Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber

by J. A. Wylie

Biblioteca Ambrosiana—A Lamp in a Sepulchre—The Palimpsests—Labours of the Monks in the Cause of Knowledge—Cardinal Mai—He recovers many valuable Manuscripts of the Ancients which the Monks had Mutilated—Ulfila's Bible—The War against Knowledge—The Brazent Serpent at Sant' Ambrogio—Passport Office—Last Visit to the Duomo and the Arco Della Pace—The Alps apostrophized—Dinner at a Restaurant—Leave Milan—Procession of the Alps—Treviglio—The River Adda—The Postilion—Evening, with dreamy, decaying Borgos—Caravaggio—Supper at Chiari—Brescia—Arnold of Brescia.

The morning of my last day in Milan was passed in the Biblioteca Ambrosiana. This justly renowned library was founded in 1609 by Cardinal Borromeo, the cousin of that Borromeo whose mummy lies so gorgeously enshrined in the subterranean chapel of the Duomo. This prelate was at vast care and expense to bring together in this library the most precious manuscripts extant. For this purpose he sent learned men into every part of Europe, with instructions to buy whatever of value they might be fortunate enough to discover, and to copy such writings as their owners might be unwilling to part with. The Biblioteca Ambrosiana is worth a visit, were it only to see the first public library established in Europe. There were earlier libraries, and some not inconsiderable ones, but only in connection with cathedrals and colleges; and access to them was refused to all save to the members of these establishments. This, on the contrary, was opened to the public; and, with a liberality rare in those days, writing materials were freely supplied to all who frequented it. The library buildings form a quadrangle of massive masonry, with a grave, venerable look, becoming its name. The collection is upwards of 80,000 volumes; but, what is not very complimentary to the literary tastes of the prefetto and honorary canons of Sant' Ambrogio, the curators of the library, they are arranged, not according to their subjects, but according to their sizes. This library reminded me of a lamp in an Etrurian tomb. There was light enough in that hall to illuminate the whole duchy of the Milanese, could it but find an outlet. As it is, I fear a few straggling rays are all that are able to escape. There is no catalogue of the books, save some very imperfect lists; and I was told that there is a pontifical bull against making any such. I saw a few visitors in its halls, attracted, like myself, by its curiosities; but I saw no one who had come to restore volumes they had read, and receive others in their room. The modern inhabitant of Milan gives his days and nights to the café and the club,—not to the library. He lives and dies unpolluted by the printing press,—an execrable invention of the fifteenth century, from which a paternal Government and an infallible Church employ their utmost energies to shield him. The works of dead authors he dare not read; the productions of living ones he dare not print; and the only compositions to which he has access are the decrees of the Austrian police, and the Catechism of the Jesuit. He fully appreciates, of course, the care taken to preserve the purity of his political and religious faith, and will one day show the extent of his gratitude.

I saw in this library the famous Palimpsests. My readers know, of course, what these are. The Palimpsests are little books of vellum, from which an original and ancient writing has been erased, to make room for the productions of later ages and of other pens. These pages bore originally the thoughts of Virgil and Livy, and, in short, of almost all the great writers of pagan, antiquity; but the monks, who did not relish their pagan notions, thought the vellum would be much better bestowed if filled with their own homilies. The good fathers conceived the project of enlightening and evangelizing the world by purging of its paganism all the vellum in Europe; and, being much intent on their object, they succeeded in it to an amazing extent.

"A second deluge learning did o'errun,
And the monks finished what the Goths begun."

Our readers have often seen with what rapidity a fog swallows up a landscape. They have marked, with a feeling of despair, golden peak and emerald valley sinking hopelessly in the dank drizzle. So the classics went down before the monks. The ancients were set a-trudging through the world in a monk's cowl and a friar's frock. On the same page from which Cicero had thundered, a monk now discoursed. Where Livy's pictured narrative had been, you found only a dull wearisome legend. Where the thunder of Homer's lyre or the sweet notes of Virgil's muse had resounded, you heard now a dismal croak or a lugubrious chant. Such was the strange metamorphosis which the ancients were compelled to endure at the hands of the' monks; and such was the way in which they strove to earn the gratitude of succeeding ages by the benefits they conferred on learning.

