IVCamaldoli and St Romuald

“Nel crudo sassa infra Tevere ed ArnoDa Cristo prese l’ultimo sigilloChe le sue membra du’ anni portarno.”(Par.11, 106 ff.)

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

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

SITUATION OF LA VERNA

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

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

VINE CULTIVATION (CASENTINO)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

ENTRANCE TO LA VERNA

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Qui è RomualdoQui son’ li frati miei che dentro il chiostroFermar li piedi e tennero il cuor saldo.”(Par.22, 49 ff.)

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

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

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

CAMALDOLI (CASENTINO)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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