V In the Apennines

Early on the following morning we left the monastery of Camaldoli for the hermitage. It was a beautiful walk of about three miles, along a steep, paved path through the ancient pine forest. The air was cold but the sun was bright, and the trees emitted a strong resinous fragrance. I have never walked under trees more stalwart in stature, the stem of each straight, smooth and rounded as a shaft, with branches loaded with hanging verdure jutting out in grander sweeps.

At one point of the road three large wooden crosses marked the limit which the hermits formerly from their side were not allowed to cross; from this side no woman was allowed to penetrate beyond them. But the story goes that a princess of the house of Medici, dressed in man’s clothing, once braved the restriction. She visited the hermitage, with no further consequences, however, but that, having satisfied her curiosity, she went and confessed to the Pope, and he bid her give money to build an additional cell in expiation of her crime, which, to this day, is designated by the armorial balls, the palle, of the Medici family.

The paved path mostly followed the course of the Fosso of Camaldoli which rises above the Eremo. Dante apparently looked upon this stream not as a tributary of the Archiano, but as the Archiano itself, for he lets Buonconte in Purgatory speak of the Archiano as “taking its rise above the hermitage.” The river came down between moss-grown rocks, carrying with it a stream of mountain fragrance, and the path which followed it ended on a wide grass-grown space, at one end of which stood the hermitage. And up here, in the midst of the forest, at an elevation of 3700 feet above sea level, and in a climate which these thin-skinned southerners talked of as cold and rough in the extreme, stood the twenty-four little stone cells of the hermitage, each inside the walled enclosure of its garden. Here in the depth of mountain solitude, cut off from intercourse with the world, and restricted in their intercourse with each other, the hermits of Camaldoli lived the same life of seclusion and solitude which St Romuald considered the surest way of attaining to happiness and heaven. Here they lived, dwelling alone, eating alone and working alone, with the conceptions of time and space obliterated as far as disregard of the ordinary interests of life will obliterate them, with no hope or expectation of change, a life in which time can mend and mar nothing.

We were told that all the cells were tenanted except the original cell of St Romuald, which is always kept standing empty. All the cells are constructed on the same plan. Each consists of a small house divided into two rooms opening out of each other, with an additional recess in which stands the bed. The windows and the door open on a small garden, which is surrounded by walls so as to close in the view. Each hermit attends to his own garden, in which he grows herbs and vegetables. The cooking for the whole settlement is done in an outhouse, and the food is brought round and handed in to each of the cells. Seven times in the twenty-four hours the hermits wander forth and assemble in church to pray together; otherwise they are alone.

We were shown over the church by a white-robed monk, who readily talked of the smaller interests of life—of the severity of the winter, the daily routine, and the relics and pictures of the different chapels. But he did not respond when I expressed regret at the severance of intercourse between the different existing settlements of the Order of Camaldoli, a severance which is inevitably leading to the collapse of the whole organisation. It may be part of these men’s attitude of mind, or it may be a self-imposed limitation, that any allusion to change is met by cheerful and unquestioning acceptance of things as they are. Is it that the future of their order has become a matter of indifference to them, or is it that a tacit agreement among them prevents them from discussing their own affairs with outsiders? The monk also showed us over the cell of St Romuald, which is unchanged, they say, except that the piety of a later age has covered the inside of its rough walls with panelling. On occasions this cell has been offered to distinguished visitors. It was so offered to St Francis, but he felt the honour too great to accept.

Many visitors in the course of centuries have visited this hermitage. Popes, emperors, men of piety and men of learning have prayed in its chapel. And up here in the shade of these huge pines those conversations took place which the learned Cristofero Landini has described, when some of the ablest scholars of the Early Italian Renaissance stayed here together in the summer of 1468, and whiled away several days in learned philosophical discussion.

The Conversations of Camaldoli are remarkable chiefly for their learned interest, but their setting is attractive, as they enable us to realise the friendly relations of some of the most distinguished men of the Medicean circle—men to whom the revival of learning and modern scholarship owes a debt of gratitude. For these conversations take us back to the time when the Republic of Florence, following the example of the Republic of Venice, had become the home of several learned Greeks. The spirit of a new era was stirring in every department of human knowledge, and those who studied the works of Plato and of his expositors at first hand and with some thoroughness, showed a renewed interest in Virgil and Horace, Dante and Petrarch. The Greek writers were translated into Latin, and many of them in a Latin garb first saw the daylight of print. But the works of Latin and Italian authors likewise engrossed attention, and Italian itself once more was looked upon as a language capable of expressing the great thoughts of great men.

