whitebeard

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Wednesday, April 11, 2007

CHAPTER IX

Pag.227-249

CAMALDOLI—BADIA A PRATAGLIA—VALLOMBROSA

" the peaceful hermitage,

the hairy gown, and mossy cell.”

THE nature of saints and mystics is to climb. It is as if their feet must follow the soul and give bodily expression to the spiritual aspiration. They cannot rest till they have arrived, breathless and bleeding, at the extremest peak within reach of their soaring eyes, and when at last the flesh can go no further, who can measure the spirit’s spring beyond?

The naked crags of the Casentino are hallowed by the footsteps of many a holy hermit. Long before Francesco d’Assisi carne to La Verna, San Romualdo had scaled the heights of the Giogana in search of a place lofty and remote enough for the contemplative life, and had founded near the source of the Archiano the hermitage and monastery of Camaldoli, from which the whole order of his followers took its name.

Romualdo was of the great Ravennese family of the Onesti, and a kinsman of the Contessa Engelrada, who married the first of the Conti Guidi known to history. In his youth he lived like other young nobles, fighting, feasting and hunting. But he was different to his fellows, and much given to thought. Often when following the stag in the great pine forests of Ravenna he would forget his quarry and fall into deep meditation upon the realities which are behind the appearances of life. Legend tells how one day, as he wandered thus, he suddenly carne upon his father in the act of treacherously slaying a foe whom he had beguiled to the place with fair words. The youth was so filled with horror and shame that he determined to betake himself to a monastery and do penance for this crime. His father, a fierce and ambitious baron, laughed and raged by turns at him, and when he persisted in his intention, locked him up in a deep dungeon. But iron bars were not to deter Romualdo from fulfilling his purpose. He managed to escape, and went to the monastery of St. Appollinare in Classe, where, after watching through a whole night in the church, and suffering the mysterious agony by which great souls apprehend their destiny, he took the vows of a Benedictine monk.

But soon his uncompromising zeal made him hated by his fellow monks, who were lax and easy-going, and to save his life from their machinations he had to fly from the convent. He then joined a hermit who lived in a forest, and under the severe discipline of this holy man he lived a life of the most rigid austerity. Before long he acquired the fame of extreme sanctity, and many serious and devout men began to follow him. His burning enthusiasm for holiness and the energy of his will made him a great power, and he went about from place to place reforming the lax and corrupt religious communities to a new life of devotion and discipline. Many a time his life was sought by monks who preferred their old ways of ease and sinfulness, but their wicked plots were invariably confounded by signal miracles. Romualdo also founded many hermitages. One day in a vision he saw a ladder stretching from earth to heaven, like that of Jacob’s dream, and upon it men in white raiment ascending and descending, whom he saw to be his own followers. When he awoke, he commanded that the communities which he had established should change the black habit of the Benedictines for a white one; and from that time to this the Camaldolesi have worn the white habit.

Romualdo, if the chronicles tell true, had reached the patriarchal age of a hundred and twenty at his death in 1027. The Eremo of Camaldoli was not founded till 1012, when, according to the reckoning of his biographers, he must have been over a hundred. The summit of the Giogana may well have been his last and steepest pilgrimage. A certain Count Maldolo, a noble of Arezzo, is said to have given the land for the new convent, and from him the name is supposed to be derived —Casa Malduli, or Camaldoli. The holy man and his followers had not long set their nests in the crags before the fame of their sanctity drew up after them a great host of pilgrims. For those whose flesh had not been disciplined to the privations which the hermits courted, San Romualdo set up a hospice below the Eremo, at about a mile’s distance, beside a fountain of very excellent water, whence the house was first called l’Ospizio di Fontebuona. Before long, so great was the concourse of monks to the community, the hospice was enlarged and partly converted into a monastery, though it continued to be also a house for guests, in which character it became famous later on.

San Romualdo did not, like San Francesco, forbid his monks to accept worldly possessions. The community of Camaldoli daily increased in wealth and power from the benefactions of the surrounding nobles, especially of the Conti Guidi, and its Abbot, who was often called Count, grew to be a great feudal lord. Many rich abbeys and monasteries of the Casentino became subject to it, as well as numerous castles— Soci, Partina, Serravalle and others. These domains involved the monks in all those distracting cares and worldly disputes from which San Francesco later defended his followers by the vow of poverty. The Camaldolesi appear in the mediaeval records in continual conflict with the Guidi and their other secular neighbours, who alternated between persecution and beneficence in dealing with them. The famous Count Guidoguerra, as we have seen, was a great offender against their peace and piety. They had often to endure mockery and despoliation, but with the Pope and his terrible ban at hand to help them, they usually got the best of their enemies in the end, and while the great barons declined gradually into insignificance, and finally vanished from the scene, the community, continually enriched by new gifts from princes and potentates, flourished and grew to even greater importance, till in the sixteenth century it is said to have possessed no less than eighty-four fiefs.

