I then proceeded along a romantic path to the monastery of Agia Triada, and on the way my servants entertained me by an account of what the monks had told them of their admiration of the Pasha of Tricala, whom they considered as a perfect model of a governor; and that it would be a blessing for the country if all other pashas were like him, as then all the roving bands of robbers, who spread terror and desolation through the land, would be cleared away. There is, it seems, a high tower over the gate of the town of Tricala, and when the Pasha caught any people whom he thought worthy of the distinction, he had them taken up to the top of this tower and thrown from it against the city walls, which his provident care had furnished with numerous large iron hooks, projecting about the length of a man's arm, which caught the bodies of the culprits as they fell, and on which they hung on either side of the town gate, affording a pleasing and instructive spectacle to the people who came in to market of a morning.
Agia Triada contains about ten or twelve monks, who pulled me up to the entrance of their monastery with a rope thirty-two fathoms long. This monastery, like the others, resembles a small village, of which the houses stand huddled round the little painted church. Here I found one hundred books, all very musty and very uninteresting. I saw no manuscripts whatever, nor was there anything worthy of observation in the habitation of the impoverished community. Having paid my respects to the grim effigies of the bearded saints upon the chapel walls, I was let down again by the rope, and walked on, still through most romantic scenery, to the monastery of Hagia Roserea.
The rock upon which this monastery stands is about a hundred feet high; it is perfectly isolated, and quite smooth and perpendicular on all sides, and so small that there is only room enough for the various buildings, without leaving any space for a garden. In fact, the buildings, although far from large, cover the whole summit of the rock. When we had shouted and made as much noise as we could for some time, an old woman came out upon a sort of wooden balcony over our heads; another woman followed her, and they began to talk and scream at us both together, so that we could not understand what they said. At last, one of them screaming louder than the other, we found that the monks were all out, and that these two ladies being the only garrison of the place declined the honour of our visit, and would not let down the rope ladder, which was drawn half way up. We used all the arguments we could think of, and told the old gentlewomen that they were the most beautiful creatures in the world, but all to no purpose; they were not to be overcome by our soft speeches, and would not let down the ladder an inch. Finding there were no hopes of getting in, we told them they were the ugliest old wretches in the country, and that we would not come near them if they asked us upon their knees; upon which they screamed and chattered louder than ever, and we walked off in high indignation.
CHAPTER XX.
The great Monastery of Meteora—The Church—Ugliness of the Portraits of Greek Saints—Greek Mode of Washing the Hands—A Monastic Supper—Morning View from the Monastery—The Library—Beautiful MSS.—Their Purchase—The Kitchen—Discussion among the Monks as to the Purchase Money for the MSS.—The MSS. reclaimed—A last Look at their Beauties—Proposed Assault of the Monastery by the Robber Escort.
As the day was drawing to a close we turned our steps towards the great monastery of Meteora, where we arrived just before dark. The vast rock upon which it is built is separated from the end of a projecting line of mountains by a widish chasm, at the bottom of which we found ourselves, after scrambling up a path which wound among masses of rock and huge stones which at some remote period had fallen from above.
Having reached the foot of the precipice under the monastery, we stopped in the middle of this dark chasm and fired a gun, as we had done at the monastery of Barlaam. Presently, after a careful reconnoitring from several long-bearded monks, a rope with a net at the end of it came slowly down to us, a distance of about twenty-five fathoms; and being bundled into the net, I was slowly drawn up into the monastery, where I was lugged in at the window by two of the strongest of the brethren, and after having been dragged along the floor and unpacked, I was presented to the admiring gaze of the whole reverend community, who were assembled round the capstan. This is by far the largest of the convents in this region; it is also in better order than the others, and is inhabited by a greater number of caloyers; I omitted to count their number, but there may have been about twenty: the monastery is, however, calculated to contain three times that number. The buildings both in their nature and arrangement are very similar to those of St. Barlaam, excepting that they are somewhat more extensive, and that there is a faint attempt at cultivating a garden which surrounded three sides of the monastery. Like all the other monasteries, it has no parapet wall.
The church had a large open porch before it, where some of the caloyers sat and talked in the evening; it was painted in fresco of bright colours, with most edifying representations of the tortures and martyrdoms of little ugly saints, very hairy and very holy, and so like the old caloyers themselves, who were discoursing before them, that they might have been taken for their portraits. These Greek monks have a singular love for the devil, and for everything horrible and hideous. I never saw a picture of a well-looking Greek saint anywhere, and yet the earlier Greek artists in their conceptions of the personages of Holy Writ sometimes approached the sublime; and in the miniatures of some of the manuscripts written previous to the twelfth century, which I collected in the Levant, there are figures of surpassing dignity and solemnity: yet in Byzantine and Egyptian art that purity and angelic expression so much to be admired in the works of Beato Angelico, Giovanni Bellini, and other early Italian masters, are not to be found. The more exalted and refined feeling which prompted the execution of those sublime works seems never to have existed in the Greek church, which goes on century after century, even up to the present time, using the same conventional and stiff forms, so that to the unpractised eye there would be considerable difficulty in discovering the difference between a Greek picture of a saint of the ninth century from one of the nineteenth. The agoumenos, a young active man with a good deal of intelligence in his countenance, sent word that the hour of supper was at hand, previously, however, to which I went through the process of washing my hands in, or rather over a Turkish basin with a perforated cover and a little vase in the middle for the piece of fresh-smelling soap in common use, which is so very much better than ours in England that I wonder none has been as yet imported, a venerable monk all the while pouring the water over my hands from a vessel resembling an antique coffee-pot. I then dried my fingers on an embroidered towel, and sat down with the agoumenos and another officer of the monastery before a metal tray covered with various dainty dishes. We three sat upon cushions on the floor, and the tray stood upon a wooden stool turned upside down, according to the usual fashion of the country: no meat had entered into the composition of our feast, but it was very savoury nevertheless, and our fingers were soon in the midst of the most tempting dishes, knives and forks being considered as useless superfluities. When my right hand was anointed with any oleaginous mixture, which it was very frequently indeed, if I wanted to drink, a monk held a silver bowl to my lips and a napkin under my chin, as you serve babies; after which I began again, until with a sigh I was obliged to throw myself back from the tray, and holding my hands aloft, the perforated basin and the coffee-pot made their appearance again. A cup of piping hot coffee concluded the evening's entertainment, and I retired to another room—the guest chamber—which opened upon a narrow court hard by, where all my things had been arranged. A long, thin candle was placed on a small stool in the middle of the floor, and having winked at the long rays which darted out of it for some time, I rolled myself into a comfortable position in the corner, and was asleep before I had settled upon any optical theory to account for them; nor did the dull, monotonous sound of the mallet, which, struck on a suspended board, called the good brethren to midnight prayer, disturb me for more than a moment.
Nov. 10.—Just before the dawn of day I opened the shutters of the unglazed windows of my room and surveyed the scene before me; all still looked grey and cold, and it was only towards the east that the distant outline of the mountains showed clear and distinct against the dark sky. By degrees the clouds, which had slept upon the shoulders of the hills, rose slowly and heavily, whilst the valleys gradually assumed all their soft and radiant beauty. It seemed to me as if I should never tire of gazing at this view. In the course of time, however, breakfast appeared, and having rapidly despatched it, I went to look at the buildings and curiosities.