Studies of Travel: Italy - Freeman Edward Augustus

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Assisi a place of world-wide fame and world-wide pilgrimage, and Saint Francis and his church are fully worthy of their fame. Yet Assisi had been a city of men for ages on ages before Saint Francis was born, and Assisi would still be a place well worthy of a visit, though Saint Francis had never been born, and though his church had therefore never been built. It is perhaps a light matter that Assisi had eminent citizens besides Saint Francis and very unlike Saint Francis, that it was the birthplace of Propertius before him and of Metastasio after him. But before Assisi, as the birthplace of the seraphic doctor, had earned a right to be itself called "seraphica civitas," before one of its later churches came to rank with the patriarchal basilicas of Rome, Assisi had, as a Roman and an early mediæval city, covered its soil with monuments of which not a few still exist and which are well worthy of study. And in one way they have a kind of connexion with Saint Francis which his own church has not. The saint never saw his own monument; it would have vexed his soul could he have known that such a monument was to be. But in his youth he saw, and doubtless mused, as on the bleak mountain of Subasio and the yellow stream of Chiaschio, so also on the campanile and apse of the cathedral church of St. Rufino and on the columns of the converted temple of the Great Twin Brethren.

      Assisi is one of the hill-cities; but the hill-cities supply endless varieties among themselves. Assisi does not, like the others which we have spoken of, occupy a hill which is wholly its own; the hill on which it stands, though very distinct, is still only a spur of a huge mountain. As at Mykênê, while the akropolis is high enough, there is something far higher rising immediately above it. And the akropolis of Assisi is a mere fortress; even if it was the primitive place of shelter, it cannot have been inhabited for many ages. The duomo stands, very far certainly from the top of the hill, but at the top of the really inhabited city with its continuous streets, and that is no small height from the lowest line of them. Above the church are the remains of the theatre, of the amphitheatre; the distant tower beyond it, and soaring over all, the fortress of Rocco Grande with no dwelling of man near it, or for some way below it. To go behind Assisi is almost more needful than in the case of any of the other hill-cities, not only for the mediæval walls, for the slight traces which seem to mark an outer and earlier wall; but yet more for the view over the narrow valley, the bleak hills scattered with houses, the winding river at their feet, soon to become yet more winding in the plain, and the glimpse far away of Perugia on its hill. But Assisi has a spot only less wild within the city walls, the ground namely over which we climb from the inhabited streets to the fortress. So it is at Cortona; but there the presence of the church and monastery of St. Margaret makes all the difference. The general view of Assisi, as seen from below, gives us the church of Saint Francis with the great arched substructure to the left, the mountain to the right; between them is a hill with a city running along it at about half its height, sending up a forest of bell-towers, some really good in themselves, all joining in the general effect. Above all this is the hill-top, partly grassy, partly rocky, crowned by the towers of the fortress which looks down on all, except the steep of the mountain itself.

      Of particular objects older than the church of Saint Francis, a restriction which of course also cuts out the church of his friend, Saint Clara, there can be no doubt that the monument of greatest interest is the temple in the forum – now Piazza grande– with its Corinthian columns strangely hemmed in by a house on one side and on the other by the bell-tower which was added when the temple was turned into a church. But it is surely not, as it is locally called, a temple of Minerva, but rather of Castor and Pollux. Not the least interesting part of its belongings lies below ground; for the level of the forum at Assisi has risen as though it had been at Rome or at Trier. The temple must have risen on a bold flight of steps, of which some of the upper ones still remain. In front of it, below the steps, was a great altar, with the drains for the blood of the victims, just as we see them on the Athenian akropolis. Such drains always bring to our mind those comments of Dean Stanley on this repulsive feature of pagan and ancient Jewish worship, which has passed away alike from the church, from the synagogue, and from the mosque, save only at Mecca. In front again is the dedicatory inscription with the name of the founder of the temple, and the record of the dedication-feast which he made to the magistrates and people. His name can doubtless be turned to in Mommsen's great collection; we are not sure that in the underground gloom we took it down quite correctly, and it is better not to be wrong. Anyhow the dedication is not to Minerva but to the twin heroes. A great number of inscriptions are built up in the wall of the church. As usual, there are more freedmen than sons; and among the freedmen the one best worth notice is Publius Decimius Eros Merula, physician, surgeon, and oculist, who bought his freedom for so much, his magistracy as one of the Sexviri for so much, who spent so much on mending the roads, and left so much behind him. Here the state of things is vividly brought home to us in which a man could buy, not only his cook and his coachman, but also his architect and his medical adviser. And we are set thinking on the one hand how great must be the physical infusion of foreign blood, Greek and barbarian, in the actual people of Italy, and on the other hand how thoroughly and speedily all such foreign elements were practically Romanized. The son of the slave-born magistrate of Assisi would look on himself, and be looked on by others, as no less good a Roman than any Fabius or Cornelius who might still linger on.

