GENZANO AND FRASCATI.
What is interesting to visitors in Rome, and indeed in all Italy, is not merely their stay in certain known localities, or their sight-seeing within a certain beaten track; it is also the casual observation of less famous and more intimate scenes, and the residence in less crowded and more attractive, because more peculiar, neighborhoods.
The curious festival, more carnivalesque than religious, that takes place every Sunday in August in the Piazza Narona, in Rome, and during which pedestrians and carriage-goers wade and splash through a shallow, artificial lake, produced by the regulated overflowing of the centre-fountain, is a sight unfamiliar to strangers and tourists, yet none the less a very characteristic sport, and interesting especially to such as view Rome chiefly in a historic and antiquarian light. Again, the "Ottobrate," a species of christianized bacchanalia, an innocent merry-making answering in some sort to our dear old familiar gathering of "Harvest Home," is a thing more often heard of than witnessed by flying visitors to the Eternal City. In October, also, the Holy Father visits different convents, and a few ladies not unfrequently procure the privilege, through "friends at court," of following in his train, and thus gaining admittance to strictly enclosed nunneries, and being present at touching little ceremonies performed very simply by the Pope himself in the poor, plain chapels of these voluntary prisoners of love. Sometimes he says a few words of encouragement and advice; sometimes he gives benediction while the untutored choir of nuns sing some simple hymn; sometimes he assembles the community, and gives them his solemn blessing. There are the "Celestines" (so-called from their blue veil beneath the black one), whose convent is in a retired street not far from St. John Lateran, and whose enclosure does not necessitate a grating, but compels them to wear their veils down while speaking to strangers, and not to advance further than the threshold of the inner house-door, while their visitor stands without the line, yet face to face with them. There are the Dominicanesses, near the Piazza Trajana, at "San Domenico e Sisto," whose profession is impressively accompanied by the heart-stirring ceremony of prostration beneath a funeral pall, while the choir sing the solemn dirge of the De Profundis. When these nuns take the habit and first become novices, they are asked, at a certain part of the service, whether they choose the crown of thorns or the wreath of roses, both of which lie before them on a table. Of course there is but one answer, but, the ceremony over, the rose, or bridal wreath, replaces for the day the coronal of thorns. There is a convent of a very severe order, called the "Sepolte-Vive," or "buried alive," whose rule is almost inhumanly severe, and has never received absolute confirmation from the Holy See, but only toleration, or permission, for such as feel themselves drawn to such appalling austerities. They dig their own graves, and wear fetters on the wrist, and, when in fault, no matter how slight, a placard on their backs indicating their peculiar failing. When news is brought to the superioress of the death of a parent or relation of any one of the sisters, the bereaved one is not told of her loss, but it is announced that "one among us has lost a member of her family;" and Masses are offered for the departed without any further mention of him or her. Again, there is a Carmelite convent in Rome, I forget where, in which a miraculous crucifix has been preserved for about fifty years—a strange image, which seems instinct with life and expression, seems to speak to and look at you, fascinates the gaze, and stirs the least impressionable heart. It is not much spoken of even in Rome, that city where marvels are no longer marvels, and where miracles are more credible than business negotiations elsewhere; but it is enough that in one of these Papal October visits to convents, two persons of calm judgment, both English, both converts, and one the sister of an eloquent and gifted Anglican divine, saw it, and declared that there was something about it far beyond the common run of even skilfully carved and elaborately chiselled masterpieces.
