Salerno

“ We were five or six miles from Salerno before sunrise, and entering upon the dreary wastes of Calabria. The people we passed on the road were dressed in skins with the wool outside, and the country looked abandoned by nature itself, scarce a flourishing tree or a healthy plant within the range of the sight. We turned from the main road after a while, crossed a ruinous bridge, and tracked a broad, waste, gloomy plain, till my eyes ached with its barrenness. ”

“ At the northern end of this promenade, in what constitutes the most fashionable quarter of the place, is a tiny garden with palms and daturas, whilst hard by stands a large theatre, evidences of the gentility of modern Salerno. But the whole town appears sleepy and dead-alive to a stranger, though at the sunset hour a band occasionally plays in this open space, the music attracting hither a crowd composed of all the divers elements of society in the quiet old city. ”

“ As in all Italian cities, northern or southern, however, the nocturnal noise is prodigious. Shouting and shrieking, quarrelling and yelling rend the air at all hours, whilst the practice of serenading, more agreeable in romantic poetry than in everyday life, is here carried to excess, and the twanging of the mandoline and the throaty voices of ardent lovers are rarely silent o’ nights in the dark narrow streets of Salerno. ”

“ We were thoroughly tired out when we arrived at Salerno, which is less picturesquely situated than Amalfi, the shore around being low. When Amalfi was a great commercial sea-port, the medical school of Salerno was famous for its knowledge of the healing art. The students went to study in Arabia and Spain; and they returned to their native town to dispense, among crowds of rich and noble patients, the treasures of their skill. Salerno in those days was regarded as illustrious among the cities of modern Italy—the women were beautiful, and the men were honest ”

“ They were walking together along the high road which leads from Amalfi towards Salerno. It is certainly one of the most beautiful roads in Europe, and in the whole world. The chain of rocky heights dashes with wild abruptness from its five thousand feet straight to the dark-blue sea, bristling with sharp needles and spikes of stone, rough with a chaos of brown boulders, cracked from peak to foot with deep torn gorges. In each gorge nestles a garden of orange and lemons and pomegranates, and out of the stones there blows a perfume of southern blossom through all the month of May. ”

“ One naturally inquires, then, what was the source of the wide-spread fame of Salerno as a school, since it was distinguished neither by notable discovery in science nor by celebrated teachers, and the predominant element was doubtless one of obstinate conservatism and unswerving devotion to ancient doctrines. Founded during the dark period of the Middle Ages, at a time when ignorance, bigotry, and superstition prevailed, it preserved, amidst the gloom that had settled upon Europe, a few rays of that intellectual light which had shown so brightly in the golden ages of Roman history. ”

“ At Salerno, at Amalfi, were cradled those fishing-hamlets which were to nurse seamen, and not soldiers. Far up the Adriatic, the storm of Northern invasion had forced a fair-haired and violet-eyed folk into the fastnesses of the lagoons, to drive their piles and lay their keels upon the reedy islets of San Giorgio and San Marco; while on the western side an ancient Celtic colony was rising into prominence, and rearing at the foot of the Ligurian Alps the palaces of Genoa the Proud.
Thus upon the Italian stock was begun the language of the seas. ”

“ During the Middle Ages, in the Empire of the West, arose the School of Salernum, which became so celebrated that, like that of Alexandria, it deserves special mention. The modern city of Salerno is situated on the Neapolitan Gulf, about thirty miles southeast of the city of Naples, with a population of but a few thousand souls. ”

“ I have said already that the mountains of the peninsula show their sternest face towards Salerno. The road which is carried along these precipices is of astonishing grandeur. From the very summit of the mountains the cliffs fall by wide steep slopes to the deep water washing round their feet. Farms or cottages scarcely exist; the ravines seem inaccessible. Beaches there are none, save at three or four points in the long distance to Amalfi; few fishermen dwell on this barren coast. Only at one or two points are the tunny nets spread upon the sea ”

