Amalfi

  

 

 

I looked forward to Edward Hutton's description of Amalfi since my paternal grandparents both came from the little town of Agerola at the top of a winding road up the hills from the lovely coastal town of Amalfi. We have fond memories of our visits, one of which is coffee in the crowded piazza at the foot of the cathedral steps one Sunday after Mass.

 

And so the great adventurous road proceeds along this wild  and beautiful coast under the villages of Tovere, Vettica Minore, Lone and Pastena, down to the shore at last at Amalfi, which it enters through a great tunnel under the Cappuccini.

 

Approached thus at evening, with the last light from the west full upon it, Amalfi seems to stand about an ampitheatre of hills, its churches, campanili and white houses hanging on the face of the great cliff which towers up above it in an awful magnificence, the little white port under the eastern hill, and all before it the Homeric sea….

 

I found Amalfi delighted me as much at morning as in that first impression in the twilight. The history of the place knows nothing of any Greek or Roman city, and indeed it seems  to have had no existence in antiquity…. In truth, Amalfi seems to have been founded by—at any rate it first appears under the protection of—the Byzantine Empire…. Amalfi is thus one of the first Italian cities to erect herself into a republic, and indeed she can boast that she gave the signal for the awakening of the municipal spirit, the independence of the cities of Italy. She was able, too, to defy the Saracens, the Prince of Palermo, and even in some sort the Norman kings of Naples….

 

The glory of Amalfi, in so far as it is to be found not in her history but in her monuments, is the great Cathedral of Saint Andrew, where in the crypt lies the incorruptible body of the Apostle, brought from Constantinople in 1206. The glorious church, marred of course by time, by restoration and rebuildings, stands at the top of a great flight of steps, which lead up to its vestibule, upheld by the antique columns of Paestum. There in the façade are those wonderful bronze doors which are said to date from the year 1000, and from which those of Montecassino were copied….

The church itself is, in spite of all it has suffered, still a beautiful Norman-Byzantine building, rather picturesque than artistic, for the antique columns within were modernized and transformed in the eighteenth century. The two ancient ambones supported by antique columns remain, as does the font, an antique vase of porphyry. Close by are two sarcophagi, upon which are to be seen the Rape of Persephone and other pagan stories. From the too sophisticated nave you descend, in the south aisle, to the modernized and over-decorated crypt, where lies the body of S. Andrew the Apostle, which has been visited through the centuries by innumerable pilgrims, among others by S. Francis of Assisi in 1218, by Queen Giovanna I and by Pius II, in whose time Cardinal Bessarion brought the head of the apostle to S. Peter’s in Rome, where it still remains. Philip III of Spain presented the church with the huge bronze statue of the saint, the work of Nacchearino. To the north of the church stands the interesting cloister. The beautiful campanile of four stories, the last being round, under a cupola upheld by columns, and set about with four little turrets, was the work of archbishop Filippo Augustariccio in 1276.

View from Agerola

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Edward Hutton: Naples and Campania Revisited. London, 1958.Preface. Pp. 212-216.