To pass from convents to hospitals, the sight during the evenings of Holy Week at the "Trinità de Pellegrini" is something not less interesting than the oft-recounted glories of the Sistine Chapel and the thrilling rubrics of the Pontifical High Mass at St. Peter's shrine. Rome is still, in this century, a real centre of pilgrimage; and what could be a greater proof of the truth of the faith she teaches than this apparently incredible fact—this anachronism in the eyes of our enlightened progressists? Men and women, chiefly from the rural and mountainous districts of Italy, but also from Hungary, and Germany, and faithful Poland, come begging their arduous way, in simple faith and fervent love, perfectly undisturbed by doubts they have never heard discussed, by the "spirit of the age" they have never dreamt of as being in antagonism with the spirit of the church, by the childish and wilful gropings after religious reconstruction which they, if they knew of them, would call madness, and pity as such. They come with their strange tattered costumes, all incrusted with dirt, and embroidered into perplexing patterns with accumulation of unheeded dust, and knock at the door of this gigantic hospital, where they find a real home and a ready welcome. Other men and women, chiefly of the higher classes, and, like the pilgrims, of divers nationalities, come to tend them and offer them literally the same services Abraham offered to the voyager-angels when they stopped, travel-stained and foot-sore, at the entrance of his tent. In an upper hall are laid tables laden with abundant and wholesome food, of which a portion is reserved by each wanderer for the morrow's breakfast, and the disposition of which, from personal observation, I know to be as follows: a small loaf of bread sliced in the middle, and meat and sauce crammed as tight as possible between the two halves thus making a substantial but somewhat ungainly sandwich. In a large room on the lower floor are placed benches against the wall, with a foot-board running along them, on which are rows of basins, with the necessary adjuncts of soap and towels. The washing of the pilgrims' feet is by no means a sinecure, or a graceful make-believe at biblical courtesies. It is a very real and slightly unpalatable business; but the grievance is far more the short time allowed to each person than the washing itself. The unfortunate feet of the weary pilgrims are more refreshed than thoroughly cleaned by one layer of soap; and it is to be wished that the time allotted could be sufficiently extended to allow the work to be well done, since it is attempted at all. The self-denial of those who undertake this most praiseworthy and mediæval charity must be enhanced by the fact that many tourists come to see this done, as a part of their Holy Week programme, and, being mostly curious and carping critics of English or American origin, their comments are more sarcastic than encouraging. Here are wildernesses of dormitories, into which the pilgrims file in slow procession after supper, singing litanies and hymns. Let any other country point to such a palace of Christian charity, to such a freely supported and admirably managed institution, and then it may have claim to talk of progressive civilization! But instead of this, what do we see but poor-laws, that treat God's poor as animals, and the state in which God himself chose to be born, and live, and die, as a crime and a moral shame. "Till when, O Lord, till when?"
On Christmas night, another beautiful scene takes place in the female prison, on the "Piazza di Termini," opposite the baths of Aurelian, between the railway station and the church of the Cistercians, "Santa Maria degli Loyoli." Yet there is nothing to describe, no gorgeous ritual, no impressive assemblage, no pageant to take the eye and divide the attention. Four whitewashed walls, an orderly throng of uniformly dressed women, a few hymns, in which the voices of the nuns, in whose charge the prisoners are, lead and predominate; a plain altar, an unpretending "Presepio," or representation of the stable of Bethlehem, and that is all. Well! what is there to say about this? No correspondent could fill a column with these details; yet they fill the heart of God, and make the heart of his sinless Mother glad, as she looks down on the repentant woman whose welfare is so dear to her in whom there is found no spot nor stain of guilt. And this is very different, no doubt, from the splendidly illuminated altar in San Luigi de Francesi, where the lighted tapers are pyramidally ranged in dazzling tiers of shining amber brightness, and where the fragrance of incense struggles hard not to be overpowered by the sweetness of the hot-house plants blooming in clusters around the steps and communion rails. Very different, too, from the artistic and elaborate "Presepio" at Sant' Andrea della Valle, where a veritable stage seems miraculously poised over the altar, and where all manner of wonderful details of Eastern scenery, somewhat mixed with prevailing Western conceptions and incongruities concerning the Orient, are displayed on a magnificent scale for the edification of the peasantry flocking into Rome from all sides. Very different, again, from the solemn ritual of "Santa Maria Maggiore" (though that has been for many years discontinued, on account of the abuses of which it was the unhappy occasion), the ceremonies that renewed most vividly the scene of the angels' announcement, and the pastoral welcome, on the moon-brightened plains round the stable of Bethlehem, the splendor of decoration gathered about the precious relic of the rude crib, whose straw, still preserved in this church, is now more glorious by far than conqueror's coat-of-mail or emperor's robe of ermine. But what of this difference, after all? Earth's costliness of display is earthly still, earth's poverty and nakedness is almost divine, because, whenever earth became the scene of any of God's choicest wonders, it was always in a state of destitution, which he ordained beforehand as a mystical preparation. God fashioned Adam out of common clay, and Eve from a bare rib; his own birth was in a stable, cold and forlorn, his life in an obscure artisan's shop, littered with common dust, filled with coarse tools; his death was on a common gibbet, on a bare mountain. Common animals, domestic drudges, and beasts of burden surrounded him at the dawn of his being; common criminals, rough men, coarse-minded gazers, were around him in his last hour. The only time he rode in any state, it was upon an ass, not a fancy war-steed with trappings of oriental magnificence, not even a stately mule, such as became later on a recognized and legitimate bearer of great dignitaries. The first men who welcomed him on earth were shepherds; the last who spoke to him were fishermen. But it is hardly necessary to say more on a theme so well known and so much canvassed; yet it is not unappropriate to the frame of mind which this picture of the midnight Mass in the prison induces and fosters. And just as it would be good for any Christian country to be able to show a hospital as well managed as the Pilgrim's Home we have glanced at, so would it be even better could any one of the nations of Europe point to prisons where repentance is taught by the rule of the Gospel and not by the regulations of a board of magistrates, and where confinement for one species of offence is not turned into a school of graduation for worse offences still.