“ On the hill above the town are the ruins of a Lombard castle. Salerno markets wine, oil, fruit, cotton, tobacco, and silk, and manufactures cotton and woolen goods. The ancient Salernum, which at the time of the Second Samnite War still belonged to the Samnites, became later a Roman colony. After the fall of the Western Empire the town was successively held by the Lombards, the Normans, and the houses of Hohenstaufen and Anjou. Population (commune) , in 1881, 31,245; in 1901, 42,727. Consult Schipa, Storia del principato longobardo di Salerno (Naples, 1887) . ”

“ There is the plain below us, thickly dotted with farms and villas set amidst crops and orchards, a fertile scene of industry and population; here on the Salerno side are wild stony tracts affording only pasturage for a few sheep and goats, and covered for miles with broom, cytizus, coronella, myrtle, and numberless fragrant weeds, all struggling fiercely for existence on the dry barren soil, and filling the clear air with an incense-like perfume. ”

“ At the first ray of dawn she arose, and at the nearest pathway she struck out of the road, and took her course nearer the bordering Apennines. From Salerno as far south as the eye could reach, a low plain stretched itself along the seaside, and the hills at about the distance of ten miles bound it in. These mountains are high and singularly beautiful in their shape; their crags point to heaven and streams flow down their sides and water the plain below. After several hours' walking, Viola reached a pine forest, which descended from the heights and stretched itself in the plain. ”

“ The dusty white road winds upwards through a region of carefully cultivated terraces filled with olives and vines, intermingled here and there with orange, lemon, fig, and pomegranate trees. As we gain higher ground, our horizon tends ever to widen, and we behold the expanse of sea and sky melting in the far distance into “some shade of blue unnameable,” whilst the mountain-fringed ring of the Bay of Salerno becomes vividly mapped out to our eyes from the Cape of Minerva to the Punta di Licosia. ”

“ In the evening we got under way, and with a light breeze sailed out of the Bay of Naples, between Capria and Cape Gampenela.
September 29th.
Becalmed on the coast of Salerno. Nothing can be more beautifully picturesque. From the water's edge to the tops of the mountains, not a vacant spot is to be seen. The whole face of the country is covered with vines, trees, and houses, mixed together in the prettiest confusion imaginable. ”

“ You are to know, then, fairest my damsels, that 'tis not long since there dwelt at Salerno a leech most eminent in surgery, his name, Master Mazzeo della Montagna, who in his extreme old age took to wife a fair damsel of the same city, whom he kept in nobler and richer array of dresses and jewels, and all other finery that the sex affects, than any other lady in Salerno. ”

“ Once more the people marveled at the magnificence of his train, and once more the jester became the laughing-stock of all the watching crowds, but he rode on unheeding. His mad anger was stilled and he began at last to realize that he had indeed deserved his dreadful punishment.
When the town of Salerno was reached the journey was continued by sea, and soon the royal retinue was safe within the walls of Palermo. Seated on his throne in the great hall, the angel listened dreamily to the convent bells, which sounded to him like voices from another world. ”

“ There is no more poetic region on the continent than the bay south of Point Conception, and the pen and the camera have made the world tolerably familiar with it. There is a graciousness, a softness, a color in the sea, the cañons, the mountains there that dwell in the memory. It is capable of inspiring the same love that the Greek colonists felt for the region between the bays of Salerno and Naples. It is as fruitful as the Italian shores, and can support as dense a population. The figures that have been given as to productiveness and variety of productions apply to it. ”

“ Not even the most extravagant ideas of Italian laziness and curiosity could account for this intense interest in the movements of an ordinary yacht; and so our Americans soon found themselves lost in an abyss of wonder.
Why should they be so stared at? Why should the whole population of Salerno thus turn out, and make a wild rush to the wharf at which they were to land? It was strange; it was inexplicable; it was also embarrassing. Not even the strongest curiosity could account for such excitement as this.
"What 'n thunder does it all mean?" said Obed, after a long silence. ”

