But St. Michael on the slope of Tifata did carry us back in thought to a church of St. Peter seen some months before under a widely different state of outward things. We then made a somewhat difficult journey to a great and solitary Tuscan basilica in time of snow. The outward aspect of nature had certainly changed a good deal between the bleak day in January when it was found a hard task to follow the way from Pisa to the basilica of the prince of the Apostles in Grado and the sunny day in May when the same travellers found their way without difficulties of any kind to the basilica of the prince of the archangels in Formis. And there certainly can be no likeness of position, even if both were seen in January or both in May, between the basilica standing low in the flats by the mouth of Arno and the basilica which nestles against the mountains which form a wall to the rich plain of Vulturnus. But in seeing any one of these great churches, left, not ruined, like our Cistercian abbeys, but still living on a kind of life in places forsaken or nearly so, something always brings up the memory of some other of its fellows. Aquileia is perhaps the greatest case of all; but Aquileia, with its special position in the history of the world, stands by itself. If Aquileia itself is dead, it has lived on a wonderful after-life in the shape of its Venetian colony. We go to see Aquileia, because it is Aquileia; but even a well-informed traveller may know nothing of San Pietro in Grado and Sant' Angelo in Formis, till either his guide-book or some earlier visitor points them out to him as places which he ought not to pass by. Aquileia again has other things to show besides the great basilica and its surroundings. St. Apollinaris in Classe is as nearly forsaken as a church that is still kept up can be; but the basilica of Classis does not stand by itself; it forms part of the wonders of Ravenna, as St. Paul without-the-Walls forms part of the wonders of Rome. St. Peter in Grado might be looked on as standing in the same relation to Pisa; but it hardly enters into our general conception of Pisa, as the church of Classis—papal havoc hinders us from adding the church of Cæsarea—certainly enters into our general conception of Ravenna. S. Angelo in Formis at all events does not enter into our general conception of old Capua, because there is not enough of old Capua left to form any general conception of it at all. The church and the small surrounding village do form a kind of distant arx to the greater collection of houses which surrounds the amphitheatre; but among the nearer objects which catch the eye from the height, the most prominent is not old Capua with its amphitheatre, but new Capua, Casilinum that once was, with its towers and cupolas, mediæval and modern. We look on many things from the terrace in front of the portico of the archangel, but that which among artificial objects chiefly draws the eye towards it, is not the elder Capua of Hannibal and Marcellus, but the Capua which succeeded Aversa as the seat of the elder but the less famous of the Norman powers in Southern Italy. As we mark the advance of national union, no less than as we mark the advance of mere dynastic aggression, we have sometimes to think, for a moment perhaps to mourn, that "kingdoms have shrunk to provinces," though in this form of advance and incorporation, we have no longer to add that "chains clank over sceptred cities." Capua, on both its sites, once the head of an Etruscan, once of a Norman dominion, passed, in one age, under the universal rule of Rome. In another age it again sank from its separate headship to become a member of that greater Norman dominion in Apulia and Sicily which, after more shiftings, unions, divisions, transfers to distant rulers, than any other part of Europe, has in our days been merged in the realm of united Italy, with Rome as its head, but not its mistress.
We reach then the height which, whether that of Jupiter or Diana of old, is now the height of the warrior archangel. The whole history of the church belongs to the independent days of the second Capua; in its present shape it belongs to the days of independent Norman rule in the second Capua. But the days of independent Norman rule were days when the arts of the earlier rulers of the land still lived on. We see signs of the art of Byzantium, so long mistress of Southern Italy, and of the art of the Saracen, in Italy only a visitor or an invader, while in Sicily an abiding master. The portico in front of the church is Roman in its general idea; but, instead of the colonnade and entablature of the Laurentian basilica, we see an arcade whose pointed arches at once call up memories of Sicily. They have indeed little of Sicilian grace. Nowhere at Palermo or Monreale do we see such massive columns bearing such massive stilts. Columns indeed we should hardly say, as some of them are plainly mere fragments. But here, just as in Sicily, just as in Aquitaine, the pointed arch is no sign of coming Gothic; the style is still wholly Romanesque, and somewhat rude Romanesque too. And in this region of Italy we can hardly doubt as to attributing the almost accidental shape of the arches to the influence of Saracen models, perhaps to the workmanship of Saracen craftsmen. Hard by, but not joining the building, by an arrangement unlike Sicily, unlike Apulia, but the common rule of Northern Italy, rises a bell-tower, or rather the beginning of a bell-tower, which raises our wonder as to what it would have been if it had ever grown to its full height. Two stages only are finished, the lower of hewn stone, the upper of brick; but their bulk is so great that the tower, if it had ever been finished, would surely have ranked among the highest of its class, utterly overpowering even the great basilica at its side, except so far as it would have been itself overpowered by the natural heights above it. As in some other cases, the thought suggests itself, were not those who left off building the tower wiser than those who began it? The tall bell-towers of Italy look well as they rise from the Lombard plain, as they crown the hill of Fiesole, as they skirt the shores of the lake of Como. But we are not sure that a gigantic tower, which, if it was to have any kind of proportion, ought to have been carried up to a height as great as that of Venice, was in its right place when set a little way up a mountain-side, as if simply to show how small man's biggest works look in the midst of the works of nature. But the technical eye is thankful for the fragment that has been built, though mainly on a very technical ground. Professor Willis is gone, but his happy phrase of mid-wall shafts has not died with him. The custom of the elder Romanesque towers, the abiding fashion of Germany and Northern Italy, was to set the little columns which divided the coupled windows in the very middle of the wall; the latter Norman fashion, whether in Normandy, in England, or in Apulia, was to set them nearly flush with the outer wall. In this tower, Italian by geography, Norman by allegiance, two sides conform to the Italian and two to the Norman fashion. Nothing can show more clearly that even such small matters of detail as the use of a mid-wall shaft were made matters of serious thought, and that it was sometimes thought well to come to a compromise between two rival forms of taste.
