Chapter 27

Fusio Revisited

THIS last year Jones and I sent for Guglielmoni to take us over the Sassello Grande from Airolo to Fusio. Soon after starting we were joined by a peasant woman and her daughter who were returning to their home at Mugno in the Val Maggia some twenty minutes’ walk below Fusio. They had come the day before over the Sassello Pass through Fusio carrying two hundred eggs and several fowls to Airolo. They had had to climb a full four thousand feet; the path is rugged in the extreme; neither of them had any shoes or stockings; the weather was very wet; the clouds hung low; the wind on the Colma blew so hard that, though the rain was coming down in torrents, it was impossible to hold up an umbrella, and they did not know the little road there is. Happily, before they got above the Valle di Sambucco they had fallen in with Guglielmoni, on his way to meet us; otherwise one does not see how they could have got over. As it was, they did not break a single egg, but they were a good deal scared and asked us to let them go back in our company. We found them delightful people; the girl was very pretty and the mother still comely, with a singularly pleasing expression. We found out what they had done with their eggs and fowls. They sold the eggs for nine centimes apiece, whereas at Fusio they would have got but five. The fowls fetched three francs apiece as against two they would have got at Fusio. Altogether they had made the best part of twenty francs by their journey, over and above what they would have made if they had stayed at home, and thought they had done good business.

The weather was perfect for the return journey. After passing Nante we noticed by the side of the path several round burnt patches some four feet in diameter which struck us as rather strange, so we asked Guglielmoni about them. He said there had been ants’ nests there, and the people burnt them because the ants did so much damage. He showed us one that was in process of reconstruction, the ants building upon the remains of their ruined home, and pointed out the deep channel which the ants had worn in the ground through their habit of entering and quitting their old-established nest by one main road. We had thought the channel was a rill artificially cut for irrigation, and it was not till Guglielmoni showed us how impossible this was that we came to see he was right. He showed us a disused road that had led to a nest now destroyed, and on two or three other occasions showed us roads leading from one nest to another.

He told us several more things about marmots which I may mention as opinions held by the Fusians, but upon which I should be sorry to base a theory. He said their fat was so subtle that it would go through glass and could not therefore be kept in a bottle. He said it would go through a man’s hand. I said: “Let us try,” but it appeared that it might take three or four hours in getting through, so we delayed the experiment for a more convenient season. I asked how the marmots held their own fat if it would go through skin. I was answered that at the end of summer, when the marmots are very fat, they no longer hold it and their fur is greasy. I could not contradict this from personal knowledge and was obliged to let it pass. He said marmots’ fat was good for rheumatism and sprains, but that it must never be used for a broken bone, as the ends of the bone would not grow together again if the fat reached them. Badgers’ fat, he said, was very good, but it was not so sovereign a remedy as marmots’. There are badgers about Fusio, though not so many as lower down the valley in the chestnut country. We saw some badgers’ fat later on at Tesserete; it was kept in a tin which was certainly very greasy, but we did not think that the fat had gone through the tin.

Then we met an old gentleman with a Rembrandt-Rabbi far-away look in his eyes. He wore a coarse but clean linen shirt, and was otherwise neat in his attire. He looked as if he had suffered much and had been chastened rather than soured by it. We talked a little and the conversation turned upon deceit. I said that deceit was a necessary alloy for truth which, without this hardening addition, like gold without an alloy of copper, would be unworkable.

“Chi non sa ingannare,” I said in conclusion, “non sa parlare il vero.”

The old gentleman seemed to like this, and so we parted. Guglielmoni told us he was a painter and liable to temporary fits of insanity. During these fits he would go up by himself into the mountains, like some old prophet going out into the wilderness, and stay there till the fit was over, living no one knew where or how.

Cheese is the principal product of these valleys. I asked Guglielmoni whether there was any sign of the upper pastures becoming impoverished by the annual removal of so much cheese. He said the soil about Fusio did not yield as much by a third as it had yielded when he was a boy, but I hardly think it likely that there is much difference. He did not see why taking away so many hundredweight, or rather tons, of cheese yearly should impoverish the land, for, he said, the cows manured it. He did not see that the cheeses should be taken into account. At one time he said that two hundred years hence the Alpe di Campo la Turba would not be worth feeding; at another that the cows left what they ate behind them. Our own impression was that, what with insect and bird life and the fertilising power of snow and the frequent addition of new soil by avalanches, there was probably no harm done, and that the grass was there or thereabouts much what it always had been since people had first begun to feed it. I have myself known these _alpi_ off and on ever since 1843, and can perceive no difference, except that the glaciers, especially at Grindelwald, have receded very considerably, and even this may be only fancy.

I asked Guglielmoni whether the _Alpigiani_—the people who spend the summer in the _alpi_—ever get pulmonary complaints. “Oh si,” was his answer, and he nodded as though it were common, which I can well believe; but it is more difficult to understand how the few robust Alpigiani escape. The majority seemed to us to be prematurely worn and to live in a state almost of squalor. What would a doctor say to the damp floor covered with mildew growing on spilt milk and fragments of half-made cheese? What about men sleeping night after night in a room built in the middle of a dung-heap, with never a ray of sunshine save a little near the door and an occasional beam through crannies in the walls? What _nidus_ can be conceived more favourable for the development of organic germs? How can any one escape who spends a summer in one of these huts? I should say the worst and most insanitary cellar into which human beings are huddled in London is not more unwholesome than these _alpi_ in the middle of the finest air in Europe.

Guglielmoni had some edelweiss in his hat, and we asked him the Italian name for it. He replied that it had no other name. The passion for this flower has evidently spread from the north. The Italians are great at suppressing unnecessary details. I was going up once in the _posta_ from Varallo to Fobello and had an Americanised Italian cook for my only fellow-traveller. I asked him the name of a bird I happened to see, and he said:

“Oh, he not got no name. There is two birds got names. There is the _gazza_; he spik very nice. I have one; he spik beautiful. And there is the _merlo_; he sing very pretty. The other, they not got no names; they not want no names; every one call them what he choose.”

And so it is with the flowers. There is the rose and perhaps half-a-dozen more plants, but as for the others “they not got no names, they not want no names.”

My fellow-traveller, speaking of the villagers in the villages we passed through, said:

“They all right as long as they stop here, but when they go away and travel, then they not never happy no more.”

When we reached the floor of the Valle di Sambucco, the people were milking the few cattle that remained there, and the milk purred into the pails as with a deep hum of satisfaction. The sun was setting red upon the Piz Campo Tencia; the water was as clear as the air, and the air in the deep shadow of the bottom of the valley had something of the deep blue as well as of the transparency of the water. We passed the gorge in twilight and presently were again at Fusio. We ordered some wine for the women who had accompanied us, and as they sat waiting for it with their hands folded before them they looked so good and holy and quiet that one would have thought they were returning from a pilgrimage.

I have nothing to retract from what I have said in praise of Fusio. It is the most old-world subalpine village that I know. It was probably burnt down some time in the Middle Ages and perhaps the scare thus caused led to its being rebuilt not in wood but in stone. The houses are much built into one another as at S. Remo; the roofs are all of them made of large stones; there are a good many wooden balconies, but it is probably because it has been chiefly built of stone that we now see it much as it must have looked two or even three centuries ago. If any one wants to know what kind of village the people of three hundred years ago beheld, at Fusio he will find an almost untouched specimen of what he wants. For picturesqueness I know no subalpine village so good. Sit down wherever one will there is a subject ready made. The back of the village is perhaps more mediæval in appearance than the front. Its quaint picturesqueness, the beauty of its flowers, the brilliancy of its meadows, and the genial presence of Signor Dazio prevent me from allowing any great length of time to pass without a visit to Fusio.

I said to Jones once: “It is worth while going to Fusio if only to please Signor Dazio.”

“Yes,” said Jones, “and he is so very easily pleased.”

It is just this that makes it so pleasant to try to please him. I believe all the people in Fusio are good. I asked Guglielmoni once what happened when any one did something wrong. He seemed bewildered. The case had not arisen within his recollection. I pressed him and said that it might arise even at Fusio, and what would happen then? Had they a prison or a lock-up of any kind? He said they had hone, and he supposed the offender would have to be taken down the valley to Cevio, about fourteen or fifteen miles off—but the case had not arisen.

At Fusio, in spite of all its flowers, there are no bees; the summer is too short and they would have to be fed too long. Nevertheless, we got the best honey at Fusio that we got anywhere. Signor Dazio said it was from his own hives at Locarno and had not been “elongated” in any way. What was bought at the shops, he said, was almost invariably “elongated” with flour, sugar and a variety of other things.

The hotel has been much improved during these last two years; the kitchen has been taken downstairs and the old one thrown into the dining-room, which has been newly decorated after a happily-conceived and tastefully-executed scheme. The visitor is to suppose himself seated in a large open belvedere upon the roof of the house, over which a light iron trellis-work has been thrown and gracefully festooned with a profusion of brilliant flowers. In the sky, which is of unclouded blue, birds of lustrous plumage are engaged in carrying a wreath, presumably for the brow of one of the visitors. The lower part of the heavens is studded with commodious hat pegs, two or three doors, the windows, and a substantial fire-place. The gorgeous parrot of the establishment has chosen the point where the sky unites with the right-hand corner of the chimney-piece as the most convenient spot to perch on, and his presence there gives life and nature to the scene. We were struck with the wise reticence of the painter in not putting another parrot at the opposite corner; there is a verisimilitude about one bird which would have been lost with two, for few houses have more than one parrot. The effect of the whole is singularly gay and pleasing. For an English household I admit that there is nothing to compare with Mr. Morris’s wall-papers—except, of course, his poetry—but there is an over-the-garden-walliness, if the expression may be pardoned, about these Italian decorations, a frank meretriciousness, both of design and colour, which will be found infinitely refreshing and may be looked for in vain in the works of our English masters of decoration.

