
with the hermit Nilus, who was working for the reform of religious life
in southern Italy along lines similar to those Romuald was following in
the north. Finally, Otto spent forty days as a penitent in the convent
at Ravenna, and was almost persuaded by Romuald to become a monk.
Romuald’s stay as abbot at Classe was not, however, of long duration. He
soon came and laid his crozier at the emperor’s feet; an abbot’s life
was not what he desired. His zeal had taken another direction. He was
fired by the thought of restoring hermit life on the model of what had
existed in Egypt, and he travelled about from place to place collecting
together wandering monks, the _gyrovagi_, whom St Benedict had denounced
as evil. He arranged that they should dwell together, and join in the
observance of certain rules.

This restoration of monastic life was part of a wider scheme. Reference
has been made to the growth of simony, both among laymen and
ecclesiastics. The evil had assumed such proportions towards the close
of the tenth century that the prestige of the Church was seriously
jeopardised. It was a critical epoch, and all depended on exposing the
cause of the evil and on stirring men’s consciences with regard to it.
Romuald came forward and openly declared that simony was the most
damnable heresy, and that no one who had entered the Church for money
could hope for salvation unless he gave up his benefice and became a
layman. Peter Damian was of opinion that, while no one acted directly in
compliance with this request, the stir which Romuald made was great.
More than once he was in danger of his life, and the experiences through
which he went are full of interesting particulars. At one time he lived
for seven years as a hermit, and came back, his body shrivelled,
weather-stained and of the colour of a newt. But his cutting himself off
from the society of his fellows apparently led to many conversions. At
another time he was fired by the wish to take a part in evangelising
Hungary. Among the monks he had come across was a son of the Prince of
Hungary. But it was not to be. When Romuald and his companions had gone
some way on their journey, sickness overtook them, and sickness returned
to the party whenever it attempted to proceed. There was nothing left to
do but give up the undertaking and return to Italy.

Romuald’s fame was at its height when the Emperor Heinrich II. crossed
the Alps in 1022. So much was he moved by Romuald that he expressed the
wish that his soul were in the saint’s body. Romuald’s appearance at the
time was peculiar. Hoary, unkempt and unwashed, he came to court wearing
a dirty, shaggy skin. The Germans crowded round in the hope of snatching
a few hairs from it, which they wished to preserve as relics.

Romuald first came to Camaldoli about the year 1018. It has been
affirmed and denied that the site of the monastery was a gift to him
from a certain Count Maldolo, and that the name Camaldoli represents the
words _Casa Malduli_. The saint never stayed here long, and he died away
from here in his hermit’s cell at Val de Castro in 1027. But the routine
of life at Camaldoli was held to represent his aspirations, and
Camaldoli gave its name to all the monasteries which Romuald had
founded. These were never numerous. The order did not spread much beyond
Italy and the south of France. But within these limits it exerted
considerable influence.

And thus attended by thoughts of the enthusiast who laid the foundations
of this vast establishment so many hundreds of years ago, we entered the
building by a long arched stone passage, which led up from the garden
without to the courtyard within. This courtyard is said to date from the
tenth century; I have rarely seen one more impressive through the stern
simplicity and perfect balance of its proportions. It is built
throughout of the same grey stone, and there is little attempt at
ornamentation. Pillars with slightly swelled shafts and simple capitals
support round arches which extend round the four sides of a paved court.
In the centre of this court stands a fountain with an unceasing flow of
water. Passages, staircases and narrow corridors lead off in different
directions. Surely there could be nothing more suited to the solitary
side of one’s nature than to sit on one of the huge logs of wood that
lay on one side of the court, listening to the flow of the water and
watching the clouds that floated across the opening above. Now and again
there was the sound of voices and of footsteps coming and going in the
far distance. A man carried faggots across the court, a woman came to
wash lettuces at the fountain--living figures that moved in the round of
duty and seemed to emphasise the old-world solitude of the place. There
is no greater solitude than an open-air solitude from which the life of
nature is excluded. And within these walls there was no sign of animal
or vegetable life--nothing to remind one of the stirring of the sap or
the beating of a pulse, except that of which one was conscious of in
one’s self.

That night we had the vast hotel of Camaldoli to ourselves. In the
springtime there are few visitors. We ate and slept in some rooms off
the

[Illustration: COURTYARD OF CAMALDOLI]

ancient courtyard. We wandered into the roomy church. One of the old
monks had died that afternoon, and prayers were being offered for his
salvation. We met the bier as it was carried out from the church.

Like other monasteries, Camaldoli has experienced many vicissitudes in
times of war and in times of peace. Throughout the Middle Ages it
remained a famous goal for pilgrimages, and its woodland air and
mountain freshness made it a favourite health resort. The converts to
the order were at first devoted to outdoor pursuits--the hermits in
their little gardens tended plants that were used for making drugs, and
the monks were devoted to the culture of the forests. Later, they
contracted a taste for learning, and a famous library was collected,
chiefly by Ambrogio Traversari, who took an important place in the early
Italian Renaissance. Of this intellectual life no trace remains. The
books were scattered at the beginning of this century. Some are at
Poppi, others are at Florence, and the love of letters is dead. But with
the older achievements time has dealt more sparingly. A pharmacy still
makes part of the settlement, and the surrounding forest retains the
fame of being one of the finest in Europe. When the Government
appropriated Camaldoli, the traditions of the monks regarding the
cultivation of the trees were carried on, and Vallombrosa, the
monastery on the further side of the Pratomagno, was turned into a
school of forestry. All the forests throughout the district were placed
under its care, and thus the great fir trees, the _abete_ of Camaldoli,
its chestnut groves, and its beech and oak forests have preserved some
of their old grandeur.

[Illustration: LANDMARK OF CAMALDOLI]

_In the Apennines_

... “appiè del Casentino
Traversa un’ acqua c’ha nome l’Archiano
Che sovra l’Ermo nasce in Appennino.”
(_Purg._ 5, 96 ff.)

Early on the following morning we left the monastery of Camaldoli for
the hermitage. It was a beautiful walk of about three miles, along a
steep, paved path through the ancient pine forest. The air was cold but
the sun was bright, and the trees emitted a strong resinous fragrance. I
have never walked under trees more stalwart in stature, the stem of each
straight, smooth and rounded as a shaft, with branches loaded with
hanging verdure jutting out in grander sweeps.

At one point of the road three large wooden crosses marked the limit
which the hermits formerly from their side were not allowed to cross;
from this side no woman was allowed to penetrate beyond them. But the
story goes that a princess of the house of Medici, dressed in man’s
clothing, once braved the restriction. She visited the hermitage, with
no further consequences, however, but that, having satisfied her
curiosity, she went and confessed to the Pope, and he bid her give money
to build an additional cell in expiation of her crime, which, to this
day, is designated by the armorial balls, the _palle_, of the Medici
family.

The paved path mostly followed the course of the Fosso of Camaldoli
which rises above the Eremo. Dante apparently looked upon this stream
not as a tributary of the Archiano, but as the Archiano itself, for he
lets Buonconte in Purgatory speak of the Archiano as “taking its rise
above the hermitage.” The river came down between moss-grown rocks,
carrying with it a stream of mountain fragrance, and the path which
followed it ended on a wide grass-grown space, at one end of which stood
the hermitage. And up here, in the midst of the forest, at an elevation
of 3700 feet above sea level, and in a climate which these thin-skinned
southerners talked of as cold and rough in the extreme, stood the
twenty-four little stone cells of the hermitage, each inside the walled
enclosure of its garden. Here in the depth of mountain solitude, cut off
from intercourse with the world, and restricted in their intercourse
with each other, the hermits of Camaldoli lived the same life of
seclusion and solitude which St Romuald considered the surest way of
attaining to happiness and heaven. Here they lived, dwelling alone,
eating alone and working alone, with the conceptions of time and space
obliterated as far as disregard of the ordinary interests of life will
obliterate them, with no hope or expectation of change, a life in which
time can mend and mar nothing.

We were told that all the cells were tenanted except the original cell
of St Romuald, which is always kept standing empty. All the cells are
constructed on the same plan. Each consists of a small house divided
into two rooms opening out of each other, with an additional recess in
which stands the bed. The windows and the door open on a small garden,
which is surrounded by walls so as to close in the view. Each hermit
attends to his own garden, in which he grows herbs and vegetables. The
cooking for the whole settlement is done in an outhouse, and the food is
brought round and handed in to each of the cells. Seven times in the
twenty-four hours the hermits wander forth and assemble in church to
pray together; otherwise they are alone.

We were shown over the church by a white-robed monk, who readily talked
of the smaller interests of life--of the severity of the winter, the
daily routine, and the relics and pictures of the different chapels. But
he did not respond when I expressed regret at the severance of
intercourse between the different existing settlements of the Order of
Camaldoli, a severance which is inevitably leading to the collapse of
the whole organisation. It may be part of these men’s attitude of mind,
or it may be a self-imposed limitation, that any allusion to change is
met by cheerful and unquestioning acceptance of things as they are. Is
it that the future of their order has become a matter of indifference to
them, or is it that a tacit agreement among them prevents them from
discussing their own affairs with outsiders? The monk also showed us
over the cell of St Romuald, which is unchanged, they say, except that
the piety of a later age has covered the inside of its rough walls with
panelling. On occasions this cell has been offered to distinguished
visitors. It was so offered to St Francis, but he felt the honour too
great to accept.

Many visitors in the course of centuries have visited this hermitage.
Popes, emperors, men of piety and men of learning have prayed in its
chapel. And up here in the shade of these huge pines those conversations
took place which the learned Cristofero Landini has described, when some
of the ablest scholars of the Early Italian Renaissance stayed here
together in the summer of 1468, and whiled away several days in learned
philosophical discussion.

The _Conversations of Camaldoli_ are remarkable chiefly for their
learned interest, but their setting is attractive, as they enable us to
realise the friendly relations of some of the most distinguished men of
the Medicean circle--men to whom the revival of learning and modern
scholarship owes a debt of gratitude. For these conversations take us
back to the time when the Republic of Florence, following the example of
the Republic of Venice, had become the home of several learned Greeks.
The spirit of a new era was stirring in every department of human
knowledge, and those who studied the works of Plato and of his
expositors at first hand and with some thoroughness, showed a renewed
interest in Virgil and Horace, Dante and Petrarch. The Greek writers
were translated into Latin, and many of them in a Latin garb first saw
the daylight of print. But the works of Latin and Italian authors
likewise engrossed attention, and Italian itself once more was looked
upon as a language capable of expressing the great thoughts of great
men.