The outside of this church, except so far as it forms an object in the general landscape, is perhaps chiefly attractive to the technical observer; the inside will surely appeal to every visitor, though the visitor who is technically informed in matters of painting may possibly look upon it with more of curiosity than of positive admiration. But the eye of the more general inquirer will give something like positive admiration to a basilica of eight arches, resting on ancient columns of various marbles, with its original design far less damaged than is common in Italian churches, and with every inch of available space covered with elaborate paintings of the date of the building. Like St. Peter by Pisa, the archangel by Capua trusted to painting for his enrichment and not to mosaics; and though the Campanian pictures are by far the better preserved of the two, though nearly all the subjects can be made out with the greatest ease, yet Ravenna and Venice rise to the mind to make us think that at least if endurance be the object, there is a more excellent way.
The walls of this church form almost a pictorial Bible, with a few legendary and local subjects thrown in. The Abbot Desiderius, holding, after the usual symbolical fashion, the church in his hand, is to be seen at the east end along with the archangels and evangelists. At the west end is what connoisseurs tell us is one of the very earliest pictures of the Last Judgment. On the two sides a crowd of scenes and figures from the Old and New Testament cover the whole space. The style of the painting is said to show Greek workmanship; we look toward the west end and mark, hardly above the ground, a single small shaft with a capital of strictly Byzantine character. The ruling Norman seems on this spot to have pressed into his service the artistic powers of all the inhabitants of the peninsula. Italian, Greek, Saracen, all give their help to adorn the house of the archangel. The Norman himself contributes nothing but the position of two small columns in the tower windows. We cannot even attribute to him the position of the house of the archangel, set Norman-fashion in a high place; for the first church was built before the Norman came. It is not so further east, where a distinctively Norman element is to be seen in the great churches of Apulia. But the gathering together of the best skill of the time from all quarters is a thoroughly Norman function, whether in Italy or in England.
The basilica should be compassed, so far at least as to climb the hill a little way to look at its east end. Its surrounding buildings supply an arch or two to catch the eye on the way up or down. But the essential features of Sant' Angelo are the grand display of painting and the union of elements of so many kinds. It is the first of a great series of churches at which our course will bid us to stop here and there. But before we reach them we shall pass by one point where our musings will again be mainly secular and largely pagan. A short journey will lead us from Campania into Samnium, and the valiant men of the Samnite land will claim a tribute on a spot which is Samnite beyond all others.
VI. A Glimpse of Samnium.
From Caserta and what is to be seen from Caserta, our next journey lies by the line of railway which runs right across Italy, connecting the two great lines of the east and west of the peninsula. It leads us from the Campanian plain, with at least its sheltering wall of mountains, with Tifata to guard the great city that once was from the ruder land beyond, to the great plain of Apulia from which every feature of a mountain-land has passed away. But, in so crossing from one side of Italy to the other, we pass through a striking and an historic region. We are in the land of the mightiest Italian rivals of Rome, the land of those with whom Rome had to fight, before Pyrrhos and Hannibal came, and ages after Pyrrhos and Hannibal were gone.
