More Italian Yesterdays

CHAPTER XVIII

Chapter 366,707 wordsPublic domain

SOUTHERN SHORES

The real life of the Adriatic coast seems to diminish visibly when one leaves Venice and drops down towards Ravenna; it has been drawn away inland to busy cities that turn their backs on the sea, and the sea itself has sullenly withdrawn, leaving ancient ports empty and useless, like stranded wrecks that will never feel the leap of the waves beneath their keels again. One should visit Ravenna either in the heyday of irrepressible youth, or much later in life when twilight is companionable and sympathetic; otherwise its melancholy is too all-pervading, too depressing to be healthy. It is a city of ghosts, big-eyed, hard-featured Byzantine ghosts; the great mosaics are full of their portraits, and, with all the beauty of gold and colour, there is something sinister and deathly in those tall, straight figures, stiff of gesture, rapacious of eye—likenesses caught unawares of people who in their hearts prized power and wealth above all other things in this life or the next.

I do not think any one Italian-born can feel much more than judicial admiration of the severe early architecture, perfect though it be. The sharp square outlines, the sulky red—that might be _rosso antico_, so little has it yielded in tint or surface to the touch of Time—all this, to me, seems misplaced under the dreamy blue of the Italian sky. Within the churches the long aisles of double-storied arches cramp the spaces where fancy might soar and prayer take wing. They make an impression of narrowness, almost of Puritanism, that stifles emotion and frowns at joy. Of course all this is rank artistic heresy, or will seem so to the crowd of submissive art experts who tumble over each other in their haste to repeat the dictums of a few famous specialists; but I fancy there are many simple-minded people who will agree with me all the same.

It has always puzzled my own ignorance to understand how anything so un-Italian as the early Byzantine style came to take root and flower successfully on Italian soil. The radiant, light-flooded climate does so much to soften and humanize the alien growth that it buys its pardon for it in the end; but when some enthusiast, thrilled with admiration for what he has seen basking in southern sunshine, undertakes to reproduce it under the cold and lowering English skies, its true character is shown at once. It is all too akin to them. One escapes from the prison gloom of Westminster Cathedral to fly to the Brompton Oratory and sink down in a corner and thank Heaven that St. Philip Neri was a Roman, and that his sons and followers can still give us churches with big, airy domes and broad, smooth naves where the light flows free, and transepts that open wide for worshippers and pool up the blessed sunshine like any bay in the Mediterranean.

But there was one point on which Ravenna, in my day at least (for it has suffered since then), yielded the palm to no Mediterranean port—the stately forest of stone-pines that stood like troops at rest, for miles along the shore. The stone-pine is always beautiful, whether as a solitary, striking up, one shaft of grace and strength, against the sky, or as in great companies sunk to the knees in the deep turfy mould that their needles have piled below them in the course of centuries. They grow thus in the south over many a green acre of Villa land, sheltering an unending profusion of the delicate wild flowers that thrive in that rich soil.

But for real forests of stone-pines you must go farther north and skirt the coast. There you will see them in their glory, miles of them together, and if you are quiet and will listen, you will learn a great deal. For, like the sons of the prophets, they have secrets of their own that have never been shared with other tribes, secrets that have only been confided to them—and that is why the solitary pine is such a true solitary; he invites no companions from the gregarious world around: towering and alone, he seems to gaze at unseen horizons, to praise the Lord in the murmur of the far-spreading branches that crown the fretted column of his stem; as for Elijah on Mount Carmel, so for him the past and the present and the future blend unto one great chord of trusting acceptance that no passing storms can shatter, no warm caress lure from its allegiance.

Have you, in some fleeting moment, caught the opening bars of an air that has haunted you afterwards for years, and then been led to where some great orchestra gave it to you in all its completeness? That was what happened to me when I first stood in the “Pineta” of Viareggio, and heard the full-voiced chant of the pines and the sea. I realized that they were part of one another, so to speak, that the whisper of the Villa pine in the south is an echo and a greeting brought by the wind from the family home in the north, where all the secrets of tree music are guarded as in some jealous ancient academy—no outsiders are ever privileged to carry them away! Psalms and marches and dirges, the wild call of the Laga, the C Major of the Te Deum, the wail of the De Profundis—the trees overhead and the surges on the shore will let you hear it all, and once heard it can never be forgotten.

It seems strange that Viareggio, the most prosaic and unpicturesque of all the Italian watering-places on the Ligurean shores, should possess this wonder still in its perfection, while the sister forest on the Adriatic side has been forsaken by the sea and devastated both by fire and by the frosts of that terrible winter of 1878-1879. We once abandoned Leghorn and went instead to Viareggio for our September bathing—a great mistake only made up to us by the drives through the Pineta in the evenings. The discomforts and the ugliness of the town have long since been forgotten—perhaps because the ups and downs of existence have shown me far less bearable ones—and now the most vivid recollection is that of the enchanted air and fragrances of the Pineta.