Among those who, according to Landini, met together at Camaldoli on a
summer day of 1468, were several whose life-work was bound up in
revising, editing and translating the great works of antiquity. The
first to arrive were the two young Medici, Lorenzo, afterwards surnamed
the Magnificent, and his brother Giuliano, who was afterwards stabbed in
the rising organised by the Pazzi. They were accompanied by Alemanno
Rinuccini, who is known for his translation of some of Plutarch’s
Lives; by Donato Acciajuoli, the author of a commentary on Aristotle; by
Donato’s brother Piero; by Marco Parenti, and by Antonio Canegiano,
“most learned men,” Landini calls them, “who had studied eloquence for
years and who had gained proficiency in philosophical discussion by
means of arduous study.” They were resting at the hermitage when Landini
describes himself as arriving. He brought his brother with him. Landini
is chiefly remembered among us for his commentary on Dante, but he also
wrote commentaries on Horace and Virgil. He taught Latin at the
newly-founded Academy of Florence, and in later days he became
Chancellor of the Republic.

The party had barely exchanged greetings when the news was brought that
two other friends had arrived at the monastery, where they were leaving
their horses to come up to the Eremo on foot, led by the prior Mariotto.
The order of Camaldoli had recently lost a shining light in its general,
Ambrogio Traversari, known as _il famoso Greco_, who not only read Greek
but spoke it with fluency. Mariotto was his pupil. The men he was
conducting were Leone Battista Alberti, and Marsilio Ficino--men as
different as possible in appearance and bearing, but who stand as
representative figures of the Italian Renaissance, each in a special
direction.

Whoever came into contact with Leone Battista felt that the gods had
bestowed on him the fulness of their gifts, for he set the mark of
originality on whatever he handled. His many-sidedness in after days was
only excelled by that of Lionardo da Vinci. As a mere youth, Leon
Battista wrote a comedy which passed for a rediscovered classic; and he
is the author of the first treatises on painting, sculpture and
architecture that can lay claim to a scientific basis. He worked as an
architect, and the front of Santa Maria Novella at Florence was his
design. He was a famous talker, a man of clever sayings, and eloquent in
praise of beauty wherever he found it--in art, in nature and in man.
From youth upwards he was renowned for his agility, and increasing years
dealt kindly with his good looks. At the time of his coming to Camaldoli
he was in the sixties.

Marsilio Ficino, whom he is here described as having met on his way from
Rome, was the greatest Hellenist of his age and the keenest intellect
among the older Florentine humanists. Small, frail and visionary, he
combined in himself the qualities that distinguish and endear the
typical scholar--patience, sagacity, preciseness, extreme modesty and a
high tone of mental elevation. His fame rests on his translation into
Latin of the works of Plato, and he was the colleague of Landini at the
Florentine Academy, where he taught Greek. In the large fresco of
Domenico Ghirlandajo in Santa Maria Novella at Florence, Marsilio Ficino
and Landini are both represented among the painter’s distinguished
contemporaries.

Such were the men who met together at the hermitage of Camaldoli,
upwards of four hundred years ago, rejoicing in the thought of spending
a few days together. On the first day they rested. On the next they
attended mass, and then they sallied forth into the forest, and there,
under a spreading beech, they sat down and Leone Battista opened the
discussion. Starting from the fact that the responsibilities of public
life were about to devolve on the two young Medici owing to the
ill-health of their father, he spoke of the duties of a citizen, and
passed on to compare the respective merits of a life of activity and of
a life of contemplation. This was a favourite subject of discussion at
the time, and Leone Battista ended by pronouncing in favour of
contemplation, a view which was in accordance with Plato’s ideality and
with the Christian exaltation of Mary above Martha. On the following day
the same subject was discussed in the same company, and on the days
after they spoke of the greatest good and of the true aim of human
existence. No doubt these _Conversations_ are largely of Landini’s
making, but they were much appreciated by his contemporaries, and
Marsilio Ficino is known to have admired them greatly. They were often
reprinted at that period; now they have fallen into oblivion, and only
the student now and again disturbs the dust which accumulates round them
on the bookshelf.

On leaving the hermitage we had intended ascending to the _Prato al
Soglio_, from where there is a splendid view, and from there crossing
the mountains by a path which led to Badia a Prataglia. But owing to the
snow that lay behind the Eremo this was impossible, and we found
ourselves instead on a grassy road skirting the mountain always at about
the same level. From one point of this road we looked down on the huge
monastery of Camaldoli; further along and the outlook was over
apparently limitless masses of pine forest; further again and the slopes
below us were clothed with beeches, their leafless branches just touched
by the first tinge of red. Finally we were out again on the bare
mountain, with the panorama of the Apennines about us, and Serravalle
with its tower hanging far below in the blue mist like a bird. The road
now became a rough path over uneven, mountainous ground, such as we had
crossed on the previous day, but we were at a higher elevation, and the
surroundings of sky and scenery were proportionately grander.

I have often thought that the sky of different mountainous regions is
different, just as the sea along different lines of the coast varies.
Whether we have seen the Mediterranean in sunny weather or in rough, we
carry away with us the impression of its restless readiness to run to
froth be it counter to a breeze or against a jutting headland. Similarly
the North Sea stays with us in its glassy reluctance to break, and the
Atlantic in the mighty inherent roll of its waves. As great a difference
in character belongs to the sky of different mountainous regions, though
it is less easily fixed in word and thought. To me heaviness and
sullenness seemed to characterise the sky of the Apennines; once it sank
into the mountains, there it stayed. The obvious reason was the poor
clothing of the soil and the want of running water; there were none of
those surface currents which carry down and dissolve the mists of thick
weather elsewhere. For once outside the forest region of Camaldoli,
there was a marked want of trees and a marked want of water. The
denudation of the soil is something terrible, and already in April many
streams were running dry.

The path we followed had many beautiful outlooks, but there was a good
deal of snow, and we had come far out of our way. We were glad at last
to catch sight of the white line of the driving road into Romagna
winding in and out among the mountains below, for the days in April are
short. In this case a shower of rain caused us to put on additional
speed; we were down in the road before dark, and soon afterwards
established in comfortable quarters at the Casa Rossi. This is no inn,
in the ordinary sense of the word--the family let the upper part of
their house in summer--but they took us in for a couple of nights and
made us welcome.

Badia a Prataglia lies at about an hour’s distance below the pass of the
driving road from the Casentino into Romagna. The place boasted of one
of the oldest abbacies in the Apennines, which dated its foundation
further back than St Romuald and Camaldoli. But in course of time the
abbacy of Prataglia lost its standing, while that of the monastery of
Camaldoli increased, with the result that the older abbey became a
dependency of the newer monastery. At present nothing remains of the old
settlement but the convent church. But Prataglia itself is a growing
place. Its numerous houses lie scattered in groups up and down the
valley, and there are several new villa residences belonging to families
who come up from Romagna and Tuscany to escape the heat of the summer. A
_pension_ situated some distance above the place on the hills is fast
becoming a favourite summer resort.

The Rossi at whose house we stayed are the originators and the owners of
a home industry which has considerably raised the standard of comfort
throughout the district. The firm exports simple wooden furniture, the
different parts of which are cut and carved to certain patterns in the
various homes and fitted together on the premises. That evening being
Saturday, men were coming to the house bringing their week’s work, in
exchange for which they carried away payment in money or payment in kind
from the store kept by the Rossi. We were shown examples of the articles
manufactured--chairs, stools, cradles and such like, all of the simplest
shape. Among other things, we were shown a spinning-wheel, but we were
told that the attempt to introduce it has failed. The Italian women
prefer spinning from the distaff, and it seems obvious that they will
continue to do so till the use of machines supersedes hand-labour.

Rain, wind, hail, a thunderstorm and a snowstorm, we experienced them
all in the one day which we spent exploring the heights of the
neighbouring pass. But with a good road within reach and food awaiting
one under cover, battling with the elements for a time adds to one’s
enjoyment. Then the reflection came that the snow prevented progress
along the mountain paths, and we determined to return into the valley.
We left Prataglia white in its wintry garb, and in the short space of an
afternoon we passed from the nipping blasts of winter into the bright
geniality of spring. Below Serravalle the falling snowflakes changed
into driving mists. As the mountains receded, the valley of the Arno lay
before us, its vineyards and cornfields brown and golden in the light of
the afternoon sun. We were bound for Poppi, which lies at about an
hour’s distance up the valley from Bibbiena--“Poppi, the capital of the
Casentino,” as Vasari called it.

_Poppi and Counts Guidi_

“Pupium agri Clusentini caput.”
(_Vasari._)

Poppi lies on a steep hill which rises abruptly from the valley of the
Arno, forming a vantage ground, as it were, in regard to the upper part
of the Casentino. The castle, its most notable feature, occupies the
highest part of this hill looking south. This is the ancient stronghold,
as it was rebuilt in the thirteenth century, curiously like the Palazzo
Vecchio at Florence, but more commanding in appearance owing to the
height on which it stands.

Poppi already in the tenth century was a centre of influence of the
Guidi, one of the most powerful families of Tuscany during the Middle
Ages. The property they owned extended far north and south of the
Apennines, and the Casentino bristled with their strongholds. Romena,
Porciano, Battifolle, Soci, all recall episodes in their history. With
the exception of Poppi, all these castles lie in ruins; their walls
stand desolate and their towers are open to wind and rain. Alone at
Poppi the palace with

[Illustration: CASTLE OF POPPI]

its soaring tower stands unbroken, a lasting monument of the power to
which the Guidi attained.

The annals of this family have engrossed the attention of historians
partly because the Guidi to some extent influenced the course of
Florentine history, partly because Dante repeatedly referred to them in
the _Divine Comedy_ and was in personal relation to several members of
the family. Their history goes back to the ninth century; in the
thirteenth the climax of their influence was reached. But in Dante’s
time the members of the family were still numerous, and in the
remoteness of the Casentino their power continued unimpaired.