The day after our arrival was the feast of the Assumption of the Madonna, and the next day was the feast of S. Rocco, the patron saint of Fusio, so the bells were ringing continually. There are only three bells, but they are good ones; they were brought up from Peccia some forty years ago, long before Signor Dazio had the present road made; he was then a boy and assisted at the very arduous task of bringing them up. Like bells generally in North Italy they hang half-way out of the windows of the _campanile_, instead of being wholly within the belfry as our English bells are. This is why an Italian _campanile_ is such a much more slender object than an English belfry; it has less to cover. When the bells are rung by being raised and swung in and out of the window, there is one ringer to each bell, and the following is all that is attempted:—

[Picture: Music score]

This, however, is varied with another and very different effect to which I have alluded in Chapter XXIII, but of which I can now speak at greater length inasmuch as we went up among the bells and saw how it was done.

The ringer has a light cord for each bell; he fastens one end of the cord by an iron hook to a hole in the clapper and the other to a beam of the belfry. The cords are just long enough to hold the clapper an inch or so off the side of the bell, the weight of the clapper keeping the cord tight. The ringer has thus three tight cords before him, on which he plays by hitting the middle of whichever one he wants with his hand; this depresses it and brings the clapper suddenly against the bell. He sits so that he can easily reach all the strings, and sets to work playing on the cords as though on a clumsy three-stringed harp. He plays out of his head without any music, and it is wonderful what variety he makes this rude instrument produce and how responsive it is to moods requiring different shades of expression. Of course, when the player’s resources are enlarged by the addition of two more bells, as at Castelletto and Vogogna, he can produce an infinitely more varied effect.

The notes, according to the pitch of Signor Dazio’s piano, were G, A, and B, and when we watched the ringer we saw that he frequently played the B with the G; sometimes he struck the B with the A, no doubt intending it as an _appoggiatura_, and, at a distance, this was the effect produced. But when he struck the two notes together and made the B louder than the A it had the effect of varying the tune. He never played his tunes in precisely the same way twice running, and this makes it difficult to say with certainty what they were, but, omitting variations, the two favourite tunes went like this:

[Picture: Music score]

This last he treated almost like a patter song, making it go as fast as ever he could. Give the Italian three bells, a belfry, and some bits of string and he will play with them and with you by the hour together with infinite variety. Give the German five bells and he will know a single figure, which he will probably have got an Italian to make for him, and will repeat it till you have to close the windows to keep the sound out, and the bottom bell will make a noise like the smell of a crushed cockroach. This is what happened to us in the valley of Gressoney at Issime, where German influences and the German language prevail.

It was at Issime, by the by, that we saw the most beautiful woman that either of us ever saw. She was gathering French beans in the little garden in front of the hotel and had her apron full of leeks and celery. No words can give an idea of the dignity and grace with which she moved, and as for her head, it was what Leonardo da Vinci, Gaudenzio Ferrari, and Bernardino Luini all tried to get without ever getting it. As long as she was in sight it was impossible to look at anything else, and at the same time there was a something about her which forbade staring.

S. Rocco is the saint who is always pointing to the dreadful wound in his poor leg; accordingly he is invoked by people who are out of health and thanked by those who have recovered. Near the first _stalle_ in one of the neighbouring valleys there is a chapel where we saw three women praying. It had been prettily decorated with edelweiss, mountain-elder berries, thistle flowers, and everything gay that could be got. There was nothing of interest inside it, except a votive picture of a little man in a tailed coat who had got a bad leg like S. Rocco and was expostulating about it to the Virgin Mary. I have seldom seen any even tolerably serious frescoes in any of these small wayside oratories; they are usually done by some local man who has cultivated the Madonna touch, as it may be called, much as some English amateurs cultivate the tree touch, and with about as happy a result. The three women had crossed by the Sassello Grande from Nante, starting with earliest daybreak. It seems that one of them had for a time been deprived of her reason, but her sister had prayed at this chapel that it might be restored and her prayer had been granted; so the two sisters and another woman come over every year as near the feast of S. Rocco as they can, and repeat their thanks at this spot.

The feast of S. Rocco is kept at Fusio with considerable solemnity. Jones happened to be outside the church and kissed a relic of the saint which was handed round after service. I was sorry not to have been there at the moment, but I joined in the procession and helped to carry S. Rocco out of the church and down the valley to Peccia. There a table covered with a handsome cloth had been placed in the middle of the road, and on this the bearers rested the silvered statue. The officiating priest approached it, said some appropriate words before it, I believe in Latin, at any rate I could not catch them, and then we all turned home again. When the procession doubled round we could see the faces of the people as they met us in pairs. First came the women, one of them bearing a crucifix turned so that the people following might see the figure on the cross. Then came the men in white shirts, some carrying candles, among whom we saw Guglielmoni, and some bearing the image of the saint. Then came the men of the place in their ordinary dress, and we followed last of all. The older women wore the Fusio costume, which is now fast disappearing; many of them wore white linen drapery over their heads, but we did not understand why some did and some did not. Immediately before the statue of S. Rocco came two nuns from Italy who were seeking alms for some purpose in connection with the Church.

We thought the people did not as a general rule look in robust health; some few, both men and women, seemed to have little or nothing the matter with them, but most of them looked as though they were suffering from the unwholesome conditions under which they live, for the conditions in the villages are not much healthier than in the _alpi_. The houses in such a village as Fusio are few of them even tolerably wholesome. Signor Dazio’s houses are all that can be wished for in this respect, but in too many of the others the rooms are low, without sufficient sunlight, and too many of them are far from inodorous.

We see a place like Fusio in summer, but what must it be after, say, the middle of October? How chill and damp, with reeking clouds that search into every corner. What, again, must it be a little later, when snow has fallen that lies till the middle of May? The men go about all day in great boots, working in the snow at whatever they can find to do; they come in at night tired and with their legs and feet half frozen. The main room of the house may have a _stufa_ in it, but how about the bedrooms? With single windows and the thermometer outside down to zero, if the room is warm enough to thaw and keep things damp it is as much as can be expected. Fancy an elderly man after a day’s work in snow climbing up, like David, step by step to a bed in such a room as this. How chill it must strike him as he goes into it, and how cold must be the bed itself till he has been in it an hour or two. We asked Guglielmoni how he warmed his house in winter and what he did about his bedroom. He said he put his wife and children into the warm room and slept himself in one that on inquiry proved to have only single windows and no stove. It then turned out that he had been at death’s door this last spring and the one before, and that the doctors at Locarno said he had serious chest mischief. The wonder is that he is alive at all. I advised him to get a half-crown petroleum burner and, if he felt he had caught cold, to keep it in his room burning all night. He asked how much it would cost and, when told from twenty to twenty-five centimes a night, said this was prohibitive, and I have no doubt to him with his wife and family it was.

One cause of the mischief doubtless lies in the fact that the high-altitude houses have descended with insufficient modification from ancestors adapted to a warmer climate. Their forefathers were built for the plains. These houses should have been begotten of Russian or Canadian dwellings, not of Piedmontese or Lombard. At any rate, if a reform is to be initiated it should begin by a study of the Canadian or Russian house.

But it is not only the hard, long cold winters, with rough living of every kind, that weigh the people down; the monotony of the snow, seven months upon the ground, is enough to bow even the strongest spirit. It is not as if one could get the “Times” every morning at breakfast and theatres, concerts, exhibitions of pictures, social gatherings of every kind. Day after day not a blade of grass can be seen, not a little bit of green anywhere, save the mockery of the pine-trees. I once spent a remarkably severe winter at Montreal and saw the thermometer for a month at 22° below zero in the main street of the city. True, it was warm enough indoors, and grass does not usually grow in houses, so that one ought not to have missed it; nevertheless one did miss it, as one misses a dead friend whom one may have been seeing but seldom. There is a depressing effect about long cold and snow which one feels whether one is cold or not. I suspect it is the monotony of the snow-surface that is so fatiguing. I used to trudge up to the far end of Montreal Mountain every day because there was a space of a few yards there on which the snow positively would not lie by reason of the wind. Here I could see a few roots of brown dried grass and moss with a tinge of yellow in it, having looked at which for a little while I would return comparatively contented. If the monotony of surface was found so depressing even in a city like Montreal, where so many interests and amusements were open, what must it be in a place like Fusio, where there are none?

The two great foes of life are the two extremes of change. Too much, that is to say too sudden change and too little change are alike fatal. That is why there is so little organic life a few feet below the surface of the earth. It gets too slow altogether and things won’t stand it. Cut away for months together the incessant changes involved in the changed vibrations consequent upon looking at a surface whose colour is varied, and a monotony is induced which should be relieved by the entry of as much other change as possible to supply the place of what is lost.

What a vineyard for the Church is there not in these subalpine valleys, if she would only work in it! The beauty and sweetness of the children show what the people are by nature and prove that the raw material is splendid. Their flowers are not gayer and lovelier than their children; but they do not get a fair chance. If the Church would only use her means and leisure to teach people how to make themselves as healthy and happy in this life as their case admits! If she would do this with a single eye to facts and to the happiness of the people, cutting caste, dogma, prescription, and self-aggrandisement direct or indirect, what a hold would she not soon have upon a grateful people. Nay, if the priests would only set the example of washing, of keeping their houses clean and their bedrooms warm and light and dry, and of being at some pains with their cookery, their example would be enough without their preaching. I grant honourable exceptions, but the upland clergy are as a rule little above their flocks in regard to cleanliness of house and person; instead of facing the many problems that surround them, they rather, I am afraid, have every desire to avoid them. They do not want their people to learn continually better and better in health and wealth how to live; they want things to go on indefinitely as hitherto, only they hold that the people should be even more docile and obedient than they are. I may be wrong, but this is certainly the impression that remains with me.

The priest himself must have a hard time of it in winter. We see the church steps basking in the morning sun of August. It is an easy matter then to dawdle into church and sit quiet for a while amid a droning old-world smell of cheese, ancestor, dry-rot, _Alpigiano_, and stale incense, and to read the plaintive epitaphing about the dear, good people “whose souls we pray thee visit with the everlasting peace that waits on saints and angels.”

As the clouds come and go the gray-green cobweb-chastened light ebbs and flows over the ceiling. If a hen has laid an egg outside and has begun to cackle, it is an event of magnitude. A peasant hammering his scythe, the clack of a wooden shoe upon the pavement, the dripping of the fountain, all these things, with such concert as they keep, invite the dewy-feathered sleep till the old woman comes and rings the bell for _mezzo giorno_.

