THE LEGEND OF SANTA RESTITUTA.
Ischia is one of the gems of the Bay of Naples, and fortunately one of the least known and least visited of the tourist-haunted island group.
The Monte Epomeo rises in its midst, a mass of tufa rock, perforated here and there by fumarole, that is, openings through which volcanic exhalations are constantly sending forth their thin blue threads of hazy smoke to mingle with the blue and hazy atmosphere that veils the whole island in a fairy and gossamer robe. Two or three villages are built upon the low girdle of sand that lies at the foot of the mountain; on one side of the island are ledges of rock where the vine grows, on the other is a projection, or rather a separate rock, on which is built a state-prison. Only one road passes through Ischia, and no wheels ever leave their marks there, save when a royal visitor brings a modern carriage with him. The inhabitants walk barefoot, and the strangers ride donkeys, or are carried in open sedan-chairs, called "portantine." The women lounge about at their cottage-doors, spindle in hand, their heads curiously bound up in silken handkerchiefs, and their ears weighed down by huge ear-rings. There is a wonderful and unspeakable charm hanging over the place; the beauties that elsewhere in Italy hardly surprise you, seem to hold you spell-bound here. The sea is now blue, now green, now purple, always of an intense color, and seemingly an inverted firmament, where the white fishing-smack sails stand for clouds, and the little silver-crested wavelets for stars. The air is very pure, yet warm and balmy, and, when the storm visits the island, even the lightning must make itself more softly beautiful than elsewhere, for it is often seen in rose and violet colored flashes, making the heavens like to a vault of opal. The myrtle grows on the mountain-side, and the oleander blooms lower down, the vines climb from the water's edge to the roofs of the few rustic hotels the island boasts, and among all these beauties are hidden springs of medicinal water and hot sea-sands, all of them much used by Italians chiefly in the shape of baths. The sand-bath is a hole within four shanty-like plank walls, and the patient has himself buried in it up to his neck for the time prescribed.
Of course, much is said to strangers concerning the beauty of the sunrise from the top of Epomeo. But, as usual, when you go to see the sun, you find him behind sulky curtains of gray-white clouds that roll like another sea between the blue unseen Mediterranean and the bright purple heaven above. Still, this, too, is beautiful, though coldly so, and very unlike the lovely western sunrise over the Atlantic. But the glory of Italy is in her sunsets, and toward evening sea and mountain, tufa rock and yellow sand, put on a marvellous robe, a veritable "coat of divers colors," and life seems to breathe and sigh in things that before seemed lifeless.
Ischia, like all Italian localities, has its patron saint; they call her Santa Restituta.
When persecution was raging in Egypt, in the third century, says the simple legend, the body of a young maiden, with a millstone tied round her neck, floated across the sea and rested in a creek on the south side of the island. The creek is called after the martyr to this day, and above it are rocks whose black mass literally overhangs and roofs in part of the bay. Just where her body rested, in a sandy, barren place, lilies grew up and continued to bloom; they are there now, and are very peculiar as well as very lovely, a sort of cross between the lily and the iris, with delicate pointed petals, five in number, and a tall smooth stem with very little verdure. Not only do these flowers grow nowhere else in the island or out of it, but they will not even grow in a land of their own sandy soil if transplanted with a quantity of it elsewhere. The millstone that was round the saint's neck is said to be embedded in a wall in the neighborhood of her church: there is such a stone, whether the same or not no one can tell. Later on, a church was erected over the remains of the martyr, and she was chosen patroness of the island. A very curious Byzantine figure, gilt all over and nearly life-size, was made in wood and placed over the altar. In one hand, she was pictured as holding a book of the Gospels, and, in the other, a full-rigged vessel. When the south of Italy was invested by Saracen hordes, Ischia did not escape pillage, and of course, judging the most precious things to be in the church, as they always were in Catholic times, the marauders rushed to Santa Restituta's shrine, and attempted to carry off the golden statue, as they believed it to be. The statue, naturally, was a movable one, and used to be carried in procession on certain stated occasions. But now it remained rooted to the spot, and no effort of the stalwart infidels could move it a hair's-breadth from its pedestal. In rage and disappointment, one of them struck at it savagely with his scimetar, and a mark upon its knee still attests this outrage. The sacrilege was promptly punished, for the men themselves now found they were unable to move, and remained invisibly chained at the foot of the miraculous image. If they were released, the legend does not say; let us hope that they were freed by faith, and that conversion followed this strange sign. The statue remained immovable ever since, and another image was made to be carried in procession, with the addition of the miraculously riveted Saracens, in a small painted group on the same stand as the figure itself. Whether the legend be absolutely true or only partly so, whether fact and figure be mixed together, and things spiritual typified under tangible forms, it is not for us to decide, but the simple faith of the happy islanders is certainly to be admired, and even to be envied. They have yearly rejoicings, fireworks, processions, songs, and services, and a military parade of what national guards they can muster, to celebrate their saint's anniversary; they are proud of her, and point out her statue and tell her history to strangers with the same enthusiasm with which soldiers speak of a favorite general.