Poppi nowadays is a town of some importance. A steep, paved path and a
driving road in wide zig-zags lead up into the town from Ponte di Poppi,
a suburb which has grown up on the Arno at the foot of the hill. The
paved path enters the town near the church, which lies on the point of
the ridge farthest away from the castle, and from the church one walks
up the main street with arcades and shops on either hand. And on either
hand, whenever a gap occurs between the houses, or a shop is thrown open
and a window appears in its depth, one looks right away across the dip
of the hill and the plains below into the green distance of the
mountains.

The place is first mentioned in the tenth century in connection with
Count Tegrimo Bevisangue, who, with his wife Gisla, founded the abbey of
Strumi in close proximity to the stronghold. The Guidi were of Langobard
descent. They were one of the noble families who had come into Italy as
part of a barbarian invasion, and who, in the course of time, came to
rank among the great feudatories of the Empire. A legendary colouring is
given to the opening chapter of their history, but its essentials are
corroborated by contemporary references. Count Tegrimo is the first
member of the family who figures in the annals of the Casentino. At the
time he was the sole surviving member of the family. His father, Count
Guido, married Engelrada, the daughter of Duke Martino of Ravenna. This
gave him a place of authority at Ravenna. But a dispute arose between
him and the archbishop; he caused the archbishop to be imprisoned. There
was a popular rising, and Count Guido and all his family were put to
death--all excepting Tegrimo, who was saved by his nurse. The name
Bevisangue afterwards attached to him either because of the revenge he
took on his father’s murderers, or else because he had contracted a
habit of licking his sword after he had spilt blood.

At the time when Tegrimo founded Strumi--the original site of which is
said to be marked by a church which is seen from Poppi lying in the
midst of dark cypresses--the family already owned strongholds near
Pistoja and Florence and the stronghold of Modigliana above Faenza,
which is identical with the Castrum Mutilum mentioned by Livy. One by
one the strongholds with which the counts fortified their possessions,
or which they snatched from their neighbours, appear in the annals of
the family. Tegrimo’s son Guido dated a charter from Porciano, which is
situated at the uppermost end of the Casentino, a proof that here also a
stronghold on a commanding site was in their possession.

Historians of a later date--Malespini and Villani, the contemporary of
Dante--state that the ancestor of the Guidi came into Italy with the
Saxon Emperor Otto I. and from him received the castle of Modigliana.
Also that Otto IV. on his passage through Florence saw Gualdrada, the
daughter of the rich citizen Berti, and that his follower, one of the
Guidi, married her and received the Casentino in dower. As the Guidi
owned Modigliana before Otto I. came to Italy, and held extensive
property in the Casentino long before the days of Gualdrada, these
stories in themselves are untrue, but a true estimation of facts
underlies them. The Saxon emperors, in order to strengthen their
authority over the greater barons of Italy, favoured the lesser, and
among them they favoured the Guidi. The Count Guido who married
Gualdrada was on good terms both with Florence and Otto IV.

After the time of Bevisangue we find the Guidi steadily increasing in
power, fighting against other lords and against rising communes,
sometimes on their own account, sometimes in support of the Imperial
policy. True representatives of the rural nobility, they were at once
turbulent and prosperous, and they made their influence felt in
ecclesiastical as well as in other matters. It was owing to protection
given him by a lady member of the Guidi family that Giovanni Gualberto
became the founder of Vallombrosa, and in three different generations a
member of the family was bishop of Pistoja. At the close of the eleventh
century a father and a son Guido were in frequent attendance on Countess
Matilda, the daughter and heir of the last margrave of Tuscany, whose
strenuous opposition to the Imperial policy and support of the claims of
Tuscany secured her lasting popularity. Probably to secure the father’s
interest she adopted the son, to whom the surname _il Marchese_ attached
in consequence. This Count Guido in his youth joined the first crusade,
and was imprisoned by Saladin. Property was mortgaged with the canons of
Pistoja to pay for his ransom. After his father’s death he bestowed land
on the faithful follower who had shared his hardships.

Count Guido _il Marchese_ favoured various schemes conducive to his
vassals’ welfare. He helped to carry out the plan of building the
aqueduct by which Pistoja is provided with water from the hills; he
became the founder of the city of Empoli; he built a leprosy near Poppi.
About the year 1106 the “Great” Countess Matilda gave up the plan of
constituting him her heir and bestowed her extensive property on the
Church. Matilda enjoyed such popularity throughout Tuscany, that songs
in praise of her were long sung in the churches of Florence according to
Boccaccio. In the _Divine Comedy_ she is described as guardian of the
earthly Paradise, in which she led the way to the triumph of the Church.
In remembrance of her the name Contessa or Tessa continues frequent to
this day. The reader will recall the sweet _contadina_ of Romola. In the
Casentino Matilda is popularly credited with building a number of
churches which are remarkable for the sculpture which adorns them.

One of these churches, that of San Martino di Vado, is about an hour’s
walk from Poppi up the valley of the Solano; another flanks the hill of
Romena; a third is at Stia, and another is at Montemignajo, high up a
side valley. The column capitals inside these churches deserve attention
for the place they claim in the history of early Tuscan sculpture. Not
two of them are alike, and the way the foliage and figures on them is
treated is always quaint and often beautiful. I have sometimes thought
what a gain it would be if some of the numerous amateur photographers
one meets would combine and systematically go over separate districts,
issuing a list of the views taken by them. In the Casentino only a few
general views were obtainable, and we in vain sought to procure
photographs of interesting remains; I ignore if any have been taken. In
this case one longed for photographs of these capitals to compare them
with the early sculptures of Pistoja and Arezzo. One of the columns in
the church of Romena bore the date 1152--the earliest sculptures at
Pistoja are dated 1166--and the erection of the parish church at Arezzo
belongs to the same period. As a direct connection existed between these
places at the time owing to the rights of overlordship held by the
Guidi, it may be owing to their influence that a style of sculpture
which has so much of the Langobard spirit came to be introduced into the
different parts of Tuscany.

The Count Guido, to whose lifetime the erection of these churches
belongs, was the son of Guido _il Marchese_, and was known himself as
Guidoguerra. In him the influence of the family reached its climax. The
vastness of his possessions was such that Sanzanome, the earliest
historian of Florence, spoke of them as

[Illustration: COURTYARD OF CASTLE, POPPI (CASENTINO)]

constituting a state or province in themselves. Moreover, he was a
shining representative of knighthood. His contemporary, the Bishop Otto
of Freysing, described him as the most powerful lord of Tuscany, and
Tolosanus, the chronicler of Faenza, who knew him, spoke of him as
holding the foremost place in honour and courtesy. “All Italy wept at
his death and especially Faenza,” he tells us, for the city of Faenza
had appealed to him for help on account of the encroachments made on its
territory by the city of Forli, and had found in him a powerful
protector. The acts of Count Guidoguerra argue in favour of his mental
horizon being wide. He joined the crusade of 1147, he stood in high
esteem with the Emperor Frederick Barbarossa, and the enterprises he led
in Italy were invariably successful. It was only by taking advantage of
his temporary absence that the citizens of Florence succeeded in
destroying Montedicroce, a most important stronghold of his which had
therefore become an object of hatred to Florence.

For the city of Florence, as it increased in importance, was bent on
improving the conditions of its trade. Florence is surrounded by hills,
and these hills in the twelfth century bristled with the strongholds of
nobles, who were ready to swoop down and plunder the trains of passing
traders on the slightest provocation. In the interest of its further
development the city was prompted to make war on the surrounding
nobility, attacks which went hand-in-hand with a policy that was
productive of important and unexpected changes.

The first attempts of the Florentines to subdue their troublesome
neighbours belonged to the lifetime of Guido _il Marchese_. Emboldened
by success, and encouraged by the inactivity of the margraves, they
attacked Fiesole, the ancient Etruscan city which towered high above
Florentine territory, for here, as Villani related, the rural nobles,
whom he designated as _cattani_, collected and harboured outlaws who did
damage to the trade and the territory of Florence. The undertaking
proved successful in the campaigns of 1123-1125, and large parts of
Fiesole were razed to the ground. Its “destruction” was followed by
attacks on Montegrifone, which belonged to the Ormanni, and on
Monteboni, which belonged to the Buondelmonti. A special significance
attached to the latter event. For the Florentines, intent on securing
friendly relations with their neighbours, made it a condition of peace
that the nobles they defeated should reside inside Florence during a
stated part of the year. The first to agree to the arrangement were the
Buondelmonti; they were followed by a number of others, including the
Guidi, who were nothing loth to gain a foothold inside the city. To the
older inhabitants of Florence, which included the greater citizens--the
_illustri cittadini_ of Dante--and the lesser citizens, a third element
was now added in the form of the rural nobles, who soon contracted a
taste for city life while they remained indifferent to its
responsibilities. They came into Florence with crowds of retainers; they
built themselves houses which were strongholds to all intents and
purposes; they fought out their private feuds inside the city walls, and
as soon as occasion offered they turned the balance of the constitution
in their favour. And more than this. They brought with them a taste for
display and splendour which subverted all accepted standards, and which
put an end to the simplicity and soberness of the older Florentines.

In the eye of Dante the influx of these rural nobles was a reason of the
city’s misfortune. “Ever was the confusion of persons the origin of the
city’s ills,” are the words which he put into the mouth of his ancestor
Cacciaguida. Cacciaguida in the _Comedy_ compares the state of Florence
as it was in Dante’s time with what it had been a century and a half
before, and he deplores the increased luxuriousness of the Florentines.
In those simpler days “Bellincion Berti went about in leathern belt with
bone clasp, and his dame came from the mirror unpainted.”

This Bellincion Berti and his wife were the parents of the lady
Gualdrada, through whom not the Casentino, as Villani recorded, but the
valuable Ravignani property in Florence near the Porta San Piero came
into the possession of the Guidi. Gualdrada was the second wife of Count
Guido, surnamed il Vecchio, and the epithet _buona_ which Dante bestowed
on her she doubtless owed to her attempts to soften her husband’s
fierceness. For Guido Vecchio in the eyes of the chronicler of Faenza
was the direct opposite of his father; knightly dignity and pride with
him took the form of wilfulness and overbearing.