It gives us pleasure to say that Cardinal Mai was amongst the most distinguished of those who undertook the task of setting free the imprisoned ancients,—of stripping them of the monk's hood and the friar's habit, and presenting them to the world in their own form. He laboured in the Biblioteca Ambrosiana, and succeeded in exhuming from darkness and dust the treasures which neglect and superstition had buried there. In the number of the works which the monks had palimpsested, and which Mai rescued from destruction, we may cite some fragments of Homer, with a great number of paintings equally ancient, and of which the subjects are taken from the works of this great poet; the unpublished writings of Cornelius Fronto; the unpublished letters of Antoninus Pius, of Marcus Aurelius, of Lucius Verus, and of Appian; some fragments of discourses of Aurelius Symmachus; the Roman Antiquities of Dionysius of Halicarnassus, which were up to that time imperfect; unpublished fragments of Plautus, of Isæus, of Themistius; an unpublished work of the philosopher Porphyrius; some writings of the Jew Philo; the ancient interpreters of Virgil; two books of the Chronicles of Eusebius Pamphilus; the VI. and XIV. Sibylline Books; and the six books of the Republic of Cicero. I saw, too, in the Biblioteca Ambrosiana, fragments of the version of the Bible made in the middle of the fourth century, by Ulfila, bishop of the Mæsogoths. The labours of the bishop underwent a strange dispersion. The gospels are at Upsala; the epistles were found at Wolfenbuttel; while a portion of the Acts of the Apostles and of the Old Testament were extracted from the palimpsests. The original writing—the superincumbent rubbish being removed—looked out in a bold, well defined character, in as fresh a black, in some places, as when newly written; in others, in a dim, rusty colour, which a practised eye only could decipher. Thus the war against knowledge has gone on. The Caliph Omer burnt the Alexandrine library. Next came the little busy creatures the monks, who, mothlike, ate up the ancient manuscripts. Last of all appeared the Pope, with his Index Expurgatorius, to put under lock and key what the Caliph had spared, and the monks had not been able to devour. The torch, the sponge, the anathema, have been tried each in its turn. Still the light spreads.

I cannot enter on the other curious manuscripts which this library contains; nor have I anything to say of the numerous beautiful portraits and pictures with which its walls are adorned. The Cenacolo, or "Last Supper," by Leonardo da Vinci, in the refectory of the Dominican convent, is fast perishing. It has not yet "lost all its original brightness," and is mightier in its decay than most other pictures are in the bloom and vigour of their youth. I recollect the great Scottish painter Harvey saying to me, that he was more affected by "that ruin," than he was by all the other works of art which he saw in Italy. The grandeur of the central head has never been approached in any copy. One thing I regret,—I did not visit the Sant' Ambrogio, and so missed seeing the famous brazen serpent which is to hiss just before the world comes to an end. This serpent is the same that Moses made in the wilderness, and which Hezekiah afterwards brake in pieces: at least it would be heresy in Milan not to believe this. It must be comfortable to a busy age, which has so many things to think of without troubling itself about how or when the world is to end, to know that, if it must end, due warning will be given of that catastrophe. The vineyards of Lombardy are good, and monks, like other men, occasionally get thirsty; and it might spoil the good fathers' digestion were the brazen serpent of Sant' Ambrogio to hiss after dinner. But doubtless it will be discreet on this head. There is said to be in some one of the graveyards of Orkney, a tombstone on which an angel may be seen blowing a great trumpet with all his might, while the dead man below is made to say, "When I hear this, I will rise." The stone-trumpet will be heard to blow, we daresay, about the same time that the serpent of Sant' Ambrogio will be heard to hiss.

I was now to bid farewell to Milan, and turn my face towards the blue Adriatic. But one unpleasant preliminary must first be gone through. The police had opened the gates of Milan to admit me, and the same authorities must open them for my departure. I walked to the passport office, where the officials received me with great politeness, and bade me be seated while my passport was being got ready. This interesting process was only a few minutes in doing; and, on payment of the customary fee, was handed me "all right" for Venice, bating the innumerable intermediate inspections and visés by the way; for a passport, like a chronometer, must be continually compared with the meridian, and put right. I put my passport into my pocket; but on opening it afterwards, I got a surprise. Its pages were getting covered all over with little creatures with wings, and, as my fancy suggested, with stings,—the black eagles of Austria. How was I to carry in my pocket such a cage of imps? How was I to sleep at night in their company? Should they take it into their head to creep out of my book, and buzz round my bed, would it not give me unpleasant dreams? And yet part with them I could not. These black, impish creatures must be my pioneers to Venice.

I now made haste to take my last look of the several objects which had endeared themselves to me during my short stay. I felt towards them as friends,—long known and beloved friends; and never should I turn and look on the track of my past existence without seeing their forms of beauty, dim and indistinct, it might be, as the haze of lapsed time should gather over them; still, always visible,—never altogether blotted out. I walked round the Cathedral for the last time. There it stood,—beauty, like an eternal halo, sitting rainbow-like upon its towers and pinnacles. Its thousand statues and cherubs stood silent and entranced, tranquil as ever, all unmoved by the city's din, reminding one of dwellers in some region of deep and unbroken bliss. "Glorious pile!" said I, apostrophizing it, "I am but a pilgrim, a shadow; so are all who now look on thee,—shadows. But you will continue to delight the ages to come, as you have done those that are past." I had a run, too, to the Piazza di Armi, to see Beauty incarnate, if I may so express myself, in the form of the Arco della Pace. It is a gem, the brightest of its kind that earth contains. The faultless grace of its form is finely set off by the overwhelming Alpine masses in the distance, which seemed as if raised on purpose to defend it, and which rise, piled one above another, in furrowed, jagged, unchiselled, fearful sublimity.