      The temple above ground and its appurtenances underground are the most memorable things in Præ-Franciscan Assisi; but there are other things besides, both Roman and mediæval. The lower church of Sta. Maria Maggiore, close by the bishop's palace, and which is said to have been the original cathedral, is a Romanesque building of rather a German look, with masses of wall instead of columns. The thought comes into the mind that it is the cella of a temple with arches cut through its walls. But it hardly can be; the arrangement seems to be a local fashion; it is found also in the later and larger church of St. Peter hard by. Besides, at Sta. Maria Maggiore there are the clear remains of a Roman building, seemingly a house, with columns and mosaic floors, underneath the present church of St. Rufino. The later cathedral has been sadly disfigured within; but it keeps its apse of the twelfth century, its west front of the thirteenth, using up older sculptures, and it has the best bell-tower in Assisi. And below it remains the crypt of the older church of 1028, with ancient Ionic columns used up, and Corinthian capitals imitated as they might be in 1028. Just above are scanty remains of the theatre; above again are still scantier remains of the amphitheatre; but its shape is impressed on the surrounding buildings, just as the four arms of the Roman chester abide unchanged in many an English town where every actual house is modern. A piece of Roman wall, and a wide arch in the Via San Paolo leading out of the forum, complete the remains of ancient Assisi above ground. It is doubtless altogether against rule, but among so many memorials of earlier gods and earlier saints, it is quite possible, in climbing the steep and narrow streets of Assisi, to forget for a while both Saint Francis and Saint Clara.

      Spello

      The Umbrian town which takes care to blazon over one of its many gates its full description as "Ispello Colonia Giulia, Citta Flavia Costante," is hardly of any great fame, either as ancient Hispellum or as modern Spello. It must have some visitors, drawn thither most likely by two or three pictures by famous masters which remain in one of its churches. Somebody must come to see them, or their keepers would not have learned the common, but shabby, trick of keeping them covered, in hopes of earning a lira by uncovering them. May we make the confession that we became aware – or, to speak more delicately, that we were reminded – of the existence of the colony at once Julian and Flavian by the description in the generally excellent German guide-book of Gsell-fels? And may we further add that, though we feel thoroughly thankful to its author for sending us to Spello at all, yet his description is not quite so orderly as is usual with him, and that, though he is perfectly accurate in his enumeration of the Roman monuments, yet his account led us to expect to find them in a more perfect state than they actually are? On the whole, except for the wonderful prospect which Spello shares with Perugia and Assisi, we should hardly send anybody to Spello except a very zealous antiquary; but a very zealous antiquary we certainly should send thither. There is no one object of first-rate importance of any date in the place; but there are the remains of a crowd of objects which have been of some importance. There is also the site; there is the general look of the place, which is akin to that of the other hill-towns, but which, as Spello is the smallest and least frequented of the group, is there less untouched and modernized in any way than even at Cortona or Assisi. We

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