It did not, however, altogether escape the misfortunes of war. The Venetians under d’Alviano in 1498 laid waste all the monastic lands, and besieged the convent itself, but they were driven off by the energetic Abate Basilio, a monk valiant in war, and devoted and faithful to his country. Basilio, having donned the corselet over his religious habit, was not content with freeing the monastery, but sallying forth set himself at the head of the Florentine soldiers and fell upon the enemy suddenly on various occasions in other parts of the Valley, stripping them of their baggage, and helping greatly to discomfit them.

Though earthly interests intruded themselves into this lofty retreat of religion, the ideal of San Romualdo, whom St. Benedict names to Dante, in the exalted sphere of the contemplatives, among

“… li frati miei, che dentro ai chiostri

fermar li piedi, e tennero il cor saldo,”

was still maintained in the Eremo, where the hermits, each in his solitary cell apart, passed their days in abstinence and contemplation. And in the great convent below the monks dignified their less austere lives by patient cultivation of their domain, and especially by a prudent and far-sighted care of their noble forests, tending, planting and preserving, so that to this day, when the work is continued by the Government, the hills around Camaldoli are clothed with thick groves, while the Apennines generally have suffered denudation. They kept alive in their rocky fastness the virtues and gentleness of civilisation, driven out from the bloody fields below; they cultivated hospitality and courtesy, and the convent became a sanctuary of good manners and refinement. Popes and princes visited it continually and were sumptuously entertained.

Above all, the community cherished knowledge and letters, not excluding philosophy from their contemplation of divine things. The convent became a centre of intellectual life and a home of scholars. When with time learning began to venture forth from the cloister and to throw off the bonds of medioeval thought it did not abandon the high ridges of Camaldoli, but returning there, brought with it the enthusiasm of the fifteenth century for antiquity. The famous Greek scholar, Ambrogio Traversari, reigned as General of the order for many years and collected a fine library, which has now been dispersed; he was succeeded by his pupil, Mariotti, who during his priorate entertained in the cool shadow of the pine forest, at the season when the sultry heat made the city intolerable, that elect circle of scholars and thinkers which the Medici had gathered round them in Florence. The Medici showed special favour towards Camaldoli; Lorenzo sent his son Giovanni, the future Pope Leo X•, on frequent visits there to profit by the instructions and example of Pietro Delfino, who succeeded Mariotti, and in after years Leo conferred many favours on the monastery in gratitude for the benefits he had received there.

The road to Camaldoli from the valley turns off near Poppi and soon begins to mount, sweeping upwards for many a mile in great bends, like the path of an ascending eagle, now hanging upon a narrow shelf, with the precipice falling away below, now winding round to the other side of the ridge and disclosing with each turn a glorious view of mountain and valley. On the left one looks down into a wide sterile valley where sheep and goats wander, seeking out the scarce blades and leaves. Moggiona is seen far off in it, clustered among the rocks, and farther down, towards the opening into the main Valley, stands Lierna, strangest of human dwelling-places, built along the top of a thin wall of rock, which falls almost sheer on either side. Beyond Lierna rises the tiny village of Avena, which was once a castle of the Guidi, and called Ragginopoli. To the right you look over Soci and away to Bibbiena lying across the opening of the Valley.

After a long climb, the road enters into the solitary forest. Presently before you, in a hollow of the hills, which rise up on all sides, dark with forests, appears a great building; with the stately and picturesque aspect of a Renaissance villa, hanging upon the edge of the narrow gorge of a torrent. Delicious green slopes scattered with spreading oak trees rise and fall in front of it, moistened and refreshed by the spray of the stream. In spring you seem to have wandered into the earthly paradise, for the slopes are then thickly strewn with rare coloured flowers. Great patches of forget-me-not, blue as the sky above them, mingled with the pink of ragged robin and orchis, and all sorts of tiny lilac and white and blue flowers, masses of buttercups, daisies and pansies, and rising above the lesser flowers, stately white asphodel. Such as this must have been that lawn of Dante’s dream, where Leah wanders, plying her fair hands to make her a garland.