I think it will be so in the next life; if we win through all right, we shall remember nothing of earth but its sweetnesses, and the _very_ wise people refuse to look at anything else, even now! The real philosophers, who are the real Saints, always seem to smile, though sometimes it is through tears. And there is one queer thing about tears—the people who have never wept don’t begin to know even how to smile, much less how to laugh. I am always sorry and frightened for them if they are nice good people, for we all have to pay our little tribute to trouble, our tithe to humanity’s debt; some get it spread all over a lifetime, some all in a moment, and these are the spoiled ones of the nursery on whom I suppose long discipline might have lain too heavily for their courage. I remember one startling case that impressed me very deeply, that of a nice American family, father, mother, and daughters twain, pleasant, harmless, good-looking people with plenty of money and perfect health. I liked being with them, though our views of life were severed as the poles, mine reaching out to the impossible and sensational (I was very young!), and theirs so satisfied with the comfortable half-lights of their own surroundings that they simply could not imagine anything desirable beyond.

One day I gave voice to my curiosity. “Do tell me about yourself, Mrs. ——,” I said to the mother. “You look just as young as your own daughters. I don’t think you can ever have had a trouble!”

“I never have,” she replied, turning on me her mild, satisfied gaze. “I cannot remember a single sorrow in all my life, not a death in my family, not an hour’s sickness even, amongst us all. We have all, _always_, had everything we could wish for.”

It was the first time I had ever heard any one say such a thing, and I felt awe-struck and envious. A few months afterwards they all went back to America—at least they started to go. Their ship went down in mid-ocean, and the dear people reached home sooner than they had expected. But for that sharp, short suffering, it is just possible that life and its unending pleasantnesses might have made it hard for them to get to heaven at all.

There was more than mere fun in Thackeray’s tale of “The Rose and the Ring.” When the Fairy Blackstick frowned at Prince Giglio and said, “What you need, young man, is a little misfortune!” she asserted a most obvious and irritating fact. But it has one delightful side to it—that bitter draught that wise Doctor Fate insists on our taking from time to time; the good things, even tiny little ones that we never noticed before, do taste so wonderfully sweet afterwards!

We were talking of shore forests—there is one, not of pine, but beeches, on the Adriatic, exactly opposite Naples on the Tyrrhenian Sea.[13] Here a great promontory runs out towards the east, rising into mountains which have caused the whole to be called the “Monte Gargano,” though each peak has its own name besides. People call the isolated district (which really belongs to the Province of Molise) Manfredonia, from the name of its chief town, long a pet stronghold of Suabian King Manfred, who founded and fortified it in the thirteenth century. But Nature protected the Monte Gargano in another way and a very effectual one. It was meant to be an island; on the western side the Abruzzi shrinking back in the real mainland, and the Adriatic, withdrawing slowly from the coast, have left a strip of land many miles wide, flat, marshy, abominably feverish, as a kind of defensive trench to cut off the Gargano promontory from the rest of Italy, and, as it were, remind it for ever that by formation it does not belong to her at all, but to the limestone plateau of Dalmatia, across the way.

This vast plain (for it stretches far and far past the promontory, towards the south) refuses to nourish a single tree on the few feet of soil which cover the mother-rock, but it provides such splendid food for sheep that since time immemorial it has been given up to them. Alphonsus I annexed it as a royal meadow in 1445, and imported his Spanish merinos with such success that two hundred years later four and a half million of the beautiful creatures were herded by Neapolitan peasants on these pastures. Even now, though only a scanty half-million graze on them, the sheep are lords and owners of all that ground.

During the summer they are led to the mountains, partly for their own sake, partly for that of their keepers, who could not live in the miasma-haunted plains in August and September. In crossing, even by train, the twenty-two miles that separate Foggia from Manfredonia, the traveller is always warned to close the carriage windows; but in October the sheep are all driven back, and for weeks the three great roads that converge towards the flats are just broad ribbons of dust through which comes the drumming of invisible millions of little hoofs. Along the edges of the yellow cloud phantom figures of shepherds dressed in sheepskins take shape at intervals and disappear again, and the dogs, dear faithful things, fly round and herd up the stragglers and nip at the legs of truants with the noisy joy that even long marches through the scorching plains can never quite suppress.

From every point on those plains Monte Gargano can be seen, raising its peaks against the blue, and clothed down to the very water’s edge in magic beechwoods, homes of light and shadow and flickering gold, musical with song, fragrant with wild flowers and carpeted with the rich mould that a thousand autumns have spread along its ways. Nothing is ever disturbed on Monte Gargano. But for the sea and the fever-land, the forest would long ago have been cut down, its riches dispersed, its very site perhaps forgotten; but now all stands as it did from the first, and winter and summer have their own way there, and the herdsmen fold their cattle in the deep caves of the hills even as they did fourteen hundred years ago, in the reign of the holy Pope St. Gelasius, when heaven’s gates opened one May morning to let through a flash of wings and the gleam of an archangel’s sword, and the fairest of Gargano’s peaks became Monte Sant’ Angelo.

And this was the way of it. While the rest of Italy was torn with the struggles of rival barbarians, and desolated by the rapacity of men like the Galla who drove his poor captives before him to the feet of St. Benedict at Monte Cassino, the peasants of Monte Gargano, safe in their isolation, lived as they live to-day, obscure, contented, minding their own affairs—which are chiefly their own cattle—with all their mind.

