Part 12
Ancona of to-day is a garden where the beautiful flowers of an ancient architecture are still flourishing among the energetic weeds and herbs of everyday life. Between the two horns of her crescent bay, Monte Astagno, crowned by the Spanish bastions of the Fortezza, and Monte Guasco, which enthrones the lovely church of San Ciriaco, there is a network of streets. Let us for the sake of the metaphor suppose that these streets are paths in the garden of Ancona; and let us walk in them, searching in the tangle of hardy commercial upshoots for the delicate blossoms which graced the pleasances of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. More than this, for down in the crowded port we shall discover the ancient growths of the Roman city in many a broken arch on whose blackened stones a Gothic spandril has been grafted, and in the glorious Triumphal Arch which the Imperial Plotina and her sister-in-law raised in honour of Trajan.
Between the shrieking railway station and the Porta Pia there is nothing to detain us; this is more or less a modern suburb which has sprung up since the foundation of the railway; but at the Porta Pia, which stands at the foot of Monte Astagno, we enter the old harbour. To our left is the picturesque Lazzaretto built by Clement XII. in 1732, now used as a sugar refinery; and in front we see before us the curving bay of Ancona, with its grand new quay or Banchina, of which the Anconans are so proud. The Via Ventinove Settembre, whose name like the ubiquitous Venti Settembre commemorates the expulsion of the Papal troops in 1860, takes us into the heart of the modern city; but it is not in her wide Corso Giuseppe Mazzini, or Vittorio Emanuele, or Piazza Cavour that we shall find anything of the old Ancona. Here she is as modern as her names betoken, although the fruit-market in a curious uphill square and the fish-market below the picturesque sixteenth-century fountain of the Corso Giuseppe Mazzini are as picturesque and irrelevant as any market in Italy.
It is in the southern wing of the city that we shall find the flowers we seek, in the steep Strada delle Scuole which runs through the centre of the graceful arcaded Court of the Prefettura, and the Via Aurelio Saffi, the most characteristic and romantic street in Ancona. In the Strada delle Scuole we see the great church of San Domenico with the colossal statue of Clement XII. upon its steps, and San Francesco with its riotous Gothic façade towering over the narrow street from its lofty stairs, and the Palazzo del Comune built by Margheritone d'Arezzo, and much restored and modernised in the seventeenth century.
But it is in the Via Aurelio Saffi that Ancona flowers best; for in this centre of the busy wharf life, which has been given up to the merchants and bankers of the eastern port, we find such gracious little basilicas, enriched with carvings from Byzantine bestiaries, and Gothic porches and façades flowering into the Renaissance under the Oriental touch of Giorgio da Sebenico, the last Gothic architect of Italy. Here is the Loggia dei Mercanti, very florid and flamboyant, with its tilting knight a-horseback; and close beside it Napoleon's home in Ancona, the Palazzo Benincasa, with fifteenth-century Gothic-Renaissance windows; and here, standing a little back from the rattle of the modern port traffic, with pigeons resting on its many little arches, is Santa Maria della Piazza, with a Pisan-romanesque façade, soft and eaten by the years, encrusted with ancient sculptures and dusty majolica plaques. Opposite this ancient and beautiful church a gateway with another relief of a knight on horseback, like the splendid gilt knight of the Loggia dei Mercanti, leads into the big docks; but it is better to go down the Via Aurelio Saffi, though at the first glance it seems to be given up to shipping agents and barbers. For here, in the shadow of the old old Palazzo del Comune, which is carried up on gigantic arches to the level of the road above, we find the little church of Santa Maria della Misericordia, with its curious Renaissance portal, its one Byzantine ambo, and its elegant mosque-like interior of brick with stone cornices, pillars and groinings only thinly disguised by plaster. A little further up is a doorway of Roman masonry, and two ancient arches, with uncemented blocks up to the cornice but Gothic work above. And soon afterwards the narrow street debouches on to the wharf.
