Italian Tales

  

 

 

In a chapter entitled "Summer about Norcia" Edward Hutton recorded some delightful stories told by his young Italian companion Ulisse. Although Assisi and Umbria Revisited was written in 1953, this episode with Ulisse must have occurred decades earlier on an earlier journey to Umbria. These stories have now been forgotten but they did provide the subject matter for many a great work of art.

 

The heat was wonderful. It was not heavy, as any great heat in England always is, but vehement and marvelous with all the fierceness and vitality of fire, the pride and the beauty of the sun.  The hushed fields seemed about to burst into flame. The sun delighted and frightened me, it was wonderful and mysterious. Each day was like a hard, bright precious stone, more dazzling and more heartless than a diamond. Everything was still. And the nights were like sapphires. For three days now, everyone seemed to be in the pieve praying for rain….  

 

As I lay that evening just without the forest, not far from a little stream that, in spite of the drought, still ran secretly under the trees among the stones out into the parched valley, I heard a clear voice say softly, “Of what is the signore thinking, it is perhaps of his own country?”

 

Looking round, I saw a pair of eyes staring at me from under a tangle  of black hair, and Ulisse came close to me.

 

I lay back among the broom and answered, “Tell me a story, then, Ulisse—and I shall forget again.”

 

“But the signore has heard all the stories of the Frate Antonio, he has heard all the stories of my mother and my mother’s mother—what is there left to tell?”

 

“Tell me them over again.”

 

“Which of them all will the signore hear? But, indeed, he knows them all by heart! There is that one of the birth of Bambino Gesu—yes? And that of the Madonnina when she was a girl in school, and that of Sampietro who was always hungry, even as myself—which of them all shall I tell, then?”

 

And I said, “Tell me the Fuga in Egitto.”

 

“Signore, why do you always like that best? For my part I prefer those of Sampietro—how he put the devil’s head on the bella ragazza—

Gerard David: Rest on the Flight into Egypt.

“As the signore doubtless knows, Erode had ordered the massacre of the Innocenti, for he wished, ah, indeed how he wished! To kill the Bambino Gesu, who was a greater king than he. So Sangiuseppe and the Madonna had to flee away. Ah, the Madonnina…. She carried always in the nest of her arms, wrapped in her apron, Gesu our Saviour. And as she went, sitting on the ass which Sangiuseppe drove before him, as she went, the Pharisees met her and said, “Beautiful Lady, what do you carry in your apron?”

 

“And she answered, ‘I carry Il Gran’ Signore.’ 

 

“But the Pharisees mistook her, thinking she said, ‘Grano, Signori,’ and they answered, ‘Carry it, then, to the mill.’ So she passed on with Our Lord and Sangiuseppe.”…

 

Ulisse continued with a number of other stories about the Flight into Egypt: the bean field, the field of flax, the olive tree that hid the Holy family from the pursuers, and even the encounter with brigands who would eventually turn out to be the good thief and the bad thief on Calvary….

 

“Ulisse,” said I, after a time, “it is necessary that these tales be written down, since then have the sound of truth, so that they who know them not may hear them.”

 

“It is my opinion also, signore,” said Ulisse. “write them then—you who are always writing.”

 

“That,” said I, “is easier to say than to do; and if I do, be sure that not all who read them will understand them, because for some they are too difficult.”

 

“Indeed, yes,” said Ulisse; “yet I understand them, and they are good tales concerning Our Lord, the Madonna and the saints whom we love.”

 

“Ulisse,” said I, “it occurs to me to write them out tomorrow and to send them to the Inglesi.”

 

“That,” said Ulisse, “would be indeed a Christian act, worthy of the signore, because the Inglesi—scusi, signori—much more often than not are no Christians at all, and it would be well to turn their hearts.”

 

Now Ulisse had for some time been troubled about my countrymen and their probable fate as heretics, and had evidently been consulting Frate Antonio on the matter, for presently he said;

 

“Scusi, signore! It was not altogether the fault of the Inglesi that they became heretics. It was really the fault of their wicked King Enrico, who wanted to get rid of his good and very pious queen and marry another woman…. But Frate Antonio has said that even these Protestanti may by chance not go to hell.”

