"Two hundred years after the invasion of Attila had driven many of the inhabitants of Aquileja and Altina from their homes, the province was desolated by the Lombards. The Altinese, alarmed at their approach, anxiously deliberated whether they should remain to face this 'Australis plaga,' or seek safety in flight, when they beheld vast flocks of birds, with their fledglings in their beaks, take flight from the city walls and towers and direct their course seaward. Regarding this as a sign from heaven, some departed to Ravenna, some to Pentapolis, and others to Istria, leaving behind them a band of devout persons, who, in order to obtain a more direct manifestation of the will of Heaven, determined to fast and pray for three days, according to the advice of their bishop, Paulus. At the end of the time they heard a voice like thunder, saying, 'Ascend into the city tower and look at the stars.' They beheld a vision of boats and ships and islands, and taking this as an indication that their course should be directed seaward, they removed their most precious possessions to the island of Torcello.... Paulus, Bishop of Altina, migrated with his flock, their relics and treasure, to Torcello and the neighboring islands, A.D. 641."
The ascent of the tall, square Campanile (eleventh century) is not easy, for its ladders are rickety; but the view from its bell-chamber compensates for all the difficulty of reaching it. To the east lies a large district, which is neither sea nor land, but partly both, crossed and recrossed by broad ditches. These are the valli, in which fish are bred. Many little huts stand beside the valli, in which Venetian gentlemen live while duck-shooting in the winter. The sport is so fine that, in spite of cold and the absence of all real comfort, a shooting-party usually lasts several days.
To the south the view is over the Adriatic, and the eye follows the line of breakwaters, even to Chioggia. South-west lies Venice, her many towers and palaces cutting an irregular line across the azure sky, with the Euganean Hills for a background. To the north, far away beyond the plain, with nothing to intercept the view, stand the Dolomitic Alps, seen in perfection from Torcello. Tofano, Antelao, and Pelmo stand out boldly, their clear-cut peaks white with snow, and their long, lower ridges dark and shadowy. A more heavenly sky, a lovelier sea, more striking mountain peaks, and a more fancy-stirring city,—can these be found in any one panorama to excel the view from the Campanile of Torcello?
The Cathedral of Torcello was so injured by the repairs under the Austrians that one can find little pleasure in visiting it. The one interesting feature is the arrangement of the chancel, where the semicircular seats rise one above the other, and the bishop's throne in the centre, reached by a steep staircase, towers above all. Authorities agree that the fittings of this apse give a better idea of the way in which apses were originally arranged than does any other church, either of the same period with this (seventh century), or even earlier. It is most unusual; and Ruskin throws such a charm about it that it is pure pleasure to read what he says of it:—
"There is one circumstance which we ought to remember as giving peculiar significance to the position which the episcopal throne occupies in the island church; namely, that in the minds of all early Christians the church itself was most frequently symbolized under the image of a ship, of which the bishop was the pilot. Consider the force which this symbol would assume in the imaginations of men to whom the spiritual Church had become an ark of refuge in the midst of a destruction hardly less terrible than that from which the eight souls were saved of old,—a destruction in which the wrath of man had become as broad as the earth and as merciless as the sea,—and who saw the actual and literal edifice of the Church raised up, itself like an ark in the midst of the waters. No marvel if with the surf of the Adriatic rolling between them and the shores of their birth, from which they were separated forever, they should have looked upon each other as the disciples did when the storm came down on Tiberias Lake, and have yielded ready and loving obedience to those who ruled them in His name who had there rebuked the winds and commanded stillness to the sea. And if the stranger would yet learn in what spirit it was that the dominion of Venice was begun, and in what strength she went forth conquering and to conquer, let him not seek to estimate the wealth of her arsenals or numbers of her armies, nor look upon the pageantry of her palaces, nor enter into the secrets of her councils; but let him ascend the highest tier of the stern ledges that sweep round the altar of Torcello, and then, looking as the pilot did of old along the marble ribs of the goodly temple-ship, let him repeople its ruined deck with the shadows of its dead mariners, and strive to feel in himself the strength of heart that was kindled within them, when first, after the pillars of it had settled in the sand, and the roof of it had been closed against the angry sky that was still reddened by the fires of their homesteads,—first, within the shelter of its knitted walls, amidst the murmur of the waste of waves and the beating of the wings of the sea-birds round the rock that was strange to them,—rose that ancient hymn, in the power of their gathered voices: 'The sea is His, and He made it: and His hands prepared the dry land.'"
A picturesque cloister connects the Baptistery or Church of St. Fosca with the cathedral. The relics of the virgin martyr are said to rest beneath the low, ancient church. The pillars of the cloisters are so short that a tall man can touch the arches they sustain; but they are of pure Greek marble, with delicately sculptured capitals. Everything seems so small,—the two churches, the tower, an ancient well, and a marble column are all that remain, save one or two old buildings that may now have disappeared, so tumble-down were they when last I saw them. The Piazza (!) around which these buildings stand is such a bit of a grass-grown place! The only street is but a footpath, and yet we reverence Torcello for its age. The banner of Venice has floated here more than a thousand years,—more than six centuries before Columbus discovered our part of the globe.
There is a little museum in which a few antiquities are gathered, where one may rest and think before taking leave of this ghost-haunted island of Torcello, so well described by Helen Hunt:—
"Short sail from Venice sad Torcello lies,
Deserted island low, and still and green.
Before fair Venice was a bride and queen
Torcello's court was held in fairer guise
Than Doges knew. To day death-vapors rise
From fields where once her palaces were seen,
And in her silent towers that crumbling lean
Unterrified the brooding swallow flies."
As we row back to Venice in the lovely evening, with the orange and purple of the after-glow dissolving into paler and colder tints, and the stars peeping out one by one, Giacomo tells us a ghost-story which is familiar to the gondoliers and fishermen, a group of whom we have just met returning from Venice to their strange fishing-ground.
The story runs that once upon a time six men were fishing and living together in a small hut among the valli. One of them had a little son who stayed in the hut to cook food for the men whenever they came in. As the night was the best time for fishing, the little fellow was often alone from sunset to dawn. One morning, as it was growing light, the men stopped their work and rowed toward home; and on the way they saw the body of a drowned man, which the tide was taking out to sea.