Through the Casentino with Hints for the Traveller

by Lina Eckenstein

LANDMARK OF CAMALDOLI

V
In the Apennines

. . . “appiè del Casentino
Traversa un’ acqua c’ha nome l’Archiano
Che sovra l’Ermo nasce in Appennino.”
(Purg. 5, 96 ff.)

Early on the following morning we left the monastery of Camaldoli for the hermitage. It was a beautiful walk of about three miles, along a steep, paved path through the ancient pine forest. The air was cold but the sun was bright, and the trees emitted a strong resinous fragrance. I have never walked under trees more stalwart in stature, the stem of each straight, smooth and rounded as a shaft, with branches loaded with hanging verdure jutting out in grander sweeps.

At one point of the road three large wooden crosses marked the limit which the hermits formerly from their side were not allowed to cross; from this side no woman was allowed to penetrate beyond them. But the story goes that a princess of the house of Medici, dressed in man’s clothing, once braved the restriction. She visited the hermitage, with no further consequences, however, but that, having satisfied her curiosity, she went and confessed to the Pope, and he bid her give money to build an additional cell in expiation of her crime, which, to this day, is designated by the armorial balls, the palle, of the Medici family.

The paved path mostly followed the course of the Fosso of Camaldoli which rises above the Eremo. Dante apparently looked upon this stream not as a tributary of the Archiano, but as the Archiano itself, for he lets Buonconte in Purgatory speak of the Archiano as “taking its rise above the hermitage.” The river came down between moss-grown rocks, carrying with it a stream of mountain fragrance, and the path which followed it ended on a wide grass-grown space, at one end of which stood the hermitage. And up here, in the midst of the forest, at an elevation of 3700 feet above sea level, and in a climate which these thin-skinned southerners talked of as cold and rough in the extreme, stood the twenty-four little stone cells of the hermitage, each inside the walled enclosure of its garden. Here in the depth of mountain solitude, cut off from intercourse with the world, and restricted in their intercourse with each other, the hermits of Camaldoli lived the same life of seclusion and solitude which St Romuald considered the surest way of attaining to happiness and heaven. Here they lived, dwelling alone, eating alone and working alone, with the conceptions of time and space obliterated as far as disregard of the ordinary interests of life will obliterate them, with no hope or expectation of change, a life in which time can mend and mar nothing.

We were told that all the cells were tenanted except the original cell of St Romuald, which is always kept standing empty. All the cells are constructed on the same plan. Each consists of a small house divided into two rooms opening out of each other, with an additional recess in which stands the bed. The windows and the door open on a small garden, which is surrounded by walls so as to close in the view. Each hermit attends to his own garden, in which he grows herbs and vegetables. The cooking for the whole settlement is done in an outhouse, and the food is brought round and handed in to each of the cells. Seven times in the twenty-four hours the hermits wander forth and assemble in church to pray together; otherwise they are alone.

We were shown over the church by a white-robed monk, who readily talked of the smaller interests of life—of the severity of the winter, the daily routine, and the relics and pictures of the different chapels. But he did not respond when I expressed regret at the severance of intercourse between the different existing settlements of the Order of Camaldoli, a severance which is inevitably leading to the collapse of the whole organisation. It may be part of these men’s attitude of mind, or it may be a self-imposed limitation, that any allusion to change is met by cheerful and unquestioning acceptance of things as they are. Is it that the future of their order has become a matter of indifference to them, or is it that a tacit agreement among them prevents them from discussing their own affairs with outsiders? The monk also showed us over the cell of St Romuald, which is unchanged, they say, except that the piety of a later age has covered the inside of its rough walls with panelling. On occasions this cell has been offered to distinguished visitors. It was so offered to St Francis, but he felt the honour too great to accept.