 

“What?” I said. “How is that?”

 

“Signore, senta! One day Il Gesu Christo was walking with Sampietro in Paridiso, as the padrone may walk with the fattore in the podere, and after a while He said—not as complaining exactly, but as stating a fact:

 

“Sampietro, I think this place has gone down.”

 

“Here Sampietro who is always impetuous and knew very well what He meant, dared to interrupt.

 

“’Il Santissimo can’t blame me,’ he said huffily; ‘Il Santissimo is not to suppose they all came in by the Gate, Che! Che!’

 

“’Not come in by the Gate, Sampietro? What do you mean?’ said Our Lord.

 

“’ If Il Santissimo will but step this way, round these bushes,’ said Sampietro, ‘He will see.’

 

“And sure enough He saw. For there was the Madonna drawing the souls up pell-mell, willy-nilly, anyhow, into Paradiso in a great bucket to their eternal gain and undeserved good.” O Clemens, O Pia, O Dulcis Virgo Maria."

 

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Edward Hutton: Assisi and Umbria Revisited, London, 1953. Pp. 92-98. 

Cascia and St. Rita

 

 

In a chapter entitled, "The Road to Norcia", Edward Hutton introduces the charming Italian boy, Ulisse, who would  explain many things to him as they wandered about the beautiful countryside. 

 I found a possible lodging in Norcia in the house of a couple whose nephew, a young boy, was paying them a visit from his home in Dolcedorme, and he became my daily companion. We explored Norcia and the surrounding country together, wandering in the woods, penetrating into the mountains and visited Cascia. He was, I suppose, in some sort my servant, but no one could have had a better or more charming companion. His name was Ulisse….

 

One day we made a more serious expedition to Castelluccio, a very high village with an inn above the Piano Grande, at the base of the Monti Sibillini, right under towering Monte Vettore. It was cooler up there at over 4,000 feet.

Cascia

Then there was the journey to Cascia, which we managed by taking the electric train from Norcia to Serravalle and proceeding from there by bus.

Cascia is over 2,000 feet above the sea and stands on the slope of a hill over the Corno stream. It is a remarkable little place with a few hundred inhabitants, and entirely given over  to Santa Rita, who is its whole existence. And no wonder, for as Ulisse impressed upon me again and again, Santa Rita is the saint dell’ impossibile. “If you are in despair, if you are at your wits’ end, if everything seems lost e buona notte, and only a miracle—but not an ordinary miracle, an ‘impossible miracle--can save you, go to Santa Rita. Or, if that is impossible, then make your petition to her, however extraordinary, unheard of, impossible of fulfillment it may be, and you will see!”

 

“Yes,” said I, “I think I see. If you have lost the love of your life, if you are in such a position that only the end of the world can save you, if you are absolutely broke and in more than desperate need of money-----”

 

“Ah,” said Ulisse, “momentino, signore. Tutti I santi and even Santa Rita are difficult about money. Si, signore. Although she will do the impossible for you, she seems to have the same feelings about money, signore, as S. Francesco had, who, as the signore will remember, refused to touch it except with a stick.”

 

“Yes,” said I, “I was forgetting Santa Rita was an Augustinian nun and had a high opinion of poverty and certainly thought, and it might almost seem still thinks, it good for one.”

 

“Signore,” said Ulisse, “the only saint who is good for money is Sangiuseppe, who was a family man and understood the difficulties one meets with in the world. And even he-----" …

Here, Hutton broke off to tell the very interesting story of the life of St. Rita, but let us return to Ulisse. 

 

It was as we returned one perfect night from the Cappuccini, and the mountains seemed more wonderful than ever under the full moon, that I remarked on the marvel of this to Ulisse. “O signore,” said he, “but the signore should see our moon at Dolcedorme.”

 

A strange answer surely, connoting I know not what, pointing beyond the Middle Age, beyond all recorded ages. But men have always believed strange things of the moon, the planets and the stars….

 

In spite of the moon it was dark in the forest, and Ulisse had taken my hand. Italians do not care to be out in the countryside after dark.