The monastery was suppressed in i866, but its old traditions of hospitality are still kept up, for it is now a great hotel, and is much frequented in the summer. But visitors are no longer received by a stately abbot and a picturesque company of white-robed monks, and lighter diversions have taken the place of platonic discussions, an d the poetic charm has vanished with the old order of things. The interior of the convent has been greatly altered, but there is still a fine fifteenth century hall with an ornate wooden ceiling, known as the Sala delle Academie, in memory of the famous Medicean discussions. There are some beautiful Renaissance chairs in it and a tapestried settee with the name of the General, Mariottus, and the emblem of the community, two doves drinking from a chalice, embroidered on the back. This charming device is also carved in the spacious corridors.

A few monks still inhabit a part of the building, which opens off a fine old cloister, of simple and impressive style, and said to be of great antiquity, part of a castle or villa here belonging to Count Maldalo in the tenth century. In the midst stands a picturesque fountain. The church is an eighteenth century restoration, ornamented in the style of that period, and contains some paintings by Vasari. An interesting survival of the sixteenth century is the old pharmacy, where special balsams and aromatic liquids are decocted from the pine trees and from the simples of the woods.

Sacrilegious change has fortunately not disturbed the hermits in their high nest above. The path up to the Sacro Eremo follows the gorge of the ever—narrowing stream through the green pavilioned coolness and silence of the forest. Here, between the soaring shafts of the pine trees, one often chances to encounter a procession of the white-robed contemplatives, wearing their large quaint hats, and for the moment the past is completely restored to one. A forest is the natural home of an anchorite; here is the stillness, the solitude which his being needs; here are streams to drink from and berries for food. Half way. up stands a little shrine, on a spot where San Romualdo had a victorious encounter with the devil, and further on you come upon three great crosses of wood, signs that the wilderness has been consecrated to Christ. After a time the solemn pine trees which have accompanied the climber all the way cease, and you come out in a sort of clearing, whence you look back upon the dark roof and aisles of the forest, with their smooth gigantic columns stretching away into the shadowy depths. And here are flowers again—flowers everywhere. Acacia and gorgeous yellow broom; beneath the feet anemones and orchis, white, pink and yellow, with Solomon’s seal and columbines. Earlier the ground is all primroses, and later on wild strawberries spot with crimson the sweet thymy carpet, and luscious raspberries drop from the tangled undergrowth.

In the midst of this fragrant wilderness, in a sort of enchanted circle of civilisation and industry, stands the great hermit settlement. All round is going on the busy work of the woodcutters, reminding one of the industrial side of these old monastic establishments, which carried on the useful labours of cultivation in the days of wasteful war, and ennobled them by a religious consecration. Within the fine gateway is a court surrounded by buildings connected with the hermitage; the church, with an ornate late Renaissance façade and two towers, stands on the right. Beyond, guarded by a tall wooden cross, is an inner enclosure, into which no woman may pass. Here, on either side of a long paved path bordered with neat grass plats. stand the little low-gabled dwellings of the hermits, each with its little cultivated plot enclosed within a stone wall The place has the calm and peaceful look of some hospital for the aged in England. But how different the setting here, the wild mountains, the forest roaring all round in autumn with the unbroken rush of the winds over the Apennine ridges? Behind and on either side of the little colony rises a dose dark wail of pine woods, planted doubtless for the sake of protection, so that each recluse may meditate undisturbed with his lamp beside him in the obscurity of the long evenings, himself as it were a quenchless torch kindled at the light of that changeless Heaven which is beyond the turmoil of our spheres.

Some of the cells are the original ones built by San Romualdo. The first on the right stands on the spot of his vision of the heavenly ladder, beside a cold spring from which he drank. Another, decorated with the “Palle” of the Medici, is of much later origin and recalls the audacious freak of a princess of that Mouse who, attired as a man, violated the clausura of the hermits and penetrated within the sacred enclosure. She was ordered by the Pope to build a cell as a penance.