The incidents which led up to the marriage and its outcome are worth
recording. Guido Vecchio began as the loyal supporter of the Imperial
cause; he entertained Frederick Barbarossa in his castle at Modigliana,
in 1167, and with the Imperial troops he marched on Rome, where
Frederick succeeded in establishing the anti-pope. But the desire for
municipal freedom was awakening in the smaller cities of Italy, and in
order to frustrate the Emperor’s influence they began to form alliances
among themselves and supported Pope Alexander. A struggle ensued which
lasted seventeen years and in which Guido sided with the Emperor,
thereby finding himself repeatedly plunged into war with Florence, and
into supporting her rival Siena. When the Emperor and the Pope finally
made peace at Venice, the relations between the cities of Tuscany were
readjusted. Among the representatives of Florence who arranged the peace
between this city and Siena was Bellincion Berti, the father of
Gualdrada. In what year Guido married her is unknown, but he divorced
his first wife Agnes in order to do so. His attitude towards Florence
underwent a complete change in consequence. Henceforth there was
friendship between them.

In other respects Guido lost ground. In opposing the growing
municipalities he was tempted to strain his authority, with the result
that he was defied more than once. Thus on one occasion he ordered his
vassals at Modigliana to pull down their houses and rebuild them on the
hill for greater safety. For five weeks they resisted, then they
destroyed their houses and went to Faenza, which was outside their
lord’s jurisdiction. This led to a war between the Count and the city of
Faenza which extended over years. On another occasion he went to
Camaldoli and carried off all the weapons which he found there to Poppi.
He restored them afterwards, but only in return for an enormous amount
of grain. Again he disputed with the nunnery of Rosano and won his
suit, but in this case Countess Gualdrada carried the decision in person
to Rosano, and declaring it annulled she tore it up. The acts of Guido
Vecchio were such that the Pope wrote to him in his old age urging him
to reform his ways, but even the warnings of a Pope were defied with
impunity by these barons.

When Count Guido Vecchio died in the year 1213, the family split into
five branches, each of his sons taking the name of count of the chief
stronghold which fell to his share. Poppi in the first instance fell to
Count Guido Magnifico of Bagno, then to his sons Guido Novello and
Simone. The acts of these brothers, and the enmity which arose between
them, take us into the very thick of the contentions which agitated
Florence in the thirteenth century.

The terms Guelf and Ghibelline were used in Florence since 1215, marking
the different tendencies of the citizens. The Guidi, like most other
rural nobles, were Ghibellines; they wished to see the power of the city
kept within certain limits, and in this they were opposed to the Guelf
or patriotic party. Guido Novello and Simone, with other Ghibellines,
left Florence for a time in 1248; ten years later they were altogether
banished from the city. Shortly afterwards they fought at the battle of
Montaperti, when the Florentines were beaten and the river Arbia, as
Dante has it, ran red with blood. It was then that Count Guido Novello
made the proposal that the city of Florence should be razed from the
face of the earth, an insult which the Florentine patriotic party never
forgave him. Farinate degli Uberti, also a Ghibelline, but one who felt
some affection for the city, successfully opposed him; he is represented
by Dante in Hell recalling this fact to the poet’s mind. Florence
remained standing, but for the next six years it was at the mercy of the
Ghibellines. Guido Novello, supported by the troops of King Manfred,
ruled in a spirit which was little calculated to soften the acrimony of
the Florentines against him. He caused Poppi to be fortified by a new
wall in 1260; he then built the Porta Ghibellina at Florence, and
constructed a new road out of it so as to be in direct communication
with the Casentino. This road (the paved path which leads over the
Consuma and along the valley of the Solano) he used to convey to Poppi
crossbows, bucklers and armour which he abstracted from the arsenal at
Florence. Villani tells how he showed his castle and these weapons to
his uncle Tegrimo, Count of Modigliana and Porciano, asking him what he
thought of them. Tegrimo replied that he liked them well enough, but
that he knew the Florentines only “lent at a high rate of usury.”
Subsequent events proved the truth of the remark. When King Manfred was
overthrown, Guido Novello lost his support and was obliged to leave
Florence. He did so without much dignity, and stones were thrown at him
as he left the city. Twenty years later, at the instigation of the
Bishop of Arezzo, he and other Ghibellines collected an army in the
Casentino to march upon Florence. The Florentines came over the
mountains and defeated them and ravaged the territory which belonged to
the Guidi. And in the following year they came back and made an assault
on Poppi, and finding the arms there which the Count had abstracted,
they carried them back to Florence in triumph.

The battle in which the Florentines fought the Ghibellines in the plain
of Campaldino below Poppi on June 11, 1289, is memorable since Dante, at
the time a youth of twenty-four, fought in the ranks of the victorious
Guelfs. He referred to the fact himself in a letter, in which he said
how he found himself “no mere child in the practice of arms, and was in
great fear, and in the end rejoiced greatly through the varying fortunes
of the battle.” For luck at first went against the Florentines; the
Ghibellines gained an advantage, but they did not follow it up. Guido
Novello, who was now an old man, backed upon Poppi, the Bishop of
Arezzo fell fighting, and Buonconte, another Ghibelline leader, was
wounded and fled. In the _Divine Comedy_ Buonconte is represented giving
an account of his flight to Dante--how with pierced and bleeding throat
he reached the point where the Archiano falls into the Arno, and how the
waters carried him away and his final resting-place was never known.

[Illustration: STATUE OF COUNT GUIDO, CASTLE OF POPPI]

Guido Novello, who backed upon Poppi, cannot have stayed there, as the
place was no longer his and no longer a stronghold of the Ghibellines.
It had passed to his brother Simone and his son Guido of Battifolle, and
Simone and his son, according to Villani, went over to the Guelfs
because of Guido Novello’s cruelty. When therefore the Florentines made
an assault on Poppi, they were damaging the property of a Guelf and an
ally. Guido of Battifolle, sometimes also called Guido Novello, the son
of Simone, pleaded in Florence for damage done to his property, and he
received the sum of twelve hundred lire, which he spent in re-building
his castle.

It is owing to this sequence of events that the remote little town of
Poppi came to boast of its remarkable castle. Vasari in his _Lives of
the Painters and Architects_ tells us that Jacopo Lapo, called il
Tedesco, “built many buildings in the Gothic style in Tuscany, among
them the palace at Poppi in the Casentino.” And in the life of Arnolfo,
whom Vasari wrongly called the son of Jacopo (he was his pupil), he adds
that Arnolfo built the palace of the Signory at Florence on the plan of
what his father had constructed at Poppi.

As one emerged from the streets and entered the open space before the
castle the contrast was striking between our peace-loving, law-abiding
age and that period when life was bound up with warfare. Trees veiled in
spring foliage cast a fitful shadow over what was formerly an open
ground for free fighting; near the ruined castle walls children played
and old people loitered in the sun. We entered the courtyard without let
or hindrance, and then the sound of a tinkling bell brought out a
Government _custode_. With him we ascended to the first floor by the
skilfully-constructed open-air staircase which leads from floor to floor
round the four sides of the court. He led the way into the large hall, a
beautiful room with carved and coloured beams and double arched windows
set high in the thickness of the wall. We wandered from room to room and
from storey to storey. Fragments of partitions taken down, of glaring
wall-papers torn from the walls, of brick and mortar, lay about here and
there--disfigurements of a later date which are now in course of being
removed. After centuries of concealment the ceiling construction and the
old fresco decorations of the walls were being bared to the light of
day, for the castle is now in the hands of the Government and is in
course of restoration as a national monument. The palace chapel
contained curious frescoes attributed to Spinello Aretino and Jacopo del
Casentino. Remains of old wall-painting in curious patterns and of
earlier date decorated the dining and other halls. We ascended to the
uppermost storey, and there in the way of a caryatide supporting a leafy
volute, on which rested the inner cornice of the roof, stood the figure
of Count Guido of Battifolle, the son of Simone, carved in stone. It is
a beautiful youthful figure, the uncovered head full of clustering
curls, the face strong and somewhat defiant in expression, the body
clad in plate-mail, with the one hand holding a short dagger, and the
other resting on the hilt of a long sword. Whose the thought thus to
place the owner of the palace, who the artist to carry it out, are not
recorded, but as it stands the figure may well have delighted him who
made it and him whom it represents.

[Illustration: ARMS OF THE GUIDI]

VII

_Capo d’Arno_

“Per mezzo Toscana si spazia
Un fiumicel che nasce in Falterona
E cento miglia di corso nol sazia.”
(_Purg._ 14, 18 ff.)

As one wandered about the palace and the streets of Poppi, the thought
arose if and under what circumstances Dante stayed here. He is known to
have come into the Casentino during the early part of his exile--that
is, about the year 1305; he was here again in March and April of 1311,
as is proved by the letters he wrote and dated from here. One of these
contains the fierce invective against Florence, the other expresses the
fears which the poet apprehended from the Emperor’s delay. They are
dated “on the confines of Tuscany near the springs of the Arno,” and on
the strength of this expression the strongholds of Poppi, Romena and
Porciano, besides Pratovecchio, claim to have harboured the poet.

These different strongholds, at the beginning of the fourteenth century,
were still in the possession of different branches of the Guidi family.
The castle of Pratovecchio was owned by Count Guido Selvatico, who
belonged to

[Illustration: CHURCH OF ROMENA (CASENTINO)]

the branch of the family which embraced Guelf sympathies. He fought on
the side of the Guelfs at Campaldino, at Florence he afterwards joined
the Neri, and his sympathies were therefore akin to those of Dante.
Boccaccio tells us that Dante enjoyed the hospitality of Guido
Selvatico, and this would be during the early part of his exile. The
wife of Guido Selvatico was Manessa, the daughter of Buonconte, who
perished at Campaldino, and it is generally supposed that Dante’s
relation to Manessa caused him to introduce the account of Buonconte’s
flight into the _Comedy_.