The reader will forgive this roundabout introduction to the two beautiful reminiscences of which this paper is the subject, for these are both among the class of events described at the beginning as less famous, but more attractive because more peculiar.
One of them is of a private and purely personal nature, the other of a public sort, but rarer than reminiscences of Rome usually are.
There is a village about twenty miles from Rome, and two beyond Albano, the name of which is Genzano, and belongs, I believe, to the Chigi family, as does Laricia with its wild woods of chestnuts. It is an ordinary hamlet, with its church standing on a height to which two side straggling streets lead up, and the front of which is pretty well hidden by the block of irregular houses that divide the road-ways. For many generations this village had been famous for its Corpus Christi procession, and the peculiar way in which the procession's track was more carpeted than strewn with flowers. Strangers used to flock to see the floral festival, and Hans Andersen, in his Improvisatore, once gave the most vivid and picturesque account of it. Perhaps every one has not read this description, and few in this country at least have seen the procession. In 1848, the custom was discontinued, owing to the unsettled state of the country, and the tendency of the Carbonari to make disturbances at any popular gathering or demonstration, especially of a religious kind. In 1864, things being somewhat more stable under the protection of French troops and the promise of non-intervention on the part of the King of Italy, the festival of the Infiorata, as it is called, was again announced, and all Rome hurried to see it.
It took place in the evening. No description can do it justice, especially as its beauty was enhanced by that most hopelessly indescribable of circumstances—the loveliness of a southern summer's day. Albano looked from its puny heights over the wide plain that stretches to Ostia and the sea, covered with dusky gray-green olive-yards; the blue hills, where the chestnuts grow and overshadow the ruddy wealth of wild mountain strawberries beneath, rose like cupolas in the evening sky, that was alive with summer lightnings; the bright red and blue costumes of the peasant women, with their little tents of spotless linen squarely poised upon their heads, and their massive chains of gold and coral vying with their wonderful sword-shaped hair-pins for quaintness and for richness, stood out in picturesque relief against the dark background of the common-looking dwellings; through the bustle and clatter of an Italian crowd, there could yet be discerned the hush and stillness so familiar to our Northern hearts, so congenial to our idea of Sabbaths and church festivals; the noise seemed a distant hum, the whole scene a vision; and over it all, the spirit of faith that made it what it was, not a mere idle show to awake idle people, but a living gathering of living and believing souls, offering nature's purest gifts in their virgin integrity to the God of love, to Gesù Sacramentato, as the Italians so ingeniously and touchingly say.
Both streets leading up to the church were paved with flowers, in thick layers, symmetrically portioned out with squares corresponding to the width of the houses on either side of the road. Patterns of great delicacy were produced by these flowers, scattered into petals as they were, and no leaves nor stems carelessly appearing anywhere. Here, on one large space, were pictured the arms of the Chigi family, there, the arms of the bishop of the diocese, further still, those of the Holy See. In the centre of one of the streets, the grand compartment was taken up by a colored representation of an altar with candles and a monstrance, and the white Host within. A little lower down was a tiny fountain, more like a squirt than anything else, concealed in a mound of soft flower-petals. Patterns of geometrical figures, of Persian carpets, of fanciful monograms, filled up the many squares, while all along the sides, and supported by stakes, ran a low festoon of box-wreaths, guarding the flower-carpet from the feet of the eager crowd.
From above, from the many balconies and terraces, and from the roofs of the tall, old-fashioned houses, the people look down and gaze upon this wonderful tapestry, more elaborate and incomparably more beautiful than the choicest produce of the looms of Genoa, and Lyons, and the Gobelins—more precious and more fair than the silken hangings woven of old by the hands of queens and sovereign princesses.
And this is all for an hour! In a few moments, the procession and the following multitude will have passed over the floral tapestry, and every trace of its beauty will be gone. But why not? Its beauty is consecrated, and, when it has ministered to the greater glory of God, its mission will be over.
Every one knows the incident in the life of Sir Walter Raleigh, when, walking across a muddy road with his imperious and capricious sovereign, Elizabeth of England, the gallant courtier's velvet cloak, costly though it was, was not deemed too rich for a woman's footstool, and doubtless the graceful homage was considered as very little beyond an absolute necessity of courtesy. And shall this display of rarest loveliness and natural treasures, called the "Infiorata," be thought of otherwise than as a cloak thrown beneath the weary feet of the pilgrim Saviour?
