Prato and Madonna's Girdle

 

His visit to the little city of Prato gave Edward Hutton occasion to relate the charming legend of Madonna's Girdle. In the Middle Ages a girdle was not an undergarment but a kind of belt worn about the waist. *     

Prato is like a flower that has fallen by the wayside that has faded in the dust of the way. She is a little cozy city, scarcely more than a castello, full of ruined churches; and in the churches are ruined frescoes, ruined statues, broken pillars, spoiled altars. You pass from one church to another… and you ask yourself, as you pass from one to another, what you have come to see: only this flower fallen by the wayside.

But in truth Prato is a child of Florence, a rosy child among the flowers—in the country, too, as children should be. Her churches are small. What could be more like a child’s dream of a church than La Madonna delle Carceri? And the Palazzo Pretorio—it is a toy palace wonderfully carved and contrived, a toy that has been thrown aside. …

And since Prato is a child, there are about her many children; mischievous, shy, joyful little people, who lurk round the coppersmiths, or play in the old churches, or hide about the corridors of Palazzo Communale. And so it is not surprising that the greatest treasures of Prato are either the work of children—the frescoes, for instance, of Lippo Lippi and Lucrezia Buzi in the Duomo—or the presentment of them, yes in their happiest moments; some dancing, while others play on pipes, or with cymbals full of surprising sweetness, in the open pulpit of Donatello; a pulpit from which five times every year a delightful and wonderful thing is shown, not without its significance, too, in this child city of children—Madonna’s Girdle, the Girdle of the Mother of them all, shown in the open air, so that even the tiniest may see. …

 

The very Girdle of Madonna herself, in its own chapel there on the left behind the beautiful bronze screen of Bruno di ser Lapo. There, too, you will always find a group of children, and surely it was for them that Agnolo Gaddi painted those frescoes of the life of Madonna and the gift of her Girdle to St. Thomas. For it seems that doubting Thomas was doubting to the last; he alone of all the saints was the least a child. How they wonder at him now, for first he could not believe that Jesus was risen from the dead, when the flowers rise, when the spring like Mary wanders to-day in tears in the garden…. After all, is it not the cry of our very hearts often enough at Easter, when the summer for which we have waited so long seems never to be coming at all? It came at last, and St. Thomas, like to us maybe, but unlike the children, would not believe it till he had touched the very dayspring with his hands, and felt the old sweetness of the sunshine. And so, when the sun was set and the world desolate, Madonna too came to die, and was received into heaven amid a great company of angels, and they were the flowers, and there she is eternally. Now, when all this came to pass, St. Thomas was not by, and when he came and saw Winter in the world, he would not believe that Madonna was dead, nor would he be persuaded that she was crowned Queen of Angels in heaven. And Mary, in pity of his sorrow, sent him by the hands of children, “the girdle with which her body was girt,”—just a strip of the blue sky sprinkled with stars,--“and therefore he understood that she was assumpt into heaven.” And if you ask how comes this precious thing to Prato, I ask where else, then, could it be but in this little city among the children, where the promise of Spring abides continually, and the Sun is ever in their hearts. Ah, Rose of the world, Lily of the fields, you will return, like Spring you will come from that heaven where you are, and in every valley the flowers will run before you, and the poppies will stray among the corn, and the proud gladiolus will bow its violet head; then on the hillside I shall hear again the silver laughter of the olives, and in the wide valleys I shall hear all the rivers running to the sea, and the sweet wind will wander in the villages,  and in the walled cities I shall find the flowers, and I too, with the children, shall wait on the hills at dawn to see you pass by with the sun in your arms because it is spring—Stella Matutina, Causa nostrae laetitiae. 

 

###

*Note: Hutton relates that "a certain lad of Prato" following in the wake of a crusading army in Palestine in 1096 kissed the daughter of a great priest, and received from her the gift of Madonna's girdle.

 

Edward Hutton: Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa, second edition, London, 1908. Pp. 385-388.

St. Francis and La Verna

 

Edward Hutton's visit to La Verna, the rocky hilltop where St. Francis received the stigmata, the wounds of Christ on his body, brought forth words about the enduring significance of the man that still resonate today.

