whitebeard

Saturday, November 04, 2006

CHAPTER IV

PRATOVECCHIO AND ROMENA

" . . . ; the ruined wall

stands when its wind-worn battlements are gone."

The main road down the Valley from Stia leads after a short mile to the little town of Pratovecchio. Here was once a strong and important castle of the Guidi. On the death of Guidoguerra II it became the seat of his widow, the Countess Imilia, who founded a convent of Camaldolense nuns here for her daughter, the Abbess Sofia, the masterful lady who as we have seen ruled al! the country round from her monastic palace as regent for her young nephew, Guidoguerra IV. The castle fell to the share of the Conti Guidi of Dovadola in the subsequent division of the family dominions, and it must have been here that Dante stayed with Count Guido Salvatico, if vie may accept Boccaccio’s account of that baron's hospitality to the exile. Whether true or not, the belief that it once sheltered the divine poet is the chief pride of the little town. After being confiscated from the Counts of Dovadola by Florence, in the fourteenth century, Pratovecchio appears to have been joined later to the jurisdictioris of the Conti Guidi of Poppi, from whom it was definitely wrested in 1440 by the Republic. lt is now'a good dea! modernised. But it has remains of the wall_ and towers of its feudal past, and the porticoedstreets, striped with sunshine and shadow, are full of the picturesque colour and charm of the gay Italian life. (The inn at Pratovecchio, kept by Oreste Spigliantini, is a comfortable resting-place. The rooms are large and airy, especially those at the top of the house, and the cooking is good.)

Beside the river stands the ancient convent of the Abbess Sofia, which stilI keeps its pale, white-robed inmates, who live strictly cloistered within their high walls, dead to the world. They are all, I believe, ladies of ;:lOble family, but the once rich and splendid community has been stripped ofits wealth, and alI theartistic treasures which it used to possess have had to be soldo There is also a convent of Dominican nuns in the town, who are called the Monache Nuove, while those of the more ancient foundation are called the Monache Vecchie.

Just beyond the town one comes to the old Badia of Poppiena, where there were monks even before the foundation of the Abbess Sofia's convent. But they have long vanished, and the church, which has a picturesque campanile, has been altered from its old form. Its only interest is an early fifteenth century picture of much charm and beauty, hanging in the choir, behind the high altar, an Annunciation, in bad condition, but preserving still to a great degree the fine miniature-like colouring and the brilliance of the gold. The figures, especially that of the angel, are notable far grace. While keeping to the conventionally idealistic treatment of the later Giottesques, the picture shows something of the new life which the more realistic painters of the period were imparting to FIorentine art. It has been claimed by a recent critic ( See the Rassegna d'Arte, Anno iv., No. 12, Dec. 1904) as the work of Giovanni del Ponte, an interesting painter of that time in Florence.
(note: An altar-piece formerly, in the church at Poppiena, is now in the National Gallery, where, on account of its place of origin, it is attributed to Jacopo Landini, a fourteenth century painter belonging to Pratovecchio. The writer mentioned above, however, pronounces this also to be by Giovanni del Ponte. )

There are two or three delightful mule paths from Pratovecchio through the woods and aver the hills to Camaldoli. One way leads up the course of a little torrent called the Fiumicello, past the hamlet of Valiano, where there is a Pietà of Giottesque style in the little church, to Casalino, and thence up and up the bare and stony hillside almost to the top of the long ridge of the Giogana. After a walk of three hours or so, you descend through thick pine woods to the Sacro Eremo.

Another path starts from Poppiena and goes up through idyllic groves of chestnut trees, and across an open moor, and then descends into the deep hollow where Moggiona lies, an ancient castle once of some importance and mentioned in a royal diploma of 933. There is nothing left ofthe castle, and the village is oflittle interest. From Moggiona the path climbs up again till the high road is reached, and after a short distance, you arrive at the old monastery of Camaldoli.