This is the sunny side of subalpine church-going, but how is it when these steps are hidden under a metre of frozen snow? How about five o’clock on a Christmas morning, when the priest can hardly get down the steps leading from his house into the church from the fury of the wind and the driving of the fine midge-like snow? Even when the horrors of the middle passage have been overcome and the church has been reached, surely it is a nice, cosy place for an infirm old gentleman or lady with bronchitic tendencies! How is it conceivable that any one should keep even decently well who has to go to church in a high subalpine village at five, six, seven, eight, or in fact at any hour before about noon upon a winter morning? And yet they go, and some of them reach good old ages. Still one would think that, if a little pains were taken, the thing might be managed so that more of them could reach better old ages. As for the priest, he will carry the last sacraments of the Church any distance, in any weather, at any hour of the night, in summer or winter, but he must have an awful time of it every now and then. So, for the matter of that, has an English country parson or doctor. Still, the Alpine roads are rougher and the snow deeper, and the pay, poor as it often is in England, is here still poorer.

After a few days at Fusio, Guglielmoni took us over to Faido in the Val Leventina by the pass that we had not yet crossed—the one that goes by the Lago di Naret and Bedretto. From Faido we returned home. We looked at nothing between the top of the St. Gothard Pass and Boulogne, nor did we again begin to take any interest in life till we saw the science-ridden, art-ridden, culture-ridden, afternoon-tea-ridden cliffs of old England rise upon the horizon.

Appendix A Wednesbury Cocking (See p. 55)

I KNOW nothing of the date of this remarkable ballad, or the source from which it comes. I have heard one who should know say, that when he was a boy at Shrewsbury school it was done into Greek hexameters, the lines (with a various reading in them):

“The colliers and nailers left work, And all to old Scroggins’ went jogging;”

being translated:

Ἔργον χαλκότυποι καὶ τέκτονες ἄνδρες ἔλειπον Σκρωγινιοῦ μεγάλου ζητοῦντες εὐτίμενον δῶ.

I have been at some pains to find out more about this translation, but have failed to do so. The ballad itself is as follows:

At Wednesbury there was a cocking, A match between Newton and Scroggins; The colliers and nailers left work, And all to old Spittle’s went jogging. To see this noble sport, Many noblemen resorted; And though they’d but little money, Yet that little they freely sported.

There was Jeffery and Colborn from Hampton, And Dusty from Bilston was there; Flummery he came from Darlaston, And he was as rude as a bear. There was old Will from Walsall, And Smacker from Westbromwich come; Blind Robin he came from Rowley, And staggering he went home.

Ralph Moody came hobbling along, As though he some cripple was mocking, To join in the blackguard throng, That met at Wednesbury cocking. He borrowed a trifle of Doll, To back old Taverner’s grey; He laid fourpence-halfpenny to fourpence, He lost and went broken away.

But soon he returned to the pit, For he’d borrowed a trifle more money, And ventured another large bet, Along with blobbermouth Coney. When Coney demanded his money, As is usual on all such occasions, He cried, — thee, if thee don’t hold thy rattle, I’ll pay thee as Paul paid the Ephasians.

The morning’s sport being over, Old Spittle a dinner proclaimed, Each man he should dine for a groat, If he grumbled he ought to be —, For there was plenty of beef, But Spittle he swore by his troth, That never a man should dine Till he ate his noggin of broth.

The beef it was old and tough, Off a bull that was baited to death, Barney Hyde got a lump in his throat, That had like to have stopped his breath, The company all fell into confusion, At seeing poor Barney Hyde choke; So they took him into the kitchen, And held him over the smoke.

They held him so close to the fire, He frizzled just like a beef-steak, They then threw him down on the floor, Which had like to have broken his neck. One gave him a kick on the stomach, Another a kick on the brow, His wife said, Throw him into the stable, And he’ll be better just now.

Then they all returned to the pit, And the fighting went forward again; Six battles were fought on each side, And the next was to decide the main. For they were two famous cocks As ever this country bred, Scroggins’s a dark-winged black, And Newton’s a shift-winged red.

The conflict was hard on both sides, Till Brassy’s black-winged was choked; The colliers were tarnationly vexed, And the nailers were sorely provoked. Peter Stevens he swore a great oath, That Scroggins had played his cock foul; Scroggins gave him a kick on the head, And cried, Yea,—thy soul.

The company then fell in discord, A bold, bold fight did ensue; —, —, and bite was the word, Till the Walsall men all were subdued. Ralph Moody bit off a man’s nose, And wished that he could have him slain, So they trampled both cocks to death, And they made a draw of the main.

The cock-pit was near to the church, An ornament unto the town; On one side an old coal pit, The other well gorsed around. Peter Hadley peeped through the gorse, In order to see them fight; Spittle jobbed out his eye with a fork, And said, — thee, it served thee right.

Some people may think this strange, Who Wednesbury never knew; But those who have ever been there, Will not have the least doubt it’s true; For they are as savage by nature, And guilty of deeds the most shocking; Jack Baker whacked his own father, And thus ended Wednesbury cocking.

Appendix B Reforms Instituted at S. Michele in the year 1478 (See p. 105)

THE palmiest days of the sanctuary were during the time that Rodolfo di Montebello or Mombello was abbot—that is to say, roughly, between the years 1325–60. “His rectorate,” says Claretta, “was the golden age of the Abbey of La Chiusa, which reaped the glory acquired by its head in the difficult negotiations entrusted to him by his princes. But after his death, either lot or intrigue caused the election to fall upon those who prepared the ruin of one of the most ancient and illustrious monasteries in Piedmont.” {309}

By the last quarter of the fifteenth century things got so bad that a commission of inquiry was held under one Giovanni di Varax in the year 1478. The following extracts from the ordinances then made may not be unwelcome to the reader. The document from which they are taken is to be found, pp. 322–336 of Claretta’s work. The text is evidently in many places corrupt or misprinted, and there are several words which I have looked for in vain in all the dictionaries—Latin, Italian, and French—in the reading-room of the British Museum which seemed in the least likely to contain them. I should say that for this translation, I have availed myself, in part, of the assistance of a well-known mediæval scholar, the Rev. Ponsonby A. Lyons, but he is in no way responsible for the translation as a whole.

After a preamble, stating the names of the commissioners, with the objects of the commission and the circumstances under which it had been called together, the following orders were unanimously agreed upon, to wit:—

“Firstly, That repairs urgently required to prevent the building from falling into a ruinous state (as shown by the ocular testimony of the commissioners, assisted by competent advisers whom they instructed to survey the fabric), be paid for by a true tithe, to be rendered by all priors, provosts, and agents directly subject to the monastery. This tithe is to be placed in the hands of two merchants to be chosen by the bishop commendatory, and a sum is to be taken from it for the restoration of the fountain which played formerly in the monastery. The proctors who collect the tithes are to be instructed by the abbot and commendatory not to press harshly upon the contributories by way of expense and labour; and the money when collected is, as already said, to be placed in the hands of two suitable merchants, clients of the said monastery, who shall hold it on trust to pay it for the above-named purposes, as the reverends the commendatory and chamberlain and treasurer of the said monastery shall direct. In the absence of one of these three the order of the other two shall be sufficient.

“Item, it is ordered that the _mandés_, {310} or customary alms, be made daily to the value of what would suffice for the support of four monks.

“Item, that the offices in the gift of the monastery be conferred by the said reverend the lord commendatory, and that those which have been hitherto at the personal disposition of the abbot be reserved for the pleasure of the Apostolic See. Item, that no one do beg a benefice without reasonable cause and consonancy of justice. Item, that those who have had books, privileges, or other documents belonging to the monastery do restore them to the treasury within three months from the publication of these presents, under pain of excommunication. Item, that no one henceforth take privileges or other documents from the monastery without a deposit of caution money, or taking oath to return the same within three months, under like pain of excommunication. Item, that no laymen do enter the treasury of the monastery without the consent of the prior of cloister, {311} nor without the presence of those who hold the keys of the treasury, or of three monks, and that those who hold the keys do not deliver them to laymen. Item, it is ordered that the places subject to the said monastery be visited every five years by persons in holy orders, and by seculars; and that, in like manner, every five years a general chapter be held, but this period may be extended or shortened for reasonable cause, and the proctors-general are to be bound in each chapter to bring their procurations, and at some chapter each monk is to bring the account of the fines and all other rights appertaining to his benefice, drawn up by a notary in public form, and undersigned by him, that they may be kept in the treasury, and this under pain of suspension. Item, that henceforth neither the office of prior nor any other benefice be conferred upon laymen. The lord abbot is in future to be charged with the expense of all new buildings that are erected within the precincts of the monastery. He is also to give four pittances or suppers to the convent during infirmary time, and six pints of wine according to the custom. {312} Furthermore, he is to keep beds in the monastery for the use of guests, and other monks shall return these beds to the chamberlain on the departure of the guests, and it shall be the chamberlain’s business to attend to this matter. Item, delinquent monks are to be punished within the monastery and not without it. Item, the monks shall not presume to give an order for more than two days’ board at the expense of the monastery, in the inns at S. Ambrogio, during each week, and they shall not give orders for fifteen days unless they have relations on a journey staying with them, or nobles, or persons above suspicion, and the same be understood as applying to officials and cloistered persons. {313a}

“Item, within twelve months from date the monks are to be at the expense of building an almshouse in S. Ambrogio, where one or two of the oldest and most respected among them are to reside, and have their portions there, and receive those who are in religion. Item, no monk is to wear his hair longer than two fingers broad. {313b} Item, no hounds are to be kept in the monastery for hunting, nor any dogs save watch-dogs. Persons in religion who come to the monastery are to be entertained there for two days, during which time the cellarer is to give them bread and wine, and the pittancer {313c} pittance.

“Item, women of bad character, and indeed all women, are forbidden the monk’s apartments without the prior’s license, except in times of indulgence, or such as are noble or above suspicion. Not even are the women from San Pietro, or any suspected women, to be admitted without the prior’s permission.

“The monks are to be careful how they hold converse with suspected women, and are not to be found in the houses of such persons, or they will be punished. Item, the epistle and gospel at high mass are to be said by the monks in church, and in Lent the epistle is to be said by one monk or sub-deacon.

“Item, two candelabra are to be kept above the altar when mass is being said, and the lord abbot is to provide the necessary candles.