Not in all Italy is there such a quay, or such a blaze of colour! A long line of mediaeval wall, of burnt red brick machicolated, runs down the Mole, and in its shadow are some low trattorie covered with Morning Glories. High above these, raised on a flight of steps, the arch of Trajan, with its marble painted grey and gold by rain and the years, is framed in the blue Italian sky. Beside it the bronze and copper sails of the fishing-boats are massed together among the black colliers, and above and behind are the green hills of Ancona, with her red-roofed houses climbing up their wide slopes, and Monte Guasco crowned by the white jewel of her cathedral. It has been said that Trajan's arch is the most beautiful and perfect Roman arch in Italy. I do not know. It is wonderfully unspoiled and graceful, extremely simple in design, plainer even than the arch of Titus on the brow of the Velian. But surely there is no other Roman monument which has so rich a setting!
Though we spent a long morning down in the harbour, hemmed in by the amphitheatre of Ancona's hills, now watching the fishermen mending their big brown nets, now engrossed with the picturesque wharf life--the sailors clad in bright blue linen at work among the black hulks of the coaling ships, the oxen toiling over the stones, their snowy flanks grey with dust and dirt, the lascars of ocean-going steamers whose scarlet turbans lent a fresh note of colour to the animated scene--our first and last thoughts of Ancona were with her fishing-boats. For when we left her they fluttered after us like butterflies out of a garden as far as Falconara, just as they had come to meet us when we drew near her sickle bay.
To watch the boats of Ancona drift into the little harbour at sundown, furling their sails, is to find oneself taken back to the Age of Beautiful Things when the ideal form and colour were as natural as sunlight and shadow. It was for this reason that we took rooms in the Albergo Milano, which is a bad and cheerless inn, for below our windows lay the whole fleet of graceful craft, with up-curved bows like ancient galleys, and sails emblazoned with devices, flaunting gay colours--old gold and purple, and Venetian browns and reds at dawn and sunset.
Although her white temple has long since vanished from Monte Guasco, Aphrodite, the goddess of fair and prosperous journeys, still keeps watch over Ancona's bay. In these halcyon-days we forgot that the vines of Umbria were already yellowing under the autumn rains; we hardly realised that these smiling waters were of an eastern sea.
Think of the coast of Norfolk in the cold wet days of an English September, when the North Sea thunders along the shore as though Poseidon shook his head in wrath! If you have stood upon the timber pier at Lowestoft, its wooden sides green with sea-wrack, and watched the deep-sea fishermen lurching out in heavy grey rollers to wrest their living from an angry sea, you will find it hard to reconcile their perilous existence with the gracious beauty of Ancona's fishing-fleet. There life is full of the grandeur and bitterness of toil, salt with the kiss of the sea and the tears of the women weeping for those who never come back; here there is song and sunshine; here you could set sail for dreamland in these painted ships upon the mirroring Adriatic.
We were never weary of watching the boat-life from our windows. In the still dawn the arms of the harbour were like gold bars encircling a sapphire, and in the distance we could see the little towns along the sea-board shining rosily from their misty hills. Sometimes the bay was sown with boats, like azure embroidery with butterflies, and sometimes below the windows the cargo of a felucca with gold and bronze sails was being unloaded on the wharf. The sailors were clad in white and blue, or stripped to the waist, with scarlet sashes girding up their short white drawers. How Brangwyn could have caught that vivid colour against the pearly dawn! Then the sun rose and the fleet began to drift slowly out to sea, trailing their bright reflections in the water.
But I loved them best when they came in at night, furling their yellow wings or drooping their tired pinions to the west, laden with who knows what treasures from the caves of sea-gods! Some were blended into a soft harmony of colour, copper and red and gold; others had strange devices painted on them, griffins and black dragons, elephants and mermen; some were like tiger moths, black and emblazoned. And there was one crimson sail with a white horse, a gallant beast like the fiery steeds of an ancient frieze, who sank to his knees when the fishers reached the quay, and then vanished in its rich red folds.
