Of all the Norman print upon Sicily nothing gave like this great church a sense of the potency of Tancred de Hauteville and his mighty brood. For no defacing hand has been laid upon this monument to their piety and power. It stands as they wrought, tremendous, glorious; commemorating the winning of the kingship of the Land of the Gods. A story as strange as any of the myths of the mythic world. And perhaps thousands of years hence the historians will relegate the Norman story, too, to the catalogue of the incredible—to the list of the sun-myths; and Tancred will be thought of as a principle of life and fecundity—his twelve strong sons be held to be merely signs of months and seasons.
Of the great Benedictine Abbey founded by William in connection with the Cathedral almost nothing remains unaltered except the delicious cloistered court with its fountain, and its two hundred and sixteen delicate, paired columns, no two alike, and with endless variations of freakish capitals.
All this freshness and richness of invention resulted from the mingling of the Saracen with the Norman, all this early work being wrought by Moslem hands under Norman direction, since King Roger and King William were no bigots, and, giving respect and security to their Saracen subjects, could command in return their skilled service and fine taste. So that this bold, springing, early Norman architecture, Gothic in outward form, is adorned by the chaste, delicate minuteness of the grave Arab ornament.
... It is Palm Sunday, and Jane and Peripatetica are at a reception—otherwise a Sicilian high mass. They have come, still on the trail of their beloved Normans, who have almost ousted the Greeks in their affections, to the Cappella Palatina in the Royal Palace. The chapel is less than a third as large as Monreale but is even more golden, more dimly splendid, more richly beautiful than the Abbey Church. It is crowded to the doors. Everywhere candles wink and drip in the blue clouds of incense. The voices of boys soar in a poignant treble, and the organ tones of men answer antiphonally. The priests mutter and drone, and occasionally take snuff. Mass goes on at a dozen side altars, oblivious of the more stately ceremonies conducted in the chancel. The congregation comes and goes. A family with all the children, including baby and nounou, enter and pray and later go out. Aristocrats and their servants kneel side by side. The crowd thickens and melts again, and companions separate to choose different altars and different masses, according to taste. All are familiar, friendly, at ease. The divine powers are holding a reception, and worshippers, having paid their respects, feel free to leave when they like. Long palm branches are carried to the altar from time to time by arriving visitors, each branch more splendid than the last. Palms braided and knotted, fluttering with ribbons, tied with rosettes of scarlet and blue, wrought with elaborate intricacies—hundreds of branches, which are solemnly sanctified, asperged, censed, with many genuflections. Priests in gold, in white, in scarlet, accompanied by candles, swinging censors and chanting, take up the palms and make a circuit of all the altars among the kneeling worshippers, and finally distribute the branches to their owners who bear their treasures away proudly.
With them go Jane and Peripatetica, joining a group, who, having paid their respects to heaven, are now ambitious to inspect the state chambers in the palace of their earthly sovereign. These prove to be the usual dull, uninviting apartments—flaring with gilt, and with the satins of criard colours which modern royalty always affect. There are the usual waxed floors, the usual uncomfortable fauteuils ranged stiffly against walls hung with inferior pictures, that are so tediously characteristic of palaces, and it is with relief and delight that Jane and Peripatetica find sandwiched amid these vulgar rooms two small chambers that by some miracle have escaped the ravages of the upholsterer. Two chambers, left intact from Norman days, that are like jewel caskets. Walls panelled with long smooth slabs of marble, grown straw-coloured with age, the delicate graining of the stone being matched like the graining of fine wood; panels set about with rich mosaics of fantastic birds and imaginary beasts framed in graceful arabesques. These are the Stanza Ruggiero; the rooms occupied by King Roger, the furnishings, such scant bits as there are, being also of his time.
“In Roger’s day,” commented Jane, “kings were not content with housings and plenishings of the ‘Early Pullman, or Late Hamburg-American School’; they knew how to be kingly in their surroundings.”
“It’s a curious fact,” agreed Peripatetica, “that there isn’t a modern palace in Europe that a self-respecting American millionaire wouldn’t blush to live in. No one ever hears of great artists being called upon to design or beautify a modern royal residence. Bad taste in furnishing seems universal among latter-day kings, who appear to form their ideas of domestic decoration from second-rate German hotels. Fancy any one seeing the high purity and beauty of Roger’s chambers and then ordering such ruthless splashings of gilt and cotton satin! Why, even ‘the best families’ of Podunk or Kalamazoo would gibe at the contrast, and as for the Wheat and Pork Kings of Denver or Chicago—they would have the whole place made époque in a week, if they had to corner the lard market, or form a breakfast-food trust to be able to afford it!”
“God made the day to be followed by the night. The moon and stars are at His command. Has He not created all things? Is He not Lord of all? Blessed be the Everlasting God!”
Jane was reading aloud from her guide-book.