A Little Pilgrimage in Italy

by Olave M. Potter

And here we paused, for this was what we had come out to see. We had no meed of worship to offer to Madonna through that strange Byzantine doll, loaded with jewels like an Indian totem, who smiles so enigmatically, over her glittering lamps and tapers, at the kneeling people. To us the story of the Santa Casa was a legend only beautiful in the faith which can believe it. Nor were we drawn hither to see the treasures worth the ransoms of many kings which Popes and Emperors have lavished on the shrine, or the exquisite frescoes of Melozzo da Forli and Luca Signorelli in its sacristies. For greater than any of these are the humble and lowly of heart who worship in the magnificent temples which princes and prelates have built to their gods. They are indeed the salt of the earth, the shining light which cannot be hid. They are like the hills and the valleys in which they live; in their eyes are the shadows born of century-long communion with Nature; being meek they have inherited the earth; being pure in heart they have seen God.

PILGRIMS AT LORETO.

Come in with me then to this great rich church and see these little ones at prayer. See how they press into the Santa Casa. Are not their simple faith, their gentle humility, the tears and sighs of the women, the bent heads of the men, more beautiful than the rich marble screen on which Sansovino and five other great sculptors of the fifteenth century lavished their art to make a worthy casket for the House of the Virgin? Its stair is worn into two deep furrows by pilgrims journeying round it on their knees. Do you not think that the great Mother of Pity loves this rough sculpture best? Look how they pray before the hearth, how eagerly they place their rosaries and medals in the little bowl which legend relates was found in the Holy House after its miraculous journey. They do not doubt that the hands of Madonna Mary, nay, of Christ Himself, have touched it.

We, too, were borne by the crowd into the Santa Casa. It was quite full of kneeling people. The altar was ablaze with candles, and lamps were pendant all round the walls, so that we saw them as it were through a mist of light. Here we could discern the window, blocked up now, through which the Angel Gabriel entered the cottage; there the little cupboard in which were found the humble bowls, such as poor people use to-day for cooking. And on the altar, clad in the rich robe presented by Maria Teresa and valued at 4,000,000 lire, stood the little cedar-wood statue of the Madonna and Child, which the Virgin is stated to have claimed as her authentic portrait.

Mass was being celebrated at the High Altar when we came out again, and the body of the church presented a charming patriarchal effect. All the men were clustered in the aisles, and the women gathered together in the nave, looking like a garden of flowers, with row after row of serious girlish faces under fair white kerchiefs, broken here by a group of black mantillas, there by the stray bright tovagliette of a southern contadina. The gilt and frescoed apses were misty with incense and sunlight; and here pilgrims, fresh from their visit to the Santa Casa, were kneeling with rapt faces before the altars. And in the midst of all this piety and worship, with the organ pealing music down the aisles, we found old crones asleep, or taking snuff as they rested in confessional boxes, and children playing hide-and-seek round them. All very reverently, however, not forgetting that they were in the house of their Father; nor were the dogs which had strayed in with the crowd turned away.

Later, when most of the pilgrims were enjoying a hard-earned siesta, or marketing in Loreto's single street, we sat in the cool nave and watched the people trooping in like sheep coming confidently into the fold. The great bell tolled overhead and in they streamed, all with their newly-bought treasures—now an umbrella, bright emerald or scarlet, wrapped clumsily in paper, now with some baking-pans, now with a household lamp. And all of them with some gewgaw to be blessed in the Virgin's bowl.

The basins of holy water were so lofty that many of the women could not reach them, and some passing pilgrim would dip his fingers in and touch their hands. Now it was a group of barefooted girls with kerchiefed heads and sunburned faces who went up to the shrine; now an old old man who dipped his hand into the holy water and then knelt down in the middle of the nave, passing wet fingers across his tired eyes, and praying there awhile before he kissed the floor, and wearily stumbled out of those glorious bronze doors into the sunshine again. Here a whole family knelt together round their rugged-faced father, with their bright kerchiefs looking like a homely flower-garden; there a man going out with his two little sons dipped his fingers in the high bowl, and moistened the hands of first one awe-struck child and then the other.

So it went on all day. Nor does it matter that the Casa is of mediaeval construction; that it is not built of the grey limestone with which all the houses of Nazareth are built, and that it does not fit its ascribed foundations in Palestine. For the gods have ever been secret. Did Ceres weep at Enna? Did the rosy feet of Aphrodite ever press the sands of Paphos? Is it the blood of Adonis which makes the stream of Carmel red?