“After winding through woods of olives, carpeted in spring by young corn and bright green flax, Dolceacqua suddenly bursts upon the view, stretching across a valley, whose sides are covered with forests of olives and chestnuts, and which is backed by fine snow mountains. Through the town winds the deep blue stream of the Nervia, flowing under a tall bridge of one wide arch, and above frowns the huge palatial castle, perched upon a perpendicular cliff, with sunlight streaming through its long lines of glassless windows. The streets are almost closed in with archways, which give them the look of gloomy crypts, only opening here and there to let in a ray of sunlight and a strip of blue sky. They lead up the steep ascent to the castle where the Doria once reigned as sovereign princes.”[20]
An electric tram connects Ventimiglia with Bordighera. This latter place is unceremoniously dismissed by Hare in these words: “The town contains nothing worth seeing.” The statement is certainly incorrect. Old Bordighera contains a good deal that is worth seeing—the quaint town gates, the steep and picturesque streets, and the glorious view from the little piazza before the church. There also by the seaside is the chapel of S. Ampelio with its cave, in which the apostle of the district lived and died.
Little authentic is known of S. Ampelio, for there is no early life of him extant. Tradition says that he was a blacksmith from the Thebaid, who left Egypt and settled here. His bones were carried off in the twelfth century to San Remo, and thence later to Genoa. The fête of S. Ampelio is on May 14th. The chapel was enlarged and restored in 1852.
The transfer of the relics of S. Ampelio to San Remo exhibits a curious feature of mediæval enthusiasm. In 1140 the citizens of San Remo, at war with Ventimiglia, took a number of the townsmen prisoners. They would release them on one condition only, that they should reveal where were secreted the bones of S. Ampelio. The Ventimiglians, to obtain their liberty, betrayed the secret; the old hermit had been laid in the grotto he had inhabited during his life. Thereupon the people of San Remo carried off his body.
What is the peculiar fancy for possessing a few pounds of phosphate of lime? Whence comes the devotion to relics?
S. Chrysostom tells us of pilgrims travelling from the ends of the earth to Arabia to see Job’s dunghill, and he says that they drew “much profit and philosophy” from the sight.
One can understand how that certain churches should be greedy to possess relics, and steal, or even invent them, because the possession brought money into their coffers; but the money would not have come had there not been, deep-seated in the hearts of the people, a conviction that there was something supernatural, a divine power surrounding and emanating from these relics.
S. AMPELIO