Aeneas Sylvius must have looked upon such sails; so might the wings of the Venetian Antonio's ships have been wrought. All the gold of the East seemed to be pouring into the harbour as those boats came in. We watched them tacking into port, passing one another again and again, like the figures in a stately dance--far off at first, then nearer, then just outside the bar, then looming large below the windows as they trailed by to tie up at the quay--drooping their pennons and folding their wings like dream-ships, the fantastic heralds of the night.
LORETO
Loreto, the hill of laurels, which tradition has made the most sacred spot in Italy, has more than a legendary antiquity. For on its sunny slopes, overlooking the battle-field of Castelfidardo and the still Adriatic, the mysterious Picenians, contemporaries of the Umbrians and the Etruscans, left traces of a perished history in graves which have yielded the highest native art of prehistoric Italy.
They are charnelled in the museum of Ancona. But the vast cathedral built over the Holy House of Loreto is of a solidity which stands well for eternity. As we approached it on the sunny autumn morning of the Feast of the Nativity of the Virgin, we thought we saw not a church but a castle, built with the robust towers of the fifteenth century. It is in fact a castle built to protect from the Saracens the treasures laid by the potentates and peoples of the Middle Ages on the threshold of the Holy House, which the hands of angels transported in the thirteenth century first from Palestine to Dalmatia; and then, when Dalmatia was no longer secure, to the hill above Recanati in the March of Ancona.
One May morning in the year 1291 some peasants of Rauniza, a little town situated on the Dalmatian coast between Tersatto and Fiume, saw a spectacle which filled their souls with wonder as they went out to work in their fields before dawn. On a hill, which the night before had been bare and solitary, they beheld a strange building, which, even to their unaccustomed eyes, was of great antiquity. Drawing near they found that it had no foundations, although it stood miraculously upright; and while they were wondering at the phenomenon they saw a multitude approaching from Tersatto, from Rauniza, and from Fiume. Summoning up courage they entered, and discovered that it was formed of a single chamber whose ceiling was made of wood painted blue, and illumined with small gold stars. The rough walls were covered with plaster on which was frescoed the story of the life of Christ, and a large open door in one of the side walls gave access to the mysterious dwelling. To the right was a long narrow window with an altar surmounted by a painted crucifix, and near by a little cupboard contained some vases of rough pottery. On the left of this they discovered a chimney hearth, and a statue of the Holy Virgin holding the Infant Christ in her arms.
In that serene and far-distant dawn all the world was spell-bound in the contemplation of the prodigy. But the explanation of the mystery was not far off, for the venerable pastor of the church of St. George, Bishop Alexander of Modruria, who had been lying on a bed of sickness, came into their midst crying out that the Blessed Virgin herself had appeared to him during the night, saying in the sweetest voice: 'My house at Nazareth is now transferred to these lands. This is the very altar erected by the apostle Peter: the statue of cedar-wood is my authentic portrait carved by Luke the evangelist. Arise from thy bed of pain! I restore you to your health because I wish that the miracle of your cure may breed faith in the crowd in what you may relate to them.' Upon which he rose up full of joy and strength and ran to render thanks. The people united their prayers night and day with the prayers of the Holy Bishop, while the Miraculous Intelligence spread rapidly, and carried by the winds, the clouds and the light, it crossed the seas and mountains to fill all western Christendom with happiness and wonder.
At that time Nicholas Frangipani, the Governor of Dalmatia, was accompanying his sovereign the Emperor Rudolph of Hapsburg in a military expedition. Warned by a courier of the arrival of the Holy House he came to Tersatto, where he could not at first believe his eyes. However, he gave permission to four wise men to go immediately to Nazareth to examine and check the facts of this extraordinary occurrence. The mission was accomplished with danger, because the Saracens under the Sultan Khalil were in possession of the Holy Land, having driven the crusaders from their stronghold in Acre. But the evidence was altogether convincing. At Nazareth the House of the Virgin was no more to be found; a mysterious power had torn it from its foundations, which were still there to show that their dimensions and materials tallied with those of the house thus suddenly transferred to Dalmatia.
