Part 29

The bishopric of Cattaro is said to date from the fifth or sixth century as suffragan to Spalato (that is, to Salona, as Spalato only became metropolitan in 650); but the first certain date occurs in 877, in which year an act of the Concilium Delmitanum, when the ancient rights of Salona were divided with Spalato, enacts that Cattaro and Budua shall be suffragan to Dioclea. Bishops of Risano are mentioned in 141 and 591. In 1033 the metropolitan of Salona called a council, and the bishop of Cattaro went with those of Dulcigno, Antivari, and Suacia. They were caught in a storm and wrecked at Bacile near Torcole, twelve miles from Lesina, and were all drowned. The sailors have never forgotten the catastrophe. The Cattarines in consequence sent to the Pope, pointing out the difficulties of communication, and obtained transference to the arch-diocese of Antivari.

The "bocche" consist of several expanses of water, separated by narrow canals and surrounded by lofty mountains, which often rise so nearly directly from the water's edge as greatly to increase their impressiveness. The scenery is exceedingly fine, and indeed the view from the road to Cettinje is claimed as almost unsurpassed in Europe. The first of the narrows is between the Kobila range (1470 ft.) and the west point of the peninsula Lustica. It leads into the Bay of Topla, and the steamer heads direct for Castelnuovo, leaving on the left the Sutorina, the lower part of the Canali valley, a portion of the territory of the Republic of Ragusa ceded to Turkey in 1699 to form a buffer state between herself and Venice. The Slav name of Castelnuovo is Erzegnovi, and it was founded in 1373 by the Bosniak king Tvarko I., Kotromanovic. In 1483 it was enlarged and raised to the position of principal place in the dukedom of Herzegovina, founded by Duke Stephan Sandalj (1435-1466). It lies on the slopes of Monti Dobrastica and Radostak, piling up most picturesquely above the little harbour, with great bastions split with wide cracks and deformed by the loss of pieces which have fallen into the sea, but clothed with ivy which hides much of the ruin. It has often changed its masters. After the death of Stephen Sandalj it became Turkish; in 1538 the Turks were driven out by the Spaniards and Venetians. At that time the Spaniards built the fort which crowns the hill to the north of the town. It was the only part of Dalmatia ever held by the Spaniards. Next year the Sardinian renegade, Hassan Barbarossa, put the whole garrison to the sword, and also conquered Risano. The Turks retained possession of Castelnuovo till 1687, when, by the assistance of the Knights of Malta, it again became Venetian. Three Turkish inscriptions still remain; one over the door of the Spanish fort, which was restored by the Turks, a second of 1660 over the Porta Terra Ferma, and a third on the well in the piazza.

Towards the east is Kloster Savina, a monastery said to have been founded in 1030, and now the summer residence of the Servian Orthodox bishops of Cattaro. There is, however, nothing to be seen authorising so early a date; the smaller of the two churches may perhaps date from the thirteenth century, since it has a pointed wagon vault and transverse ribs without mouldings. In this church the Knights of Malta who died some two hundred years ago lie buried. The interest of the place lies in the seventeenth-century silver-work, in which the treasure is rich. It includes some twenty carved crosses mounted in silver and enamel from Mount Athos; hanging lamps of pierced silver, in which the design is much older than the workmanship, with medallions of saints; silver-mounted book-covers, one of which is decorated with enamels; a most curious "five-bread platter," with a cup in the centre, and two little cruets and two little platters on projecting arms, all in pierced work of archaic design enriched with blue enamel; and some embroidered vestments of the fifteenth century, all of which are said to have been brought from Studenitza. Farther on is Meljina, with a lazaretto of the seventeenth century.