“Any one absent from morning or evening mass is to be punished by the prior, if his absence arises from negligence.

“The choir, and the monks residing in the monastery, are to be provided with books and a convenient breviary {314} . . . according to ancient custom and statute, nor can those things be sold which are necessary or useful to the convent.

* * * * *

“Item, all the religious who are admitted and enter the monastery and religion, shall bring one alb and one amice, to be delivered into the hands of the treasurer and preserved by him for the use of the church.

* * * * *

“The treasurer is to have the books that are in daily use in the choir re-bound, and to see that the capes which are unsewn, and all the ecclesiastical vestments under his care are kept in proper repair. He is to have the custody of the plate belonging to the monastery, and to hold a key of the treasury. He is to furnish in each year an inventory of the property of which he has charge, and to hand the same over to the lord abbot. He is to make one common pittance {315a} of bread and wine on the day of the feast of St. Nicholas in December, according to custom; and if it happens to be found necessary to make a chest to hold charters, &c., the person whose business it shall be to make this shall be bound to make it.

“As regards the office of almoner, the almoner shall each day give alms in the monastery to the faithful poor—to wit, barley bread to the value of twopence current money, and on Holy Thursday he shall make an alms of threepence {315b} to all comers, and shall give them a plate of beans and a drink of wine. Item, he is to make alms four times a year—that is to say, on Christmas Day, on Quinquagesima Sunday, and at the feasts of Pentecost and Easter; and he is to give to every man a small loaf of barley and a grilled pork chop, {315c} the third of a pound in weight. Item, he shall make a pittance to the convent on the vigil of St. Martin of bread, wine, and mincemeat dumplings, {315d}—that is to say, for each person two loaves and two . . . {315e} of wine and some leeks,—and he is to lay out sixty shillings (?) in fish and seasoning, and all the servants are to have a ration of dumplings; and in the morning he is to give them a dumpling cooked in oil, and a quarter of a loaf, and some wine. Item, he shall give another pittance on the feast of St. James—to wit, a good sheep and some cabbages {316a} with seasoning.

“Item, during infirmary time he must provide four meat suppers and two pints {316b} (?) of wine, and a pittance of mincemeat dumplings during the rogation days, as do the sacristan and the butler. He is also to give each monk one bundle of straw in every year, and to keep a servant who shall bring water from the spring for the service of the mass and for holy water, and light the fire for the barber, and wait at table, and do all else that is reasonable and usual; and the said almoner shall also keep a towel in the church for drying the hands, and he shall make preparation for the _mandés_ on Holy Thursday, both in the monastery and in the cloister. Futhermore, he must keep beds in the hospital of S. Ambrogio, and keep the said hospital in such condition that Christ’s poor may be received there in orderly and godly fashion; he must also maintain the chapel of St. Nicholas, and keep the chapel of St. James in a state of repair, and another part of the building contiguous to the chapel. Item, it shall devolve upon the chamberlain to pay yearly to each of the monks of the said monastery of St. Martin who say mass, except those of them who hold office, the sum of six florins and six groats, {316c} and to the treasurer, precentor, and surveyor, {316d} to each one of them the same sum for their clothing, and to each of the young monks who do not say mass four florins and six groats. And in every year he is to do one O {317a} for the greater priorate {317b} during Advent. Those who have benefices and who are resident within the monastery, but whose benefice does not amount to the value of their clothes, are to receive their clothes according to the existing custom.

“Item, the pittancer shall give a pittance of cheese and eggs to each of the monks on every day from the feast of Easter to the feast of the Holy Cross in September—to wit, three quarters of a pound of cheese; but when there is a principal processional duplex feast, each monk is to have a pound of cheese _per diem_, except on fast days, when he is to have half a pound only. Also on days when there is a principal or processional feast, each one of them, including the hebdomadary, is to have five eggs. Also, from the feast of Easter to the octave of St. John the Baptist the pittancer is to serve out old cheese, and new cheese from the octave of St. John the Baptist to the feast of St. Michael. From the feast of St. Michael to Quinquagesima the cheese is to be of medium quality. From the least of the Holy Cross in September until Lent the pittancer must serve out to each monk three quarters of a pound of cheese, if it is a feast of twelve lessons, and if it is a feast of three lessons, whether a week-day or a vigil, the pittancer is to give each monk but half a pound of cheese. He is also to give all the monks during Advent nine pounds of wax extra allowance, and it is not proper that the pittancer should weigh out cheese for any one on a Friday unless it be a principal processional or duplex feast, or a principal octave. It is also proper, seeing there is no fast from the feast of Christmas to the octave of the Epiphany, that every man should have his three quarters of a pound of cheese _per diem_. Also, on Christmas and Easter days the pittancer shall provide five dumplings per monk _per diem_, and one plate of sausage meat, {318a} and he shall also give to each of the servants on the said two days five dumplings for each several day; and the said pittancer on Christmas Day and on the day of St. John the Baptist shall make a relish, {318b} or seasoning, and give to each monk one good glass thereof, that is to say, the fourth part of one {318c} for each monk—to wit, on the first, second, and third day of the feast of the Nativity, the Circumcision, the Epiphany, and the Purification of the Blessed Virgin; and the pittancer is to put spice in the said relish, and the cellarer is to provide wine and honey, and during infirmary time those who are being bled are to receive no pittance from the pittancer. Further, from the feast of Easter to that of the Cross of September, there is no fast except on the prescribed vigils; each monk, therefore, should always have three quarters of a pound of cheese after celebration on a week-day until the above-named day. Further, the pittancer is to provide for three _mandés_ in each week during the whole year, excepting Lent, and for each _mandé_ he is to find three pounds of cheese. From the feast of St. Michael to that of St. Andrew he is to provide for an additional _mandé_ in each week. Item, he is to pay the prior of the cloister six florins for his fine {319a} . . . and three florins to the . . . . {319b} and he should also give five eggs per _diem_ to the hebdomadary of the high altar, except in Lent. Further, he is to give to the woodman, the baker, the keeper of the church, the servants of the Infirmary, the servant at the Eleemosynary, and the stableman, to each of them one florin in every year. Item, any monks who leave the monastery before vespers when it is not a fast, shall lose one quarter of a pound of cheese even though they return to the monastery after vespers but if it is a fast day, they are to lose nothing. Item, the pittancer is to serve out mashed beans to the servants of the convent during Lent as well as to those who are in religion, and at this season he is to provide the prior of the cloister and the hebdomadary with bruised cicerate; {319c} but if any one of the same is hebdomadary, he is only to receive one portion. If there are two celebrating high mass at the high altar, each of them is to receive one plate of the said bruised cicerate.

“As regards the office of cantor, the cantor is to intone the antiphon ‘_ad benedictus ad magnificat_’ at terce, {319d} and at all other services, and he is himself to intone the antiphons or provide a substitute who can intone them; and he is to intone the psalms according to custom. Also if there is any cloistered person who has begun his week of being hebdomadary, and falls into such sickness that he cannot celebrate the same, the cantor is to say or celebrate three masses. The cantor is to lead all the monks of the choir at matins, high mass, vespers, and on all other occasions. On days when there is a processional duplex feast, he is to write down the order of the office; that is to say, those who are to say the invitatory, {320a} the lessons, the epistle of the gospel {320b} and those who are to wear copes at high mass and at vespers. The cantor must sing the processional hymns which are sung on entering the church, but he is exempt from taking his turn of being hebdomadary by reason of his intoning the offices; and he is to write down the names of those who celebrate low masses and of those who get them said by proxy; and he is to report these last to the prior that they may be punished. The cantor or his delegate is to read in the refectory during meal times and during infirmary time, and he who reads in the refectory is to have a quart [?] of bread, as also are the two junior monks who wait at table. The cantor is to instruct the boys in the singing of the office and in morals, and is to receive their portions of bread, wine and pittance, and besides all this he is to receive one florin for each of them, and he is to keep them decently; and the prior is to certify himself upon this matter, and to see to it that he victuals them properly and gives them their food.

“The sacristan is to provide all the lights of the church whether oil or wax, and he is to give out small candles to the hebdomadary, and to keep the eight lamps that burn both night and day supplied with oil. He is to keep the lamps in repair and to buy new ones if the old are broken, and he is to provide the incense. He is to maintain the covered chapel of St. Nicholas, and the whole church except the portico of the same; and the lord abbot is to provide sound timber for doors and other necessaries. He is to keep the frames {321a} of the bells in repair, and also the ropes for the same, and during Lent he is to provide two pittances of eels to the value of eighteen groats for each pittance, and one other pittance of dumplings and seasoning during rogation time, to wit, five dumplings cooked in oil for each person, and one quart of bread and wine, and all the house domestics and serving men of the convent who may be present are to have the same. At this time all the monks are to have one quarter of a pound of cheese from the sacristan. And the said sacristan should find the convent two pittances during infirmary time and two pints {321b} of wine, and two suppers, one of chicken and salt meat, with white chestnuts, inasmuch as there is only to be just so much chicken as is sufficient. Item, he is to keep the church clean. Item, he has to pay to the keeper of the church one measure of barley, and eighteen groats for his clothes yearly, and every Martinmas he is to pay to the cantor sixty soldi, and he shall place a {321c} . . . or boss {321d} in the choir during Lent. Also he must do one O in Advent and take charge of all the ornaments of the altars and all the relics. Also on high days and when there is a procession he is to keep the paschal candle before the altar, as is customary, but on other days he shall keep a burning lamp only, and when the candle is burning the lamp may be extinguished.

* * * * *

“As touching the office of infirmarer, the infirmarer is to keep the whole convent fifteen days during infirmary time, to wit, the one-half of them for fifteen days and the other half for another fifteen days, except that on the first and last days all the monks will be in the infirmary. Also when he makes a pittance he is to give the monks beef and mutton, {322} sufficient in quantity and quality, and to receive their portions. The prior of the cloister, cantor, and cellarer may be in the infirmary the whole month. And the infirmarer is to keep a servant, who shall go and buy meat three times a week, to wit, on Saturdays, Mondays, and Wednesdays, but at the expense of the sender, and the said servant shall on the days following prepare the meat at the expense of the infirmarer; and he shall salt it and make seasoning as is customary, to wit, on all high days and days when there is a processional duplex feast, and on other days. On the feast of St. Michael he shall serve out a seasoning made of sage and onions; but the said servant shall not be bound to go and buy meat during Advent, and on Septuagesima and Quinquagesima Sundays he shall serve out seasoning. Also when the infirmarer serves out fresh meat, he is to provide fine salt. Also the said servant is to go and fetch medicine once or oftener when necessary, at the expense of the sick person, and to visit him. If the sick person requires it, he can have aid in the payment of his doctor, and the lord abbot is to pay for the doctor and medicines of all cloistered persons.