Our Lord walks through many lands, and the way of men's hearts is very rugged here, very treacherous there, very uneven everywhere. Let him pause here for a moment, as he rests his feet on the carpet or cloak spread for him, and let him find in a few faithful hearts a path ready prepared for him, as fragrant and as beautiful as this floral "via sacra."
The procession leaves the church by one of the two diverging roads, and returns by the other. It is a regular Italian procession, somewhat grotesque in our eyes, unaccustomed to some little peculiarities, such as winged angels represented by children in scanty robes of tinselled muslin, and golden paper kites flying from their shoulders, but on the whole it is edifying in its very artlessness. There are many monks, walking two-and-two, and bearing lighted tapers; children in companies and sodalities with gaudy banners and streamers, priests in black and white, and cross-bearers and thurifers, and, lastly, the swaying canopy under which is borne the Lord of nature. While each person in the procession winds his way among the flower patterns, and carefully spares the perfection of the design as much as possible, the priest, on the contrary, carries the Blessed Sacrament right over in the centre of the broad path, and the crowd pour after him in heaving masses, leaving the track behind them strewn with remnants of box and olive borders and blended heaps of crushed flower-petals.
And so the sacred pageant is over. The sky is getting cloudy, and thunder-drops of almost tropic rain are falling noisily to the earth; people hurry home, but long before Albano is reached the storm is already furious, and bursts over the darkening plain. Many are detained at the inns of the white village whose gallerie of elm and ilex are so famous round Rome.
By the bye, these gallerie lead from Albano to the neighboring village of Frascati, an archiepiscopal see, and once the retreat of the Cardinal of York, the last of the Stuarts. He himself, with his unfortunate brother, is buried in St. Peter's; but in the village church of which he was titular archbishop is a tablet to his memory, recounting his many virtues, and the love and veneration in which his flock ever held him.
Frascati is the scene of the second reminiscence I have once before spoken of; one more domestic and more intimate than the last, and very interesting as being the record of an unusual favor shown to a foreigner by the Holy Father, Pope Pius IX.
There are a great many villas around Frascati, and one of the prettiest as well as most historical is the Villa Falconieri, the whilom abode of Santa Juliana Falconieri, to whom a chapel is dedicated in the house. The grounds are, as in most Italian villas, very badly kept (according to Northern ideas), but in their wildness more beautiful than the trimmest garden of Old or New England. A winding, steep road, bordered with box, leads to the mansion, whose wide marble chambers re-echo the few footsteps they ever bear, and whose best preserved ornaments are some marble busts and old frescoes. To the front stretches a lawn dotted with Spanish chestnut-trees, and beyond lies an alley of hoary and gigantic cypresses that seem the enchanted genii of perpetual silence. There is a peculiar odor about cypress-trees which can never be forgotten by one who has been much among these groves of living columns; and it is a well-known fact that the charm inherent in a familiar odor is one of the strongest that exists. Not only in this alley, a mile long, leading up through a maze of thickets to the ruins of Tusculum, but also in a weird quadrangle planted round a stone-coped pond, do these trees stand in their stern and sad majesty. Here, again, is silence, reigning undisputed; the grand path is grassy with weeds; the little cones drop into it and are never swept away; the brown branches of the trees fall upon it in autumn, and remain there till they decay into the soil; the water is stagnant, and the artificial rock-work in the centre of the pond is neglected and overgrown with crops of worthless yet not unlovely weeds. A landscape gardener would form and draw out a new map of these mismanaged acres; a painter would shout for joy at this picturesque frame for a historical love-scene, and would transfer the whole to his canvas, adding only, according to his fancy, the pale moon silvering the mysterious trees, or the setting sun, in its amethyst radiance, throwing golden arrows through the glorious openings of the cypress grove.