And, if my surmise be true, they have had her celebrated in art by no less a painter than Paul de la Roche, whose "Martyre" is well known all over Europe as one of the chastest, truest, and most reverent as well as most beautiful representations of martyrdom. He has painted a fair maiden in a white robe, and her hands tied with a cruel rope in front. The long, golden hair is gently moved, like a strange and new sea-weed, by the rippling water that flows over it; the cord cuts into the flesh of the white, delicate hand, and the water seems reverently eager to pour its coolness into the wounds and to stay the cruel fever in them; the face is that of an angel that is looking on the Father's countenance in highest heaven; a coronal of light rests, like a sun-touched cloud, just above her head, and in the dark background a large mass of overhanging rock, just like the rocks of Ischia, frown down upon the sea-green bay, and shadows of muffled, lurking figures are seen watching the floating wonder from above.
If the painter had not Santa Restituta in his mind, the coincidence, at least, is curious. Yet it is true that so many blessed saints died this death that he may have meant to portray a typical rather than an individual representation in this picture, which is one of his masterpieces.
There is another floating figure, with golden hair and folded hands, which is more familiar to most people than this one, and, though the comparison is strange, I cannot help introducing it here. I mean the figure of Tennyson's Elaine, whom Gustave Dore has made his own in his unapproachable illustration of the Idyls of the King, but whose history and especially whose death has been the source of many a painter's inspiration. I hardly know one more touching object in all modern poetry, save that more solemn and more dignified one that closes the idyl of Guinevere, and whose calm sublimity almost touches the divine. But though the analogy of the "Lily Maid of Astolat" borne down the river to the oriel-windowed palace of Arthur's Queen to that other lily maid, the virgin-martyr of Egypt, be brought to mind by the likeness in both cases of the floating waters and the unbound hair; yet here the analogy ends, for we see that as far as heaven is from earth, so far are these two beautiful figures removed one from the other. Both died for love, both died pure; but the love of the one was such as, once quenched in death, would never live again, for she would be "even as the angels;" while the love of the other not only did death not quench, but would make tenfold more ardent, as she would "follow the Lamb whithersoever he goeth," and sing "the new canticle" no man could sing but those "who were purchased from the earth."
Tennyson's Elaine is a figure of earth in earth's most sinless form and most innocent meaning, yet still earthly, still imperfect, still embodying the idea of man's natural weakness and inherent decay. Paul de la Roche's "Martyre," or Ischia's Santa Restituta, is a figure of heaven, an already glorified soul, who, having conquered the flesh, the world, and the devil, having offered her body to God "a living sacrifice," and having "put on immortality," has passed beyond our understanding and beyond our criticism into that region of bliss whose very dimmest ray would be unbearable glare to our eyes, and the full vision of which would bring a blessed and a painless death in its inevitable train.