IN A SUPPRESSED TUSCAN MONASTERY.
We have left the golden hills and laughing valleys of Tuscany behind us as we approach that desert part of it where the gray chalk cliffs stretch out into the Maremma in long narrow tongues of rock, not far from Siena. A frightful convulsion of nature in prehistoric times rent the solid rock, seaming it with chasms so wide and deep that the region is almost depopulated, not only because man can with difficulty find room for the sole of his foot, but because the gases which lie over the Maremma in vapors thick enough to destroy life in a single night rise up to the top of these cliffs and reduce the dwellers there to fever-worn shadows. Even the scattered olive-trees that have taken root in the thin layer of soil are of the same hue, and the few clumps of cypresses add to the pallor of the scene with their dark funereal shafts. The only bit of color is where a cluster of low red-washed houses have found room for their scanty foundations on a knot of rock where several chasms converge. Where the sides of the chasms slope gently enough to admit of being terraced, vineyards are planted, which yield famous wines, the red Aleatico and the white Vino Santo, rivalling in quality the Monte Pulciano, which grows only a short distance away. Farther down in the depths thickets of scrub oak and wild vines form oases that are invisible unless one is standing on the brink.
The epithet "God-forsaken," so often applied to regions like this, would, however, be inappropriate here, for in God's name the locality is famous. On a promontory whose sides fall down in sheer precipices all about, except where a narrow neck of rock connects it with the net-work of cliffs, is a vast monastery, the Mother Abbey of the Olivetani. In 1313 a noble of Siena, Bernardo Tolomei, in the midst of a life of literary distinctions and pleasures, received, it is said, the grace of God. He was struck blind, and in his prayers vowed if he recovered his sight to embrace a life of penitence. It was the divine will that his vows should be fulfilled, and his sight was immediately restored. Two friends of the noblest Italian families, the Patrizzi and Piccolomini, joined him in leaving the world to become hermits in the desert. The chalky cliffs overhanging the Maremma on Bernardo's estates were selected as a fitting retreat: here they dug grottoes in the sides of a precipice and lived on roots and water. They were soon followed by so many penitents as to form a community requiring a government, and, the necessity of this being made plain to them through a vision, in which Bernardo saw a silver ladder suspended between heaven and earth, on which white-robed monks were ascending accompanied by angels, he was urged to go to Avignon and obtain an audience of the Pope, who gave to the community the rule of St. Benedict.
For a century the friars labored in building their convent to accommodate the needs of their ever-increasing numbers: the one vast cloister was not enough, and another was added; the primitive chapel was enlarged into a stately church, and the abbey walls were extended until, enclosing the garden, they covered the entire promontory. Then they ceased from their labors, and began to establish other monasteries and send out swarms from the mother-hive to fill them, until the executive and administrative ability to govern a small kingdom had to be supplied from their numbers, and manual work had to give way to mental.
Another century found the abbey governed by men of culture and lovers of the fine arts; and the celebrated painted cloister, the intarsia-work, and the wooden sculptures, which now attract so many visitors, date from that time. Nearly all the movable works of art, the pictures, illuminated missals, and precious manuscripts, were confiscated at the time of the first suppression under Napoleon, in 1810; and whatever else could be carried off went in 1866, when the religious orders were suppressed by the Italian government, to embellish the museums. Still, the empty cloister, with Signorelli's and Sodoma's frescos on the walls, Fra Giovanni of Verona's intarsia-work in the church, and the solitary monastery itself, so silent after centuries of activity, have an inexpressible charm, and travellers who undertake a pilgrimage hither can never forget their impressions.
On a sunny autumn afternoon three ladies left Siena in a light wagon, and drove over the gray upland, which was shrouded in a pale blue mist, through the picturesque hamlet of Buonconvento. Here they changed their horse and left the Roman highway for the road cut in the rocks five centuries ago by the monks of Monte Oliveto. These pious men understood little of engineering, of the art of throwing bridges across ravines. Their road simply followed the course pointed out by nature, winding in serpentine folds through the labyrinth of chasms which begin at Buonconvento.
It was toward evening when the party drove over a narrow bridge across a half-filled moat, and under the arch of a massive crenellated tower whose unguarded gates stood wide open. A hundred years ago they would have found the portcullis drawn, and, being women, if they had attempted to force an entrance would have been excommunicated, for until the suppression no woman's foot was allowed across this threshold. The tower was built as a protection against bandits, and the grated windows which give it a sinister look to-day lighted the cells of refractory brothers, placed here to catch the eye of novices as they entered the outer portal and serve as a silent warning.
The convent was still invisible, and our three visitors were speculating on what they would find at the end of the grass-grown allée bordered with cypresses, when they saw, in a ravine below, a white-robed figure hastening toward them.