The cell inhabited by the holy founder himself is outside the barrier and is kept untenanted. It was offered to San Francesco, when he visited the hermitage, as his lodging, but he refused on the ground of unworthiness. We were assured that it resembles all the others in every way. Beyond a minute vestibule, there is a little living chamber, with an aperture in the wall, barred on the outside, through which the inmate’s daily supply of food is put in. It has a large hearth, and a recess for sleeping. San Romualdo’s bed is spread with a matting only, but the hermits now enjoy the luxury of straw mattresses. A tiny oratory and study completes the dwelling. In such an abode each hermitlives a solitary life, occupied in prayer, meditation and study, issuing forth only at stated times to assist in the offices in the choir of the church, and to walk out three times a week in the forest. Every night at one o’clock they come out of their cells and gather in the church for Matins, summer and winter alike. When the snow is thick a path is cleared by means of oxen, and the monks pass in procession between two high white walls, each carrying a little lantern. Theirs is a life of primitive innocence and simplicity. They eat no animal food, nor do they work with their hands, except to cultivate their little gardens, but give themselves altogether to spiritual exercise.

To labourers in material fields, with sweaty brows, this existence seems but idleness and waste; they repeat the old utilitarian objection, this ointment might have been sold for much and given to the poor, forgetful that it was answered long ago, she hath wrought a good work upon me. These Camaldolese hermits have a sweetness and gentleness of expression which seems to justify their way of life; gathered within the green subdued light of the forest, behind the great Cross, they stand apart from the cares and passions of men,

“Pluckers of amaranth grown beneath God’s eye

In gracious twilights where His chosen lie.”

There is a strange contrast between the simple anchorites and the temple in which they worship. The interior of the Chiesa Maggiore is baroque in the most exaggerated sense of the word; incredibly ornate, plastered all over with gilt, and with choreographic nymphs figuring as angels. Nowhere is the extraordinary paradox of the Roman Church, which loads its worship of the Babe of Nazareth with all the pomp of the world and decks out humility in trappings of gold and jewels, so apparent as here in this gaudy fane set on a mountain top of the Apennines in the heart of the solitary forest. The church contains no artistic treasures of any kind, but in the little chapel of Sant’Antonio, on the other side of the court, there is a terra-cotta altar-piece by Giovanni della Robbia, a Madonna and Child, with SS. Sebastian, Antony, Romualdo and the Magdalen, an uninteresting work, resembling a good deal his Madonna del Rifugio at La Verna. San Romualdo in altercation with two demons is represented in the predella, which bears the device of the community, together with two dolphins, the arms of Pietro Delfino, general of the order in the latter part of the fifteenth century.

Saints and Popes and Emperors have climbed up in past times to this hermitage. Francesco d’Assisi carne to press the footprints of the holy Romualdo with his own bare eager feet. Dante had doubtless seen the source of the Archiano, che sopra l’Ermo nasce in Appennino.(1)

(1) The torrent which comes down from the Eremo, past the monastery below, is not the Archiano, but the Fosso di Camaldoli, which falls into the Archiano lower down, just below Serravalle. Whether Dante confused the two streams, or whether the Archiano proper also rises above the Eremo, I do not know.

But few of the pilgrims surpass in interest for us a little company that assembled here in the summer of 1468. There were the two princely youths, Lorenzo and Giuliano de’ Medici, the one destined to rule Florence in the hour of her beauty and magnificence, the other to be the sacrifice at the assassin’s hand for the over-great glory and sin of his Mouse. They were attended by several. Florentines of learning and distinction, and at the Eremo, Cristoforo Landino, who had come up with his brother from his villa at Borgo alla Collina, joined them. It is to Landino’s Camaldolese Disputes, a book famous in its time, that we owe the story of this meeting, with its picturesque details. An interchange of stately greetings between Lorenzo and his old tutor was interrupted by the announcement of the unexpected arrival of Marsilio Ficino and Leone Battista Alberti, the two most remarkable men of the Medicean circle, the frail, delicate Marsilio being facile princeps among the Platonists of his time, while Leone Battista was a marvel of physical and intellectual strength, a man whose charm and marked personality made him the natural leader of any society in which he found himself. The two being in company together had decided to turn aside from the road to Florence, whither they had intended to go, and to seek during the dog days the cool shades of the Casentino. They were received with enthusiasm by the first comers, and the next day, when all were well rested, the whole party having assisted at Mass, were pleased, “for the sake of health and enjoyment,” to walk up through the high forest, which extended to the mountain top. When by slow degrees they were at last come to the top, they found a flowery glade beside a clear spring, over which a great beech tree spread its shade. Here they sat down to rest, at the suggestion of Leone Battista, to whom the tree with its soft murmur and the rushing stream brought Socratic memories, and drew him at once into philosophic discourse. in accordance with the spirit of the place, he dwelt on the advantages of the contemplative life, a subject agreeable likewise to the platonic sentiment of the party. In response the nineteen-year—old Lorenzo, already a statesman and on the eve of succession to the highest position in the Florentine Republic, pleaded in favour of active intercourse with the world of men. This discussion and others on the following days, all showing the prevailing influence of platonic ideas, are described by Landino, and though no doubt he invented them mostly himself, they probably give a very true picture of the thoughts and interests of that singularly gifted circle. Strange the combination of keen delight in lofty spiritual and intellectual ideaswith vice, craft and cruelty in some of these representative men of the age. In this young Lorenzo, seated in the chosen place of the ascetic visionary Romualdo, eagerly drinking of the fountain of mystic philosophy, we see the same man who corrupted the noble sobriety of Florence to luxury and immorality, and crushed her freedom under his feet.