The view from the road between these two places is enchanting. Above the blue waters of the Bay of Teodo the ground rises to the mountains, which divide it from the Gulf of Cattaro, while farther still and bluer, the greater heights of Montenegro cut the sky with their serrated edges. To reach the Bay of Teodo another of the narrows is passed, the Canal of Kombor, by the foot of Mount Dvesite. Here is a naval station. The land is the most fertile in the whole district, and here is grown the famous Margamino wine. At Bianca, near Teodo, Danilo, Prince of Montenegro, used to pass the summer. Farther on is the Strait of Le Catene, so called because in 1381 Lewis of Hungary actually put chains across it to protect the inner portions. Opposite to the channel is Perasto, to the left the Valle di Risano, to the right the Gulf of Cattaro. In front of Perasto are two little islands, with picturesque buildings upon them--the Scoglio S. Giorgio, and the Madonna del Scarpello, a little church with a green cupola, containing a picture of the Madonna ascribed as usual to S. Luke, a Byzantine work decked with gold and silver, brought hither from Negropont in 1452. For many years the Bocchesi brought shiploads of stone to increase the size of the island, and still, on July 22 of each year, a stone-laden boat goes from Perasto to the rock. There are two festivals celebrated here, of which the more important is that of the Assumption, August 15. The other, the Birth of the Virgin, on September 8, is less so. There is a proverb "Entre le due Madonne cade la pioggia," the greatest rainfall occurring between the two festivals. On festival days the picture is decked with rings, chains, &c., kept locked up at Perasto during the rest of the year. The property of the church is over £30,000. For five hundred years it has been a centre of interest in the Bocche. According to the legend, a luminous figure of the Madonna was seen by a sailor on the rock on July 22, 1452, and on that spot a chapel was erected. The present church was built in 1628. Inside are a good many late seventeenth-century pictures, and in two rooms close by are votive pictures of the usual kind. There is a café on the island for the benefit of pilgrims. The island of S. Giorgio is gradually wasting away. The monastery is said to have been the most ancient in the district, and a list of the abbots "in commendam" from 1166 exists, with notices of the church and monastery, going back to the tenth century. There was a long contest for its possession between Cattaro and Perasto, ending in the assassination of the abbot by the Perastines, who took the property by force. Venice gave the commune of Cattaro an annual subvention as _solatium_. The abbey, destroyed in 1571, was rebuilt in 1624, and in 1654 was plundered by the Turks, and then almost ruined by earthquake in 1667. The French erected a battery upon it, which was abandoned some thirty years ago. The church-was restored for service on October 27, 1878.

Near Risano, at Sopoti (the rushing), is an intermittent waterfall 45 ft. high, which I was told was 100 ft. wide. As soon as it runs dry the cave from which it issued can be entered for several hundred yards. The flow commences after heavy rains, and at the same times a well, or spring, at Cattaro spirts up with such force as to throw out stones of several pounds' weight. Above Risano are two strong fortresses, erected after the insurrection of the Crivoscians in 1881. The revolt of 500 men against conscription necessitated the mobilisation of a whole _corps d'armée_ to subjugate them. They lived on the slopes of inaccessible mountains, and the troops had to make the mountain paths into roads practicable for artillery. The rebels were taken between troops from Risano and Orohovac, and others who came from the Herzegovinian mountains. Part laid down their arms, and part fled into Montenegro. To prevent a recurrence of the trouble, and perhaps also with an eye to Montenegro, the forts and a number of blockhouses were built, which one may see high up the mountains, sometimes against the sky-line.

A white line about 3,000 ft. high marks the military road between Perasto and Cattaro; the way of access to the blockhouses, in each of which a detachment of twenty-five men, with two non-commissioned officers and one lieutenant, is on duty for a year at a time, bearing great heat in summer (for it is said that an egg laid on the rock in the sun is hard in eight minutes), while in winter they are often blocked by the snow for two or three weeks together.

