The Road to Vallombrosa

 

After his stay in Florence, Edward Hutton left the city to tour the surrounding countryside. One of his objects, the former abbey at Vallombrosa, was founded in the eleventh century by S. Giovanni Gualberto. In the nineteenth century the abbey was secularized by the government of the newly formed Kingdom of Italy.

There are many ways that lead from  Florence to Vallombrosa—by the hills, by the valley, and by rail—and the best of these is by the valley, but the shortest is by rail, for by that way you may leave Florence at noon and be in your inn by three… but for me I will cross the river, and go once more by the byways through the valley now, where the wind whispers in the poplars beside Arno, and the river passes singing gently on its way. It is a long road full of the quiet life of the country…

However, I was for Vallombrosa; so I kept to the Aretine Way. I left it at last at S. Ellero, whence the little railway climbs up to the Saltino, passing first through the olives and vines, then through the chestnuts, the oaks, and the beeches, till at last the high lawns appeared, and evening fell at the last turn of the mule path over the hill as I came out of the forest before the monastery itself, almost like a village or a stronghold with square towers and vast buildings too, fallen, alas! from their high office, to serve as a school of forestry, and inn for the summer visitor who has fled from the heat of the valleys. And there I slept.

It is best always to come to any place for the first time at evening or even at night, and then in the morning to return a little on your way and come to it again. Wandering there, out of the sunshine, in the stillness of the forest itself, with the ruin of a thousand winters under my feet, how could I be but angry that modern Italy—ah, so small a thing!—has chased out the great and ancient order that had dwelt here so long in quietness, and has established after our pattern a utilitarian school, and thus what was once a guest-house is now a pension of tourists. But in the abbey itself I forgot my anger, I was ashamed of my contempt of those who could do so small a thing. This place was founded because a young man refused to hate his enemy; every stone here is a part of the mountain, every beam a tree of the forest, that forest that has been renewed and destroyed a thousand times, that has never known resentment, because it thinks only of life. Yes, this is no place for hatred; since he who founded it loved his enemies, I will also let them pass by, and since I too am of that company which thinks only of life, what is the modern world to me with its denial, its doubt, its contemptible materialism, its destruction, its misery? Like winter, it will flee away before the first footsteps of our spring.*

*Hutton included a brief life of S. Giovanni Gualberto, born about the year 1000, that included the charming story of his conversion. Interspersed throughout his travel books are many of these lives of now forgotten local saints. 

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Edward Hutton: Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa, second edition, London, 1908. Pp. 362-363.