 

It was with a certain hesitation that I first came to La Verna, as though something divine that was hidden in the life of the Apostle of Humanity might be lost for me in the mere realism of  his sacred places. But it was not so. In Italy, it might seem even to-day, St. Francis is not a stranger, and, in fact, I had got no further than the Cappella degli Uccelli before I seemed to understand everything, and in a place so lonely as this to have found again, yes, that Jesus whom I had lost in the city. … 

Everywhere you go in La Verna you feel that S. Francesco has been there before you; and where there is no tradition to help you, surely you will make one for yourself. Can he who loved everything that had life had failed to love, too, that world he saw from La Penna—

                    “Nel crudo sasso, intra Tevere ed Arno”

--Casentino and its woods and streams, Val d’Arno, Val di Tevere, the hills of Perugia, the valleys of Umbria, the lean, wolfish country of the Marche, the rugged mountains of Romagna. There on the summit of La Verna, you look down on the broken fortresses of countless wars, the passes through which army after army, company upon company, has marched to victory or fled in defeat; every hilltop seems to bear some ruined Rocca, every valley to be a forgotten battlefield, every stream has run red with blood. All is forgotten, all is over, all is done with. The victories led to nothing; the defeats are out of mind. In the midst of the battle the peasant went on ploughing his field; somewhere not far away the girls gathered the grapes. All this violence was of no account; it achieved nothing, and every victory was but the tombstone of an idea. Here; on La Verna, is the only fortress that is yet living in all Tuscany of that time so long ago. It is a fortress of love. The man who built it had flung away his dagger, and already his sword rusted in that little house in Assisi; he conquered the world by love. His was the irresistible and lovely force, the immortal, indestructible confidence of the Idea, the Idea which cannot die. If he prayed in Latin, he wrote the first verses of Italian poetry. Out of his tomb grew the rose of the Renaissance, and filled the world with its sweetness. He was the son of a burgess in Assisi, and is now the greatest saint in our heaven. With the sun he loved his name has shown round the world, and there is no land so far that it has not heard it. And we who look upon the ruined castles of the Conti Guidi, are here because of him, and speak with his brethren as we gaze.

 

###

 

Edward Hutton: Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa, second edition, London, 1908. Pp. 381-384.

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. 

###

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

Florence: The Villa

 In his chapter on Fiesole, Edward Hutton discoursed on the villa, that very important feature of the Italian countryside. 

That love of country life, no longer characteristic of the Florentines, which we are too apt to consider almost wholly English, was long ago certainly one of the most delightful traits of the Tuscan character; for Siena was not behind Florence in her delight in the life of the villa. It is perhaps in the Commentaries of Pius II that a love of country byways, the lanes and valleys about his home, through which, gouty and old, he would have himself carried in a litter, is expressed for the first time with a true understanding and appreciation of things which for us have come to mean a good half of life…. Yet the Florentine burgess of the fifteenth century, the very man whose simple and hard common sense got him wealth, or at least a fine competence, and, as he has told us, a good housewife, and made him one of the toughest traders in Europe, would become almost a poet in his country house. Old Agnolfo Pandolfini, talking to his sons, and teaching them his somewhat narrow and yet wholesome and delightful wisdom, continually reminds himself of those villas near Florence, some like palaces… some like castles… “in the purest air, in a laughing country of lovely views, where there are no fogs nor bitter winds, but always fresh water and everything pure and healthy.”…