“On the principal octaves the monks are to have seasoning, but during the main feasts they are to have seasoning upon the first day only. The infirmarer is not bound to do anything or serve out anything on days when no flesh is eaten. The cellarer is to do this, and during the times of the said infirmaries, the servants of the monastery and convent are to be, as above, on the same footing as those who are in religion, that is to say, half of them are to be bled during one fifteen days, and the other half during the other fifteen days, as is customary.

“Item, touching the office of cellarer, it is ordered that the cellarer do serve out to the whole convent bread, wine, oil, and salt; as much of these two last as any one may require reasonably, and this on all days excepting when the infirmarer serves out kitchen meats, but even then the cellarer is to serve his rations to the hebdomadary. Item, he is to make a pittance of dumplings with seasoning to the convent on the first of the rogation days; each monk and each servant is to have five dumplings uncooked with his seasoning, and one cooked with [oil?] and a quart of bread and wine, and each monk is to have one quarter of a pound of cheese. Item, upon Holy Thursday he is to give to the convent a pittance of leeks and fish to the value of sixty soldi, and . . . {323a} Item, another pittance upon the first day of August; and he is to present the convent with a good sheep and cabbages with seasoning. Item, in infirmary time he is to provide two pittances, one of fowls and the other of salt meat and white chestnuts, and he is to give two pints of wine. Item, in each week he is to give one flagon [?]. {323b} Item, the cellarer is to provide napkins and plates at meal times in the refectory, and he is to find the bread for making seasoning, and the vinegar for the mustard; and he is to do an O in Advent, and in Lent he is to provide white chestnuts, and cicerate all the year. From the feast of St. Luke to the octave of St. Martin he is to provide fresh chestnuts, to wit, on feasts of twelve lessons; and on dumpling days he is to find the oil and flour with which to make the dumplings.

“Item, as to the office of surveyor, it is ordered that the surveyor do pay the master builder and also the wages of the day labourers; the lord abbot is to find all the materials requisite for this purpose. Item, the surveyor is to make good any plank or post or nail, and he is to repair any hole in the roofs which can be repaired easily, and any beam or piece of boarding. Touching the aforesaid materials it is to be understood that the lord abbot furnish beams, boards, rafters, scantling, tiles, and anything of this description; {324a} the said surveyor is also to renew the roof of the cloister, chapter, refectory, dormitory, and portico; and the said surveyor is to do an O in Advent.

“Item, concerning the office of porter. The porter is to be in charge of the gate night and day, and if he go outside the convent, he must find a sufficient and trustworthy substitute; on every feast day he is {324b} . . . to lose none of his provender; and to receive his clothing in spring as though he were a junior monk; and if he is in holy orders, he is to receive clothing money; and to have his _pro ratâ_ portions in all distributions. Item, the said porter shall enjoy the income derived from S. Michael of Canavesio; and when a monk is received into the monastery, he shall pay to the said porter five good sous; and the said porter shall shut the gates of the convent at sunset, and open them at sunrise.”

The rest of the document is little more than a _resumé_ of what has been given, and common form to the effect that nothing in the foregoing is to override any orders made by the Holy Apostolic See which may be preserved in the monastery, and that the rights of the Holy See are to be preserved in all respects intact. If doubts arise concerning the interpretation of any clause they are to be settled by the abbot and two of the senior monks.

Index

Abruptness of introduction the measure of importance, 196

Absolute, we would have an absolute standard if we could, 196

Absolutely, nothing is anything, 196

Academies and their influence, 146–59, 226, 248

Academy picture, the desire to paint an, 142

— Ciseri’s, at Locarno, 271

Accidentals, a maze of metaphysical, 23

Action, foundations of, lie deeper than reason, 107

Adaptation and illusion, 44

Adipose cushion of Italy, 92

Advertisements, American, at Locarno, 273

Æstheticism, culture, earnestness, and intenseness, all methods of trying to conceal weakness, 192

