Christmas in Dolcedorme

 Edward Hutton interrupted his tour of Umbria to spend the winter in Rome. But he did take time to visit Ulisse, his young traveling  companion, in the boy's hometown of Dolcedorme where they attending the Christmas Midnight Mass. Hutton's charming account is a unique historical document.

 

Ah! That Midnight Mass! … I am not likely to forget it. I had gone with Ulisse, who guided me through the dark and narrow ways, up to the Collegiata, enthroned above the city, under those enormous and precipitous rocks, like giant’s teeth, which distinguish Dolcedorme.

 

It is a large church, rebuilt after an earthquake, in the seventeenth century; but large and spacious though it was, it was full. And not only of the faithful, not only of the women and the poveri. The whole city seemed to be there when the bell sounded for the third time.

 

In their own place sat the women, young and old, devout enough, and for the most part already on their knees. Behind and about, against the pillars and side-altars, stood the men, a vast crowd. And the noise! The whole church was filled with it, and the air was already stifling.

 

Over all the tumult came at last the organ. In the cora they began to sing Te Deum. It was the end of Matins. Mass was about to begin.

 

Still the people came in under the heavy leather curtains. The church was packed. More candles were lighted: more music poured from the organ. Finally, in procession, behind the great Byzantine cross, came Sua Ecclenzia—the whole concourse bent like a field of corn under a wind—blessing as he came. He was to sing Mass. Over the Crucifix on the high altar his single candle shone.

 

Ulisse and I stood before a pillar on the Epistle side, half-way down the great nave. Mass began. Domine dixit ad me … Kyrie eleison … Christie eleison … Kyrie eleison.

 

Monsignor intoned the Gloria in excelsis. The organ burst out into a great peal of music, the bells rang, everyone sang or whistled. …Most whistled.

 

Whistled!

 

Not with the lips only as one whistles an air, but with the fingers in the mouth to make a noise, as much noise as possible. Still others had brought whistles with them, and were using them with all their might. 

 

I was astonished. I was scandalized. Surely my ears deceived me. It was so hot and the odour.…

 

But no, the whistling continued. There was Ulisse with both his fists at his mouth, whistling for all he was worth.

 

Ma come! Was this a theatre or a church? Was this some piece being hooted off the stage or the first Mass of Christmas? I turned to Ulisse.

 

“Ma si, signore, di qua e di la si fischia.”

 

“They’re whistling all over the place!” But why?

 

There was a little silence; the Gloria had finished itself.

 

Surely Monsignor would not continue? But no, the Mass proceeded as usual. The great Epistle proclaimed Him qui dedit semetipsium pro nobis, ut nos redimeret ab omni iniquitate….

 

The Gospel, known from childhood, unfolded itself from the edict of Caesar Augustus to the peace born on earth to men of good will.

 

Slowly we came to the Christmas Preface, the Christmas Sanctus, sung here to a strange dancing measure as in the picture of Botticelli. I had forgotten the unseemly interruption at the Gloria. I had forgotten everything.…

 

There it was again! Suddenly, at the Elevation! But worse than before, more exulting, more joyous, more insolently enthusiastic and rejoicing. It was beyond all possible bounds. In England….

 

“But what is it then?” I leant to Ulisse.

 

“Ma signore, it is the shepherds! E un pio ricordo dei suoni pastorali quando necque nostro Signore.” “A pious remembrance of the shepherds’ music when Our Lord was born.” But I… I, too, would whistle. I … I, too, whistled—only the sounds would not come. What could be the matter with my throat?

 

“Peccato!” whispered Ulisse, that one cannot hear also the voice of the ox and the ass.

 

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Edward Hutton: Assisi and Umbria Revisited, London, 1953. Pp. 124-125.

Monza: The Iron Crown

   

 

 

 

 

After leaving Pavia, Edward Hutton travelled to Monza to view its relics, the most famous of which was the "Iron Crown of Lombardy," originally conferred on Queen Theodolinda, the Apostle to the Lombards, by Pope Gregory I around the year 600.