This villa of Santa Juliana Falconieri was once let, now many, many years ago, to an Englishman, a recent convert, and a well-known and zealous defender of his newly adopted faith. He was not unfrequently a guest at the neighboring monastery of Camaldoli, a beautiful hermitage embosomed in the woods, and where the white-robed monks follow a strict and ascetic rule, very different from the lives of hypocritical holiness that Protestants and liberators would make us believe is the present type of monastic perfection. One day, when the temporary owner of the Villa Falconieri was dining at the Camaldolese convent, the Holy Father, whose summer residence is close by, at a little village called Castel Gandolfo, overlooking the classic Lake Nemi, came with his retinue to visit the monks. He also stayed to dinner, which in Italy and among religious is in the middle of the day, and, the visit over, he spontaneously proposed to his English friend to make another halt at his house. A message was sent down in haste to prepare the villa, and so few were the servants there that it was not before the cavalcade of the Pope was at the head of the cypress alley that the end nearest the house was swept and cleaned. The wife and little daughter were ready to welcome the Holy Father, as his host introduced him into the pretty, picturesque dwelling. A throne had been temporarily arranged at the further end of the drawing-room, and a square of gold-edged velvet placed at the feet. The "Noble Guard," part of the Pontifical retinue, took their places around the room, seemingly a living wall, and other ecclesiastical attendants grouped themselves in various corners. This was an honor seldom bestowed on any but Roman princes, and then very sparingly, so that it was all the more a distinguished mark of personal friendship on the part of the good and fatherly Pope toward his English child. Not long before, those three, the father and mother and little daughter, had knelt before the Pope, and the parents had resolved and promised to embrace outwardly the religion they inwardly believed; the child had unknowingly played with its father's sword, and prattled, as unconscious little ones do, in the midst of these grave events.
Now, the child was not forgotten either, and the Holy Father kept it near his throne, and bestowed especial attention upon it, even while he conversed with the steadfast and happy parents. By-and-by, the Noble Guard were dismissed, and bivouacked outside the house, under the chestnut-trees, till it was dark. Then lanterns were hung on the branches and on the tall gates, and a regular illumination took place. When the Pope left, torches were carried around him and his cortége, all through the woods that cover the ground between Frascati and Castel Gandolfo. A tablet was put up in the vestibule or atrium of the villa, with the permission of the owner of the property, in commemoration of this signal honor conferred upon a stranger. These details are only a part of the many-sided recollections of this day, but, such as they are, they come from the lips of an eye-witness, and we are not conscious that they are in any degree exaggerated.
Nearly twelve years after this memorable visit, the villa was revisited by some of the persons who had been its temporary occupants during that occurrence, and it was found to be in exactly the same state as before; the dark cypress alley and the quadrangle, the chestnut-shaded lawn and deserted-looking house, showing no sign of the lapse of time. The former owner, however—a Cardinal Falconieri, I believe—was dead, and the property was disputed by two or three noble families. The chapel of Santa Juliana stood open to the terrace, accessible from the outside as well as from the narrow inner passage connecting it with the house; and on one side of its tiny walls was the picture of the saint's death-bed, representing the miraculous communion by way of viaticum, when the blessed sacrament sank into her breast because her sickness was of such a nature as to prevent her from receiving it into her mouth. Below the picture is a long explanation of this fact, and a sort of laudatory epitaph in the saint's honor.
The villa Aldobrandini occupies one of the most prominent positions in Frascati, and commands attention from its tiers of stone fountains, raised amphitheatre-like one over the other up the face of the hill, and arranged so as to let an artificial waterfall spring down the giant staircase.
Another notable building of this village is the white-walled Capuchin convent, a nest among the trees and rocks, where the little chapel is railed off by heavy gates from the poor vestibule, and where lived once a very good and eloquent monk, Padre Silvestro. He too, like the old cardinal, died within the years that followed the visit of the Pope to the Villa Falconieri, but his kindness to little children and his well-known powers of language alike cause him to live for ever in the heart and memory of those whose happiness it was to know him.
He always seemed to the writer the very type of Manzoni's renowned "Padre Cristofaro," one of the noblest creatures of that author's world-famed romance, I Promessi Sposi.
And with this mention of him and his quiet convent—which is now, perhaps, a desecrated stable or barrack—let us close this little sketch of a well-remembered and beloved spot, endeared to us by many happy hours spent among its hills and woods, and by the memory of one of God's best and purest creatures, one worthy of more gratitude, more love, and more appreciation than our poor heart was ever able to render her. To her, once our guide on earth, now our guardian, we trust, in heaven, do we dedicate these few mementoes of our happy companionship in a land whose beauty she always taught us to look upon as the chosen appanage of the Vicar of Christ, and the Jerusalem of the new law.
SONNET.
St. Francis and St. Dominic.
Francis and Dominic, the marvels twain
Of those fair ages faith inspired and ruled,
When Christendom, alike by darkness schooled
And light, served God, and spurned the secular chain.
Strong brother-saints of Italy and Spain,
The nations, Christian once, whose love hath cooled,
The sects pride-blind, the sophists sense-befooled,
Your child-like, God-like lowliness disdain!
But ye your task fulfilled! All love the one,
Christ's lover, burning with seraphic fire;
All light the other, from the cherub choir
Missioned, a clouded world's re-risen sun;
Warriors of God! for centuries three at bay
Those crowned lusts ye kept that gore his church to-day.
Aubrey de Vere.
Rome—Convent of St. Buonaventura.