Affection a _sine quâ non_ for success, 158

_Agape_ and _gnosis_, 17

Airolo, 25

Alcohol and imagination, 46

Alda, Il Salto della bella, 104

All things to all men, 66

Allen, Grant, 69

Almoner, the, of S. Michele, 315

Alone, should we like to see a picture when we are, 23, 158

_Alpi_ and _monti_, difference between, 35

Alpine roads, the steps by which they have advanced, 59

Alps, narrowness of the, 61

Altar cloth, a fine embroidered 256

Altar-piece at Morbio Superiore, 237

Amateurs, wanted a periodical written and illustrated by, 156

Amber, a smile in, 235

Ambrogio, S., and neighbourhood, 113

American advertisements at Locarno, 273

Ancestors, to have been begotten of good ones for many generations, 252

Andermatt, 24

Andorno, 186

Angel, drawing an, down, 42

Angera, 258

Animals and plants, cause of their divergence, 153

Ants near Faido, 38

— and bees, stationary civilisation of, 195

— and their nests, 288

Anzone, the sad torrent of, 220

Apparition, artificial, of the B.V.M., 275

Appliances, creatures and their, 283

Apprenticeship _v._ the academic system, 150

Arona, 265

Art for art’s sake, 156

— Italian, causes of its decline, 141

— moral effect of, 252

Asbestos on pass between Fusio and Dalpe, 285

_Asplenium alternifolium_, 37

Ass dressed in sacerdotal robes, 67

Aureggio, 177

Aurora Borealis like pedal notes in Handel’s bass, 83

Avalanches at Mesocco, 222

Avogadro, 148

* * * * *

B.A. degree should be assimilated to M.A., 186

Baby, death of a, bells rung for, 266

Bach as good a musician as Handel, 17

Badgers’ fat, 289

Balaclava, a stuffed Charge of, 251

Ballerini, Mgr., Patriarch of Alexandria, 268, 272

_Banda_, _Casina di_, 119

Bank of England note, Italian language on, 19

Barelli, Signer, at Bisbino, 239

Barley, mode of drying, 29

Barratt, Mrs., of Langar, 198

Baskets, helmet-shaped, near Lanzo, 134

Bastianini, 149

Bayeux tapestry, 150

Beaconsfield, Lord, 23, 141, 142

Bears, 75, 223

Beds, good, their moral influence, 184, 186

Bees, stationary civilisation of, 195

Beethoven on Handel, 18

Beginners in art, how to treat them, 155

Bell, Peter, and his primrose, 38, 143

Bellini, the, when, where, and how to get their like again, 146

Bellinzona, 198

Bells, 45, 265, 294

Bergamo, Colleone chapel at, 231

Berkeley, Bishop, and his tar-water, 64

Bernardino, Padre, his inscription on my drawing, 220

Bernardino, San, 223

Biasca, 85

Biella, 169

Bignasco, 278

Bigotry, eating a mode of, 153

Birds, 116

— their names, 291

— their singing, 230

Bisbino, Monte, 233

Bishop, Boy, 67

— welcomed with a brass band, 272

Bleeding times, 312

Blinds, milkmen’s and undertakers’, 145

Blood, circulation of, like people, 20

Bodily mechanism, a town like, 20

Body, soul, and money, 107

Boelini, family of, 213

Bologna, Academy at, 147

Bonvicino, the _famiglia_, 124

Borromeo, S. Carlo, room in which he was born, 263

Botticelli, Sandro, on landscape painting, 45

Box-trees, clipped, 104, 167

Brebbia, church at, 258

Bridge, the first, 59

Brigand, right to free a, conferred upon Graglia, 189, 193

British Museum and Oropa, 183, 185

Buckley, Miss Arabella, 69

Bullocks, how I lost my, 154

Burrello, Castel, 114

Bussoleno, 114

Butcher, the eructive, 126

* * * * *

Cadagno, Lake of, 81

Cader Idris, an Archbishop on, 89

Calanca, Sta. Maria in, 202, 223

Calonico, 55

Calpiognia, 29, 35

Cama, the æsthetic dog at, 202

Cambridge, a modest proposal to make an Oropa of, 186

Campello, 76

Campo Santo at Calpiognia, 30

— at Mesocco, 204

— at Pisa, 159

Campolungo, Alpe di, 42, 284

Canaries, their song unpleasant, 231

_Cantine_, a day at the, 243

Canvas of life turned upside down, 68

“Carbonate of pork,” 315

Carracci, the, 147

_Casina di Banda_, 119

Castelletto, 265

Cavagnago, 76

Cenere, Monte, narcissuses on, 228

Ceres, 161

_Cerrea_, 133

Chalk, Conté, the Italian for whom this was the one thing needful, 136

Chalk eggs, 43

Chamois, foot of, 283

Change, repudiation of desire for sudden, 186

— importance of, depends on the rate of introduction, 196

— either the circumstances or the sufferer will, 196

Changes, sweeping, to be felt hereafter as vibrations, 60

_Cheapissimo_, 165

Cheese and the _alpi_, 289

Cherries, 33, 35, 46

Chestnuts, 118

Chicory and seed onions, weary utterness in, 227

Children, subalpine, 301

— what becomes of the clever, 149

Chinese, the examination-ridden, 151

Chironico, 75

“Chow,” 52

Church-going, subalpine, 303

Circulation of people like blood, 20

Ciseri, his picture at Locarno, 271

Civilisation, antiquity of Italian, 124

— stationary, of ants and bees, 195

Class distinction inevitable, 195

Classification only possible through sense of shock, 63

Clergy, our English, and S. Michele priests, 106

Cloisters at Locarno, 271

— at Oltrona, 258

Club, the, the true university, 155

Cocking, Wednesbury, 55, 305

Collects, unsympathetic priest bristling with, 111

Colleone, Medea, 231

Colma di San Giovanni, 163

Comba di Susa, 119

Comfort as a moral influence 185

Comic song, the landlord’s, 128

Common sense, the safest guide, 108

Consistent, who ever is? 153

Contradictory principles, there must be a harmonious fusing of, 152

Converting things by eating them, 153

Corpses, desiccated, at S. Michele, 97

Cousins, my, the lower animals, 69

Cows fighting in farmyard, 120

Cricco, 125

Cristoforo, S., church of, at Mesocco, 208

— at Castello, 234

Crossing, efficacy of, 152

— unexpected results of, 55

— useless if too wide, 157

Crucifixion, fresco at Fusio, 140

Culture and priggishness, 141

— a mode of concealing weakness, 192

Current feeling, the safest guide, 108

Cutlets, burnt, and the waiter, 124

* * * * *

Dalpe, 38

Dante a humbug, 156

Darwin, Charles, no place for meeting, 69

Darwin, Erasmus, 23, 153

Dazio, Signor Pietro, of Fusio, 279

Death, no man can die to himself, 277

Deceit a necessary alloy of truth, 289

Dedomenici da Rossa, 137–9

Demand and supply, 108

D’Enrico, the brothers, 189

Dentist’s show-case mistaken for relics, 43

Deportment, good technique resembles, 156

Desire and power, 108

Development of power to know our own likes and dislikes, 22

Devil’s Bridge, 23

Diatonic scale, and song of birds in New Zealand, 232

Dirt, eating a peck of moral, 71

_Disgrazia_ and misfortune, 58

D’Israeli, Isaac, quotations from, 67

Dissenters all narrow-minded, 153

Distribution of plants and animals often inexplicable, 135

Diversion of mental images, 54

Doera, fresco at, 145, 221

Dogs, 156, 202, 260, 313

Doing, the only mode of learning, 151

Doors, how they open in time, 151

Doubt, “There lives more doubt in honest faith,” 67

Downs, the South, like Monte Generoso, 230

Draughtsman, first business of a, 148

Drawing, the old manner of teaching, 150

Dream, my, at Lago di Cadagno, 82

Drunkenness and imagination, 46

_Dunque_, 133

Duso, Agostino, his fresco at Sta. Maria in Calanca, 225

* * * * *

Earnestness, 142, 192

Eating, a mode of bigotry, 153

Echo at Graglia, 192

Edelweiss, 291

Electricity and Alpine roads, 60

Elephant brays a third, 233

“Elongated” honey, 293

Embryonic stages, the artist must go through, 148

Endymion, Lord Beaconsfield’s, 23, 141

English as tract-distributors, 65

— language, its ultimate supremacy, 41

English priests and Italian, 106

— why introspective, 18

Equilibrium only attainable at the cost of progress, 195

_Eritis_, a panic concerning, 204

Eternal punishment, 111, 196

Eusebius, St., 178

Evolution and illusion, 43

— essence of, consists in not shocking too much, 110

Extreme, every, an absurdity, 153

* * * * *

Faido, 22

Faith, doubt lives in honest, 67

— more assured in the days of spiritual Saturnalia, 68

— foundations of our system based on, 107, 277

— and reason, 108

— catholic, of protoplasm, 152

— a mode of impudence, 283

Falsehood turning to truth, 71

Famine prices at Locarno, 276

Feeling, current, the safest guide, 108

Fertile, rich and poor rarely fertile _inter se_, 195

Fires, how Italians manage their, 117

Fishmonger choosing a bloater, 23

Flats and sharps, a maze of metaphysical, 23

Fleet Street, beauties of, 19

Flowers, names of, 291

Fossil-soul, 234

Foundations of action lie deeper than reason, 107

— of a durable system laid on faith, 277

Francis, St., and Insurance Co.’s plate, 191

Friction, which prevents the unduly rapid growth of inventions, 60

Fucine, 166

Fun, Italian love of, 243

Fusing and confusing of ideas and structures, 44

— faith and reason, necessity of, 108

Fusing the harmonious, of two contradictory principles, 152

Fusio, 140, 277

* * * * *

Gallows at S. Michele, 104

Garnets, 285

Garrard, 159

Generations, more than one necessary for great things, 87, 188

Generoso, Monte, 229

German influences in Italian valleys, 167

Gesture older and easier than speech, 165

Giacomo, San, 223

Giorio, San, 113

Giornico, 73

Giovanni, San, Colma di, 163

Gladstone, Mr., advised to go to the Grecian pantomime, 68

Gnats, daily swallowing of, 69

_Gnosis_ and _Agape_, 17

God not angry with the plover for lying, and likes the spider, 70

Goethe a humbug, 156

Gogin, Charles, 204

Gold at the _Casina di Banda_, 120

Gothard, St., scenery of the pass, 22

— crossing in winter, 24

— the old road, 38

Graglia, 188

Grammar and good technique, 156

Grecian pantomime, Mr. Gladstone recommended to see, 68

Gribbio, 76

Griffin at Temple Bar, 20

_Grissino_, _pane_, 135

Groesner, G. W., his picture at S. Maria in Calanca, 225

Groscavallo Glacier, 135

Guglielmoni, 284, 287–92, 298

* * * * *

Habit, the oldest commonly resorted to at a pinch, 165

Hair, no monk to wear his hair more than two fingers broad, 313

Handel and Shakespeare, 17

— and Italy, 19

— how I said he was a Catholic, 69

Handel, his ploughman and his humour, 144

— his paganism and his religious fervour, 191

— the Varese chapels like a set of variations by, 252

— quotations from his music, 31, 34, 83, 84, 99, 200, 282

Harlington, inscription at, 234

Hawks, tame, 116

Hay-making at Piora, 81

Hedgehog, a spiritual, 111

Hen, the meditative, 110

— and chalk eggs, 43

Heresy and heretics, 152

Hieroglyph of a lost soul, 147

Holidays like a garden, 69

Holiness a Semitic characteristic, 142

Honey, the “elongation” of, 293

Hooghe, P. de, 267

Humbugs, the seven, 156

Humour, Italian love of, 243

— Leonardo da Vinci’s, 144

Huxley, 69

* * * * *

Ignazio, S., 161

Illusion and evolution, 43

— and fusion, 54

Images, mental diversion of the, 54

— worship of, 251

Imagination and bells, Leonardo da Vinci on, 45

Immortality, 23, 277

Imperfection the only true perfection, 138

_Impossibilissimo_, 165

Impudence a mode of faith, 284

— the chamois continues to live through, 284

Inconsistency of plants and animals, 153

Infirmary times, 316

Institution, the Royal, why we go to, 68

Insurance Office, plate of, and St. Francis, 191

Intenseness a mode of weakness, 192

Interaction of reason and faith, 108

Inundations and the _ruscelli_, 219

Inventions, 59, 134

Irrigation, 119

Israelites, the Vaudois the lost ten tribes of, 112

Issime, bells at, 297

Italians, their resemblance to Englishmen, 141, 168

Ivy blossoms, intoxicating effect of, on insects, 104

* * * * *

Jay, a tame, 116

John-the-Baptist-looking man, 122

Joke, the mediæval, 144

Jones, H. F., as my collaborator, 92

— on Lord Beaconsfield and Endymion, 142

— how he learned to draw, 150

— and the dog at Cama, 202

— and the fresco of S. Cristoforo at Mesocco, 209

