BY ADRIATIC SEA AND SHORE.

Otago Witness, Issue 2840, 19 August 1908, Page 86

BY ADRIATIC SEA AND SHORE.

By 2ditu Skoile Grossiianx.

VI.— BRINDISI, THE DEVOUT.

Brindisi is evidently very devout. It

abounds in churches and wayside shrines. This is, of course, only what we should expect from its general villainy, because it must need such a lot of religion, just as our own Dark Ages were much the de-

voutest. Brindisi is still in the Dark Ages, with just a few details borrowed from the' year 1907. Even its cardsharpers, and gamblers like to pursue their occupation in the shelter of some mediaeval church porch. On the stone steps of the Chiesa. del Cristo (Christehtirch), under the sculptured saints, we saw a vile set of banditti, or rather ruffians lower than banditti, sitting and playing diee — undersized, evil-eyed men, one of them with, only one eye, and that one eye ■so vile that you hardly wondered- at his companions having put out the other one; one man was dwarfish; all of them were unclean. Even the cows and horses ought to be rather religious here, for the old cloisters of this church are now used as stables, while those at Casale have been converted into a large dairy. Sometimes religion and. industry go hand in hand. One small chapel along the har-

bour front is utilised both as a shrine and a cowshed, and serves both purposes equally well. While we were looking at the holy pictures in the niche, the cow inside the building began to low. Near the Porta Lecce is an artificial rock tomb 01 sepulchre of Christ, a piece of that ghastly realism which disfigures Italian art and religion. Two paper soldiers In twentieth-century uniforms, and rather frjre the toy soldiers sold to London chilI -i#n, are fired at each side of the small

open hollow, supposed to represent the tomb. A semi-circular stone wall, form-

ing the background of the scene, is-~ueed

to illustrate the stations of the cross, with black wooden crosses at intervals and horrible pictures of livid Christs painted on the stone, illustrating the procession to Calvary. Adjoining this

sepulchre is a loud-smelling wine factory, with a pious, 'livid. Madonna painted on its wall, a sword sticking in her. I should think this factory needed a Madonna badly. Though it is; true the majority of people in • Italy drink wine without any .bad effects, I have seen a good- deal of "drunkenness, even in, sainted Florence, and heard a nightly pandemonium of brawls and insanities at the

drogherie. Another of Brindisi's innumerable shrines is built in the wall 'of the

archway in the. Porta Lecoe, so that peasants travelling in from the province of

Lecc© and Brindiciarr. travelling out, can get a little sanctification en passant. Among the churches one authority puts the cathedral first in order of .importance, and it certainly is a more living place of worship. But, from the view of antiquity or art, -it seemed to us the least remarkable church we visited^ so little remarkable, in fact, that the dnly image I hold of it now in my memory is a large white modern-looking Italian church, fiat-fronted, with a paved Piazza del Duomo in front — where, by the way, I once 6aw the archbishop in his pontifical robes coming out after vespers, and a number of beautiful pious young priests or theological students in iblack bending their knees devoutly, and kissing his hand, and doing it all so beautifully, so deferentially, that, what with their youth, and the splendid robes, and' the sunset, and the full-toned vesper bell, they might all have been saints in a sort of lower paradise contrasted with the extreme I earthliness and squalor of Brindisi. If ! this cathedral really were built in the \ twelfth century, as Chambers 6ays it was, it must have been very much restored. I What principally I struck me in the interior was a typical instance of Italian religion, a memorial (if I remember rightly) to some dead man, placed there •by his sorrowing widow — a life-size figure, representing, not the dead husband, as -one might expect, but the widow herself in a truly awful state of anguish, physically twisted as if she had an internal malady, and looking like nothing so much as a bad imitation "of Madame Tuesaud'a waxworks in the Chamber of Horrors.

•Thie "mourning 'bride" was matched in the Cathedral of Turin by a votive picture of thanksgiving representing the donor's escape from a tramway accident ■with a fidelity and 1 literalness truly atrocious — the grisette, who had run out to see the scene ; the waiter,* in black cloth and starched shirt-front, lifting up his hands; the tram conductors, the small boy climbing up a- post to look on, the overturned tram and the mangled, horse, even the drops of blood, all were set down (with conscientious accuracy and lack of taste or humour, and all in the crudest colours. The ch.urch that is really the most interesting in Brindisi i& not the Duojno, but the Chiesa San Giovanni al Sepolchro. This i§ beyond a doubt medieval, and portions may belong 1 to more ancient days. The Brindisiaii caretaker, an educated man, who knew the church well, said that it had formerly been, a Greek temple. It was very probably built oji the site of one-, and parts may have been used in 'building the Christian church. The aama "fctory Tras told -us of numerous early churches; especially in Corfu, Greece, and the South of Italy, but thai is no reason for distrusting it, for undoubtedly it has been a most common custom with all races either to destroy their temples 05 to convert them into Christian churches, and even if they are fulled down, pillars or slabe, or perhaps whole porches, are incorporated in the new -building. J have seen some curious instances "of this— one' in the littje ByzanI tine church in Athens, where" slabs with pagan designs were, b,uilt into the exterior w.aJlls, one of them** upside dmfijr %±Z.\ „' : - ' JJnt Q i^ftV jrhi£ ghurpji" js£:W5L

Sepulchre is one of those round churches of the Dark Ages, but whether it was Byzantine or Norman I must leave some one to decide who knows a little about architectural history. Unfortunately, like some other interesting buildings in Brindisi, it has been surrounded by houses, now inhabited by the squalid and diseased poor, and except on one side these houses are built right on to its walls, so that the general effect is spoiled. The front still remains visible, too strong to be spoiled, but with the rich! ornamentation and fine sculptures of its porch worn and injured, and a general appearance of magnificence neglected and shabby, but still magnificent. On each side of the door is a battered lion couehant, one of white and the other of coloured marble. This church must have been used by the Crusaders. The Chiesa del Cristo is built high up on an angle of the old city walls, above the Porta Lecce. It is a curious style of architecture which I have not seen anywhere else, except at a church a mile or two on the other side of the harbour at Casale. Our ragamuffin quide — the 6ame one who afterwards pelted vs — said that the Chiesa del Cristo was- built first, and that of Casale was modelled on it. One cannot, of course, put blind faith on what these chance street guides will tell you, but at the same time it is a mistake to dismiss their information. It is often, if not usually, based on traditions, and some quite illiterate local residents whose ancestors have lived on 4he spot will, in Italy and Corfu, give information that ha 6 never got into any guide book. They are not to be regarded as one would regard a modern professed guide in England or Scotland, who invent or add or distort, or else repeat a lesson learnt by rote.