Among those who, according to Landini, met together at Camaldoli on a summer day of 1468, were several whose life-work was bound up in revising, editing and translating the great works of antiquity. The first to arrive were the two young Medici, Lorenzo, afterwards surnamed the Magnificent, and his brother Giuliano, who was afterwards stabbed in the rising organised by the Pazzi. They were accompanied by Alemanno Rinuccini, who is known for his translation of some of Plutarch’s Lives; by Donato Acciajuoli, the author of a commentary on Aristotle; by Donato’s brother Piero; by Marco Parenti, and by Antonio Canegiano, “most learned men,” Landini calls them, “who had studied eloquence for years and who had gained proficiency in philosophical discussion by means of arduous study.” They were resting at the hermitage when Landini describes himself as arriving. He brought his brother with him. Landini is chiefly remembered among us for his commentary on Dante, but he also wrote commentaries on Horace and Virgil. He taught Latin at the newly-founded Academy of Florence, and in later days he became Chancellor of the Republic.

The party had barely exchanged greetings when the news was brought that two other friends had arrived at the monastery, where they were leaving their horses to come up to the Eremo on foot, led by the prior Mariotto. The order of Camaldoli had recently lost a shining light in its general, Ambrogio Traversari, known as il famoso Greco, who not only read Greek but spoke it with fluency. Mariotto was his pupil. The men he was conducting were Leone Battista Alberti, and Marsilio Ficino—men as different as possible in appearance and bearing, but who stand as representative figures of the Italian Renaissance, each in a special direction.

Whoever came into contact with Leone Battista felt that the gods had bestowed on him the fulness of their gifts, for he set the mark of originality on whatever he handled. His many-sidedness in after days was only excelled by that of Lionardo da Vinci. As a mere youth, Leon Battista wrote a comedy which passed for a rediscovered classic; and he is the author of the first treatises on painting, sculpture and architecture that can lay claim to a scientific basis. He worked as an architect, and the front of Santa Maria Novella at Florence was his design. He was a famous talker, a man of clever sayings, and eloquent in praise of beauty wherever he found it—in art, in nature and in man. From youth upwards he was renowned for his agility, and increasing years dealt kindly with his good looks. At the time of his coming to Camaldoli he was in the sixties.

Marsilio Ficino, whom he is here described as having met on his way from Rome, was the greatest Hellenist of his age and the keenest intellect among the older Florentine humanists. Small, frail and visionary, he combined in himself the qualities that distinguish and endear the typical scholar—patience, sagacity, preciseness, extreme modesty and a high tone of mental elevation. His fame rests on his translation into Latin of the works of Plato, and he was the colleague of Landini at the Florentine Academy, where he taught Greek. In the large fresco of Domenico Ghirlandajo in Santa Maria Novella at Florence, Marsilio Ficino and Landini are both represented among the painter’s distinguished contemporaries.

Such were the men who met together at the hermitage of Camaldoli, upwards of four hundred years ago, rejoicing in the thought of spending a few days together. On the first day they rested. On the next they attended mass, and then they sallied forth into the forest, and there, under a spreading beech, they sat down and Leone Battista opened the discussion. Starting from the fact that the responsibilities of public life were about to devolve on the two young Medici owing to the ill-health of their father, he spoke of the duties of a citizen, and passed on to compare the respective merits of a life of activity and of a life of contemplation. This was a favourite subject of discussion at the time, and Leone Battista ended by pronouncing in favour of contemplation, a view which was in accordance with Plato’s ideality and with the Christian exaltation of Mary above Martha. On the following day the same subject was discussed in the same company, and on the days after they spoke of the greatest good and of the true aim of human existence. No doubt these Conversations are largely of Landini’s making, but they were much appreciated by his contemporaries, and Marsilio Ficino is known to have admired them greatly. They were often reprinted at that period; now they have fallen into oblivion, and only the student now and again disturbs the dust which accumulates round them on the bookshelf.

