Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, September, 1880

by Various

In the afternoon we went to the church of St. Francis to see the piccola ruota of the Neapolitan peasants, which is apparently a rehearsal for the gran ruota to be performed in the Porziuncola the day following. These people were all gone, when we reached the church, to follow a relic-bearing procession of Franciscans to the little chapel built over the spot where St. Francis was born, and the spectators took advantage of the opportunity to range themselves about the walls and wherever they could find places. We were scarcely in the seats offered us in the choir when a murmur of subdued exclamations, a trampling of many feet and a cloud of dust that filled the vestibule announced the return of the procession. The gates of the iron grating which shut off the chancel and transepts from the nave were opened to admit the monks with their relic, and closed immediately to exclude the crowd. After the short function was ended they were again opened, and the crowd rushed in and began to run around the altar.

These people were all poor: many were old and had to be held up and helped along by a younger person at either side. The women wore handkerchiefs on their heads, and many wore those sandals made of a piece of leather tied up over the foot with strings which give these peasants their popular name of sciusciari, an imitative word derived from the scuffling sound of the sandals in walking. They hurried eagerly on, hustling each other, murmuring prayers and ejaculations, and seemed quite unconscious of the crowd of persons who had come there to stare, perhaps to laugh, at them. The Asisinati looked on without taking any part, and with a curiosity not unmingled with contempt. "The Neapolitans are so material!" they say.

These repeated circlings of the altar, I was told, are intended as so many visits, each time they go round having the value of a visit. Many of these people seek the Pardon not only for themselves, but for friends who are unable to come. The absent confess and communicate at their parish church at home, and unite their intention with that of the person who makes the visit for them.

My padrona di casa told me an anecdote in illustration of this materialism of the Neapolitans, which the Asisinati are anxious not to be thought to share: On the first of August several years before, she said, when the church of St. Francis was full of people waiting around the confessionals, a man at one of them was observed to be disputing with the priest inside. Pressed so closely as they were, many might excuse themselves for being aware that the penitent was refusing to agree to the penance imposed by the priest, who consequently declined to give him absolution. The priest cut the dispute short by closing the wicket and addressing himself to the penitent at the other side. The man left his place and wandered disconsolately about the church, followed by many curious eyes, for not to listen in silent submission to the penance imposed by the priest is a rare scandal. After a while he seemed to have resolved on a compromise, but it was no longer possible to obtain his place in advance of the crowd, where each one waited his turn. He took a post, therefore, directly opposite the front of the confessional, as near as he could get, but with half the width of the nave between, and waited till the priest should be visible. The moment came when the confessor, turning from one penitent to another, was seen from the front. The man leaned eagerly forward, and throwing out his right hand with three fingers extended, as if playing morra, called out, "Quello del casotiello, volete farlo per tre?" ("You in the confessional there, will you do it for three?") (These peasants call the confessional casotiello.) Whether the bargain related to a number of prayers to be said, a number of visits or of masses, does not concern us.

The next afternoon we went down to Santa Maria degli Angeli in the plain, the very penetralia of the Pardon. Those who have visited this church know that the little chapel of the Porziuncola, which is enclosed in its midst like the heart in a body, has two doors—one at the lower end, the other at the upper right corner. It is very dim except when its altar is blazing with candles and its hanging lamps lighted. As we have already said, a visit to this chapel or merely passing through it, for a person who has confessed, satisfies the outward conditions of the Pardon.

In the gran ruota which we were about to witness the Neapolitans entered in an unbroken line at the lower door, passed out without stopping at the upper, ran down the side-aisle of the church and out of the door, in again at the great door, up the nave, and again through the chapel, repeating this over and over for fifteen or twenty minutes. While they make the wheel no one else enters the chapel: all are spectators.

