CHAPTER I.
VESCOVATO AND THE CORSICAN HISTORIANS.
Some miles to the southwards of Bastia, on the heights of the east coast, lies Vescovato, a spot celebrated in Corsican history. Leaving the coast-road at the tower of Buttafuoco, you turn upwards into the hills, the way leading through magnificent forests of chestnuts, which cover the heights on every side. The general name for this beautiful little district is Casinca; and the region round Vescovato is honoured with the special appellation of Castagniccia, or the land of chestnuts.
I was curious to see this Corsican paese, in which Count Matteo Buttafuoco once offered Rousseau an asylum; I expected to find a village such as I had already seen frequently enough among the mountains. I was astonished, therefore, when I saw Vescovato before me, lost in the green hills among magnificent groves of chestnuts, oranges, vines, fruit-trees of every kind, a mountain brook gushing down through it, the houses of primitive Corsican cast, yet here and there not without indications of architectural taste. I now could not but own to myself that of all the retreats that a misanthropic philosopher might select, the worst was by no means Vescovato. It is a mountain hermitage, in the greenest, shadiest solitude, with the loveliest walks, where you can dream undisturbed, now among the rocks by the wild stream, now under a blossom-laden bush of erica beside an ivy-hung cloister, or you are on the brow of a hill from which the eye looks down upon the plain of the Golo, rich and beautiful as a nook of paradise, and upon the sea.
A bishop built the place; and the bishops of the old town of Mariana, which lay below in the plain, latterly lived here.
Historic names and associations cluster thickly round Vescovato; especially is it honoured by its connexion with three Corsican historians of the sixteenth century—Ceccaldi, Monteggiani, and Filippini. Their memory is still as fresh as their houses are well preserved. The Curato of the place conducted me to Filippini's house, a mean peasant's cottage. I could not repress a smile when I was shown a stone taken from the wall, on which the most celebrated of the Corsican historians had in the fulness of his heart engraved the following inscription:—Has Ædes ad suum et amicorum usum in commodiorem Formam redegit anno MDLXXV., cal. Decemb. A. Petrus Philippinus Archid. Marian. In sooth, the pretensions of these worthy men were extremely humble. Another stone exhibits Filippini's coat of arms—his house, with a horse tied to a tree. It was the custom of the archdeacon to write his history in his vineyard, which they still show in Vescovato. After riding up from Mariana, he fastened his horse under a pine, and sat down to meditate or to write, protected by the high walls of his garden—for his life was in constant danger from the balls of his enemies. He thus wrote the history of the Corsicans under impressions highly exciting and dramatic.
Filippini's book is the leading work on Corsican history, and is of a thoroughly national character. The Corsicans may well be proud of it. It is an organic growth from the popular mind of the country; songs, traditions, chronicles, and, latterly, professed and conscious historical writing, go to constitute the work as it now lies before us. The first who wrought upon it was Giovanni della Grossa, lieutenant and secretary of the brave Vincentello d'Istria. He collected the old legends and traditions, and proceeded as Paul Diaconus did in his history. He brought down the history of Corsica to the year 1464. His scholar, Monteggiani, continued it to the year 1525,—but this part of the history is meagre; then came Ceccaldi, who continued it to the year 1559; and Filippini, who brought it as far as 1594. Of the thirteen books composing the whole, he has, therefore, written only the last four; but he edited and gave form to the entire work, so that it now bears his name. The editio princeps appeared in Tournon in France, in 1594, in Italian, under the following title:—
"The History of Corsica, in which all things are recorded that have happened from the time that it began to be inhabited up till the year 1594. With a general description of the entire Island; divided into thirteen books, and commenced by Giovanni della Grossa, who wrote the first nine thereof, which were continued by Pier Antonio Monteggiani, and afterwards by Marc' Antonio Ceccaldi, and were collected and enlarged by the Very Reverend Antonpietro Filippini, Archidiaconus of Mariana, the last four being composed by himself. Diligently revised and given to the light by the same Archidiaconus. In Tournon. In the printing-house of Claudio Michael, Printer to the University, 1594."
Although an opponent of Sampiero, and though, from timidity, or from deliberate intent to falsify, frequently guilty of suppressing or perverting facts, he, nevertheless, told the Genoese so many bitter truths in his book, that the Republic did everything in its power to prevent its circulation. It had become extremely scarce when Pozzo di Borgo did his country the signal service of having it edited anew. The learned Corsican, Gregori, was the new editor, and he furnished the work with an excellent introduction; it appeared, as edited by Gregori, at Pisa, in the year 1827, in five volumes. The Corsicans are certainly worthy to have the documentary monuments of their history well attended to. Their modern historians blame Filippini severely for incorporating in his history all the traditions and fables of Grossa. For my part, I have nothing but praise to give him for this; his history must not be judged according to strict scientific rules; it possesses, as we have it, the high value of bearing the undisguised impress of the popular mind. I have equally little sympathy with the fault-finders in their depreciation of Filippini's talent. He is somewhat prolix, but his vein is rich; and a sound philosophic morality, based on accurate observation of life, pervades his writings. The man is to be held in honour; he has done his people justice, though no adherent of the popular cause, but a partisan of Genoa. Without Filippini, a great part of Corsican history would by this time have been buried in obscurity. He dedicated his work to Alfonso d'Ornano, Sampiero's son, in token of his satisfaction at the young hero's reconciling himself to Genoa, and even visiting that city.
"When I undertook to write the History," he says, "I trusted more to the gifts which I enjoy from nature, than to that acquired skill and polish which is expected in those who make similar attempts. I thought to myself that I should stand excused in the eyes of those who should read me, if they considered how great the want of all provision for such an undertaking is in this island (in which I must live, since it has pleased God to cast my lot here); so that scientific pursuits, of whatever kind, are totally impossible, not to speak of writing a pure and quite faultless style." There are other passages in Filippini, in which he complains with equal bitterness of the ignorance of the Corsicans, and their total want of cultivation in any shape. He does not even except the clergy, "among whom," says he, "there are hardly a dozen who have learned grammar; while among the Franciscans, although they have five-and-twenty convents, there are scarcely so many as eight lettered men; and thus the whole nation grows up in ignorance."
He never conceals the faults of his countrymen. "Besides their ignorance," he remarks, "one can find no words to express the laziness of the islanders where the tilling of the ground is concerned. Even the fairest plain in the world—the plain that extends from Aleria to Mariana—lies desolate; and they will not so much as drive away the fowls. But when it chances that they have become masters of a single carlino, they imagine that it is impossible now that they can ever want, and so sink into complete idleness."—This is a strikingly apt characterization of the Corsicans of the present day. "Why does no one prop the numberless wild oleasters?" asks Filippini; "why not the chestnuts? But they do nothing, and therefore are they all poor. Poverty leads to crime; and daily we hear of robberies. They also swear false oaths. Their feuds and their hatred, their little love and their little faithfulness, are quite endless; hence that proverb is true which we are wont to hear: 'The Corsican never forgives.' And hence arises all that calumniating, and all that backbiting, that we see perpetually. The people of Corsica (as Braccellio has written) are, beyond other nations, rebellious, and given to change; many are addicted to a certain superstition which they call Magonie, and thereto they use the men as women. There prevails here also a kind of soothsaying, which they practise with the shoulder-bones of dead animals."