apposite Pratovecchio, on the right bank of the Arno, the hill of Romena rises abruptly from the water's edge and lifts its skeleton castle into the sky. Of all the ruined strongholds of the Casentino, Romena has the most tragic aspect. The stricken towers, rearing themselves above the parched terraces that circle the hill beneath, seem to tell, not of time's slow decay, but of some sudden destruction fallen upon them for their sins. lt is as if the heat of the illicit fires in which Maestro Adamo coined the false florins for the wicked Counts had seared the stones of the castle. From everywhere in the Valley the gaunt towers are conspicuous, standing up alien and apart, not sharing alike with the rest of the Valley in the sweet influences of the light and air. lf on a clear day there be but one little cloud in the sky, Romena will be black beneath it amid the golden and purple glory around. But when the Valley rests under a soft shadow, the towers stand up pallid on their peak, like untranquil ghosts. Again, on stormy days, they will appear above the rolling drifts of cloud, fired by a reflection from some unseen gleam of the lurid day. And in the evening dusk, when the sky quickens into a beauty of rose, and the hills to the east are warm and golden, Romena grows dark alone, the sullen towers scarcely reflecting the western splendour, and unkindled by any beam of candle within.

It is a long steep climb up to the Castle. The path at first is pleasantly shaded by chestnut trees, but as you approach the summit it becomes bare and stony, flanked only by a few scanty olives and thin vines, as it winds without the encircling walls of the stronghold. The Castle, set upon the crest and verge of the hill, must have been of great strength and size. It is said to have been defended by fourteen towers. One lofty tower still stands guarding the southern end of the great court or piazza, and at the north end rises the huge and massive Torre del Mastio, the last and innermost defence and refuge in times of siege. It rears itself above an inner enclosure, where the palace of the Counts stood, and which is entered through a lower tower, once separated from the piazza by a moat and drawbridge. Some of the palace chambers still remain altered, however, by the various Podestàs who occupied the castle after it had fallen into the hands of Florence. The shields of some of these governors moulder on the walls. An ancient cistern exists beneath this inner Keep, and there was once a subterranean passage by which the tower might be reached from the outer enclosure. The curious may also discover traces of dungeons and oubliettes.

On the precipitous slopes of the hill below the remains of the many circles of walls may be seen. The outermost was half a mile in circumference, and a hundred families were once housed within the citadel,

within which there was also an hospital. Two ruined gateways are visible on the north side, and the ancient- looking farmhouse beneath the castle on the south was once the Podesteria, or court of justice.

This is all that is left of the home of the great Counts Palatine. The pleasant grass grows over the traces of Guido, Alessandro and their brother, who live on nevertheless for ever in the poet's terrible judgment roll. Perhaps, if we could read what was written long ago on the ground, we might discover here the lost footprints of the exile himself. There can be little doubt that Dante stayed at Romena or was at least acquainted with the place; that he climbed the hill and perhaps slaked his thirst himself at Fonte Branda be1ow. He m1ist have been thrown much into contact with Alessandro and Aghinolfo da Romena at the time that he was actively engaged in the affairs of the Bianchi, whose cause both brothers zealously adopted, and is likely enough to have been their guest. Perhaps here in the society of these descendants of mighty sires he may have been led to the philosophic meditations on the fallacy of deriving gentilezza from antica ricchezza, which he expounds in the Convivio. As he remembers the Counts in his great poem later only to damn them out of the mouth of Maestro Adamo, it is to be supposed that, if he did experience their hospitality, the obligation for it must have been wiped out afterwards by personal wrongs oi by treachery on their part towards his political ideals.

But however unworthy the disposition of its lords may have been, the hill-top of Romena was a fit abode for the lofty thought of a poet. Though the castle walls are fallen now, the scene remains the same as then. Lifted up into the great concave of blue, you look down upon the emerald plain patterned by the shining coils of the river, and away over castles and villages to the girdling ranges of purple forest and silver rock and golden cloud. What a place at night this would be for one whose meditation was upon the significances of the heavenly spheres !

Just below the castle on the path down to the tiny hamlet you pass by Fonte Branda. The spring, with this famous name, by which it appears always to have been known, is now but a tiny trickle issuing from the hillside beneath a ruined stone archway. There can be little doubt, considering its position dose

to the earthly abode of Maestro Adamo, that it is this Fonte Branda, and not the fountain at Siena, which the false coiner recalls amid the tortures of the Inferno.