Our course leads us into the heart of the Samnite land, a land which may well call up endless musings on the hard fate of those "hearts of steel" who bore up so long against Rome, in the days when Rome was really at her greatest. And the memories of the same land in after days are not wholly alien to those of earlier times. Our course brings us, at not a few points, across the memories, if not of nations, yet of men, who had to bear up against the power of Rome, when the power of Rome had taken a far other form than that of the senate and the armies against which the Samnite had to strive. For the old Samnite land holds its place in later story, as the land of princes who felt what the spiritual Rome could do when the powers of the spiritual Rome were at their highest. We pass through regions which were the scene of no small part of the history of the Norman and Swabian lords of Sicily and Southern Italy. We are deep in the land of the counts, dukes, kings, and emperors of the house of Hauteville and the house of Hohenstaufen; and we are often called on to stop and track out their deeds. At not a few points do we light on some building, some inscription, which brings up the memory of Frederick, the Wonder of the World, and of Manfred, whose field of overthrow we shall presently pass by. In both periods the history of these lands has a character altogether different from that of Northern and Central Italy. In the later period this needs no proof: we are dealing with the history of a kingdom, not with the history of a system of separate cities. But something of the same difference extends to the earlier period also. If we wish to know more of Volscians and Hernicans, yet more keenly do we wish to know more of Samnites. The part which they played is greater, at all events in scale, and their dealings with Rome belong to a stage of Roman history when we feel that we have a kind of right to know more than we could hope to know in the earlier time. But while we know something of the character of the Samnite people as a whole, while we know something—though much less than in some other Italian lands—of the geography of the Samnite country, we have no clear notion of the political position or the political action of any particular Samnite city or canton, such as we ever and anon do get of particular cities of Etruria and Latium. And again, it is seldom that we can call up any distinct personal conception of any Samnite leader as a living and breathing man. This is indeed a grievance which affects Samnites along with the other Italian enemies of Rome. The personal conceptions which we do get of Etruscans and Latins largely belong to legendary times. Of historical Volscians we know very few. And we have already complained on Hernican ground that we cannot picture to ourselves the personal likeness of any single Hernican of independent Hernican days.
Still, on this particular journey we have small right to complain; for we pass by the spot which calls up the memories of the most memorable Samnites of whom we have any personal knowledge. They are men of one name, most likely therefore of one house, and men of whom we emphatically wish to know more than we do know. Leaving Caserta behind, glancing at the Campanian plain and the Campanian mountains, marking Naples only by the smoke of the distant city, we pass along through what, in our simplicity, we take to be the vale of Vulturnus, till we light on a more classical friend, armed with a more classical map, who explains that the stream which we are tracing is in strictness not Vulturnus himself, but only his tributary Calor. Anyhow we go along its course into the heart of the Samnite land, and we pass by one spot—a spot which we ought to have treated better than merely to pass it by, a spot round which the greatest memories of Samnite history gather, and where they strangely interweave themselves with wholly different memories of the history of our own land. We reach Telesia, the home of the Pontii, and we remember that Telesia was also for a moment the home of Anselm. Our guide-book provokingly fails us; but the large building on the hill-side must surely be the monastery where he sojourned. There are Roman antiquities in the place; for Samnite antiquities we do not look. But did Samnites build no walls, or do the mighty bulwarks of Cori and Segni mark an earlier state of things than the Sabellian occupation of Southern Italy? Anyhow, we are here at the place which has attached itself as a surname to the two most memorable men in the scanty personal history of Samnium. Here, on his own ground, we remember that Gaius Pontius who spared Rome's army at the Caudine Forks, and who lived to be led, twenty-seven years later, as a spectacle in a Roman triumph, to end his days, one might almost say as a martyr, by the axe of the headsman in a Roman dungeon. So we used to read the tale in our youth; so moralized the historians of our youth over the special baseness which handed over such a man to such an end. Or are we to adopt the new reading of the tale which at least saves Quintus Fabius Maximus from that special stain of blood-guiltiness which cleaves to the canonized memory of Divus Julius? It may be well if we can believe that one of the worthiest heroes of the old commonwealth, if he could not forestall the magnanimity of Pompeius and Aurelian, at least did not sink to the special and petty spite of the murderer of Vercingetorix. We are now taught that the Gaius Pontius who appears twenty-seven years after the first mention of that name, is most likely not the same man as the merciful victor of the Caudine Forks. If this be so, then Quintus Fabius, in consigning his Pontius to the axe, merely conformed to the cruel custom of his nation, without the further aggravation of slaying in cold blood one who had dealt with Rome so nobly. And after all some might hint that the oldest Pontius of all was the wisest. It may be that the sage old father of Gaius knew human nature best, when he bade his son either to massacre the whole Roman army or else to let them go free without terms. It may be that the son chose a more dangerous path than either, when he took to diplomacy and middle courses.