Every doubt having disappeared, the facts of the translation were made public, and religion took advantage to reap a good harvest of faith from the miraculous seed which had taken root on the shores of Dalmatia.
But the rejoicing was not for long. On the 10th of December 1294 the Holy House of the Virgin disappeared as suddenly as it arrived, and the pilgrims sought for it in vain on the little hill of Tersatto which had become so celebrated.
One whole day the Sanctuary was upon the waters of the Adriatic. At ten o'clock at night it appeared on the other coast, in the neighbourhood of Recanati, where it deposited itself in a laurel wood (lauretum), to the terror of some shepherds who were tending their flocks, and saw the wonderful edifice approach surrounded by a halo.
At Loreto the same thing happened as at Rauniza. In a few days the place became celebrated. Crowds of pilgrims flocked to it, and from dawn to sunset the echo of their prayers mingled with the song of the woodland birds.
Here again there were revelations. The first was a recompense to the prayers of an aged hermit. The second was found in a prophecy of St. Francis, who had foretold the coming of the Holy House. The third was vouchsafed to St. Nicholas of Tolentino who, filled with the prophetic spirit, often walked towards the sea, and fixed his gaze on the azure distance with a presentiment that from there he would receive a precious treasure. Which he did. For it was from the Virgin, in person, that the Holy Monk had the announcement that her house was no longer to be found at Nazareth, or at Tersatto in Dalmatia, but in the fresh and whispering wood of Lauretum.
Loreto the town is dependent upon Loreto the church. It is a mere growth, which has sprung up round the miraculous shrine of the Santa Casa, as the tents of the servants of God sprang up round the Holy Tabernacle in the wilderness. If by another miracle the Santa Casa, and with it the mother church and the apostolical palace, were to change its abode again, Loreto would be nothing but a cluster of peasant cottages with a mediaeval clock-tower and a picturesque city gate. It consists mainly of one long street, leading from the Porta della Città to the church, lined with humble shops, which on feast days empty themselves into the road in gaily decked booths of rosaries, medals, peasant jewellery, bright kerchiefs, and all the semi-religious paraphernalia dear to the heart of the Italian holiday-maker.
Loreto is the Lourdes of Italy. The prevalence of cholera in Apulia, in the autumn of 1910, caused the Government to issue an edict forbidding the annual fair of the Feast of the Nativity of the Virgin, which brings more than a quarter of a million peasants from all parts of Italy; but although the festa lost much in picturesqueness by the absence of the southern Italians, we drove up the hillside, in the company of a host of pilgrims.
As we went all eyes were turned towards Loreto, the little village, white as any city of the Orient, which enshrines one of the greatest treasures of the Roman Catholic Church, the humble cottage, built of rough stones, which half Christendom believes to have been the home of the Holy Family on their return from Egypt, as well as the scene of the Annunciation and the Incarnation. For in its midst loomed the towers and bastions of the Chiesa della Santa Casa, with its many apses spreading out on the crest of the hill like the petals of a flower, golden-hued, and crowned by a dome bearing aloft a gilded image of the Virgin. We approached it through an avenue of tinselled merry-go-rounds, and rifle ranges, and red and white striped theatre-booths,--the mushroom-growths of all European festas; but it was not until we passed through the city gates that the real business of the day began. Here it was impossible to hurry. The stream of pilgrims in that narrow and crowded thoroughfare, stopping at every stall to chaffer and bid, flowed but slowly towards the shrine, although the great bell was booming from the campanile like the voice of a temple, calling its devotees to prayer.
It was a scene of indescribable noise and gaiety, but from the picturesque point of view it was disappointing, for the peasants of the March are not beautiful like the peasants of Umbria and Tuscany, nor do they wear the gay kerchiefs and costumes of the southern Italians, seeming to prefer white silk and wool kerchiefs to the brilliant flowered _tovagliette_ of the women of the Campagna.
