A Book of the Riviera

by S. Baring-Gould

Prudentius, the Christian poet (died about 410) shows us how strong was the devotion, even in his day.

“His first food was the sacred meal, his earliest sight the sacred candles, and the family gods growing black with holy oil. He saw his mother pale at her prayers before the holy stone, and he, too, would be lifted by his nurse to kiss it in his turn.” (Cont. Symmachum.)

It has been so tough that it is not extirpated yet.

In 1877 a correspondent of the Society of Anthropology at Paris wrote about the worship as still prevailing in the valleys of the Pyrenees.

“One comes across these sacred stones most usually near fountains. They are rough blocks of porphyroid, or amphibolite granite, left on the mountain side by glacial action. They are almost invariably shapeless, and rarely present any features that can distinguish them from other great stones strewn about. One might pass them by unnoticed but for the local traditions that attach to them and the veneration with which they are regarded by the natives. In vain do the priests preach against them. They have utterly failed to drive the superstition from the hearts of their people. In vain do they get them smashed up secretly, in hopes of thereby destroying these vestiges of paganism; especially do they use their efforts against such as serve as meeting-places to young men and girls. The natives, when they come on the workmen engaged in the destruction, break out into riot, and stop the work. When they cannot do this, then they collect the fragments, replace them, and continue to surround them with veneration. It is necessary to disperse the débris of the Holy Stone to put an end to the cult; but even then, the place where it stood is regarded as sacred, and sometimes the clergy plant a cross there, as the only means of turning the traditional reverence of the spot into a new direction.”

Whether this religion of the black stone of Antibes goes back to Phœnician or to Ligurian religion one cannot say—probably both Phœnician colonist and Ligurian native shared the same devotion to rude blocks of stone.

In Scotland, in Ireland, in Cornwall, in Brittany, among the graves of the dead of the Bronze Age, almost invariably a piece of white quartz or a jade weapon is found. Indeed, the bit of quartz is so constant that a workman engaged in opening one of the barrows will cry out, “Now we are coming on the bones,” when he sees it gleam. The bit of quartz or jade pertained to the same category of ideas. It was the rude stone protecting the dead, as the rude stone was the safeguard of the living, the object of worship in life, of hope, of confidence in death.

At Antibes, in the wall of the Hôtel de Ville, is the stone with the inscription, already spoken of, to the poor little dancing boy of twelve, from the North. In the museum is an inscription to the memory of a horse, by his sorrowing master. Another shows that at Antibes there was a corporation of Utriculares, that is to say, of boatmen who navigated the sea in vessels sustained by bladders. These were common enough on the lagoons and the rivers, but exceptional on the coast.

Perhaps the most interesting excursion that can be made from Cannes is to the isles of Lerins. Of these there are two—Ste. Marguerite and S. Honorat—the latter formerly the seat of the great school and monastery of Lerins. The islands take their name from some mythic Lero, of whose story nothing is known; but Pliny informs us that there had once been a town named Vergoanum situated on one of them which had disappeared before the Christian era, and of which no traces remained. That Ste. Marguerite was occupied by Greeks and Romans is testified by the finding there of a bi-lingual inscription. But whatever relics of structures may have been left by its old masters have been used up again and again from mediæval times down to the present. The fortress now standing is a barrack. It was built by Richelieu, considerably enlarged by the Spaniards when they had possession of the island, and then transformed after the plans of Vauban. The fortress was employed mainly as a military or State prison.