It was for these poor people the supreme moment. They had come from afar at an expense which they could ill afford; they had endured fatigue, perhaps hunger; and they had been mocked at. But, so far, they had accomplished their task. They had confessed their sins with all the fervor and sincerity of which they were capable, had visited the birthplace, the home, the basilica and the distant mountain-retreat of St. Francis, and they had gathered the miraculous yellow fennel-flowers of the mountain. Now they were to receive the Pardon. The chains of hell had fallen from them in confession: at the moment of entering the chapel the bonds of Purgatory would also be loosened, and if they should drop dead there, or die before having committed another sin, they would fly straight to heaven as larks into the morning sky. No passing from a miserable present to a miserable Purgatory, but unimaginable bliss in an instant. Their ideal bliss might not be the highest which the human mind is capable of conceiving, but it was the highest that they could conceive, and their souls strained blindly upward to that point where imagination faints against the thrilling cord with which the body holds the spirit in tether. To these people heaven was not a mere theological expression, a vague place which might or might not be: it was as real as the bay and the sky of Naples and the smoking volcano that nursed for ever their sense of unknown terrors. It was as real as the poppies in their grass and the oranges ripening on their trees. Maria Santissima, in her white robe and the blue mantle where they could count the creases, was there, with ever the vision of a Babe in her arms, and Gesù, the arms of whose cross should fall into folds of a glorious garment about his naked crucified form, in sleeves to his hands, in folds about his feet and raised into a crown about his head. Into this blessed company no earthly pain could enter to destroy their delights. Cold and hunger and the dagger's point could never find them more, nor sickness rack them, nor betrayal set their blood in a poisoned flame, nor earthquakes chill them with terror. Lying in that heavenly sunshine, with fruit-laden boughs within reach and heaps of gold beside them if they should wish for it, they could laugh at Vesuvius licking in vain with its fiery tongue toward them, and at the black clouds heavy with hail that would spread ruin over the fields far away from these celestial vineyards and the waving grain of Paradise.

Exalted by such visions, what to them were the gazing crowd and their own rags and squalor? They entered the Porziuncola singing: they came out at the side-door transfigured, and silent except for some breathless "Maria!" or "Gesù!" Their arms were thrown upward, their glowing black eyes were upraised, their thin swarthy faces burned with a vivid scarlet, their white teeth glittered between the parted lips. Round and round they went like a great water-wheel that revolves in sun and shadow, and the spray it tossed up as it issued from the Porziuncola was rapture, the fiery spray of the soul.

At last all remained outside the chapel, making two long lines from either side the door down the nave to the open air, their faces ever toward the chapel. Then they began to sing in voices as clear and sweet as a chorus of birds. Not a harsh note was there. They sang some hymn that had come down to them from other generations as the robins and the bobo-links drop their songs down to future nestlings, and ever a long-drawn note stretched bright and steady from one stanza to another. So singing, they stepped slowly backward, always gazing steadily at the lighted altar of the Porziuncola, visible through the door, and, stepping backward and singing, they slowly drew themselves out of the church, and the Pardon for them was over.

But though Asisi is not without its notable sights, the chief pleasures there are quiet ones. A walk down through the olive trees to the dry bed of the torrent Tescio will please one who is accustomed to rivers which never leave their beds. One strays among the rocks and pebbles that the rushing waters have brought down from the mountains, and stands dryshod under the arches of the bridges, with something of the feeling excited by visiting a deserted house; with the difference that the Undine people are sure to come rushing down from the mountains again some day. There one searches out charming little nooks which would make the loveliest of pictures. There was one in the Via del Terz' Ordine which was a sweet bit of color. Two rows of stone houses facing on other streets turn their backs to this, and shade it to a soft twilight, till it seems a corridor with a high blue ceiling rather than a street. There it lies forgotten. No one passes through it or looks into it. In one spot the tall houses are separated by a rod or so of high garden-wall with an arch in the middle of it, and under the arch is a door. Over this arch climbs a rose-vine with dropping clusters of tiny pink roses that lean on the stone, hang down into the shadow or lift and melt into the liquid, dazzling blue of the sky. Except the roses and the sky all is a gray shadow. It reminds one of some lovely picture of the Madonna with clustering cherub faces about her head, and you think it would not be discordant with the scene if a miraculous figure should steal into sight under that arch. It is one of the charms of Italy that it can always fitly frame whatever picture your imagination may paint.