When at last we did emerge from the narrow, crowded thoroughfare we found ourselves in a wide piazza surrounded by elegant Renaissance arcades, and saw before us the Chiesa della Santa Casa, towering above a broad flight of steps. And straightway, although the gay stalls with their fluttering kerchiefs and strings of rosaries and images flowed down one side of the square, we forgot the noise and bustle of the street; heard only the deep-toned bell calling the world to worship on that sunny hill-top overlooking the Adriatic; saw only the pilgrims streaming up the stairs on either side of the statue of Pope Sixtus V., and into those exquisite bronze doors which are among the chief glories of Loreto's treasury of art.
For here in Loreto the legend of the Holy House is told with the simple faith of the age of Rudolph of Hapsburg, the founder of the Austrian dynasty, and St. Nicholas of Tolentino, in whose life-time it took place. And whether the stranger comes to Loreto as a pilgrim or a sight-seer it is impossible for him not to be stirred by the simple piety and devotion of the multitudes which throng this shrine. When I remember that for five centuries the world has journeyed here to pray and worship, to me it makes no difference that the dimensions of the foundations of the Holy House in Nazareth do not tally with the dimensions of the Santa Casa of Loreto, or that none of the pilgrims to Nazareth between the fourth and the sixteenth centuries made mention of the house of Joseph in Palestine. It stands for so much in the history of the world. For we have all waited on the shore of the Sea of Doubt, like St. Nicholas upon the shore of the Adriatic, and searched the horizon for the treasure which we dreamt lay beyond it. And though many of us have had some message, faint and fluttering maybe, which has nevertheless grown clearer as we strained towards it, for how few of us has the miracle come safely through the breakers and blessed our eyes as the Santa Casa of Loreto blessed the eyes of the shepherds of Recanati!
In comparison with its splendid fortified apses, whose fifteenth-century fighting galleries are still intact, and pierced by holes for dropping hot lead on to the heads of besiegers, the façade which Sixtus v. built for the Chiesa della Santa Casa is unimposing. But it is graced by three bronze doors worthy of comparison with Ghiberti's wonderful gates in the baptistery at Florence. They are the work of the sons of Girolamo Lombardo and his pupils; and the panels of the central door, with their story of the Creation, the Expulsion from the Garden of Eden and the murder of Abel, are masterpieces of the Renaissance, so godlike are the figures of Adam, as he tills the soil, and of the slayer Cain, fleeing from wrath to come. They are surrounded by a daring and frankly pagan arabesque of fauns and mermen and foliage. Nor are the side doors less beautiful, with their lives of Abraham and Moses, and their smiling cherubs holding up medallions and lockets in which are figures of Virgins and Saints, and miniature scenes in delicate low relief.
While we stayed to look at those exquisite panels of the oldest story in the world, there came two shaggy-haired men, with the dust of long journeys on their hob-nailed boots, who doffed their hats and knelt there on the pavement in the midst of the shifting crowd of worshippers, praying before their Lord with unconscious grace, as Abel prayed before the God of Israel, ere they ventured to approach the holy shrine.
And here we paused, for this was what we had come out to see. We had no meed of worship to offer to Madonna through that strange Byzantine doll, loaded with jewels like an Indian totem, who smiles so enigmatically, over her glittering lamps and tapers, at the kneeling people. To us the story of the Santa Casa was a legend only beautiful in the faith which can believe it. Nor were we drawn hither to see the treasures worth the ransoms of many kings which Popes and Emperors have lavished on the shrine, or the exquisite frescoes of Melozzo da Forli and Luca Signorelli in its sacristies. For greater than any of these are the humble and lowly of heart who worship in the magnificent temples which princes and prelates have built to their gods. They are indeed the salt of the earth, the shining light which cannot be hid. They are like the hills and the valleys in which they live; in their eyes are the shadows born of century-long communion with Nature; being meek they have inherited the earth; being pure in heart they have seen God.