Another Florentine, visiting Camaldoli in the next century, was affected in the same way as Alberti and his friends by the contemplative spirit of the place. Vasari, whom the monks summoned to decorate their church with those bombastic paintings which were so much more highly prized in his day than now, records that when he arrived there: I was greatly pleased with the Alpine and eternal solitude and quiet of that holy place . . . those fathers, of venerable aspect . . . I experienced how much more profitable to study is sweet quiet and virtuous solitude than the clamour of the piazza and the court.

A beautiful walk along the mountain side, beneath tall beech trees,. leads from the hermitage to the ancient abbey, Badia a Prataglia, which is situated a few miles to the south-east of Camaldoli in the valley of the Archiano. Badia a Prataglia is of older origin than the more famous Eremo. Its monks had already claimed the mountain solitudes for the Church and for civilisation by the year 1002, when they are mentioned in a diploma of Otto III.'s. A few years later the monastery was enlarged and richly endowed by the Bishops of Arezzo and given to the Benedictines. The Guidi and other barons of the neighbourhood bestowed territories upon it. But as soon as San Romualdo's community was founded, jealousies and quarrels arose between the two convents, and the Badia gradually declined as its rival increased in fame and power, and in the twelfth century Adrian IV., to put an end to the constant disputes, made it subject to Camaldoli. In 1391 it was finally suppressed. The old church still exists in the little mountain village, which has now become a favourite summer resort. It may be reached from the main Valley by a splendid road which has been made of late years from the Casentino into the Romagna. This passes first through Soci, an ancient fortified place which belonged originally to the Guidi, and soffered much in the contests with the Ubertini and the Tarlati, and which now, by setting the wild waters of the Archiano to turn machinery, has transformed itself into a little modern manufacturing town. The road follows on along the right bank of the river past La Mausolea, an old villa belonging to the monks of Camaldoli, where Piero de' Medici was near being surprised and captured by the Florentines in 1498, when in exile with a price of 4000 florins upon his head. He was in the company of d'Alviano and Venetians who had occupied Bibbiena, and for who knows what private game of his own he had arranged to lodge on a certain nights in this villa with only a few followers. The Ten (Dieci di Balia) of Florence, having somehow learnt his intention, sent word to their captains in the Valley to surround the house and take him. But he was warned in time, and when the Florentines arrived they had only the poor satisfaction of burning the empty palace. Ariosto, in one of his Satires, enumerating all the claimants for favours from the Medicean Pope, Leo X, represents one as saying : " I was with Piero in Casentino." To have attended that rash young prince, whom his father called the fool of the family, in such perilous circumstances might well constitute a right to reward in after days from his successful brother.
A little pile of buildings, clustered most picturesquely with a group of dark trees against the mountain side, stands up on the left. lt represents the old Castle of Partina, which belonged to the monks of Camaldoli, and afterwards to the Counts of Romena. The hills now rise high on either side of the torrent, and a turn of the road discloses Serravalle, set far above upon the sharp ridge of a precipitous mountain, a white aerial little town, overtopped by the tower of a ruined castle. To one's right the old strongholds of Marciano and Gressa are seen seated upon crags detached from the great mountain wall. The road winds on and up, a veritable shelf cut in the rock, with the stream gushing far below at the foot of the steep oak woods. Rivulets descend on the left, spanned by bridges as they leap down narrow clefts, on their way to the Archiano below.
Presently Badia a Prataglia comes in sight, far ahead; and soon one reaches the village. It is not picturesque or interesting in itself, being principally a place for summer visitors (There is an English summer pension at Badia a Prataglia, Pension Bosco-Verde, which is very well spoken of.)
but is set in the midst of the most enchanting woods and lawns and delicious streams, sheltered in the lap of the wild hills. The church has been entirely transformed at different times, and only the shell of the tenth century building is left. But the original crypt remains, though now used for the humble purpose of a wood cellar; it is a very interesting little building of Romanesque style, quite complete with tribune and three naves, though divided up by partitions of later date. The low vaulted roof is supported on stone columns, with sculptured capitals now almost worn away. Two of the capitals are of marble. The chief