 

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Spoleto: Holy Week

   

 

 

Edward Hutton visited many churches in Spoleto but his favorite was the Basilica of San Salvatore built on the remains of an ancient Roman temple.

 

It is, however, something quite different we find in San Salvatore, which has been built from the ruins of a Roman temple. From a picturesque and historical point of view, it delights me, as I have said, beyond any other piece of architecture in Spoleto. Today its façade guards the Campo Santo, with its hard white crosses and beady flowers, and all the frippery of modern death. Magnificent columns, Roman and pagan, group themselves round the choir and chancel; and the nave is ennobled by the remains of other shafts, now ruinous, that once bore the weight of some splendid roof. Pagan gods, not dead but living in exile, perhaps in the ilex woods that crown the city and envelop her in their sombre mantle, seem to creep into the warm sunshine that floods the church from the open door. They knock at our hearts; and gazing at the feeble and terrible “decorations” of the Christian altar between the majestic pillars of an alien religion, it is rather of the nobility of the past, which is so present everywhere in Italy—of its beauty and its sufficiency—that we think, than of its Christian successor.

And yet who here in Spoleto can resist the touching appeal of that little ugly shrine that greets the traveller on his way to San Paolo, that old thirteenth-century church? It is a picture of S. Maria Immacolata and bears the legend: Et macula originalis non est in Te. As I passed by at evening some children  were decking the shrine with wild flowers, gathered on the Umbrian hills. The cage that guarded the picture was starred with buttercups as lovely in their shining yellow as those which doubtless in old days sprang up beneath the white footsteps of Persephone as she crossed the rivers of Sicily on her way to Demeter, after her unwilling exile from our world. Will she not know and smile and understand, this Virgin that is the one goddess left to a sorrowful world? Be sure, if she is not mindful of the flowers of the maidens and children, if in that heaven where she is she does not smile to her Son upon His Throne of chrysoprase and jasper to see these, simple of heart, bringing the flowers of the field for her Festa—then Persephone never trod our world, nor was Demeter bereft and sorrowful; all is a lie—the beautiful, austere gods, the terrible love of Christ, the very Fatherhood of God, since even these so simple of heart may deceive themselves on their lovely way to death….

 

It was Holy Week when for the first time I came to Spoleto; a certain silence and wistful sadness, I remember, seemed to invest the city; the streets were very quiet, the churches sombre. At evening I watched the processions, with their torches and innumerable tapers, wind along the roads; all night as I lay in my bed I seemed to hear the melancholy chants that accompanied them up the Via Crucis. In reality it would seem that Christ had died that afternoon; now at last mankind was desolate. The tones of the Vexilla Regis seemed to wave like long streamers  from the church towers, and one heard the Mother, heart-broken, and weeping sigh to the world spread at our feet:

 

O vos omnes qui transitis per viam, attendite 

     et videte, si est dolor, sicut dolor meus.

 

Then there was silence. Spoleto, with finger on her lip, awaited the dawn of Easter. At last it broke, very cool and sweet and full of promises. An immense hope seemed to have swept over the world. In the churches they sang again Alleluia, and I, with the whole city went to the Cathedral to greet the Christ, new risen from the  tomb, in the Easter Mass.

 

Out of my window, as I write, I can see S. Mary of the Angels gleaming in the sunlight beneath the mass of Subasio. It is only the mountains that hide Orvieto from me, and even perhaps Rome herself. Innumerable roads over plain and mountain to half a hundred cities that the world has forgotten. I seem to see them all in the soft lucidity of evening, that is the  most precious part of the day in this land where, every evening, God paints for us those pictures which taught Perugino all he knew—the magnificent spaciousness, his sense of luminous light.

 

Before the sunset Spoleto, like a tall and sweet maiden, kneels on her hill and seems to pray. Ever she has the attitude of prayer; and after dark when her little lights gleam far over the plain, I seem to know that they burn before the shrines of many saints whose prayers she has desired, simple  of heart as she is, kneeling at the head of her long valley under the soft sky.

 

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Edward Hutton: Assisi and Umbria Revisited, London, 1953. Pp. 77-78, 79-80.