Some ten miles to the north of Milan, still in the plain but within sight of the hills, stands Monza, which in its immortal, its beautiful relics, its thirteenth century Broletto, recalls for us the earliest Lombardy, for it was here from the eleventh century, in the first city within the Italian border, that the emperors-elect were crowned kings with the “iron crown of Lombardy,” still holy and still preserved over the high altar of the Duomo, before they set out on that long march to Rome, there to receive the Imperial title and consecration of the Pope. …

Standing on both banks of the Lambro, … Monza is a fair city. If the ancients knew her not, for she is a city of the Fall, to the men of the Middle Age she was as famous as any town in Italy, and the great church which Theodolinda, the Apostle of the Lombards, built beside her own palace remained through all its rebuildings the one true coronation church that has ever been erected south of the alps. …

In the chapel to the left of the choir in a large monstrance in the shape of a cross is preserved the holy and famous Iron Crown of Lombardy, which it is said Gregory the Great gave to Theodolinda. It consists of an inner circlet of iron beaten out of one of the nails of the Cross: this precious relic is encased in a circle of gold and jewels. It is one of the most sacred and priceless treasures—even from a merely historical point of view—to be found in Italy, for it has circled the brows of Theodolinda, of Charlemagne, of Frederick Barbarossa, of Charles V, and of Napoleon I. In itself it seems to bind Europe indissolubly into one; and if ever the Empire be re-erected it is with this majestic and holy symbol we shall crown our Emperor. Not with it has the modern Italian kingdom been consecrated, a newer and a more brittle ring of gold suffices it. This symbol of iron, as old and as indestructible as Europe, awaits, let us believe it, him who shall make us one. 

 

And here in this holy place under the  crown lies she who brought light and strength to her kingdom, the Apostle of the Lombards, Queen Theodolinda, the friend of Gregory. Her tomb, a sarcophagus resting upon four pillars of marble, is a work of the fourteenth century, and the four frescoes of scenes from her life are from the fifteenth, restored in our own day. More interesting are her gifts to the church—the few that remain—in the treasury: a hen with seven chickens of silver-gilt, her crown and comb of gold filigree and fan of painted leather, and best of all, the “precious Gospel book” and cross which Gregory gave her when her son was baptized; it was his last gift before his death.

 

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Edward Hutton: The Cities of Lombardy, New York, 1912. Pp. 162-.

Pavia: Treasures

 

 

 

 

Two of the treasures that Edward Hutton saw in Pavia were its famed University, and the tomb of Saint Augustine. 

From the cathedral one proceeds up the Corso to the Piazza d’Italia and the University, which it is said Charlemagne founded in 774. However that may be, the University of Pavia owes almost everything to Gian Galeazzo Visconti, who endowed it with many privileges in 1390 and is regarded as its founder. Nevertheless, Pavia was able to boast of learning and philosophy before the Visconti were thought of. Is not Boethius her son, and did he not write here in his captivity the De Consolazione Philosophiae that our King Alfred loved? And was not Lanfranc, Norman William’s Archbishop of Canterbury, born here, and did he not make the legal and philosophical school of Pavia famous through all Europe? To Giovanni Visconti we owe, however, the presence here of Petrarch, who was so often his guest; and the Visconti foundation can at least boast of a name famous through the world, for in 1447 Christopher Columbus was at the University.*** …

The great treasure of Pavia, however, is to be found in that church close to the Castello which is called S. Pietro in Ciel d’Oro, which with its magnificent west front and polygonal tower is itself a wonder, but is altogether glorious because it is the casquet—as far as the body of the church goes a poor one—of one of the five great shrines of Italy—that of S. Augustine—comparable in splendour with those of S. Peter Martyr in S. Eustorgio in Milan, of S. Domenico at Bologna, of S. Donato at Arezzo, and of Our Lady in Or S. Michele at Florence…. 