— on the writing by Lazarus Borollinus, 213

Jutland and Scheria, 41

* * * * *

Kettle, sparks smouldering on, a sign of rain, 239

Kicking the waiter downstairs, 124

Kindliness _v._ grammar and deportment, 156

Kitchen at Angera, 263

Knowing our own likes and dislikes, difficulty of, 22

Knowledge, a good bed one of the main ends of, 186

* * * * *

_Là_, 132

Lamb and perpetual spring, 62

Lankester, Prof. Ray, 69

Larks and Wordsworth, 231

Latin and Greek verses and art, 145

Learning _via_ doing, 151

Leg, old woman’s, at Dalpe, 39

— S. Rocco’s, 297

Lesbia and her _passer_, 231

Liberals throw too large pieces of bread at their hen, 110

Ligornetto, 243

Likes and dislikes hard to discover, 22

Liking and trying, 151

Lilies, 55, 285

Locarno, 268

Locke, his essay on the understanding, 44

Locomotion of plants, 153

London, 19

Loom at Fucine, 166

Lothair sent to a University, 141

Ludgate Hill Station, 20

Lugano, 228

Luke, St., his statue of the Virgin, 178

Lukmanier Pass, 24, 28

Lying, a few remarks on, 69

* * * * *

M.A. degree should be assimilated to the B.A. degree, 186

Mairengo, 28

“Mans is all alike,” 146

Mantegnesque man at the _Casina di Banda_, 122

Maoris on white men’s fires, 117

Marcus Aurelius a humbug, 156

Marigold blossoms used to colour _risotto_, 227

Marmots, 285, 288

Martello, Pietro Giuseppe, 189

Master and pupil, true relations between, 150

Matchbox, a frivolous, at Graglia, 194

Matilda and the Bayeux tapestry, 150

Megatherium fossil bores us, 235

“Membrane, my mucous, is before you,” 166

Mendelssohn, staying a long time before things, 24

Mendrisio, 228

Merriment an essential feature of the old feast, 191

Mesocco, 207

Michael Angelo would have failed for “Punch,” 143

Michele, S., 86

Microscope, a mental, wanted, 22

Milton and Fleet Street, 20

Milton and Handel, 191

“Minga far tutto,” 244

Mirrors, frescoes of Death with, at Soazza, 204

Misfortune and disgrace, 58

Mistakes, essence of evolution lies in power to make, 110

— and plasticity, 44

Misunderstanding, essay on human, 44

Monks less sociable than priests, 71

— at S. Michele, 106

Montboissier, Hugo de, 87

_Monti_ and _alpi_, difference between, 35

Montreal Mountain, 301

Moody, Tom, funeral of, 159

Morbio Superiore, 237

Mozart on Handel, 18

Murray’s Handbook, mistakes on S. Michele, 102

Music at Locarno, 272

— at Varese, 257

* * * * *

Names of birds, 291

— of flowers, 291

— scratched on walls, 213, 235

Narcissuses on Monte Cenere, 228

National Gallery, an art professor at the, 203

Nativity, a stuffed, 251

Negri, Cav. Avvocato, 41

Nemesis, an intellectual sop to, 67

Nests, artificial, 116

New Zealand, song of birds in, 232

Nicolao, S., church of, at Giornico, 73

— chapel of, on Monte Bisbino, 242

— above Sommazzo, 247

Nightingale does not use the diatonic scale, 231

Nose, the man who tapped his, 165

— the man with red, among the saints at Orta, 177

— dispute about a lady’s, 124

Noses, saints with pink, 254

Novice, the, to whom I played Handel, 69

“Obadiahs, The two,” welcoming a bishop with, 272

Oltrona, 258

Onions, seed, and chicory, their weary utterness, 227

Opportunity, lying in wait for, 152

Oratories, Ticinese, 42

Orchids that imitate flies, 70

Oropa, 169

Orta, 167, 177

Osco, 28

Oxford and Cambridge, proposal to make Oropas of them, 186

* * * * *

Paganism of Handel, Milton, and the better part of Catholicism, 191

_Pagliotto_ at Varese, 256

Painting, the giants of, uninteresting, 144

— not more mysterious than conveyancing, 151

Pantheism lurking in rhubarb, 64

Parrot at Mesocco, 207

_Passero solitario_, 230

Paul, St., letting in the thin edge of the wedge, 66

— and seasonarianism, 68

Peccia, 278

Pella, 167

Periodical, wanted a, by pure amateurs, 156

Photography used in votive pictures, 145

Pick-me-up, a spiritual, 55

Pietro, San, 92

Pinerolo, 111

Piora, 77

Piotta, 26

Piottino, Monte, 26

Pirchiriano, Monte, 88

Plants and animals, causes of their divergence, 153

Plato a humbug, 156

Plover, the, a liar, 69

Pollaiuolo, Antonio, 131

Pollard, Mr., 158

_Polypodium vulgare_, 242

Porches, timber, 28

“Pork, carbonate of,” 315

_Posizionina_, _una discreta_, 165

Postilions, St. Gothard, 24

Potatoes easily bored, 55

Prato, 42

Present, the only comfortable time to live in, 61

Priggishness, 70, 141

Prigs, “she had heard there were such things,” 125

Primadengo, 33

Primrose Hill and the Archbishops of Canterbury and York, 89

Procaccini, the brothers, 248

Professions should be hereditary, 155

Progress and equilibrium, each have their advantages, 195

Propositions want tempering with their contraries, 158

Proselytising by eating, 153

Protestantism less logical than Catholicism, 106

— more logical than Catholicism, 192

Protestants do not try to understand Catholicism, 273

Protoplasm, the catholic faith of, 152

Pruning of trees, 129

Pulmonary complaints in subalpine villages, 290

“Punch,” the illustrations to, 143

Punishment, eternal, denied by an Italian, 111

— we would have it so if we could, 196

Purgatory, fresco at Fusio, 140

* * * * *

Quarrel, pleasure of laying aside a, 69

— why the subalpine people quarrel so little, 223

Quietism _v._ going about in search of prey, 152

Quinto, 26, 46, 77

Quirico, S., chapel of, 261

* * * * *

Raffaelle a humbug, 156

Railway director, the ideal, his education, 155

_Rascane_, 29

Rationalism, when will it sit lightly on us? 112

Reason and faith, 108

— insufficient alone, 108

— and the chamois’s foot, 283

Recreation and regeneration, 54

— cities of, 186

Red Lion Square said by an Italian to be the centre of London business, 125

Reformation, the, confined to a narrow area, 135

Relics, dentist’s show-case mistaken for, 43

Rembrandt, Sir W. Scott on, 77

Renaissance, the standing aloof from academic principles a _sine quâ non_ for a genuine, 155

Revolutions felt hereafter as mere vibrations, 60

Rhinoceros grunts a fourth, 233

Rhubarb, reflections upon, 62

Richmond Gem cigarette, advertisement of, 273

_Risotto_, marigolds for colouring, 227

Ritom, Lago, 79

Roads, Alpine, 59

Rocca Melone, 167

Rocco, San, and his leg, 297

Rocks, conventional treatment of, in fresco, 143

Romanes, Mr., 69

Ronco, 77

Rosherville Gardens and Varese, 256

Rossa, Dedomenici da, 137–9

Rossura, 49

Royal Institution, why we go to the, 68

Ruins, all, are frauds, 261

* * * * *

Sacramental wafers, how the novice taught me to make, 69

Sagno, 238

Saints a feeble folk at Varese, 253

Sambucco, Val di, 281, 291

Sanitary conditions of the _alpi_, 290

— of Fusio, 299

Saturnalia, spiritual, 68

Scheria and Jutland, 41

Schools, our, are covertly radical, 158

Scott, Sir W., on Rembrandt, 77

Seasonarianism and St. Paul, 68

Seasons, the, like species, 63

Semitic characteristic, holiness a, 142

Shakespeare and Handel, 17, 185

Shock, a _sine quâ non_ for consolation and for evolution, 54

— our perception of a, our sole means of classifying, 63

Signorelli, Signor, 264

Skeletons at S. Michele, 97

Sketching clubs, their place in a renaissance of art, 156

Sleep, cost of, 184

Smile, a, in amber, 235

Smuggling on Monte Bisbino, 238

Soazza, 198

Sommazzo, 247

Soot, sparks clinging to, a sign of rain, 239

Soul, hieroglyph of a lost, 147

Soul-fossil, 234

Sparrow, the solitary, 230

Sparrows, tame, at Angera, 260

Species like the seasons, 63

Speculation founded on illusion, 44

Speech not so old as gesture, 165

Spider, the, a liar, but God likes it, 70

Spiders are liers-in-wait, 152

Spinning-wheels at Fucine, 166

Spiral tunnels, 58

Spires near the Lake of Orta, 167

Sporting pictures, 159

Spring, perpetual, and lamb, 62

Spurs at the Tower of London, 215

Stomach affected by thunder, 127

Structures, fusion and confusion of, 44

Stura Valley, 167

Success due mainly to affection, 158

Sunday at Rossura, 51

Supply and demand, 108

Switzerland, German, I have done with, 28

* * * * *

Tabachetti, 189

Tacitus hankered after German institutions, and was a prig, 142

Tanner, extract from ledger of, 235

Tanzio, Il, 189

Tar-water, Bishop Berkeley’s, 64

Technique and grammar, 156

_Témoin_, _Le_, a Vaudois newspaper, 111

Tempering, all propositions want, with their contraries, 152

Tengia, 55

Tennyson, misquotation from, 67

Thatch, an indication of German influence, 167

Theism in Bishop Berkeley’s tar-water, 64

Thunder, its effect on the stomach, 127

Ticino carries mud into the Lago Maggiore, 220

“Tira giù,” 42

Titian would not have done for “Punch,” 143

Toeless men, 129

Tom, Lago, 78, 85

_Tondino_, 164

Torre Pellice, 111

Torrents, deification of, 220

Tower of London, prisoners’ carvings in, 150

— figure of Queen Elizabeth in, 175

— spurs in, 215

Trees, pruning of, 129

Tremorgio, Lago di, 79

Trinity College, Cambridge, and Oropa, 173

Triulci, family of, at Mesocco, 214

Trojan War, duration of, 198

Trout in the Lago Ritom, 79

Truth, deceit a necessary alloy for, 289

Tunnels, spiral, 58

Turin, picture gallery at, 131

Turner, J. M. W., 157, 198

Tyndall, Professor, 69

Undertakers’ blinds and art, 145

Universities and priggishness, 141

— few pass through them unscathed, 151

— an obstacle to the finding of doors, 155

— covertly radical, 158

— proposal to make Oropas of them, 186

* * * * *

Varallo, 176

Varese, 176, 249

Vela, Professor, and his son, 243

Velotti, Nicolao, 188

Verdabbio, 223

Vibrations, revolutions in our social status felt as, 60

Vinci, Leonardo da, on bells, 45

— would have failed for “Punch,” 143

— and Nature’s grandchildren 148

— and anatomy, 216

Viù, 160

Vogogna, 265

Votive pictures, 121, 145, 180, 271

* * * * *

Wafers, sacramental, how the novice taught me to make, 69

_Waitee_, 41

Waiter, the, at S. Pietro, 124

Walnuts, 118

Waterloo Bridge, view from, 20

Waterspouts at Mesocco, 219

Wednesbury Cocking, 55, 305

West, Benjamin, his picture of Christ healing the sick, 72

Will, Lord Beaconsfield on, 23

Wine-cellars, a day at the, 243

Winter, crossing the St. Gothard Pass in, 24

— in Ticino valley, 78

— at Fusio, 299

— at Montreal, 300

_Woodsia hyperborea_, 37

Wordsworth and larks, 231

* * * * *

Yawning of a parrot, 207

Yew-trees, clipped, 167

York, Archbishop of, and Scafell, 89

* * * * *

_Zèle_, _surtout point de_, 66, 68

Footnotes

{23} Vol. iii. p. 300.

{31} “I know that my Redeemer liveth.”—“Messiah.”

{32} Suites de Pièces, set i., prelude to No. 8.

{33} Dettingen Te Deum.

{41} In the index that Butler prepared in view of a possible second edition of _Alps and Sanctuaries_ occurs the following entry under the heading “Waitee”: “All wrong; ‘waitee’ is ‘ohè, ti.’” He was subsequently compelled to abandon this eminently plausible etymology, for his friend the Avvocato Negri of Casale-Monferrato told him that the mysterious “waitee” is actually a word in the Ticinese dialect, and, if it were written, would appear as “vuaitee.” It means “stop” or “look here,” and is used to attract attention. Butler used to couple this little mistake of his with another that he made in _The Authoress of the Odyssey_, when he said, “Scheria means Jutland—a piece of land jutting out into the sea.” Jutland, on the contrary, means the land of the Jutes, and has no more to do with jutting than “waitee” has to do with waiting.—R. A. S.

{46} Treatise on Painting, chap. cccxlix.

{55} See Appendix A.

{68} Curiosities of Literature, Lond. 1866, Routledge & Co., p. 272.

{78} Ivanhoe, chap. xxiii., near the beginning.