There is extant a letter of Dante, in which he describes how, after
setting foot by the streams of the Arno, he made the acquaintance of a
woman whom he thought in all respects suited to his inclination, his
character and his fortunes. This lady so inspired him that he gave up
his resolve to keep aloof from women and from songs about women. He
composed a canzone in her praise, a copy of which he appended to the
letter. But the lady’s name and her whereabouts have always remained a
mystery.

From which of the other strongholds Dante dated the letters of 1311 is
difficult to decide. The expression “Capo d’Arno” may well refer to
Poppi, which is the first place reached coming over the hills from
Florence by the old road. Its castle, as we have seen, was owned at this
time by the younger Count Guido of Battifolle, who, after his uncle’s
death, was called Guido Novello, and who, after re-building the castle,
quietly dwelt there. He was comparatively peace-loving, and lived on
friendly terms with his cousin of Pratovecchio; their sons too were
friends. When the Emperor, in 1312, summoned the Guidi to join him in
his march on Florence, Guido Novello the younger did not respond to the
call, but sent troops in aid of the city. He became _podestà_ of
Florence a few years later, and it was during the term of his rule that
the proposal was tendered to Dante to return to Florence, but on terms
which the poet felt unable to accept.

Villani tells us that this Count Guido caused a large part of the
Palazzo Vecchio to be rebuilt on the plan of his palace at Poppi.
Perhaps this act caused his portrait to be introduced in a fresco of the
Capella degli Spagnuoli, one of the greatest monuments of
fourteenth-century art. The Count, who stands as a beardless youth on
the staircase at Poppi, is here represented in manhood. He is seen in
profile, forming one of a group which includes Cimabue, Boccaccio,
Petrarch and Laura.

The wife of this Count Guido was Gherardesca, the daughter of Count
Ugolino, who with his sons died of starvation at Pisa. The description
of their sufferings is among the most terrible of the _Divine Comedy_.
Several letters have recently come to light addressed by Gherardesca to
Margaret, the consort of the Emperor, and, partly because these letters
are preserved with the letters of Dante, partly because of certain
peculiarities in their style, the opinion has been advanced that they
were drafted by Dante. One of them is of the year 1311 and is dated from
Poppi.

Among the _Novelle_, or short stories, which Sacchetti put into writing
in the fourteenth century, one (nr. 179) tells what befell one day when
Countess Gherardesca of Poppi, and Countess Manessa of Pratovecchio,
were crossing Campaldino together. It is intended to illustrate the
sharp tongue and ready wit of the female sex. Gherardesca was a proud
lady, and she attracted her companion’s attention to the promising state
of the harvest. With reference to the defeat of the Ghibellines there,
among whom Buonconte, Manessa’s father, had fought, she remarked that
the corn no doubt stood so high in consequence of the blood that had
been spilt there. But Manessa met her in the same spirit. Alluding to
the death by starvation of Ugolino, the father of Gherardesca, she
replied that they would no doubt enjoy a fine harvest provided they did
not die of starvation before it was ripe. Gherardesca pretended not to
understand, and so they continued their walk together in peace.

While Dante’s relations with the owner of Poppi leave room for
conjecture, his connection with the Counts of Romena rests on a firm
foundation. The stronghold of Romena, judging by the position and extent
of its ruins, was the most imposing castle of the Casentino.

There was a Count Alessandro of Romena who was a leader of the Guelfs of
Tuscany against the Ghibellines in 1288. He afterwards joined the
Bianchi and was expelled from Florence. Later we find him captain of the
exiles at Arezzo. He led the attack on Florence which ensued, and died
shortly afterwards. Dante then addressed a letter of condolence to his
nephews, the Counts Oberto and Guido of Romena, in which he deplored the
death of one who had such greatness of soul, and added much to his
praise. He would have come to the funeral but that, being an exile, he
was deprived of the necessary horses and arms.

The idea has been accepted by some scholars and rejected by others that
this Count Alessandro was identical with the Count of Romena of the same
name, who, with Guido and another brother, employed the forger Adamo of
Brescia to coin false florins at Romena. The reader of Dante is familiar
with the figure of Adamo, whom the poet found in Hell, suffering from
dropsy and terrible thirst. He told him how he was burnt alive for his
acts at Romena, and how he longed for the sight of those who employed
him--one of the counts, he has heard, is already in Hell. Falsified
florins were discovered in 1281; a cairn on the road above Romena is
popularly held to mark the spot where Adamo was burnt. It is locally
known as the “Maccia del Uomo Morto,” and travellers not many years back
were wont to throw a stone on it in passing. The genealogy of the owners
of Romena, however, remains a matter of dispute. On the face of it, it
seems improbable that Dante thought well of the abettor of a forger, or
relegated a man he admired to Hell. Still these were stirring times of
changing sympathies, and though the view has been advanced that there
were two Counts Alessandro, uncle and nephew, the evidence brought
forward by Passerini, who argues that there was but one, has never been
conclusively disproved.

Above Romena, at the head of the valley, lie the ruins of Porciano, and
the expression “Capo d’Arno,” if taken literally, would apply to it. But
Dante’s relation with its counts is based on legend only. They were a
set of lawless, changeful men. There was a Count Guido of Porciano who
was condemned in 1282 by the city of Florence to pay five thousand lire
for murder, theft and arson. He had eight sons, and several of them were
fined in 1291 for waylaying and robbing a merchant from Ancona. In 1311
five of the brothers received the ambassadors of the Emperor at San
Godenzo and swore fealty to the Imperial cause, but four of them
afterwards deserted it. If Dante thought favourably of those of Porciano
for their Imperial sympathies, it cannot have lasted. For in describing
the sources of the Arno in the _Comedy_ he says that the river takes its
rise among “foul hogs more worthy of galls than of any food made for
the use of man,” with obvious reference to the meaning of the word
_porci_ as contained in the place-name Porciano.

A tradition is preserved, according to which the poet was kept prisoner
at Porciano, possibly after the battle of Campaldino. An anecdote
intended to illustrate his ready wit is localised here. The poet, we are
told, had left the castle and was walking down the hill when he met some
men from Florence, who were sent to take him into custody. They did not
recognise him, and asked if Dante were at Porciano, and he replied, “He
was there while I was!”

There seemed no end to the stories associated with Dante which were
localised in this neighbourhood. Palmieri, a writer of the early
fifteenth century, described an incident, which he says befell Dante on
Campaldino. The poet and the triumphant Guelfs after the battle pursued
the enemy as far as Bibbiena and beyond it, and on the third day they
returned to look for their friends and to bury the dead. Dante found a
friend, who either “was not quite dead or else suddenly revived,” and
who proceeded to describe what he had seen during these days of Hell and
Purgatory, words through which the whole plan of the _Comedy_ was
revealed to Dante. The account contains expressions which recall Dante’s
description, still it is sufficiently distinct. It rambles on over
about half a dozen pages in print without definite plan or purpose.

It was with a feeling of regret that we left Poppi, which played so
important a part in the history of the district. We left it early one
morning and crossed Campaldino, now, as six hundred years ago, green
with sprouting corn. Beyond it the driving road over the Consuma begins
its steady ascent along a mountain spur which is formed by the Arno and
its tributary the Solano. The old road branched off, following the
course of the Solano, and up this we went to explore.

I presume that foreigners carrying knapsacks for their convenience do
not often walk in these parts. We had been accosted before and asked
what our _roba_ was, and women especially joined us along the road in
hopes of driving a bargain in needles and scissors. In the valley of the
Solano our appearance brought concern to the heart of a professional
pedlar, who eyed us askance. When we came down the valley again in the
afternoon we were met by a woman, who told us she had been looking out
for us ever since we went past in the morning; might she see our wares?
She too looked upon us as rivals of the pedlar.

We found the narrow, tortuous valley of the Solano oppressive and
unattractive, and we did not penetrate much beyond Strada San Niccolo,
a town of high houses built close between the mountain sides. Here too
the history of many centuries lay condensed, as it were, in a nutshell.
The ancient church near the castle, now deserted--the ruins of the
castle itself, long a stronghold of the Guidi, which the growing Commune
destroyed in the fifteenth century--the modern city with its
manufactories--each represented a special phase in the history of
growing civilisation.

The city of Borgo-alla-Collina on the Consuma road, to which we
returned, bore a very different character. Situated on a breezy height,
its wide streets were grass-grown, and its low, rambling houses looked
desolate. Here Christofero Landini, the author of the _Conversations of
Camaldoli_, spent the last years of his life. He had been the teacher of
Lorenzo the Magnificent; he afterwards became Chancellor of the Republic
of Florence, and a palace at Borgo was given him in acknowledgment of
his services. Ampère, in his _Voyages dantesques_, tells an amusing
incident which happened to him here. A priest offered to show him the
uncorrupted body of a saint, and he showed Ampère a dried mummy in a
sarcophagus. But when Ampère looked at the inscription on the
sarcophagus he saw that the holy man here displayed was none other than
Landini.

We did not stay to see the wonderful relic.

[Illustration: CASTEL SAN NICCOLO]

The crispness of the air outside and the panorama of the hills had
greater attractions. The road above Borgo commanded a wide field of
view, and the eye was free to roam across the valley where the Arno
flowed fed by many streams, and to the heights around. The valley was
closed in by the Falterona, which is the highest mountain of this part
of the Apennines; it rises to an elevation of 5434 ft.

After an hour’s walk we deviated to Romena, where we spent some time in
the ancient church which flanks the hill. We greatly admired the old
column capitals, one of which bears the date 1152. Beni’s guide-book
says that the church also possesses an ancient bell, with the date 1186,
and the words “Mentem Sanctam Deo Placentem.”

From Romena we left the road and descended by a path to Pratovecchio, a
large rambling place, which seemed to have no special attraction. We
then pushed on to Stia, which lies at the confluence of the Arno and the
Staggia; above it rise the ruins of the castle of Porciano.