If this should seem a mere pleasaunce of delight, the wishes of a poet,  the garden of a dream… then listen to Alberti—or old Agnolfo Pandolfini, is it?--In his Trattato del Governo della Famiglia, one of the most delightful books of the fifteenth century. He certainly was no poet, yet with what enthusiasm and happiness he speaks of his villa, how comely and useful it is, so that while everything else brings labour, danger, suspicion, harm, fear, and repentance, the villa will bring none of these, but a pure happiness, a real consolation. …  ”La Villa, the country, one soon finds, is always gracious, faithful, and true; if you govern it with diligence and love, it will never be satisfied with what it does for you… In the spring the villa gives you continual delight; green leaves, flowers, odours, songs and in every way makes you happy and jocund; all smiles on you and promises a fine harvest, filling you with good hope, delight, and pleasure. Yes indeed, how courteous is the villa! She gives you now one fruit, now another, never leaving you without some of her own joy. For in autumn she pays you for all your trouble, fruit out of all proportion to your merit, recompense and thanks; and how willing and with abundance—twelve for one; for a little sweat, many barrels of wine, and for what is old in the house, the villa will give you new, seasoned, clear, and good. She fills the house the winter long with grapes, both fresh and dry, with plums, walnuts, pears, apples, almonds, filberts, guggiole, pomegranates, and other wholesome fruits, and apples fragrant and beautiful. Nor in winter will she forget to be liberal; she sends you wood, oil, vine branches, laurels, junipers to keep out snow and wind, and then she comforts you with the sun, offering you the hare and the roe, and the field to follow them. …” Nor are the joys of summer less, for you read Greek and Latin in the shadow of the courtyard where the fountains splash, while your girls are learning songs and your boys are busy with the contadini, in the vineyards or beside the stream. It is a spirit of pure delight, we find in that old townsman, in country life, simple and quiet, after the noise and sharpness of the market-place.

###

Edward Hutton: Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa, second edition, London, 1908. Pp. 355-6. 

Florence: Fiesole

 After his tour of Florence, Edward Hutton took to the countryside and the small towns in the vicinity. His first stop was the hilltop town of Fiesole with its awesome views. One of the most memorable things to do on any trip to Florence is to have lunch at an open-air restaurant on the walkway to the summit of the city with its spectacular view of Florence below even if it is usually covered in haze.

How weary one grows of the ways of the city, --yes, even in Florence, where every street runs into the country, and one may always see the hills and the sky! … so to-day, leaving the dead beauty littered in the churches, the palaces, the museums, the streets of Florence, very often I seek the living beauty of the country, the whisper of the poplars beside Arno, the little lovely songs of streams….

 

Many and fair are the ways to Fiesole… but for me I will go like a young man by the bye ways, like a poor man on my feet, and the dew will be yet on the roses when I set out, and in the vineyards they will be singing among the corn… And then, who knows what awaits one on the way? …

 

The Fiesolani are not Florentines, people of the valley. But Etruscans, people of the hills, and that you may see in half an hour any day in their windy piazzas and narrow climbing ways. Rough, outspoken, stark men, little women keen and full of salt, they have not the assured urbanity of the Florentine, who, while he scorns you in his soul as a barbarian, will trade with you, eat with you, and humour you, certainly without betraying his contempt. But the Fiesolano is otherwise; quarrelsome he is, and a little aloof, he will not concern himself overmuch about you, and will do his business whether you come or go. And I think, indeed, he still hates the Florentino, as the Pisan does, as the Sienese does, with an immortal, cold, everlasting hatred, that maybe nothing will altogether wipe out or cause him to forget. All these people have suffered too much from Florence, who understood the art of victory as little as she understood the art of empire….

 

To-day Fiesole consists of a windy Piazza, in which a campanile towers between two hills  covered with houses and churches and a host of narrow lanes. …

 

But it is not to see a church that we have wandered up to Fiesole, for in the country certainly the churches are less than an olive garden, and the pictures are shamed by the flowers that run over the hills. Lounging about this old fortress of a city, one is caught rather by the aspect of natural things—Val d’Arno, far and far away, and at last a glimpse of the Apennines; Val di Mugnone towards Monte Senario, the night of cypresses about Vincigliana, the olives of Maiano—than by the churches scattered among the trees or hidden in the narrow ways that everywhere climb the hills… Or if it be up to San Francesco you climb, the old acropolis of Fiesole, above the palace of the bishop and the Seminary, it will surely be rather to look over the valley to the farthest hills, where Val di Greve winds toward Siena, than to enter a place which, Franciscan though it be, has nothing to show half so fair as this laughing country, or that Tuscan cypress on the edge of that grove of olives.

Florence from Fiesole

 ###