Spoleto

“ Assisi lay behind us like a city of the Middle Ages, with Gothic towers and palaces grouped in échelon below her fantastic castle. On our right the hillside, veiled in the tender grey of olives, sloped [163] away to the Valley of Spoleto, which was a vision of pure beauty, with mists clinging about the banks of its streams, and its many little cities, Spello, [164] Foligno, Bevagna, tall Trevi and Spoleto, rising from the green folds of encircling hills. ”

“ Spoleto, as we know it to-day—but how can I describe it? One magic pen has pictured the Umbrian cities [93] with such divine felicity that the rest of us must be for ever mute. Read what Edward Hutton says about Spoleto—“a beautiful city of rose colour set on a high hill.”—“Spoleto, like a tall and sweet maiden,—kneeling at the head of her long valley under the soft sky.” Read all that that pure-souled genius has written about Umbria and Tuscany, and you will know whatever your mind can grasp of that which the poet and the mystic and the artist feel in that immortal region ”

“ How familiar all the dear places seemed on the way, and yet how changed the feeling with which one saw them—Thrasymene, Perugia, Assisi, Spoleto—all so much to us, so woven into our lives, and I was thankful for the twilight obscurity before the steep of Fidenae rose beside us, and then the towers of the beloved city crested the hill, the hill down which my darling drove so often in her little carriage to the Ponte Salario and the Ponte Nomentano, drinking in the full beauty of the historic loveliness. ”

“ Spoleto, it is little wonder that you are proud to-day, that your bells ring so joyously down the valleys, that you hold high festival to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of United Italy. What does it profit Perugia that her name was splendid in the Middle Ages, and that she is still the Queen of Umbria, 'the Empress of hill-set cities'? ”

“ I ascended to Spoleto and went along the aqueduct, which serves also for a bridge from one mountain to another. The ten brick arches which span the valley, have quietly stood there through centuries, and the water still flows into Spoleto, and reaches its remotest quarters. This is the third great work of the ancients that I have seen, and still the same grandeur of conception. A second nature made to work for social objects,—such was their architecture; and so arose the amphitheatre, the temple, and the aqueduct. ”

“ There is no land more fair, no sky more tenderly blue, no breeze more balmy, than the land where Spoleto and Toligno and Assisi rise in their picturesque beauty, than the sky which spreads its azure roof over the Umbrian traveller's head, than the airs which are wafted from the heights of Monte Falco, or the hill of Perugia. ”

“ SPOLETO (anc. Spoletium) , a town and archiepiscopal see of the province of Perugia, Italy, 18 m. N.N.E. of Terni, and 88 m. N. by E. of Rome by rail. Pop. (1901) , 9631 (town) , 24,648 (commune) . It is situated on a hill, so that the lowest part is about 1000, the highest 1485, ft. above sea-level, at the south end of the open valley of the Topino, a tributary of the Tiber, which it joins near Assisi. ”

“ Spoleto (8) , an ancient city of Central Italy, built on the rocky slopes of a hill, in the province of Umbria, 75 m. NE. of Rome; is protected by an ancient citadel, and has an interesting old cathedral with frescoes by Lippo Lippi, and an imposing 7th-century aqueduct; was capital of a Lombard duchy, and in 1220 was joined to the Papal States.
Spontini, Gasparo, Italian operatic composer, born at Majolati ”

“ On the slope of a hill, in the shade of the battered masonry of a feudal castle overlooking to the north Romagna and the hills of Umbria, to southward the sun-steeped plains of Calabria, Francesco at last faced the Duke of Spoleto, his bare, blood-stained sword across his knees. He had partaken of drink and food, while his steed was grazing on the emerald turf, and the men-at-arms were roasting a kid and some chestnuts they had gathered, over a fire kindled with dried branches and decayed leaves. ”

“ Moreover one is too much “exploited” in the neighbourhood to enjoy his visit. It costs half a lira to enter by this gate, and to leave by that road; to cross this bridge, or descend into that cavern; and troops of children beg soldi of you at every turn. The thing is not worth doing.
Spoleto, twenty-six kilometres away, is somewhat more interesting. It is famous for the fine relics, which still exist, of its more magnificent days, when, 242 B. C., it was named Spoletium.
The towers of Spoleto, like those of San Gimignano and Volterra, are its chief glory ”