Stia is a picturesque city. Its market-place, set on rising ground, with
houses jutting out from both sides, suggested the arrangements of scene
decoration. Its ancient church is unattractive from outside, but
beautiful within. Stia is a convenient centre for walks, but we thought
badly of its _Albergo Alpina_, and would give the preference another
time to the inn at Pratovecchio, the situation of which is quite as
convenient. The Falterona is usually ascended from Stia, but the snow
that had recently fallen made the ascent impossible. We were even
prevented from penetrating to the fir woods which have been planted in
honour of Dante near the sources of the Arno, a spot to which the
expression “Capo d’Arno” is now currently applied. Our walks were
limited to the valleys and the lower heights, but we thereby saw more of
the people than we should have done otherwise. They were courteous and
friendly and charmed us by their unaffected ways. In Dante’s ears the
speech of the inhabitants of the Casentino sounded harsh and ugly; to us
their Italian seemed correct and clear, and we were struck more than
once by their conversational ease.

With pleasure we recalled a homestead on the road to San Godenzo, in
which seemed to linger that unaffected rusticity of classic times which
the Georgics of Virgil have preserved for us. We were sheltering from a
shower in an outhouse when the woman of the farm came out and invited us
in. We entered a long low room with a window at each end, the further
one looking out into the distance of the hills. The room seemed dark at
first, but as one’s power of vision readjusted itself to the mellow
light, the wide hearth stood forth with its glowing embers with the
children hanging round. Earthenware pots and plates shone bright from
shelves against the wall; and the board and the benches, all rounded and
polished with use, also caught the reflection from the glow. One of the
children threw on some crackling sticks; two others, dark-haired and
red-cheeked, came and clung about their mother. Rickety chairs were
placed for us near the hearth, then the woman resumed her low seat and
went on winding her yarn. In her rough homespun, with her little ones
about her, she looked a picture of health and vigour. She readily talked
of her home and the children’s varying ways, and of the mill at Stia to
which she was sending the yarn which she had spun. Presently the husband
too came in, a figure such as one associates with the hills, tall and
well-made. He began cleaning his gun, and with the same friendliness
talked of the hares he had shot, and of the sport still in store for
him. They seemed a happy family, making us welcome with the simple
dignity which is so marked a feature in the Italian peasant, and
speeding us on our way with the wish that for our sake the weather might
improve.

Yet another interior remains with me, the workshop of a cobbler below
Porciano. Here a number of houses stood huddled together against the
slope of the hill. The word _vino_, roughly painted in red on a wall
that faced the road at an angle, attracted our attention, for we were
thirsty, as one often is in a country where one feels suspicious of the
water, and we entered. The hale, white-haired cobbler rose from his
stool and motioned us to a seat with a certain formality. He then
reached two glasses and a huge straw-covered flagon from the shelf, drew
out the bit of tow that closed its mouth, and flicked on the floor the
drops of oil that floated on the wine, and a little of the wine itself.
Here was a reasonable basis for the offer of a libation! Then he filled
our glasses, and resuming his work spoke of a son in America, and of the
love of change and the growing desire for travel in the younger
generation. We too were travelling: whence had we come, whither were we
bound? His caustic aptness of speech recalled the saying that the smell
of leather sharpens a man’s wits. We had been puzzled that day by a
roadside shrine dedicated to a saint Mona Giovanna, and I asked about
her, hazarding the remark that his trade was known to go with love of
reading. He seemed pleased, and pointing to a small store of books he
said he could oblige us, and drew forth the story of the saint in the
cheap form in which these stories circulate among the peasantry. In
this case it was the question of a woman whose claim to holiness the
folk endorsed, while the clergy refused to accept it. Finally the bells
at Stia tolled of their own accord as she entered the town, and the
candle she was carrying to the shrine was miraculously set alight. In
the pantheon of the saints Giovanna has found a place in connection with
Bagno on the further side of the hills, but the cobbler was sure about
the miracle happening at Stia, and the book confirmed his belief.

This was one of several occasions on which I engaged in conversation
with the people on their local saints. Many of the stories which have
been worked into legends, and now go to swell the bulk of the _Acta
Sanctorum_, are fresh in the mind of the folk, and a question or two
draws from them an account of most wondrous wonders which happened in
these districts. The incidents are related in sober earnest, but
sometimes the narrator ends with a smile and a shrug of the shoulders.
“This is what they say, as to when it happened, _chi lo sa?_” The chief
saint of the district, of whom many wonders are told, is St Torello, the
saint of Poppi, whose image faces that of the abbot Fedele of Strumi in
the chief church of the place. The wonders worked by Torello chiefly
refer to wolves, his power over them was such, that he succeeded in
taming one and turning him practically into a dog. In our British Isles
the wonder of taming the wolf and setting him to guard the sheep, “which
he does to this present day,” is attributed to the woman saint Modwen
who came into England from Ireland. Torello seems to have been content
to have the wolf as his companion, and those who called upon him against
wolves henceforth found protection. The learned editors of the _Acta
Sanctorum_ suggested that Torello lived in the eleventh century, but his
legend, as it was put into writing by an inhabitant of Poppi, contains
lingering pre-Christian superstitions. The great wolf locally called
“Moninus,” whom he put under a ban, seems to be unknown except in this
district. Torello is also called upon by the people to protect them
against famine and the plague.

The driving road over the Consuma to Florence is a well planned road,
which rises to a height of 3435 ft. On the day when we crossed the
mountains the weather gave a peculiar grandeur to the wildness of the
surroundings. We joined the road above Romena and cast a farewell look
back on the Casentino. It stretched away in a sunny morning haze, with
the hills of Poppi and Bibbiena just visible, and the heights of La
Verna overshadowed by clouds. The road went steadily rising through
scenery which became more and more bleak and desolate. We passed
Casaccia, a solitary inn, since turned into a private house, and
appropriated to some society. After passing Casaccia the road wound in
and out at about the same height till a gap in the hills was reached,
down which one looked down into the valley of the Solano; the old path
here joined the new road. In this valley a storm was brewing. Clouds
came rolling up, but they could not prevail against the strong wind
which blew from the pass. It was grand to see the masses of blue and
purple and black, rolled back on each other in the valley, more and more
densely packed. Every now and then a streak of cloud escaped and ran
under shelter of a rock till it met the wind, which seized it and
scattered it and dashed it towards us in the form of blinding snow. On
the further side of the pass the weather was settled and fine. The sun
shone clear and a blue sky spanned the distant view towards the
Mediterranean. This view was limited in the north only by the distant
mountains of Carrara; in the south it embraced Florence and all the
hills around it, spreading away to the flatness of the distant coast.
And in the glow of the late afternoon sun we once more caught sight of
the Arno in the near distance. We had left it a rushing mountain stream
at Stia; we now beheld it again a broad, shining river, flowing beneath
the city of Florence.

[Illustration]

HINTS FOR THE TRAVELLER

The Casentino is reached from Florence.

--by rail _via_ Arezzo (55 miles, 6 trains daily, in 1½-4 hours) and
Bibbiena (20 miles, 3 trains daily, in 1½ hours). The railway goes on to
Poppi, Pratovecchio and Stia, the terminus of the line lying midway
between the two latter towns which are about a mile apart.

--or by rail to Pontassieve, _Albergo del Vapore_, _Locanda della
Stazione_, _Restaurant Piselli_, and from there by carriage road over
the Consuma Pass to Stia or Pratovecchio. A diligence starts daily from
Pontassieve for Stia at 2.30 in the afternoon (3 lire), and for
Pontassieve from Stia at 11 o’clock in the morning. At Pontassieve
carriages in the inns mentioned above. To Stia one-horse carriage, 12
lire; two-horse carriage, 24 lire. Carriages from Pontassieve to
Camaldoli, 25 lire and 40 lire.

--or by rail to St Ellero, the station beyond Pontassieve, and on by
steep grade line to Saltino (trains vary according to the season) and
Vallombrosa. At Saltino _Hotel Vallombrosa_, _Hotel Croce di Savoia_,
and ten minutes further _Hotel Castello di Acquabella_ (all large and
with modern comforts). From Saltino carriage road 1½ miles to
Vallombrosa, _Albergo della Foresta_, _Villino Medici_ (recommended).
From Vallombrosa a road ending in a footpath across the mountains
reaches the Consuma road near Consuma, about two hours’ walk.

* * * * *

Convenient centres for excursions are Bibbiena, _Albergo Amorosi_;
Poppi, _Restaurant and pension Gelati_, _Albergo Vezzosi_, near the
station; Pratovecchio, _Albergo Spigliantini_, _Albergo Bastieri_; Stia,
_Albergo della Stazione Alpina_, _Albergo Falterona_.

=Bibbiena= is situated on a hill fifteen minutes’ walk from the station,
fare 50 c. In the church of San Lorenzo are two _della Robbias_.

* * * * *

Excursions from Bibbiena.

--to La Verna (inn) by road, 7½ miles. Two-horse carriage from Bibbiena,
15-20 lire. The monastery, which is visible from afar, consists of
several parts which date from different periods. The road on leaving
Bibbiena passes the interesting Dominican monastery Madonna del Sasso,
founded in 1347, and enlarged in 1486. It then passes Campi, crosses the
Corsalone and ascends through a wood and along rocky slopes. Outside the
monastery lies the Cappella degli Uccelli, where flocks of birds
welcomed St Francis on his first visit. The oldest part is the Cappella
degli Angeli, built in 1216. This contains three _della Robbias_. The
large church was begun in 1348 by Tarlato, Count of Pietramala. This
contains several _della Robbias_. The small church of the Stigmata was
built in 1263 by Count Simone of Battifolle, as is indicated by a
well-cut inscription at the entrance. It contains a very fine _della
Robbia_. Below this chapel is the Sasso Spicco, whence the devil hurled
St Francis, and the cave, called St Francis’s Bed, whence a raven used
to call him every night to matins. In the Luoghi Santi, St Francis
frequently stayed. A path leads to the chapel, three-quarters of an hour
above the convent, from which there is an extensive view, and beyond
ascends the Penna. Below lies Chiusi di Casentino, formerly looked upon
as _Clusium Novum_, mentioned by Pliny. Here Ludovico Buonarotti was
_podestà_ at the time when his son Michel Angelo was born at Caprera, a
short distance to the south-east.

--to Ortignano, an hour’s drive along the valley of the Teggina. A
beautiful view of Bibbiena looking back. A paved path leads from the
road up to Ortignano, and beyond to the church, which contains a
beautiful Virgin and Child by _Matteo di Giovanni_. Along the road
beyond Ortignano lies Raggiolo (inn), with the ruins of a castle which
was held by the Ubertini (1325), and passed from them to the Tarlati.
From Raggiolo the Prato Magno is sometimes ascended, about two and a
half hours’ walk, guide necessary.