In that wild place the cattle stray sometimes, and it is hard to find them again. And so it happened that on May 8, towards 493, or thereabouts, a young herdsman went climbing in the hills with some companions to look for a valuable steer that he had lost. Having wandered and searched for some time in vain, they were feeling deeply discouraged, when they perceived the creature hopelessly entangled in a thicket of briars at the entrance of a deep cavern. In fear, or irritation, one of the pursuers drew his bow and let fly an arrow at the animal, but, to the men’s amazement, the missile turned in the air and struck him who had shot it. Terrified at this portent, they all fled and did not stop till they reached the town of Sipontum, far below, where they related what had happened to them. Fear fell on the inhabitants, and no one had the courage to go and examine the cavern, though all were consumed with curiosity to know what, or who, it contained. In this dilemma they referred the case to their Bishop, and he replied that he must lay the thing before the Lord, and ordained three days of fasting and prayer for all the population, during which they were to join him in begging that Heaven’s will in the matter might be made clear.

And the petition was granted, for on the third day the great Archangel Michael appeared to the Bishop and told him that the portent of the returning arrow was intended to show that he wished to have a sanctuary consecrated in that cave to the glory of God, and in honour of the angels. So immediately the Bishop came forth, and, gathering all the people to him, led them, with prayers and chants, into the heart of the hills to the mysterious cavern, and entering in, they found it hollowed out and disposed in the form of a church, with all things ready, so that the Bishop at once said Mass there; and from that hour so many wonderful miracles took place on that spot that all men knew certainly that it was greatly favoured by heaven. And from that day to this it has been a place of holy pilgrimage, where many sinners have been converted, and many, afflicted with terrible diseases, cured.

The church celebrates the Apparition of St. Michael the Archangel on Monte Gargano, on May 8, but the feast of that spring morning is not the only one in which she commemorates his glorious interventions on her behalf. Far away in the north, another promontory, strangely like that of Monte Gargano, once encircled by forests too, but now cut off from the land at each return of the tide, the Mont Saint-Michel, stands as the last outpost of France, flinging defiance at its twin peak across the water in Britain. There is something strangely significant in the choice of these two points for the most notable apparitions of the great Archangel who commands the heavenly hosts and watches with such sublime benignity over the destinies of men. One in the north and one in the south, the great lonely rocks rise sheer from the sea as if set apart as resting-places where the glorious pinions might be folded for a while, and the effulgence of the angelic countenance, too overwhelming for man to bear as it comes straight from the Presence of God, a little tempered and veiled by the mists of sorrowful earth. But one feels, too, that the purity of the lonely rock, the brave song of the wind, the long roll of Atlantic surge and the chant of Adriatic billows, were dear and welcome to the Warrior Angel, who holds our world in his hands as the Creator’s chief Minister, who carries out His mandates, chastizing when he must, but so tender to the contrite, so inspiring to the valiant, so royal in protection to the oppressed!

Of all the peaks that bear his name through the length and breadth of Europe none has been more signally his own than this one on the coast of Brittany. The East has its own, in Phrygia, where also the Archangel deigned to manifest his love for us poor mortals by his visible presence, and where the marvel of that love is commemorated under the title of “The Synax of Michael, Prince of the Army and of the other Incorporeal Powers.” The Greeks always give such thunderously full titles to their friends in heaven! But I am sure they cannot honour their great protector half so heartily as he has been honoured on the Mont Saint-Michel ever since he touched it and consecrated it for all time, in the eighth century. The details that have come down to us of that Apparition are somewhat less full than those of the one at Monte Gargano, but the subsequent history of the French sanctuary, which stood for just a thousand years as an impregnable fortress, is connected, right through, with humanity as the lonely shrine of the South has never been. Its name alone is like a war-cry—“Saint Michel au Péril de la Mer,” Saint Michael of the Peril of the Sea—and bespeaks the invincible ally of the race that was once the ardent apostle of Christianity and its most valiant champion.

It was to Saint Aubert that the revelation came, when he was Bishop of Avranches, in the reign of Childeburt II. The Archangel appeared to him in his sleep, says the Breviary, and bade him build a church on the sentinel rock, round which already many pious hermits were gathered to serve God in solitude. Now Saint Aubert was a man who reflected much before taking any new step, and he hesitated so long that the Archangel had to repeat his visit three times before he was obeyed—a great encouragement, this, to timid souls!—but then the Saint went to work valiantly enough. The rock was of a strange rounded shape, and he built on its summit a great round church, as closely resembling the holy cave at Monte Gargano as possible. Then he sent to that place to fetch stones and relics from it, all of which he set with great honour in the newer sanctuary; and when all was done he established and endowed there a monastery of twelve “holy clerks for the perpetual service of the Blessed Archangel.”

But Richard I, Duke of Normandy, wished still further to honour St. Michael, so he sent away the clerks and established the Benedictines in their place; and the fame of the Shrine and of the many miracles performed there drew a great concourse of pilgrims from all over the world, especially royal pilgrims from England and Europe generally, so that when the Order of the Knights of St. Michael was instituted, this was their Chapter House. By that time it was already one of the most ancient and one of the few “maiden” fortresses of the realm, and never, until the monarchy succumbed to the Revolution, did a single foe to France succeed in setting foot within its walls. For a thousand years, seven times a day, the praises of God had rung out from it over the sea; for a thousand years the standard of France floated stainless above its battlements. “_Monsieur Saint-Michel, Archange, premier Chevalier, qui pour la querelle de Dieu victorieusement batailla contre le dragon_” (it is thus that his titles are given in the Institutes of the Order founded in 1469), took care of his own—till France drove him away.