Perasto is now a little place of some 500 inhabitants, but shows in its ruined palaces and unfinished church that it was once populous and prosperous. It has had a stormy history, during which the Perastines have shown themselves sturdy fighters and loyal supporters of their overlords, and is the one city of the Bocche which remained faithful and grateful to Venice, even after Campo Formio. When the Austrian troops came to take possession, the gonfalon, which had been confided to the Perastines by the Republic, as a reward for their faithful services almost four centuries before, was buried beneath the altar of S. Nicolò with a solemn requiem, as if for the burial of a father. It was a red flag with a yellow border, and the winged lion in the centre, prepared to defend the cross planted upon a base rising out of the sea. It was only consigned to the army in maritime and land enterprises in the Levant. The city was distinguished by Venice with the title of "fedelissima gonfaloniera." The guards were selected from the twelve "casate" into which the city was divided, the names being those of the original feudal families. It is asserted that the Perastines had the same honour conferred upon them by the Servian kings, the guard consisting of a company of twelve. Some say that it was their valour in taking the citadel of Cattaro in 1378 which was the origin of the trust. After the contests with Cattaro in 1160 it followed the fortunes of that city till 1365, but in that year Perasto put itself under Venice. The activity shown in assisting Victor Pisani in 1378 had other results, for it was attacked shortly afterwards and sacked by the allies of Lewis of Hungary. Till about 1400 it was subject either to Lewis or Tvartko of Bosnia. It is now quite a little place, with some 500 inhabitants. The palaces, with fine stone balconies now falling into ruins, which were inhabited by the noble families, show how it prospered under Venetian rule, as do the high campanile and the fragment of a large church on the model of La Salute at Venice, commenced some hundred and thirty years ago, but never completed. It is entered from the sacristy of the small church, the arch and vault of the apse towering above it, and showing the whole of the vault and the caps of the pilasters over its roof. In the museum are a banner taken from the Turks in 1654, a sword presented to the commune by Peter Zrinyi, and the gonfalon already mentioned, which was buried beneath the altar. A fine processional cross, a sixteenth-century filigreed chalice, a monstrance, and several reliquaries are also preserved in the place; and here is also the mausoleum of Bishop Zmajevic of Antivari, who took the Albanians to Borgo Erizzo near Zara, and was a Perastine by birth. It lies at the foot of Monte Cassone (about 2,900 ft. high), upon which is Fort S. Croce. From its base the Bay of Ljuta stretches away south-eastwards towards Dobrota, with Orohovac at its foot. The two Stolivos beneath the lofty Vrmac, and Perzagno may be seen on the opposite shore. This last-named place stands finely on a promontory, with a large domed church (an unfinished shell with gaping window-openings) crowning the eminence, whilst many houses, of the same date as those at Perasto, and with fine angle balconies, are scattered about the road along the shore, from which there are delightful views. A late Renaissance church has a rather pretty rose-window with radiating shafts recalling the Romanesque.

Nearer to Cattaro is Mula, and on the other side Dobrota; along both roads are red and white oleanders, orange and lemon trees, ancient figs and chestnuts, locust beans (carob), olives, pomegranates, and main' flowers, among which may be specially named beautiful pale mauve irises. The torrent Skurda, or Fiumara, separates the mountains Pestingrad and Mrajanik from the lofty Lovcen, which towers above Cattaro to the height of 5,770 ft. It is the holy mountain of Montenegro; on it the great Wladika Pietro, the singer of the Servian redemption, chose to be buried, as if from that height his spirit might watch and protect the land to which he devoted his life. Every year a pilgrimage climbs to the white-walled little chapel which sparkles on the dark mountain side. The Servian dream is for the waters of Cattaro to be covered with ships under the eagle of the Nemagna, for the country folk know well the story of Uros, the great Stephan Nemagna, and the epic of the wars against the Turks.