--to Badia a Prataglia, a rising summer resort, _Albergo Mulinacci_, and
at Boscoverde, 2700 ft., a summer pension, 10 miles. Diligence from
Bibbiena, 2 lire; one-horse carriage, 8 lire. The road follows the
valley of the Archiano and passes Camprena. The ruins of Gressa
(formerly of the bishops of Arezzo and taken by the Florentines in 1259)
and of Marciano (granted to Badia a Prataglia in 1084) are visible on
the right. At Partina are ruins of a castle held by the Guidi till 1389.
Serravalle, with its tower of 1188, is visible on the left. A driving
road leading up to it from beyond the bridge is in course of
construction, and several new villas have been built near the old
village. The Archiano is here joined by the Fosso of Camaldoli. A path
this side of the bridge leads along the valley to Camaldoli. Another
path further up over the hills also leads through the woods to
Camaldoli. Badia a Prataglia, founded about the year 980, was associated
with Camaldoli in the twelfth century, and for a time suppressed. The
church has an interesting crypt with romanesque columns, now used as a
wood store. The old monastery adjoining the church is now a private
villa. Beyond Badia the road ascends, and from the height of the pass
Bagno in Romagna is visible. From Badia to Bagno 10, to Forli 58 miles.
Interesting short walks to the confluence of the Arno and Archiano, and
to Memmenano, where is a fine _della Robbia_.

* * * * *

=Poppi= lies on a hill, fifteen minutes’ walk from the station. The castle
is being restored. It is the work of Jacopo Lapo. On the top of the
staircase Count Guido of Battifolle. The chapel contains frescoes
attributed to Spinello Aretino and Jacopo da Casentino, and other fresco
decorations have been uncovered in the dining hall. In the church of the
Augustinians a poor _della Robbia_. Another _della Robbia_ outside the
Casa Bremasole. The parochial church, beautifully situated, contains
several good paintings, including a Virgin of Franciabigio, others
attributed to Guido da Siena, and the head of St Torello, the patron
saint of the district, in silver gilt casing.

Excursions from Poppi.

--to Camaldoli by road 8 miles. One-horse carriage, 7-10 lire. In summer
months a diligence. The older bad road is by Lierna, the new one leaves
Ragginopoli to the right. Both contain ruins of strongholds owned by the
Guidi. The monastery of Camaldoli lies in a wooded valley on a rocky
slope of the Apennines. A few of the more aged and infirm monks remain
here, but the greater part of the monastery is turned into a hotel,
_Grande Albergo_, with every comfort. The monastery founded by St
Romuald in 1018 was destroyed by fire in 1203, but the old convent court
remains unchanged. It owned an early printing press, and the famous
_Annali Camaldolensi_, 907-1764, were written here. The church, which
was injured in 1498 when the monastery was besieged by the Duke of
Urbino, was rebuilt in 1523, and contains three paintings by Vasari. It
was restored 1772-1776. The monastery was suppressed in 1866 and belongs
to the Woods and Forest Department of the State. The majority of the
monks have retired to the hermitage. This lies three-quarters of an hour
up the glen above the convent, along a paved path, at a height of 3700
ft. Visitors are shown over the church and the cell of St Romuald by one
of the monks. Beyond the hermitage a path leads to the Prato al Soglio,
fine and extensive view, and across the hills to Badia a Prataglia. In
the opposite direction a footpath to Lonnano and Poppiena. Fine walk
along the ridge to Monte Falterona.

--to Fronzola, with the remains of a castle besieged by Count Simone of
Battifolle in 1344. The road leads on to Raggiolo.

--to Borgo alla Collina and Strada San Niccolo (inn). The road follows
the valley and crosses Campaldino, the site of the famous battle. At
Certomondo there is a church and cloister of the fifteenth century. Near
here were found Etruscan remains in 1846. The road to the Consuma Pass
diverges to the left. Borgo alla Collina (inn), six miles from Poppi,
has an old church containing a Virgin and saints of 1423. The new church
contains the body of Cristofero Landini, Chancellor of the Republic of
Florence. From the road extensive views of the valley. To the left a
road leads to Strada. Interesting church of San Martino in Vado with
many curious column capitals, similar in style to those of Romena and
Stia. On the further side of the river lies the ruined Castel S.
Niccolo, one of the great strongholds of the Guidi, with church, also in
ruins. A road diverges to the right to Cajano. Of the Castle of
Battifolle only a few stones are left. From Cajano the paved road in a
steep ascent reaches the high road between Casaccia and Consuma. From
Strada the road along the Scheggia ends in a path by which it is
possible to reach Montemignajo, a stronghold of the Guidi, of which the
tower, a vast cistern, and part of the walls are left. In the church of
Santa Maria, are column capitals, similar in style to those of Romena,
etc. To reach Montemignajo driving, it is necessary to drive almost to
the height of the pass between Casaccia and Consuma, branching off to
the left. From Montemignajo a rough path leads to the Croce Vecchia and
on to Vallombrosa.

--to Pratovecchio (6 miles) the road follows the valley of the Arno. The
place, large and rambling, is closely connected with the history of the
Guidi. There are extant the ruins of towers and remains of the ancient
walls and fortifications. The convent church of the Dominican nuns
contains several seventeenth century paintings. From Pratovecchio three
different paths, the one _via_ Lonnano, the other _via_ Casalino, the
third _via_ Moggiona, lead to Camaldoli.

* * * * *

=Stia= lies on the confluence of the Staggia and the Arno. The church (La
Pieve) is of the twelfth century, partly modernised, but contains
interesting round arches and carved column capitals. It is said to have
been built by Countess Matelda. In the church several _della Robbias_.
In the town hall a beautiful _della Robbia_. Also in the _Oratorio della
Madonna del Ponte_ a polychrome _della Robbia_. In the bed of a small
lake north-east of Stia, during the drought of 1838, were discovered
many Etruscan antiquities.

Excursions from Stia and Pratovecchio.

--to Monte Falterona (5434 ft.) about four hours. Guide advisable (5
frs.). The usual way is by Porciano, an ancient stronghold of the Guidi.
From here following the path in a northerly direction to the Capo
d’Arno, from where by a steep ascent to the refuge _Ricovero Dante_
built by the Italian Alpine Club. (The key procurable at the house of
Signor Beni at Stia, or of the Secretary of the Club at Florence.) In
the club hut only bare bedsteads. On a clear day the view extends to the
Adriatic and the Tyrrhenian. From Falterona a splendid walk along the
mountain ridge to Camaldoli.

--to Santa Maria delle Grazie, at one time a dependency of Vallombrosa,
sometimes called Vallombrosella. The church, beautifully situated, dates
from the end of fifteenth century. Some good pictures and several
beautiful _della Robbias_. The ruins of Castel Castagnajo, and of Campo
Lombardo, strongholds of the Guidi, are seen on the further side of the
river. A path leads on to the mountain village Vallucciole. Another road
along the valley of the Staggia leads to Gaviserri branching off to the
left to Papiano, near which are the ruins of Urbech, a stronghold of the
Guidi.

--to the Castle and Church of Romena along the road which joins the main
road over the Consuma. The Castle ruins are in a commanding position and
are visible from afar. The site in 1034 was in the power of Count Guido
Alberti of Spoleto, and passed into the family of the Guidi through
marriage. It passed to Florence in 1357. An inscription records Dante’s
stay here during his exile. Half a mile below lie the ruins of the
church, built in 1152, as mentioned on one of the column capitals. The
road passes Fonte Branda. The church, which contains some good
paintings, has been restored. Beyond Romena the road returns to the main
road which rises to Omo Morto, a heap of stones that is popularly
associated with Maestro Adamo of Brescia, and beyond to Casaccia and the
pass over the Consuma.

INDEX

Adamo of Brescia, 118, 141.

Ampère, _Voyages dantesques_, 11, 122.

Apennines, 57, 77 ff.

Archiano, 57, 78, 109, 136.

Arezzo, trains from, 133.

Arno, valley of the, 1;
sources of, 113 ff.

Arnolfo Lapo, 110.

Badia a Prataglia, 10, 85, 87;
inns at and situation, 136.

Badia a Tega, 10.

Bagno, 56, 68, 136.

Battifolle, 90;
ruins of, 139.

Beni, guide book of, 49, 125;
address of, 141.

Bibbiena, 2, 13 ff.;
market-place, 14;
inns at and excursions from, 134.

Bibbiena, Cardinal, 13, 17, 21 ff.

Borgo alla Collina, 122;
situation of, 138.

Boscoverde, pension at, 136.

Buonconte, killed at Campaldino, 114, 117.

Cajano, 139.

_Calandra_, 26 ff.

Camaldoli, 2, 51 ff.;
views of, 53, 73;
landmark of, 76;
approaches of, 133, 136;
inns at and excursions from, 137;
paths to, 140.

Campaldino, 114, 120, 138.

Campi, 134.

Campo Lombardo, 141.

Camprena, 55.

Capo d’Arno, 113 ff.;
paths to, 140.

Cappella degli Uccelli, 134.

Caprera, 135.

Casaccia, 131, 139.

Casalino, 140.

Castel Castagnajo, 141.

Castel San Niccolo, 139;
view of, 123.

Castiglione on Cardinal Bibbiena, 22 ff.

Certomondo, 139.

Chiusi di Casentino, 135.

Consuma, 107, 121, etc.;
driving road over, 133;
paths leading to, 134, 139, 141.

_Conversations of Camaldoli_, 80 ff.

Corsalone, 35, 134.

_Cortegiano, il_, 24 ff.

Dante, on the Guidi, 7;
connection with the Guidi, 93, 113 ff.;
on St Francis, 44;
on St Romuald, 10.

Della Robbia, at Bibbiena, 17, 134;
at La Verna (frontispiece), 46, 49, 134;
at Memmenano, 137;
at Poppi, 137;
at Santa Maria, 141;
at Stia, 140.

Divizio, Angelo, 32;
Bernardo, _see_ Bibbiena, Cardinal.

Eremo, 63, 78 ff., 138.