INDEX

A

Acciajuoli, Lorenzo, 262

Acciajuoli, Nicholas, 246, 251-2, 261 _et sq._

Aglaë, 3 _et sq._

Agnes, Duchess of Durazzo, 204, 235 _et sq._

Aix, Archbishop of, 258

Alaric the Goth, 3, 10

Alban Hills, 142, 145 _et sq._

Alexander, Emperor of Russia, 294

Alexis, St., 6 _et sq._

Alphonsus Liguori, St., 241-2

Altamura, Giovanni Pipino, Count of, 205, 212-13, 230

Amadeus VIII of Savoy, 185, 187

Ancona, 289, 296, 302

Andrew of Hungary, Prince (Duke of Calabria), 1st Consort of Queen Joan of Naples, his marriage to Queen Joan, 200 _et sq._; his temperament, 201-2; his disappointment at Joan’s sole occupancy of the throne, 202 _et sq._, 219; Charles of Durazzo plots against, 210; forms a friendship with Charles of Durazzo, 211 _et sq._; begged to leave Naples by his mother, 219 _et sq._; his crown confirmed by the Pope, 221-2; his murder planned, 223 _et sq._, 254; goes on a hunting expedition, 224 _et sq._; murdered by his enemies, 228-9, 248, 255, 275; lying-in-state of, 230-1; Papal Bull to inquire into the murder of, 238 _et sq._; his murderers tried and sentenced, 239 _et sq._; Joan’s complicity in the death of, 249 _et sq._, 260; King Louis seeks to avenge the death of, 248 _et sq._

Andrew of Isernia, 222 _et sq._

Angles, 49

Anicia, family of, 19, 39

Anthony, St., 156, 197

Apennines, the, 146, 159

Appian Way, 145

Aquileia, Patriarch of, 265

Arétin, Baron d’, 119

Artois, Bertrand d’, 203-4, 206-7, 213, 215, 222-3, 227-8, 241, 245-6

Artois, Charles d’, 203, 213, 223, 241, 245 _et sq._

Asilo, The, 69 _et sq._, 84 _et sq._

Aubert, St., 364-5

Augustine, St., 50-1

Aventine, The, 2 _et sq._

Avignon, 77 _et sq._, 205, 220, 238, 251, 258, 260

B

Bacourt, Marquis de, 97

Baldwin II, 204

Balzo, Count of, 213

Barberini, Prince, 76

Barbou, 288

Baux, Renaud des, 268-9

Baux, Robert des, 268-9

Beauharnais, Eugène de, 277, 293

Bellegarde, 289, 290

Benedict, St., 15 _et sq._, 22 _et sq._, 52, 152, 156

Benedict I, 42-3

Benedictine Rule, 31 _et sq._, 40 _et sq._, 50

Bentinck, Lord William, 282-3, 289, 290, 304

Bernadotte. _See_ Charles XIV

Bernard, St., 84

Berthier, General, 115-16, 131 _et sq._

Bianchi, 303, 305-6, 311

Bonaparte, Caroline. _See_ Murat

Bonaparte, Prince Jerome, 78

Bonaparte, Joseph (King of Naples, afterwards King of Spain), 279

Bonaparte, Napoleon. _See_ Napoleon

Bonaparte, Pauline (Princess Borghese), 297, 309

Boniface, St., 3 _et sq._, 10 _et sq._

Boniface III, 52

Boniface IV, 54, 57 _et sq._

Boniface VIII, 147 _et sq._

Borghese, Villa, 68

Borgi, Giovanni, 65 _et sq._, 84, 86, 96, 104

Bossone, Francesco, 182 _et sq._

Bossuet, _cited_, 29

Boulogne, Cardinal de, 261

Brennan, Rev. Richard, 97

Brompton Oratory, 355

Brune, Marshal, 315

Burghersh, Lord, 311

C

Cabano, Filippo, 201, 206 _et sq._, 214-15, 223, 231, 241

Cabano, Raymond, 201, 207

Cabano, Robert of, Count of Eboli, 200 _et sq._, 213-14, 223, 226 _et sq._, 231, 241, 243

Cabarelli, 321

Calabria, Duke of. _See_ Charles

Campbell, Commodore, 308

Campochiaro, Duke di, 293

Cancia, Donna, 206, 223, 231, 241, 256

Cane, Facino, 182 _et sq._

Canosa, 324

Capobianco, 282 _et sq._

Caracalla, 56

Carbonari, the, 282 _et sq._, 296, 298

Cariati, Prince de, 293, 307

Carmagnola. _See_ Francesco Borsone

Caroline of Austria, Queen of Spain, 294, 297

Carrascosa, General, 291, 303, 309, 311

Cassino Monte, 30 _et sq._, 361

Castel Nuovo (Naples), 214, 219, 224 _et sq._, 269, 273

Castlereagh, Viscount, 295

Catanzaro, Count of, 213, 223, 241, 256

Catherine of Taranto, Empress of Constantinople, 204, 206, 214, 223, 232 _et sq._, 245 _et sq._