“ The principal industries are the collection and preparation of truffles and preserved foods, also tanning and the manufacture of earthenware. Spoleto is also the centre of an agricultural district, and contains a government experimental olive oil factory. There are few towns of Italy which possess so many Roman remains in good preservation under the medieval buildings, and few medieval towns with so picturesque an appearance. ”

“ And then, who knows what awaits even us too, in that valley where Blessed Angela heard Christ say, "I love thee more than any other woman in the valley of Spoleto"? It is certainly some divinity that we find in those clouds of saints and angels, those marvellously sweet Madonnas, those majestic and touching crucifixions, that with a simplicity and sincerity beyond praise, Angelico has left up and down Italy, and not least in the convent of S. Marco. ”

“ There are some valuable paintings in the church. The people are said to be very civil, and provisions to be extremely cheap. It was the birthplace of the emperor Tacitus, as well as of the historian of the same name. In our journey from hence to Spoleto, we passed over a high mountain, (called, from its height, Somma) where it was necessary to have two additional horses to the carriage, and the road winds along a precipice. which is equally dangerous and dreadful. We passed through part of Spoleto, the capital of Umbria, which is a pretty large city. ”

“ We arrived at Spoleto before noon, and while our dejeuner was being prepared, looked down from the window of the inn into the narrow street beneath, which, from the throng of people in it, I judged to be the principal one: priests, papal soldiers, women with no bonnets on their heads; peasants in breeches and mushroom hats; maids and matrons, drawing water at a fountain; idlers, smoking on a bench under the window ”

“ He was as a man shipwrecked on a stormy sea, ever rocking with the waves, with no beacon-light beckoning him to shore.
"You have seen Conradino?" the duke said after a pause.
It might have been a statement, it might have been a question.
Francesco nodded.
"Rome is as Ghibelline at this hour as if the Pope had lived forever at Viterbo!"
The Duke of Spoleto shrugged.
"A passing fever! Many a one's soul is in sympathy with one's snout!" ”

“ In the valley the peasantry were returning from Vespers. The silvery chimes of the Angelus, from some convent concealed in the forest deeps, smote the silence of evening. Deep to the confines of the dusky sky glimmered the far Tyrrhenian Sea, washing shores remote with sheets of foam. Black cliffs, craggy and solemn, frowned upon the sea. The far heights bristled with woodland, dark under the setting sun.
Not once did Francesco interrupt the guttural account his host gave of his campaigns, until the Duke of Spoleto referred to the Frangipani. ”

“ Francesco ventured, with a sidelong glance at his companion, whose nose was in the air as if he sniffed countless monasteries and convents.
[Pg 167]
After a time the Duke of Spoleto growled.
"If the world were so perilous a place, were it not more manly to go out and conquer it than to hide from it like a girl that bars the door of the room? What if Christ and the apostles had shut themselves up in stone cells, the grim silence, the half-starved sanctity of the cloister? What has it done for the world? Men make a patchwork quilt of life and call the patchwork religion and law!" ”

“ Other pastors were doing all they could for their own flocks, but Monsignor Mastai’s zeal and charity were so conspicuous as to draw down the special and enthusiastic commendation of Gregory XVI, who immediately promoted him to the Archbishopric of Imola, a far more important see than that of Spoleto. Naturally the Spoleto people were frantic at the idea of losing him, and sent a deputation of their most notable citizens to Rome to beg the Pope to change his mind. ”

“ And along the fair white road which links the little townships of this Umbrian vale together—Perugia, Santa Maria degli Angeli, Assisi, Spello, Foligno, Trevi, Spoleto—I saw a stream of people flowing towards the Porta Romana. Some had burdens on their heads, and others were riding pannier-wise on mules; here they walked with free step beside their milk-white oxen, there they rode on wooden tumbrils among their heaped-up fruits and vegetables. Far away where the slim poplars rose up like banners upon the horizon I saw them, mere specks upon the long white ribbon of the road. ”