Etruscan remains, 2, 18, 139.

Faenza at war with Guidi, 105.

Falterona, 1, 113, 125;
ascent of, 140.

Fedele of Strumi, 129.

Florence at war with Guidi, 105.

Fonte Branda, 63, 142.

Forli, road to, 101, 137.

Fosso of Camaldoli, 78, 136.

Francis, St, 5, 10, 11, 33 ff.;
portrait of (frontispiece).

Fronzola, 138.

Gaviserri, 141.

Gherardesca, Countess, 116, 117.

Giovio on Cardinal Bibbiena, 22, 29.

Gisla, Countess, 94.

Gressa, 55, 136.

Gualdrada, Countess, 95, 104 ff.

Guidi, Counts, 90 ff.;
Guido, 95;
Guido _il Marchese_, 97, 102;
Guidoguerra, 98, 101;
Guido Vecchio, 104, 106;
Guido Magnifico, 106;
Guido Novello, 106 ff.;
Guido Selvatico, 113;
Guido of Battifolle, 115,
his portrait, 109;
Guido Novello the younger, 115;
Tegrimo, 94;
Tegrimo Bevisangue, 94;
Tegrimo of Modigliana, 107;
Simone of Battifolle, 48, 106, 135;
Alessandro of Romena, 117 ff.;
Oberto and Guido of Romena, 118;
arms of, 112.

Jacopo del Casentino, 46, 111, 137.

Jacopo Lapo, 110, 137.

Landini, Cristofero, 11, 80 ff.;
relic of, 139.

La Verna, 5, 11, 33 ff.;
views of, 3, 34, 43;
description of, 134.

Lierna, 137.

Lonnano, 138, 140.

Maccia del Uomo Morto, 118.

Madonna del Sasso, 35, 134.

Maldolo, Count, 71.

Malespini on Guidi, 95.

Manessa, Countess, 114, 117.

Marciano, 55, 136.

Mariotto, 82.

Matelda, Countess, 96, 97, 140.

Medici in the Casentino, 21, 81 ff.;
princess at Eremo, 77.

Memmenano, 137.

Moggiona, 140.

Mona Giovanna, 128.

Montemignajo, 97, 139.

Orlando, Count, 46.

Ortignano, 135.

Otto of Freysing on Guidi, 101.

Ozanam on St Francis, 40, 41.

Pappiano, 141.

Passerini on Guidi, 119.

Penna, 33, 50;
ascent of, 135.

Peter Damian, 64, 65.

Pontassieve, inns at, 133.

Poppi, 75, 89, 90 ff.;
views of, 91, 99, 109;
inns at, 134;
excursions from, 137.

Poppiena, 138.

Porciano, 90, 95, etc.

Prato al Soglio, 85, 138.

Pratomagno, 18, 76;
ascent of, 135.

Pratovecchio, 46, 113, 125;
inns at, 134;
excursions from, 140.

Ragginopoli, 136.

Raggiolo, 135, 138.

Romena, 90, 97, 98;
view of, 114;
ways to, 141.

Romuald, St, 5, 10, 51 ff., 80, etc.

Ruskin on St Francis, 39, 41.

Sacchetti on Countesses at Poppi, 117.

Saltino, hotels at, 133.

San Martino di Vado, 97, 139.

Santa Maria delle Grazie, 141.

Sasso Spicco, 135.

Scheggia, 139.

Serravalle, 59, 85, 89, 136.

Soci, 55, 56, 57, 90.

Solano, 97, 121.

Staggia, 125, 141.

Stia, 97, 125, 133;
inns at, 134;
excursions from, 140.

Strava San Niccolo, 121;
situation of, 138.

Strumi, 94, 129.

Tarlati, 20, 22;
of Pietramala, 56.

Teggina, 135.

Tolosanus on Guidi, 101.

Torello, St, 129 ff., 137.

Urbech, 141.

Vallombrosa, inns at, 134.

Vallucciole, 141.

Vasari, 46, 89, 90, 110, 138.

Villani, 95, 109, 116.

THE END

_Colston & Coy., Limited, Printers, Edinburgh_

[Illustration: Map of Casentino]

* * * * *

A LIST OF DENT’S

COUNTY GUIDES

EDITED BY GEORGE A. B. DEWAR.

In issuing this series of books the publishers believe that they are
making a departure, no less welcome than needful, from the usual lines
on which such Handbooks are compiled. What they have endeavoured to do
for the historic Towns of Europe in their “Mediæval Town Series,” they
now hope to accomplish for the Counties of England, by presenting their
unrivalled attractions in such a way as shall no longer make a
guide-book a weariness to the flesh.

Their object is to produce a series of books at once thoroughly readable
and thoroughly efficient as tourist guides.

The volumes will be redolent of the fresh open air and the country side.
Natural History and Sport in their various branches will be in the hands
of experts living in the districts described. The Scenery and History of
each interesting spot will be written of by a man of letters who knows
and loves his own county.

Each volume is divided into three parts. PART I., dealing with the
“Story and Scenery” of the county, consists of Itineraries devoted to
its characteristic districts; and it is intended that these sections,
though independent of each other, may form a connected whole fit to be
read through as are the chapters of a book. To make the “Story and
Scenery” of the county readable as a whole, it has been necessary to
condense into PART III. “A County Gazetteer,” much antiquarian and other
information about towns, villages, and churches, together with
indispensable directions of a purely practical character about trains,
hotels and inns, and the like. PART II. consists of articles on the
Natural History and Sport of the county, contributed by writers who have
studied these subjects on the spot, together with a chapter specially
intended for the use of cyclists.

* * * * *

LIST OF VOLUMES

_Each with numerous Topographical Illustrations, Sectional Plans
accompanying the Itineraries, and a County Map. Fcap. 8vo (convenient
for the pocket), cloth gilt, tinted edges, 4s. 6d. net per volume._

THE LAKE COUNTIES. By W. G. COLLINGWOOD, with Special Articles on:
Birds, by MARY L. ARMITT; Butterflies and Moths, by Canon CREWDSON;
Flora, by S. L. PETTY; Geology, by Prof. E. HULL, LL.D.;
Fox-hunting, by Rev. E. M. REYNOLDS, M.F.H.; Mountaineering, by W.
P. HASKETT SMITH; Yachting, by ARTHUR SEVERN; Angling, by A.
SEVERN, Junr.; Shooting, by A. RUSKIN SEVERN; Cycling, by A. W.
RUMNEY.

[_Spring, 1902._

SURREY. By WALTER JERROLD, with Special Articles on: Birds, by J.
A. BUCKNILL, M.A.; Flowers, by EDWARD STEP, F.L.S.; Entomology, by
Rev. J. VERNON; Geology, by Prof. EDWARD HULL, LL.D.; Cycling, by
DUNCAN TOVEY.

_Athenæum._--“He writes with ample knowledge and enthusiasm,
and the volume may be recommended as fully maintaining the high
reputation which the series has already gained.... Besides Mr.
Jerrold’s main narrative, which is strong on the antiquarian and
literary side, we have special articles ... which seem excellent.”

_Field._--“Something more than a guide book, though in that
direction it would be hard to beat, for while the author is an
enthusiast, and writes very pleasantly, he is far from unmindful
of those details which, though they may be commonplace, are very
valuable.”

NORFOLK. By WILLIAM A. DUTT, with Special Articles on: Birds, by
Rev. R. C. NIGHTINGALE; Botany, by H. D. GELDART; Entomology, by
CLAUDE MORLEY, F.E.S.; Geology, by F. W. HARMER, F.G.S.; Shooting
and Fishing, by A. J. RUDD; Sea Fishing, by E. A. CROXON; Cycling,
by H. MORRISS.

_Academy._--“As near a model guide book as may be; the itineraries
are ample and well arranged, the maps good, and he discourses
pleasantly by the way of matters interesting to more than the mere
tourist.”

_Daily Chronicle._--“This little volume is so excellent as far as
it goes, has been written with so much cheeriness and love for the
Eastern county, is such a miracle of cheapness, and so exactly what
the tourist in Norfolk needs during his stay, that we can only
speak of it with cordial praise and admiration.”

HAMPSHIRE WITH THE ISLE OF WIGHT.

By GEORGE A. B. DEWAR, with Special Articles on: Botany, by JOHN
VAUGHAN; Entomology, by G. M. A. HEWETT; Birds, by G. B. CORBIN;
Geology, by Prof. EDWARD HULL, LL.D.; Fishing and Shooting, by the
EDITOR; Cycling, by W. M. HARMAN.

_Athenæum._--“_After a wide and practical experience of guide-books
for nearly forty years, we have no hesitation in saying that it is
the best of its size (350 pp.) that we have as yet seen. It is a
book that the general antiquary or lover of Nature as well as the
country resident will delight to have on their shelves._”

_Times._--“The authors have done their work extremely well, ... an
immense amount of information presented in an orderly and
attractive form.”

_County Gentleman._--“At once practical and romantic, useful and
ornamental.”

* * * * *

PRESS APPRECIATIONS

_Outlook._--“Many will bless Messrs. Dent for the happy idea embodied in
this series.”

_Athenæum._--“This seems to us an excellent plan, and should produce a
kind of volume decidedly superior to the ordinary run of handbooks.”

_Daily News._--“There is no reason why a guide-book should not be
artistic and literary, as well as an accurate production, but before the
issue of ‘Dent’s County Guides,’ we are not aware that anybody ever
thought of making it so.”

_Daily Chronicle._--“We rejoice that the writing of guide-books has come
into the hands of men of fine taste, large appreciation, and delicate
style, and has for ever escaped from those who, in the past, gave
guide-books a reputation for all that was commonplace, banal, and dull.
Messrs. Dent are to be much commended.”

_Scottish Geographical Magazine._--“These guide-books may be said to
inaugurate a new departure. Instead of bare statistics, dry details, and
unattractive forms of ordinary guide-books, we have here dainty little
volumes with interesting letterpress, clear maps, and exquisite woodcuts
from original sketches.... No lover of the beautiful could have more
delightful companions.”

J. M. DENT & CO., BEDFORD STREET, LONDON, W.C.

*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "Through the Casentino with Hints for the Traveller" ***

Home