In the city of Cattaro, the ancient Ascrivium or Acrivium, some small remains of the Roman period are to be seen encrusted in the walls of the clock-tower, an altar and a memorial to a girl and her teacher. At the beginning of the ninth century it boasted several fine buildings, to which a rich man named Andreaccio Saracenis, mentioned as "Certo zitadino nobile zintilhomo si de generazion come di richeza," contributed. Towards the end of the eighth century S. Maria Infunara was built by him in the rope-makers' district, and here he also founded a convent to enable his second daughter Theodora to lead the life of contemplation. He also paid for the first cathedral of S. Trifone, which Porphyrogenitus says was circular. The body of this martyr of the third century was being brought to Venice from Asia Minor by certain merchants, when a storm obliged them to shelter in the Bocche. The magnates of the city and Andreaccio treated with the pilot for its purchase, and paid 200 Roman solidi for the shrine, and 100 for a gemmed crown above it. On January 13, 809, clergy and people went by ship to Porto Rose to fetch the body. On their return the bishop invited them to stop on the spot where the church was to be built, and hymns were sung. February 3, the reputed day of his martyrdom, was accepted as the festival, and a figure of S. Trifone was put on the standard of the city. Certain coins which bore his effigy were named after him. The sarcophagus of Andreaccio, in which his wife was also buried, was found beneath the street in 1840, between the cathedral and the bishop's palace. A portion of the ciborium of his church is encrusted in the wall of the sacristy inscribed: "Andree sci ad honorem sociorvmq majorem," and other fragments of the same period have been found during the restoration, which is still going on. That these fragments were part of an ambo on three columns, to which reference has been found, is proved by the inscription from the Ash Wednesday service which runs along it, "Memento te homine," &c. The front had two crosses beneath semicircular heads, with conventional trees or candlesticks beside them, and a great piece of circular interfacings, small and large, like the slabs at S. Maria in Trastevere, Rome. The sides had bands of ornament dividing the surface into unornamented sunken panels. A capital or two of the same period were also found, a relief of peacocks drinking from a vase, and some antique fragments, a piece of a frieze, a column of cipollino and several of granite, and a few antique caps.

The rock above the town, called Stirovnik, has a chapel upon it, the Madonna della Salute, now used as an ossuary, which has a piece of Lombard carving inserted in the tympanum above the door. The present cathedral was built about the middle of the twelfth century. A great effort was made, contributions were invited, and a tax of three per cent, on legacies was imposed. Success crowned the effort, and on June 19, 1166, Bishop Malone consecrated the altars, amid the rejoicings of the Bocchesi. The head of S. Trifone, stolen in 968, was brought from Constantinople in 1227 by Matteo Bonascio. At first deposited in S. Pietro, it was brought to the cathedral on December 20, with great pomp. In return, he was given the field of S. Theodore, and his family was exempted from communal taxes in perpetuity.

The plan of the cathedral is that of a Roman basilica with nave and aisles. The three apses are semicircular, with pilasters externally. The nave has three quadripartite bays, and a half-bay to the west. The aisles have seven quadripartite bays, two to each one of the nave, with columns between the three pairs of piers upon which the vaults rest. The bay before the apse has been a step higher than the rest. What the arrangement will eventually be it is difficult to say, judging from the state of the interior on the two occasions when I was in Cattaro. The columns of the nave are some of them Byzantine-Roman, and some of them Corinthian. The aisle windows and the fine east window are Gothic. The vaults are most of them of the sixteenth century, the towers of the façade seventeenth or eighteenth, and the great rose-window and the doorway below, late Gothic with Renaissance details, rebuilt after the earthquake of 1667. The nave is about 88 ft. long, the aisles within the towers 81 ft., breadth of nave, 19 ft. 6 in., of the aisles 9 ft. 9 in. The ciborium is exceedingly interesting. It rests upon four octagonal columns of the red marble of Lustizza, a place not far away. The altar was rebuilt and beautified in 1362, and it is probable that the baldacchino is of that date. On the base on which the pillars rest are sinkings showing that the altar had a central octagonal pillar, with four smaller circular ones surrounding it. The caps of the ciborium are rather richly carved, and the lintel bears on three sides subjects in relief from the legend of S. Trifone, the back being carved with ornament. The illustration shows the three stages of trefoiled arches, the two lower with coupled colonnettes. The lowest has caryatid figures of a warrior and a civilian in front of the angles to the west. The next stage has twisted colonnettes at the angles, the third squat single shafts, and on a little crowning member pierced with four arches stands a gilded angel, the rest of the canopy being octagonal. The proportions of the figures are squat, and the carving rather rough. The first time I saw it I was able to examine it closely, as it was surrounded by scaffolding, and there were some remains of colour on the figures; but I should not like to assert that it was original, since I understand that the reliefs were painted to imitate marble, and the figures gilded about the middle of the last century. The silver pala is said to be fixed on the wall of the apse during the completion of the restoration; it certainly was not there when I visited the cathedral, and I have not seen it.