On leaving the hermitage we had intended ascending to the Prato al Soglio, from where there is a splendid view, and from there crossing the mountains by a path which led to Badia a Prataglia. But owing to the snow that lay behind the Eremo this was impossible, and we found ourselves instead on a grassy road skirting the mountain always at about the same level. From one point of this road we looked down on the huge monastery of Camaldoli; further along and the outlook was over apparently limitless masses of pine forest; further again and the slopes below us were clothed with beeches, their leafless branches just touched by the first tinge of red. Finally we were out again on the bare mountain, with the panorama of the Apennines about us, and Serravalle with its tower hanging far below in the blue mist like a bird. The road now became a rough path over uneven, mountainous ground, such as we had crossed on the previous day, but we were at a higher elevation, and the surroundings of sky and scenery were proportionately grander.

I have often thought that the sky of different mountainous regions is different, just as the sea along different lines of the coast varies. Whether we have seen the Mediterranean in sunny weather or in rough, we carry away with us the impression of its restless readiness to run to froth be it counter to a breeze or against a jutting headland. Similarly the North Sea stays with us in its glassy reluctance to break, and the Atlantic in the mighty inherent roll of its waves. As great a difference in character belongs to the sky of different mountainous regions, though it is less easily fixed in word and thought. To me heaviness and sullenness seemed to characterise the sky of the Apennines; once it sank into the mountains, there it stayed. The obvious reason was the poor clothing of the soil and the want of running water; there were none of those surface currents which carry down and dissolve the mists of thick weather elsewhere. For once outside the forest region of Camaldoli, there was a marked want of trees and a marked want of water. The denudation of the soil is something terrible, and already in April many streams were running dry.

The path we followed had many beautiful outlooks, but there was a good deal of snow, and we had come far out of our way. We were glad at last to catch sight of the white line of the driving road into Romagna winding in and out among the mountains below, for the days in April are short. In this case a shower of rain caused us to put on additional speed; we were down in the road before dark, and soon afterwards established in comfortable quarters at the Casa Rossi. This is no inn, in the ordinary sense of the word—the family let the upper part of their house in summer—but they took us in for a couple of nights and made us welcome.

Badia a Prataglia lies at about an hour’s distance below the pass of the driving road from the Casentino into Romagna. The place boasted of one of the oldest abbacies in the Apennines, which dated its foundation further back than St Romuald and Camaldoli. But in course of time the abbacy of Prataglia lost its standing, while that of the monastery of Camaldoli increased, with the result that the older abbey became a dependency of the newer monastery. At present nothing remains of the old settlement but the convent church. But Prataglia itself is a growing place. Its numerous houses lie scattered in groups up and down the valley, and there are several new villa residences belonging to families who come up from Romagna and Tuscany to escape the heat of the summer. A pension situated some distance above the place on the hills is fast becoming a favourite summer resort.

The Rossi at whose house we stayed are the originators and the owners of a home industry which has considerably raised the standard of comfort throughout the district. The firm exports simple wooden furniture, the different parts of which are cut and carved to certain patterns in the various homes and fitted together on the premises. That evening being Saturday, men were coming to the house bringing their week’s work, in exchange for which they carried away payment in money or payment in kind from the store kept by the Rossi. We were shown examples of the articles manufactured—chairs, stools, cradles and such like, all of the simplest shape. Among other things, we were shown a spinning-wheel, but we were told that the attempt to introduce it has failed. The Italian women prefer spinning from the distaff, and it seems obvious that they will continue to do so till the use of machines supersedes hand-labour.

Rain, wind, hail, a thunderstorm and a snowstorm, we experienced them all in the one day which we spent exploring the heights of the neighbouring pass. But with a good road within reach and food awaiting one under cover, battling with the elements for a time adds to one’s enjoyment. Then the reflection came that the snow prevented progress along the mountain paths, and we determined to return into the valley. We left Prataglia white in its wintry garb, and in the short space of an afternoon we passed from the nipping blasts of winter into the bright geniality of spring. Below Serravalle the falling snowflakes changed into driving mists. As the mountains receded, the valley of the Arno lay before us, its vineyards and cornfields brown and golden in the light of the afternoon sun. We were bound for Poppi, which lies at about an hour’s distance up the valley from Bibbiena—“Poppi, the capital of the Casentino,” as Vasari called it.