ornament of the church is a fine cinquecento frame over the altar, designed by Vasari for the high altar at Camaldoli and thence transported here. It has the Camaldolese emblem, the doves, upon the pillars.
A climb of about an hour from the village brings one to the crest of the mountain above. As one gets higher the country begins to have a volcanic look. Great walls of slate-like rock, sheer and naked, break the verdant hillsides. The road crosses the gorge and mounts up in long loops, and the great Apennine scene spreads out wider and wider before one. Beyond a welter of ridges southwards La Verna rises large and shadowy, arid to the west the dim distant forms of the Pratomagno range lift themselves above the intervening summits. The chestnut zone is soon left behind, and the .toad passes between stunted beechwood and rough waste ground, where flowers spring thick, and through dark pine woods; and turning one's back upon the Tuscan country, spread out green and smiling below, and walking eastwards for a space, one emerges, through a gap blasted in the rocks, into an utter1y contrasting world. The strange dead region of the Alta Romagna lies spread out before one, heaped up in sharp cones and ridges of ashen rock, pallid, skeleton, sterile, without a trace of habitation or sign of bird or beast: only the road cutting sharply down and down, in endless curves, till far away a pale green plain is seen, with a stream winding through a sandy bed and losing itself between the distant hills of a serener and gentler world. It is the Savio, which lower down in its course bathes the flank of Cesena, the city which, as it is seated between the plain and the mountain, so lives it between tyranny and freedom.
In such a country as this, which seems changed by an ironic enchanter into a sterile gold that can feed no hunger and quench no thirst, one imagines those sandy streams must take their rise, which bring down and deposit in their pallid beds the ore for which men struggle and agonise, strangling one another in their rage to gain it.
Vallombrosa, which with La Verna and Camaldoli forms the trio of famous religious sanctuaries of the Casentino, hardly falls within the scope of this book. Though included in the district of the Casentino, it lies quite outside the Valley, upon the western side of the Pratomagno, and is most easily reached by a little mountain railway from St. Ellero, the station next to Pontassieve, on the line between Florence and Arezzo. There is a road, however, which branches off from the high road of the Consuma and leads thither, and from the Casentino proper it may be reached by delightful tracks over the mountains, starting from the villages in the valleys on the east side of the Pratomagno. From Montemignaio it is a walk of about three hours to Vallombrosa. From Raggiolo it takes many hours longer, but the way, which after a long climb follows the crest of the mountain for some distance over solitary stretches of short grass, with glorious views of the Val d'Arno on the one hand and the Casentino on the other, and then descends through "Etrurian shades" till the monastery is reached, is an enchanting pilgrimage in fine weather.
The monastery of Vallombrosa was founded in 1060 by San Giovanni Gualberto, the young Florentine noble who spared the life of his brother's murderer when he had him in his power, and having received wonderful signs of the divine grace, abandoned the world and established a community of reformed Benedictines, known as the Vallombrosan monks. The land where he built his convent was granted to him by the Countess Itta dei Guidi, a nun, and sister of the first Count Guidoguerra, who was himself also a generous patron of the new order. The community grew rapidly rich and powerful, and the great Abbey of San Fedele at Poppi, as well as many other houses in the Casentino, became subject to it. In modern times, however, it fell into decay, and in 1880 was suppressed. The great house is now a summer hotel and the care of the forest has passed into civil hands. The very name of Vallombrosa brings the thought of classic groves, suggested by the famous lines :

“Thick as autumnal leaves that strew the brooks
In Vallombrosa, where the Etrurian shades,
High over-arch'd embower."

But the dark, colourless patches of pines upon the mountain side, seen from far off, do not look as if they would fulfil the promise of the beautiful Miltonic words.