Some half mile further down stands the splendid old Pieve, which is the best example of the so-called Countess Matilda's churches in the Valley, as it was very carefully restored in 1893 and the accretions of later times were cleared away_ It stands on the slope of the hill among the fields like some sanctuary in a medioeval romance which an errant knight comes upon unawares in a forest. Its solitary position gives it peculiar charm, and the effect of the noble exterior rising in pallid stone, fretted with rich shadows within a setting of green, is very beautiful. The semicircular east end, ribbed with. columns and pierced by round-headed windows, with delicate pillars dividing the lights, has been touched. only here and there by the restorer, and the crumbling state of the stone gives picturesqueness to the rich and simple contours. The sculptured work of the capitals has unfortunately almost completely perished. The interior is very noble and impressive, and is quite free from florid and tawdry ornament and adjuncts. The original proportions are however now lost owing to the destruction at some time of the two last bays of the nave. In its complete form the church must have been singularly long and narrow. The capitals are like those at Stia, and some of the same figures occur here, as the snarling beast with head turned round and tail curled over his back, and a curious design of a human head and feet, with draperies or wings, perhaps intended for a seraph. An inscription upon the last column on the south side: Tempore famis MCLII. (in the time of the famine 1152), apparently alludes to the building of the church, unless it be the date of a restoration. Upon the corresponding capital opposite one reads: Henricus (?) Plebanus fecit, also with a date in the twelfth century. The four faces of this capital represent the mystical Foundation of the' Church, under the figures of Christ committing the keys to Peter, the sons of Zebedee fishing, and the four Evangelic Beasts. The graceful pattern of grapes, wi th birds plucking at them, upon the abacus, doubtless signifies Christ as the Vine. A capital in the west wall shows a very grotesque Adam and Eve, and another column has a winged and feathered being on all the four faces of the capital, carrying on its head now a cross, now a creature with a long tail and four legs ending in c1aws, now a bird with a human head, while four grotesques form the angles. One would fain be a Danie1 to read these mysterious characters of medioeval religious art. I was told that the particular form of cross worked repeatedly into the ornamentation is the cross of St. Agatha, the protectress of the fìe1ds from storms and unfavourable weather. These sculptures are in wonderful preservation, the thick coating of whitewash which had been spread over it and over the arches and the walls above for centuries till 1893 having protected the work so well that it looks as if it had been cut yesterday.

The remains of an older church may be traced in the present building: .part of the original masonry is built into the north wall, and the broken bases .of two old columns are embedded in the steps of the sanctuary. The crypt is also part of the first church. Its walls are in good preservation, and it contains the remains of the old stone altar and the bases of the columns which once supported the vaulted roof.

In the restoration of 1893 the floor of the church, which had been raised till almost level with the sanctuary, was lowered to the original level, and the hidden bases of the columns were uncovered, and the stonework of them was renewed where it had decayed away. A wall which crossed the church from the belfry down to the corresponding door on the south side, dividing it into an upper part for the clergy and a lower for the people, was removed at the same time. There are one or two medioeval pictures in the church. An early Madonna and Child upon the left-hand wall, and on the opposite side, part of a triptych of Giottesque style, fourteenth century, the Madonna and Child, with SS. Peter and Paul below, the first with his hand upon the kneeling figure of the donor, perhaps one of the Guidi, whose head has a good deal of individuality, though the work otherwise is quite conventional. On a side panel are depicted St. John Baptist and St. Anthony. On the same wall hangs a fifteenth century painting of much interest, which has suffered terribly from decay. Faded as it is, however, the Madonna, with her fair face, deep-lidded eyes, and the slender, wistful Child upon her knee, keep their old grace and charm, and one can still appreciate something of the dignity of the saints grouped around her throne. The work is very reminiscent of the school of Domenico Veneziano and his followers.

Romena on this side of the hill has a different and gentler aspect. Around and beyond the church there are woods and cool green glades scored by rocky watercourses, and the air is full of the rustling of hidden streams.

"li ruscelletti, che dai verdi colli

del Casentin discendon giuso in Amo,

facendo lor canali freddi e molli."

It is in this guise that his earthly dwelling-place haunts the burning vision of Maestro Adamo in Hell

and sharpens his intolerable longing. To pass from the mere terrestrial ardours of the hill-top at noonday into the chequered shade and rest on the margin of one of these rushing brooks is a sensation which brings home to one very vividly the cruelty of the fate meted out by "rigid justice," as interpreted by the poet, to the man who had sought to defraud the sacred seal of the Baptist of its truth and honour.

A pleasant path from Romena leads through the woods and over a hill to Borgo alla Collina. Another and even more delightful way to the same place keeps. upon the slope of the hill over the Arno, now ascending, now descending, to the edge of the rippling water, which spreads out here in shallow quiet pools, or narrows into a swift current, curling within a wide shingly bed, as it flows towards the towered hill of Poppi.