Cavaletti, Marchese, 164 _et sq._

Celestine V, 239

Charlemagne, 13

Charles I of Anjou, 242

Charles, Duke of Calabria, 200

Charles, Duke of Durazzo, presents Joan as sole sovereign to the Neapolitans, 202; refuses to do homage to Andrew of Hungary, 202; his ambition, 204, 208; obtains an audience with Joan and plots against Andrew, 209 _et sq._; secretly marries Princess Maria of Calabria, 211, 216 _et sq._; propitiates Andrew, 211 _et sq._; appeals to the people to avenge Andrew’s death, 231; objects to re-marriage of Joan, 232 _et sq._; tragic death of his mother, 235-6; and the Papal inquiry into the murder of Prince Andrew, 238 _et sq._; his tyranny, 244; civil war between Louis of Taranto and, 244 _et sq._; invites King Louis of Hungary to take possession of Naples, 248 _et sq._; a truce with Joan, 250; attempts to conciliate King Louis, 253; King Louis’s accusations against, 254-5; his execution by order of King Louis, 255-6

Charles, Duke of Durazzo (son of Prince Louis), 272 _et sq._

Charles IV, Emperor of Germany, 265

Charles, King of Hungary, 200

Charles, King of Naples, 201

Charles XIV, King of Sweden, 117, 278

Chile, 1, 84 _et sq._

Cienfuegos, Canon, 85

Civita Vecchia, 289

Clement VI, 205, 220-1, 238, 244, 249, 250-1, 259 _et sq._, 265, 270

Clement VII (Anti-Pope), 273

Colonna, Count of, 299

Colonna, family of, 147 _et sq._

Conradin of Hohenstaufen, 242

Consalvi, Cardinal, 86

Constans II, 56

Constantine the Great, 13

Constantinople, Empress of, _See_ Catherine of Taranto

Crawford, Marion, 154, 169, 331

Cyrilla, 19, 20, 22-3

D

Dalberg, Duke, 295

Dante, 149, 150

Denbigh, Countess of, 157

Diocletian, 2, 4

Dominic, St., 352

Doria, Monsignor, 116, 121-2

Dumas, Alexandre, 261

Dupin, 295

Durazzo. _See_ Agnes, Charles, and Louis

E

Edessa, 8

Elizabeth of Hungary, St., 351

Elizabeth of Poland, Queen, 205, 219 _et sq._, 249

Enghien, Duc d’, 326

Ephrem, St., 197

Euphemian, 11-12

Eustace, St., 20 _et sq._

Eutychius, 43-4

F

Falkland Isles, 91 _et sq._

Ferdinand VII, King of Spain, 278, 284, 286, 288, 297, 311-12, 321, 326, 328

Ferrara, 289

Fesch, Cardinal, 129, 134, 309

Filippo Maria, Duke of Milan, 183 _et sq._

Florence, 289, 336

Fondi, Count of, 253

Foscari, Doge of Venice, 186-7

Fouché, Joseph, Duke of Otranto, 288, 315 _et sq._

Francis of Assisi, St., 24, 156

Francis, Emperor of Austria, 119, 125, 300, 320

Frederick of Baden, 242

Frimont, 303

Fullerton, Lady Georgina, 157

G

Gargano, Monte, 359 _et sq._

Genazzano, 141 _et sq._

Genoa, 336 _et sq._

Genseric, 13

George III of England, 264-5

Gian Maria, Duke of Milan, 183

Giotto, 271

Giovanni, Duke of Milan, 182-3

Gonzaga, Lord of Mantua, 193

Goths, the, 28, 32 _et sq._

Gotis, Conrad de, 224

Grace, Mary, 1 _et sq._

Gravina, Domenico, 247

Gregory, St., 29, 31, 39 _et sq._, 110

Gregory XVI, 65, 98-9, 102

Guadagnolo, 20 _et sq._

Guéranger, Dom, 22

H

Hadrian, 52, 55

Hardenberg, Prince Von, 295

Hare, Augustus J., 141, 152, 154

Honorius, Emperor, 57

Hutton, Edward, _cited_, 97

I

Imola, 83, 102 _et sq._, 111

Infantado, Duke dell’, 322

Innocent I, 11

Innocent IV, 352

Isolda (Nurse to Andrew of Hungary), 225-6, 229

Italian seas, 329 _et sq._

Ives, St., 109

J

James of Aragon, King of Minorca (3rd Consort of Queen Joan of Naples), 272

Januarius, St., 276

Jerome, St., 197

Joan of Anjou, Queen of Naples, 200 _et sq._

Joan of Naples, Queen, her beauty, 200, 209, 214; her marriage to Andrew of Hungary, 200 _et sq._; her intrigue with Robert of Cabano, 201, 203, 206 _et sq._; is proclaimed sole ruler of Naples, 202 _et sq._, 222; and Charles of Durazzo’s scheming against Andrew, 209, 210; her love for Bertrand d’Artois, 213, 223; abduction of her sister, Princess Maria, 214 _et sq._; and Charles of Durazzo’s marriage to Princess Maria, 216-17; her act of homage for her crown, 218-9; Andrew’s confirmation as King, 222; and the murder of Prince Andrew, 223 _et sq._; her fellow-conspirators’ claims, 231 _et sq._; her marriage to Louis of Taranto, 237-8, 244; Charles of Durazzo and Robert of Taranto make war upon, 244 _et sq._; accused by King Louis of Hungary of the murder of Prince Andrew, 248 _et sq._; departs for Marseilles on the entrance of King Louis into Naples, 251; her reception at Aix, 258; Clement VI declares her innocent of Andrew’s death, 260; her marriage to Louis of Taranto confirmed by the Pope, 260, 271; returns to Naples, 262; her attempt to wrest Naples from Louis of Hungary, 262 _et sq._; invites the Pope’s mediation, 270; her third marriage to James of Aragon, 272; her fourth marriage to Duke Otho of Brunswick, 273; supports the anti-Pope, Clement VII, 273; the ingratitude of her successor and nephew, 273 _et sq._; put to death by order of Louis of Hungary, 274-5