“ The coast stretched around in a vast semi-circle of silver till it lost itself in the misty horizon. Little villages lay at our feet, ran up the hill-sides with their terraces of orange-groves, or clung to the cliffs far overhead like martins’ nests in winter. A long range of snow-capped mountains reared themselves above Salerno, and sent us an icy blast now and then. There had been quite a snow the day before. We rattled up to our “albergo” at eleven. This was at the foot of the hill; our destination was an old monastery of the Capucins, now a hotel, of which this was the porter’s lodge. ”

“ The next day we went in the morning from Salerno to Amalfi. It is an unspeakably grand drive round the mighty rocks with the sea below; and Amalfi itself surpasses all imagination of a romantic site for a city that once made itself famous in the world. We stupidly neglected seeing the cathedral, but we saw a macaroni-mill and a paper-mill from among the many that are turned by the rushing stream, which, with its precipitous course down the ravine, creates an immense water-power ”

“ Beautiful as is Majori, it is no lovelier than many another spot upon this exquisite coast; it is but [pg 170] as one pearl in a well-matched necklace, for the country that lies between Amalfi and Salerno is fully as rich in historical interest and natural charm as is the western portion that we have just traversed. Behind Majori we behold Monte Falerio, with its rocky summit tipped with the glow of evening and its base in purple shadow, descending abruptly into the darkening waters of the Bay. ”

“ The traveler who to-day visits Salerno, in the hope of seeing some remains of the oldest medical school in Europe, will find there only a collection of squalid buildings which serve as dwellings for the poorer classes, a dirty and uncomfortable inn, and shops of nearly the same dimensions as those which once lined the narrow streets of Pompeii. ”

“ Robert Guiscard and Hildebrand in quiet Salerno, Tasso at health-giving Sorrento, Vittoria Colonna in her palace-fortress on the crags of Ischia, the great Apostle of the west at Puteoli:—these are but a few of the more eminent and gracious figures that arise before us at the casual bidding of memory. Then there are the infamous, as well as the virtuous and the gallant, whose misdeeds are still freshly remembered upon these coasts or in their fertile valleys. ”

“ The division of this flourishing state produced the rival principalities of Benevento, Salerno, and Capua; and the thoughtless ambition or revenge of the competitors invited the Saracens to the ruin of their common inheritance. During a calamitous period of two hundred years, Italy was exposed to a repetition of wounds which the invaders were not capable of healing by the union and tranquillity of a perfect conquest. ”

“ Salerno was founded very early, probably in [Pg 248] the tenth century, Bologna, Reggio, and Modena came into existence toward the end of the twelfth century; Vicenza, Padua, Naples, Vercelli, and Piacenza, as well as Arezzo, during the first half of the thirteenth century; Rome, Perugia, Trevizo, Pisa, Florence, Sienna, Lucca, Pavia, and Ferrara during the next century. The thirteenth century was the special flourishing period of the universities, and the medical departments, far from being behind, were leaders in accomplishment. (See my "The Thirteenth Greatest of Centuries," N. Y., 1908.) ”

“ The sea-coast from Reggio to Gaeta is commonly believed to be well nigh the most delightful part of Italy, and therein, pretty near Salerno, is a hillside overlooking the sea, which the countryfolk call Amalfi Side, full of little towns and gardens and springs and of men as rich and stirring in the matter of trade as any in the world. ”

“ This is all the more interesting because the University of Salerno was mainly under monastic influence. Originally the schools in connection with the school of medicine were founded from the great Benedictine monastery of Monte Cassino not far away. The first great teacher of medicine at Salerno, Constantine Africanus, whose influence was dominant in his own time and continued afterwards through his writings, became a Benedictine monk in his early middle age. The {282} preparatory schools for the medical courses at Salerno were largely in the hands of the Benedictines. ”