“ When Lorenzo the Magnificent, some years after the great Carmelite's death, passed through Spoleto as ambassador of the Florentine Commonwealth, he demanded Fra Filippo's body from the Spoletans, for re-interment in the Duomo of Florence. The Spoletans' reply is characteristic of the spirit of the age: they begged to be left in possession of the remains of the master, since they were so poorly provided with distinguished men, whereas Florence had enough and to spare. ”

“ This city is less considerable than Spoleto. The diocese, however, is richer and more populous. Its Episcopal chair leads directly to the Cardinalate. It has also thrice given to the Catholic Church its Chief Pastor. The people of Spoleto sent a deputation, but in vain, to beseech the Holy Father to leave the good pastor to his affectionate flock.
He was destined also to reign in the hearts of the good people of Imola. The numerous institutions there, which owe their existence to his Episcopal zeal and Christian charity, are [pg 010] monuments of his pastoral care. ”

“ Hildeprand, Duke of Spoleto, who had—in spite of the supposed annexation of Spoleto—chosen to regard Charlemagne rather than Hadrian as his suzerain, was on good terms with Arichis, and the Pope looked on their friendship with gloomy suspicion. ”

“ Assisi is full of forgotten charms. No other city in Umbria, except proud Spoleto, can boast as many traces of her Roman greatness. Though her amphitheatre has vanished underground, its lines are clearly preserved by the houses which are built above it; there is a wonderful Roman cistern below the cathedral; there are fragments of a theatre, and a drain of excellent masonry in the Canon's garden; and in the Piazza Vittore Emanuele is the exquisite portico of the Temple of Minerva, which, legend says, was built by Dardanus of Troy. ”

“ While he laid waste the possessions of the Church in the territory of Ravenna, he sat down before Spoleto in the spring of 739 with a considerable force. Duke Thrasimund could not resist and fled to Rome. In June the king entered Spoleto. He compelled Benevento to receive his nephew Gregory for duke. At the same time he drew the exarch to his [pg 339] interest, to whom the Pope's independence had long been odious. The confused accounts of annalists and historians make it difficult, if not impossible, to establish particular events in chronological accuracy. ”

“ No doubt it was the friar's garb which aroused his choler, for I never saw him before."
The Duke of Spoleto nodded grimly.
"A renegade is ever the worst enemy of his kind."
The paradox was lost upon Francesco.
But in the course of their converse the Duke of Spoleto revealed himself to be one Count Rupert of Teck, a bondsman of the Swabian branch of the Hohenstauffen, near whose castle his own was situated. In their cause he had fought Margaret of Flanders and King Ottokar of Bohemia, William of Holland and Charles of Anjou. ”

“ He was poisoned, some say, this Florentine monk, because of his loves with an Umbrian lady. Lorenzo de’ Medici tried to get his body back that they might bury it in Florence, but the Spoletans refused, pleading that they possessed so few objects of interest of their own that they must needs keep the bones of this great painter for an ornament. So Lorenzo caused his tomb to be built in the cathedral of Spoleto. ”

“ The Duchy of Spoleto was less important, as it had lost in territory and in independence during the reign of Desiderius, but means were taken to conciliate the Church by gifts to important abbeys. Indeed, so numerous were these alienations of the royal lands to ecclesiastical foundations, that the king’s policy in annexing cities and territories in the Patrimony of the Pope had become as much an economic as a political necessity, for the owners of the alienated land could only in this way be compensated for their losses. ”

“ From Florence south, by the less direct road via Arezzo, Perugia and Terni, there is another surprisingly sudden rise but likewise brief. It{71} is on this same road that one remarks from a great distance the towers of Spoleto piercing the sky at a seemingly enormous height, while the background mountain road over the Passo della Somma rises six hundred and thirty metres and tries the courage of every automobilist passing this way. ”

“ We might hazard a conjecture that the Lombards, when they ruled the Duchy of Spoleto, following their usual policy of opposing new military centres to the ancient Roman municipia, encouraged Fulginium at the expense of her two neighbours. But of this there is no certainty to build upon. All that can be affirmed with accuracy is that in the Middle Ages, while Spello and Bevagna declined into the inferiority of dependent burghs, Foligno grew in power and became the chief commune of this part of Umbria. ”