John, Patriarch of Constantinople, 46

Josephus, 20

Julian the Apostate, 13

Julius Cæsar, 45

L

Louis, King of Hungary, 211; informed of conspiracy to deprive his brother Andrew of sharing the crown with Joan, 205; invited by Charles of Durazzo to take possession of Naples, 248-9; accuses Joan of complicity in the murder of Andrew, 248 _et sq._; enters Italy, 251; Charles of Durazzo and Robert of Taranto attempt to conciliate, 253; orders Charles to be executed, 255, 272; wreaks vengeance on Andrew’s murderers, 256, 270; terrorises the country, 256-7; requested by the Pope to retire from Naples, 261; fighting between Louis of Taranto and, 262 _et sq._; consents to abandon Naples, 270; orders Queen Joan to be put to death, 274-5

La Mentorella, 20, 22 _et sq._

Lascolette, 288

Lebzeltern, Chevalier de, 114 _et sq._, 118 _et sq._

Lecchi, General, 306

Leghorn, 289, 322 _et sq._, 357

Leo XII, 87, 98

Leo XIII, 1

Leopold of Bourbon, Crown Prince, 313

Lillo of Aquila, Count, 253-4

Livron, General, 304

Lombards, 40, 44, 48

Loreto, 143

Louis of Anjou, Prince, 273

Louis of Durazzo, Prince, 253, 272

Louis of Taranto, Prince (afterwards King of Naples), 2nd husband of Queen Joan, his personal appearance, 204, 214; marries Joan of Naples, 237; civil war between Charles of Durazzo and, 244 _et sq._; resists Louis of Hungary, 250 _et sq._, 262 _et sq._; joins Queen Joan at Provence, 252; his marriage to Joan confirmed by Clement VI, 260; his rescue of Princess Maria, 265 _et sq._; returns to Naples with Queen Joan, 270; his coronation, 271; his death, 272

Louis XVIII, 316

M

Macdonald, Marshal, 309, 312

Maceroni, 319, 320

Magella, 296

Maio, General, 306

Malachy, St., 84

Malastrata, Carlo, 191

Marcella, 3

Marcellinus, 103

Marcus Agrippa, 55

Marie Louise, Empress of France, 123

Marie de Medici, 336

Marie of Valois, 200

Marius, 145

Marmont, Marshal, 314

Martin V, 189

Mary of Calabria, Princess (afterwards Duchess of Durazzo), 203, 206-7, 311, 214 _et sq._, 238, 248

Masaniello, 242

Masdea, Father, 327

Mastai-Ferretti, Cardinal, 107, 255, 259, 262, 265 _et sq._

Mastai-Ferretti, Count, 73 _et sq._, 81

Mastai-Ferretti, Countess, 74 _et sq._

Mastai-Ferretti, Giovanni. _See_ Pius IX

Maurice, Emperor, 44-5, 51

Maurus, 29 _et sq._

Metternich, Count, 116, 119 _et sq._, 133, 290, 295, 299, 320

Mier, Count Von, 285

Milan Cathedral, 59

Milan, Dukes of. _See_ Gian, Giovanni, and Filippo

Mileto, Count of, 213, 241

Miollis, General de, 118, 288

Mocenigo, Doge of Venice, 186, 190

Mohr, 303

Monastic Orders, 14-15

Montalembert, _cited_, 19, 28, 34, 47

Montefeltro, Guido de, 148

Monte Scaglioso, Bertram des Baux, Count of, 238-9, 242, 264

Montigny, General, 306-7

Morcone, Count of, 213, 223, 241

Morcone, Countess of, 206, 223, 231, 241

Moscow, 280

Murano, 348-9

Murat, Caroline Queen of Naples, 297 _et sq._, 308 _et sq._, 325

Murat, Joachim, King of Naples, his descent from power, 277; his difficult position, 278; conspiracies against his life, 279, 280; his public works, 280; and the Smolensk campaign, 280; attempts to unify Italy, 281; and the suggested alliance with Austria, 285 _et sq._; and Pope Pius VII, 291-2, 296; receives the news of Napoleon’s abdication, 292-3; adjusts his kingdom, 293-4; Talleyrand’s enmity towards, 294 _et sq._; and Napoleon’s escape from Elba, 299 _et sq._; engages in war against Austria, 303 _et sq._; his defeat, 309 _et sq._; resolves to join Napoleon, 311; at Toulon, 315-16; his perils _en route_ for Paris, 316 _et sq._; and Austria’s offer to, 319 _et sq._; lands at Pizzo, 3; is imprisoned, 322 _et sq._; his trial and death sentence, 324 _et sq._; last letter to Caroline, 325; his execution, 327-8