{83} Handel’s third set of organ concertos, No. 6.

{90} “Storia diplomatica dell’ antica abbazia di S. Michele della Chiusa,” by Gaudenzio Claretta. Turin, 1870. Pp. 8, 9.

{91} “Storia diplomatica dell’ antica abbazia di S. Michele della Chiusa,” by Gaudenzio Claretta. Turin, 1870. P. 14.

{99} Handel; slow movement in the fifth grand concerto.

{105} For documents relating to the sanctuary, see Appendix B, P. 309.

{109} “Well, my dear sir, I am sorry you do not think as I do, but in these days we cannot all of us start with the same principles.”

{111} “It may be for a hundred, or for five hundred years, or for a thousand, or even ten thousand, but it will not be eternal; for God is a strong man—great, generous, and of large heart.”

{124} “If a person has not got an appetite . . . ”

{125a} The waiter’s nickname no doubt was Cristo, which was softened into Cricco for the reason put forward below.—R. A. S.

{125b} “Cricco is a rustic appellation, and thus religion is not offended.”

{126} “Religion and the magnificent panorama attract numerous and merry visitors.”

{131} “And the milk [in your coffee] does for you instead of soup.”

{147} Butler said of this drawing that it was “the hieroglyph of a lost soul.”—R. A. S.

{178} “Dalle meraviglie finalmente che sono inerenti al simulacro stesso.”—Cenni storico-artistici intorno al santuario di Oropa. (Prof. Maurizio Marocco. Turin, Milan, 1866, p. 329.)

{180} Marocco, p. 331.

{190} “Questa è la festa popolare di Gragha, e pochi anni addietro ancora ricordava in miniature le feste popolari delle sacre campestri del medio evo. Da qualche anno in qua, il costume più severo che s’ introdusse in questi paesi non meno che in tutti gli altri del Piemonte, tolse non poco del carattere originale di questa come di tante altre festività popolesche, nelle quali erompeva spontanea da tutti i cuori la diffusive vicendevolezza degli affetti, e la sincera giovalità dei sentimenti. Ciò non pertanto, malgrado sì fatta decadenza la festa della Madonna di Campra è ancor al presente una di quelle rare adunanze sentimentali, unica forse nel Biellese, alle quali accorre volentieri e ritrova pascolo appropriato il cristiano divoto non meno che il curioso viaggiatore.” (Del Santuario di Graglia notizie istoriche di Giuseppe Muratori. Torino, Stamperia reale, 1848, p. 18.)

{191a} Samson Agonistes.

{191b} “Venus laughing from the skies.”

{191c} Jephthah.

{201} I cannot give this cry in musical notation more nearly than as follows:—

[Picture: Music score]

{204} “Such as ye are, we once were, and such as we are, ye shall be.”

{215} Lugano, 1838.

{231} Butler always regretted that he did not find out about Medea Colleone’s _passero solitario_ in time to introduce it into _Alps and Sanctuaries_. Medea was the daughter of Bartolomeo Colleone, the famous _condottiere_, whose statue adorns the Campo SS. Giovanni e Paolo at Venice. Like Catullus’s Lesbia, whose immortal _passer_ Butler felt sure was also a _passero solitario_, she had the misfortune to lose her pet. Its little body can still be seen in the Capella Colleone, up in the old town at Bergamo, lying on a little cushion on the top of a little column, and behind it there stands a little weeping willow tree whose leaves, cut out in green paper, droop over the corpse. In front of the column is the inscription,—“Passer Medeæ Colleonis,” and the whole is covered by a glass shade about eight inches high. Mr. Festing Jones has kindly allowed me to borrow this note from his “Diary of a Tour through North Italy to Sicily.”—R. A. S.

{282} Handel’s third set of organ Concertos, No. 3.

{309} “Storia diplomatica dell’ antica abbazia di S. Michele della Chiusa,” by Gaudenzio Claretta. Turin, Civelli & Co. 1870. p. 116.

{310} “Item, ordinaverunt quod fiant mandata seu ellemosinæ consuetæ quæ sint valloris quatuor prebendarum religiosorum omni die ut moris est.” (Claretta, Storia diplomatica, p. 325.) The _mandatum_ generally refers to “the washing of one another’s feet,” according to the mandate of Christ during the last supper. In the Benedictine order, however, with which we are now concerned, alms, in lieu of the actual washing of feet, are alone intended by the word.

{311} The prior-claustralis, as distinguished from the prior-major, was the working head of a monastery, and was supposed never, or hardly ever, to leave the precincts. He was the vicar-major of the prior-major. The prior-major was vice-abbot when the abbot was absent, but he could not exercise the full functions of an abbot. The abbot, prior-major, and prior-claustralis may be compared loosely to the master, vice-master, and senior tutor of a large college.

{312} “Item, quod dominus abbas teneatur dare quatuor pitancias seu cenas conventui tempore infirmariæ, et quatuor sextaria vini ut consuetum est” (Claretta, Storia diplomatica, p. 326). The “infirmariæ generales” were stated times during which the monks were to let blood—“Stata nimirum tempora quibus sanguis monachis minuebatur, seu vena secabatur.” (Ducange.) There were five “minutiones generales” in each year—namely, in September, Advent, before Lent, after Easter, and after Pentecost. The letting of blood was to last three days; after the third day the patients were to return to matins again, and on the fourth they were to receive absolution. Bleeding was strictly forbidden at any other than these stated times, unless for grave illness. During the time of blood-letting the monks stayed in the infirmary, and were provided with supper by the abbot. During the actual operation the brethren sat all together after orderly fashion in a single room, amid silence and singing of psalms.

{313a} “Item, quod religiosi non audeant in Sancto Ambrosio videlicet in hospiciis concedere ultra duos pastos videlicet officiariis singulis hebdomadis claustrales non de quindecim diebus nisi forte aliquæ personæ de eorum parentelâ transeuntes aut nobiles aut tales de quibus verisimiliter non habetur suspicio eos secum morari faciant, et sic intelligatur de officiariis et de claustralibus” (Claretta, Storia diplomatica, p. 326).

{313b} The two fingers are the barber’s, who lets one finger, or two, or three, intervene between the scissors and the head of the person whose hair he is cutting, according to the length of hair he wishes to remain.

{313c} “Cellelarius teneatur ministrare panem et vinum et pittanciarius pittanciam” (Claretta, Stor. dip., p. 327). Pittancia is believed to be a corruption of “pietantia.” “Pietantiæ modus et ordo sic conscripti . . . observentur. In primis videlicet, quod pietantiarius qui pro tempore fuerit omni anno singulis festivitatibus infra scriptis duo ova in brodio pipere et croco bene condito omnibus et singulis fratribus . . . tenebitur ministrare.” (Decretum pro Monasterio Dobirluc., A.D. 1374, apud Ducange.) A “pittance” ordinarily was served to two persons in a single dish, but there need not be a dish necessarily, for a piece of raw cheese or four eggs would be a pittance. The pittancer was the official whose business it was to serve out their pittances to each of the monks. Practically he was the _maître d’hôtel_ of the establishment.

{314} Here the text seems to be corrupt.

{315a} That is to say, he is to serve out rations of bread and wine to everyone.

{315b} “Tres denarios.”

{315c} “Unam carbonatam porci.” I suppose I have translated this correctly; I cannot find that there is any substance known as “carbonate of pork.”

{315d} “Rapiolla” I presume to be a translation of “raviolo,” or “raviuolo,” which, as served at San Pietro at the present day, is a small dumpling containing minced meat and herbs, and either boiled or baked according to preference.

{315e} “Luiroletos.” This word is not to be found in any dictionary: litre (?).

{316a} “Caulos cabutos cum salsa” (choux cabotés?)

{316b} “Sextaria.”

{316c} “Grossos.”

{316d} “Operarius, i.e. Dignitas in Collegiis Canonicorum et Monasteriis, cui operibus publicis vacare incumbit . . . Latius interdum patebant operarii munera siquidem ad ipsum spectabat librorum et ornamentorum provincia.” (Ducange.) “Let one priest and two laymen be elected in every year, who shall be called _operarii_ of the said Church of St. Lawrence, and shall have the care of the whole fabric of the church itself . . . but it shall also pertain to them to receive all the moneys belonging to the said church, and to be at the charge of all necessary repairs, whether of the building itself or of the ornaments.” (Statuta Eccl. S. Laur. Rom. apud Ducange.)

{317a} O. The seven antiphons which were sung in Advent were called O’s. (Ducange.)

{317b} “Pro prioratu majori.” I have been unable to understand what is here intended.

{318a} “Carmingier.”

{318b} “Primmentum vel salsam.”

{318c} “Biroleti.” I have not been able to find the words “carmingier,” “primmentum,” and “biroletus” in any dictionary. “Biroletus” is probably the same as “luiroletus” which we have met with above, and the word is misprinted in one or both cases.

{319a} “Item, priori claustrali pro suâ duplâ sex florinos.” “Dupla” has the meaning “mulcta” assigned to it in Ducange among others, none of which seem appropriate here. The translation as above, however, is not satisfactory.

{319b} “Pastamderio.” I have been unable to find this word in any dictionary. The text in this part is evidently full of misprints and corruptions.

{319c} “Ciceratam fractam.” This word is not given in any dictionary. Cicer is a small kind of pea, so cicerata fracta may perhaps mean something like pease pudding.

{319d} Terce. A service of the Roman Church.

{320a} “Invitatorium.” Ce nom est donné à un verset qui se chante ou se récite au commencement de l’office de marines. Il varie selon les fêtes et même les féries. Migne. Encyclopédie Théologique.

{320b} “Epistolam Evangelii.” There are probably several misprints here.

{321a} “Monnas.” Word not to be found.

{321b} “Sextaria.”

{321c} Word missing in the original.

{321d} “Borchiam.” Word not to be found. _Borchia_ in Italian is a kind of ornamental boss.

{322} “Teneatur dare religiosis de carnibus bovinis et montonis decenter.”

{323a} “Foannotos.” Word not to be found.

{323b} “Laganum.”

{324a} “Enredullas hujusmodi” [et res ullas hujusmodi?].

{324b} “In processionibus deferre et de suâ prebendâ nihil perdat vestiarium vere suum salvatur eidem sicut uni monacullo.”