 

The body of S. Augustine, with the fall of the Roman Empire, was brought in 430 from Hippo in the province of Africa, then in the hands of the Vandals, to Cagliari in Sardinia… where it remained for more than two centuries, till indeed Sardinia was overrun by the Saracens… Then the great Liutprand, King of the Lombards, bought the body of the infidel for 60,000 golden crowns. And in 710 had it borne to his church of S. Pietro in Ciel d’Oro in Pavia…

In appearance the shrine is a vast oblong tomb covered by a canopy borne by square piers. The whole is of marble and in every part is elaborately carved and niched and set above with statues and reliefs. On the top of the tomb, beneath the gabled canopy, the marble effigy of the Saint lies in a linen pall upheld by angels….it is in itself a monument, an everlasting witness to the nobility of the age which produced, and to the men who desired and loved such a work as this.

 

It is easy to measure the enormous abyss which separates our time from theirs, and us from them, when we realise that nowhere in the world could such a work as this  be carried out today; but then we no longer hold the Christian philosophy and have so far ceased to be European. It is little wonder, then, that when we would build a monument we erect such a vulgarity as the Victoria Memorial, or such a heavy ineptitude as the Admiralty Arch at Charing Cross, and this though no saint that has ever existed is capable of exciting in us the love and reverence we had for Queen Victoria. Nor are we alone in this; industrialism has set its loathsome seal upon all our hearts, that without love or speech or sight or hearing we may pass gloomily through a gloomy and unhappy world without hope and without beauty.

 

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*** A rare mistake. Columbus was born in 1451 and said he went to sea at the age of 14.

 

Edward Hutton: The Cities of Lombardy, New York, 1912. Pp. 157-161. 

Pavia: S. Michele

  

 

 

 

In Pavia Edward Hutton reflected on the significance of the eleventh century church of S. Michele.

All along the Via Aemilia, between Venetia on the north and Tuscany and the Apennines on the south, between the Alps and the Adriatic, there may be found a whole series of buildings, certainly of the North, belonging to a style of architecture which we call Lombard, but which it would be an error to merge altogether  in the larger title of Romanesque. Perhaps the most remarkable of these buildings, among which we may name Borgo S. Donnino, the monastic church of Chiaravalle and S. Fedele at Como, is the church of S. Michele at Pavia, which is certainly one of the earliest, dating as it does from the last years of the eleventh century. … the whole is at once massive, savage, and restless, a true barbarian work—that is to say, the work of a barbarian who has been brought in contact with Latin work and has been unable to use or assimilate it. Something rude and uncouth we find in all this, of course, for that is the fundamental nature of it, but how full of energy and life it is, too, how restless, daring and unhappy. And indeed the whole building seems to express a sort of disappointment, most of all with itself, as though the builders had seen a vision which they could not recall, or had heard some sudden good news which they could not remember. It is well to remember that the church is dedicated to S. Michael, and that everywhere it speaks of deliverance—deliverance perhaps from the helpless misery and disorderliness of the forests, of the roadless lands hidden in the twilight of the North, that here on the sunny side of the great mountains had been left behind forever, but still remained as a kind of an uneasy and ever recurrent dream. The souls of men who built these churches were haunted by an unconscious recollection of barbarism, from which suddenly and by a kind of miracle their fathers and they themselves had been delivered….

This haunting dread, and an overwhelming sense of deliverance from it, are expressed not only in these carvings over the doors, but everywhere in S. Michele. The belts of carving along the walls, the medallions, and the figures on the jambs of the arches represent dragons, griffins, sphinxes, centaurs, snakes and eagles, a whole menagerie of doubtful creatures from whose power here in Italy one has escaped, that Christianity certainly once and for all disposed of. It is the same within the church, and indeed here in S. Michele Christianity appears in the eleventh century as it appeared to the men of the primitive Church, as a refuge from a whole world of danger, disorder and ennui, as a refuge, most of all, perhaps, from oneself; a philosophy, a faith, a revelation upon acquiring or receiving which depended the safety of the whole world and of one’s own soul. It is possible here in this strange and lonely church to understand that ultimately there is no such thing as Europe, that there is only Christendom, since it is upon what is in the mind and the soul the present and the future of man depends.

 

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Edward Hutton: The Cities of Lombardy, New York, 1912. Pp. 154-156.