Muzi, Monsignor, 85, 87 _et sq._

N

Naples, under Queen Joan, 201 _et sq._; under Murat, 276 _et sq._

Napoleon I, 13,45; his persecution of Pius VII, 75, 77 _et sq._, 114 _et sq._; elevates Murat to the throne of Naples, 278; pushes on to Moscow, 280; his quarrel with Murat, 281; his abdication, 292, 294; his distrust of Talleyrand, 295; at Elba, 296; his escape from Elba, 299, 310; suggests an alliance with Murat, 299-314; his star once more in the ascendant, 311; and Murat’s appeal to, 315; his power in Europe, 318; and Duc d’Enghien, 326

Napoleon III, 101

Narses, 13-14

Neipperg, Count, 303, 305-6, 311

Nero, 23, 27

Nesselrode, Count, 295

Ney, Marshal, 280, 314, 318

Nicholas of Melazzo, 211, 215, 223-4, 228, 239 _et sq._

Noailles, Count de, 295

Nogaret, William de, 150-1

Norcia. _See_ Nursia

Normandy, Duke of, 203, 211, 258

Notre Dame, 59, 77, 124

Nunziante, General, 323 _et sq._

Nursia, 15 _et sq._

O

Oderisio, Roberto di, 271

Odescalchi Palace, 1

Odoacer, 13

Olevano, 152

Orsini, family of, 147

Otho, Duke of Brunswick (4th Consort of Queen Joan of Naples), 273-4

P

Pace, Tommaso, 211, 215, 223, 228, 239 _et sq._

Palestrina, 144 _et sq._

Pantheon, 55 _et sq._

Paul Petrovitch, Emperor, 264

Paul, St., 4

Pelagius II, 43-4, 50

Pepes, General, 305

Périgord, Cardinal de, 254

Peter, St., 51, 118, 350 _et sq._

Peter, St. (the exorcist), 103

Petrarch, 202

Philip of Taranto, Prince, 253

Philippe le Bel, King of France, 150

Phocas, Emperor, 57

Piccino, Nicolo, 190, 192 _et sq._

Pignatelli, General, 264

Pisa, 196 _et sq._, 336

Pius VI, 69, 75-6

Pius VII, and the ordination of Pius IX, 72; returns in triumph to the throne of St. Peter, 76-7; Napoleon’s insolent demands upon, 77-8, 116 _et sq._; excommunicates Napoleon, 78, 119 _et sq._; is arrested by the French troops, 79, 116; imprisoned at Savona and Fontainebleau, 80; returns to Rome, 80, 291; rejoicing in Rome, 81 _et sq._; prophesies the election of Father Mastai to the Papacy, 83; reorganizes ecclesiastical matters in Chile, 85; his death, 87; Lebzeltern obtains an audience with, 122 _et sq._; his personal appearance, 122; and Murat, 292, 296, 302

Pius VIII, 98

Pius IX, 50, 65; appointed director of the Asilo, 70 _et sq._; his infirmity, 71-2, 76; his ordination, 72; his birth and early life, 73 _et sq._; witnesses the return to Rome of Pius VII, 76, 81-2; prophecies concerning his election to the Papacy, 83-4; undertakes mission to Chile, 84 _et sq._; last evening at the Asilo, 85-6; appointed Director of the Ospizio di San Michele, 95-6; appointed Abp. of Spoleto, 96 _et sq._; and the revolutionaries in Spoleto, 99 _et sq._; appointed Abp. of Imola, 102; his fearless zeal, 102; his escape from assassination, 103; made a Cardinal, 103; Riotti’s attempt to kidnap, 104-5; his great humility, 106-7; his charity and love of justice, 108 _et sq._

Pius X, 143

Pizzo (Calabria), 277, 323

Placidus. _See_ St. Eustace

Prina, 293

Procopius, St., 197

Q

Quintus, Sertorius, 16

R

Radet, General, 78-9, 117

Ranieri, Bp. of Pisa, 149, 196 _et sq._

Rapp, Marshal, 280

Ravenna, 354 _et sq._

Richard I, Duke of Normandy, 365

Riotti, 104

Rivière, Marquis de la, 316

Robert, Father, 202, 205-6, 208, 212, 220-1, 249

Robert, King of Naples, 200 _et sq._, 211, 220, 222

Robert of Taranto, Prince, 232-3, 236 _et sq._, 244, 250

Romanus, 24 _et sq._

Rome, the Aventine, 2 _et sq._; the centre of education, 19; pestilence in, 51 _et sq._; the Pantheon, 55 _et sq._; Giovanni Borgi founds the Asilo in, 65 _et sq._; Pius VII returns to 76-7, 81, 136, 291; the Vatican, 78 _et sq._, 136; the Campagna and its cities, 137 _et sq._; the Sabines from, 160