The treasury contains a good many rather uninteresting objects, such as arm and leg reliquaries of the fourteenth century, or later rather, decorated with nielli and bosses in relief, and a few others shaped like vases borne on stems; on some of them the date 1483 can be traced. The reliquary of the body of S. Trifone is of silver, and rather rough sixteenth-century work, but encloses a wooden coffer, upon which remains of ninth-century paintings have been discovered. The head reliquary is of gold and enamel, the stem and an arcade round the upper part of fourteenth-century work (the upper portion re-made in the seventeenth), and the foot apparently of an intermediate period, with early Renaissance details upon a Gothic plan, medallions in relief, and rough scroll-work. The knop has eight roundels with niello crosses crossleted; on the stem are saints in niello in vesicas. The arches of the canopied arcade are filled with figures in relief in couples and enamels in _basse-taille_, red and blue alternately. The nielli have had a ground of blue enamel. These two reliquaries and a crystal cross in a very graceful setting, early Renaissance in style, are kept in a receptacle lined with cut velvet, upon which are embroideries of half-figures of saints beneath niches raised in gold; above the niches are domes, and between them twisted columns, probably originally part of a vestment. A globe-shaped ciborium, with cresting and knop of the fourteenth century, is interesting. Upon the globe a pattern with beasts and leaves is chased; the foot is conical and sexfoil in plan, with little niello medallions and piercings on the perpendicular parts of two steps. The knop has pinnacles and pierced gables. A half-length figure of Christ in silver, upon a seventeenth-century pierced hemispherical base, is well modelled and designed, and a reliquary cross of wood used by the Capuchin monk Marcus Avianus, on September 12, 1683, to bless the allied hosts on the Leopoldsberg before the relief of Vienna from the Turks, deserves mention. In the treasury is also a great Romanesque crucifix of painted wood, over life-size, with the feet crossed. According to tradition it belonged to the church of the Franciscans outside the walls, built in 1288 by Elena, wife of Orosius I. The church was pulled down when there was war between Venice and the Turks, and moved within the Porta Gordicchio, which was therefore called the Porta S. Francesco. Most of the convents are now used by the military authorities.

La Colleggiata is the ancient church of S. Maria Infunara, which Andreacci Saracenis founded, but was rebuilt in 1221, during the Servian period. It has a nave two bays in length, the first cross-vaulted, and the second with a dome enclosed within an octagonal drum, and with a barrel-vaulted presbytery before the apse. An aisle to the north, continued to the tower as a sacristy, is later. The apse has shallow pilasters dividing the exterior surface into three, in the centre of which is a walled-up east window of two lights, with a cross within a circle in the tympanum beneath the enclosing arch. The arch of the south door is perhaps a fragment of the original building, and the west door also looks early. In the aisle is a Virgin and Child, with painted faces, and the hands and feet added in relief and painted. The draperies are silver and silver-gilt, patterned, and each figure has a nimbus formed of a gilded patterned roll. The background is of silver, with little angels supporting the Virgin's nimbus, and there is a curious frame of filigree arabesques of tinsel set in wire and standing free.