S

Sabine Hills, 138 _et sq._, 159 _et sq._

St. Michael, Mont, 363 _et sq._

St. Peter’s (Rome), 63, 65, 68, 83

Sant’Angelo, 288-9

Sant’Angelo, Count of, 213

Santa Chiara, Church of, 207, 218

Santa Croce, Church of, 243, 259

Sant’Eligio, Church of, 222

San Gennaro (Naples), Cathedral of, 230-1

St. John Lateran, 143

San Marco (Venice), 341

San Martino de Monti, Cardinal, 218

San Michele, Ospizio di, 95-6

San Pietro a Maiella, 226

San Severino, Count of, 213

Santo Spirito, Hospital of, 109

Sallusti, Father, 85 _et sq._

Sancia of Aragon, Queen, 204

Savona, 113 _et sq._

Scholastica, St., 15 _et sq._, 36 _et sq._, 152

Sciarra, family of, 147

Septimus Severus, 56

Silvia, St., 39, 41-2, 50

Sinigaglia, 70 _et sq._, 104, 108

Soult, Marshal, 314, 318

Spezia, 336

Spinelli, 262

Spoleto, 96 _et sq._, 111

Squillace, Godfrey of Marsano, Count of, 223, 241, 256

Stackelberg, 295

Stephen of Transylvania (Voivode), 255

Strasburg Cathedral, 59

Stratti, Captain, 323, 326-7

Strongoli, General, 304

Subiaco, 24, 27 _et sq._, 34, 152, 154

Sub Laqueum. _See_ Subiaco

Sulla, 145

T

Taigi, Anna Maria, 83-4

Talleyrand, Prince de, 117, 294-5, 236

Taranto. _See_ Robert of, Louis, King of Naples, and Philip of

Tarsus, 4

Terlizzi, Count of, 213, 223, 227 _et sq._, 240

Terlizzi, Countess of, 206, 223, 231, 241

Tertullus, 20, 28

Thackeray, W. M., 359

Thévenot, Colonel, 114-5

Tiberius Constantinus, Emperor, 43-4

Totila, 13, 34 _et sq._

Trajan, Emperor, 21

Trentacapilli, Captain, 322

U

Urban VI, 273

Urban VIII, 110

V

Vatican, the, 65, 78, 136

Venice, 180 _et sq._, 336 _et sq._

Vescovado, Palace of, 114 _et sq._

Vespasian, Emperor, 16

Vesuvius, Mt., 8

Viareggio, 356 _et sq._

Vico Varo, Monks of, 26-7

Victoria, Queen, 301, 328

W

Wellington, Duke of, 290

Westminster Abbey, 59

Westminster Cathedral, 355

Wied, 303

Wolf, Conrad, 263

_Printed by Hazell, Watson & Viney, Ld., London and Aylesbury._

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Montalembert.

[2] Montalembert.

[3] This term requires explanation. The two great sins of the Church in Gaul were, first, simony, and secondly, the practice of admitting unprepared laymen to Holy Orders and often to the Episcopate. This last vice Gregory called “the heresy of Neophytes.”

[4] In a former volume I stated that Pius IX had for a short time served in the Noble Guards. This was an error, for he never obtained admittance, although I believe a portrait of him in the uniform was extant in the earlier years of the nineteenth century. It may have been altogether a “fake” or else taken to please his father when there appeared to be some hope of the latter’s ambition being fulfilled.

[5] “Reminiscences of a Diplomatist’s Wife” (Hutchinson & Co.). “The Looms of Time” (Isbister).

[6] The Islands, about a hundred in number, but most of them very small and uninhabited, have been the cause of sharp contention and have changed hands several times since their discovery in 1656—France, Spain, England, and the United States have variously claimed them. Twice the matter has been decided by an Englishman’s landing and running up the Union Jack. The last time this occurred was in 1833, when, in the middle of the quarrel, Captain Falkland took possession of them on his own responsibility. Great Britain has held them ever since as one of her recognized colonies. They are self-governing, and have a population altogether of two thousand souls, the capital, Stanley, claiming nearly half of the number.

[7] “A Popular Life of Pius IX,” Rev. Richard Brennan. (Benziger, 1877.)

[8] St. Peter the exorcist, martyred with the priest Marcellinus under Diocletian. His name occurs in the Canon of the Mass.

[9] H. Chatard, “Le Pape Pie VII à Savone,” p. 83. (Plon. Nourrit et Cie. Paris: 1887.)

[10] _Unchangeable principles_—unchangeable, that is to say, until, of course, 1870, since when——!

[11] “Reminiscences of a Diplomatist’s Wife.”

[12] “Crimes Célèbres: Jeanne de Naples.”

[13] In our parlance all that is not the Adriatic is the Mediterranean, but the Italians only give this name to the waters that separate Italy and Spain from Africa, and differentiate the remainder as the Ligurean Sea—in the Bay of Genoa, the Tyrrhenian that Rome and Naples contemplate, and the Ionian, which washes up from Sicily under Italy’s instep in the Gulf of Taranto.

Transcriber’s Notes

Original spelling and punctuation have been preserved as much as possible. Minor typographical errors have been corrected without note.

End of Project Gutenberg's More Italian Yesterdays, by Mrs. Hugh Fraser