Tag: Umbria

The Sala dei Notari (Room of the Notaries) in Perugia is not just an imposing and beautiful space, but something that tells us how Perugians thought of themselves, in the Middle Ages and today.

To visit, or live in, a central Italian town is to be constantly aware of the Middle Ages. Not just the architecture, but the medieval town districts, and the celebrations and parades that I documented in my posts on The Serious Business of Dressing Up and its successor. Over time I have come to think that there is more to this than the admittedly great fun of a street parade in funny costumes. To some extent I believe that it is because towns are celebrating what is seen as a golden age. Why? It is unlikely to be the regular wars and the bubonic plague. But it is likely to be about community memories of identity and self-determination. Let us explore that idea in the context of Perugia.

An enjoyable aspect of central Italian cities – to the history nerd anyway – is the fact that many of the noble civic buildings are still used for public administration. These buildings generally date from the period of the independent communes in the 11^th-13^th Centuries, when cities developed their own institutions of self-government – law courts, regulation of commerce and public works, and self-defence.

One of the best examples is in Perugia. In my post on The Buried Streets of Perugia I wrote about how the subjugation of Perugia by Pope Paul III led to the relocation of power to the new Papal fortress built at the southern end of the town, and how, during the centuries of neglect that followed, the magnificent Gothic civic buildings at the other end of town nonetheless survived. But before Perugia fell, there were few better examples of the assertive, self-governing and self-confident medieval Italian city.

After the defeat of Papal forces by the new Italian government in 1860, the fortress was demolished and replaced by the palaces which – with obvious symbolism – housed the government of the Region of Umbria and the Province of Perugia as elements of the modern Italian State. Meanwhile, at the northern end of town, by the Duomo, the Palazzo dei Priori continued to house the local government offices, as it does today, along with the excellent National Gallery of Umbria.

While there is much to admire about the period of the independent communes, one very unfortunate aspect – which was to fatally weaken Italy in following centuries – was the intense factionalism of the time. City fought city, and internally, factions and powerful families fought each other. These factions were often proxies for the overarching great-power rivalry of the Middle Ages, between the Papacy (the Guelphs) and the Holy Roman Empire (the Ghibellines), but the existence of that rivalry did not cause Italian bellicosity, it simply channelled it.

The Perugians were famously warlike, and there can have been few cities in central Italy they did not fight with. They were particularly unable to get along with their near neighbours in Assisi, and in 1202 there was an encounter between Perugia and Assisi at a place called Collestrada, near today’s Perugia Airport. In that battle a wealthy young man serving as a soldier in the militia of Assisi was taken prisoner and spent a year in Perugian captivity, where he underwent a spiritual conversion. His name was Giovanni di Pietro di Bernardone, but history knows him by his nickname Francesco – or in English, Francis of Assisi.

Francis’s peaceful message didn’t change things very much. In the photograph below, the iron chains and bar that hang above the door of the Palazzo dei Priori were taken from the gates of the town of Torrita di Siena after a battle between Perugian and Sienese forces in 1358. The gryphons, by the way, are the symbol of Perugia, and you can see them everywhere in the city, and also on packets of “Baci” chocolates made by the Perugina chocolate company.

In the end, the factionalism and fighting doomed the independent communes. Fighting created mercenary armies, their commanders became warlords and strongmen who seized power, and some of those went on to become counts, marquises and dukes. They in turn fell to foreign powers, or in central Italy, to the Papacy.

But those collapses of self-government did not happen straight away. That they did not happen sooner was due in part to an admirable institution devised to deliver effective government while keeping factionalism under control. This was rule by a podestà. A podestà  was an official – well-born, but not of the higher ranks of the nobility, typically of the rank of knight – and typically with legal experience. Crucially, a podestà  had to come from somewhere else, so could not have ties to one of the local factions. And he served for a fixed term (usually two years) so he was not around long enough to “go native” with one of those local factions. A podestà was not a dictator, more like a chief magistrate. His authority was balanced by councils and assemblies, other magistrates and the factions themselves, but he was expected to act as a mediator between them all, and take decisions in the best interest of the city as a whole.

In some places the podestà  was felt to be too closely aligned to the interests of the gentry rather than the growing middle class, (populares in Latin) so an additional official position was created, that of capitano del popolo, who like the podestà was appointed from somewhere else and served a fixed term. Perugia too took that route.

In Perugia today, at the top of a flight of stairs leading up to the Palazzo dei Priori from what is now called Piazza IV Novembre near the famous Fontana Maggiore, is a large room called the Sala dei Notari, or “room of the notaries”. It is a large chamber, originally used for meetings of the popular assembly. Later, after Perugia came under Papal control and popular assemblies ceased to be meaningful, it became the headquarters of the guild of notaries, from which it takes its modern name.

These days the room is once again an assembly hall, of sorts, where public meetings are held, lectures given, and city councillors meet. Weddings are held there. Last time I was there they were holding a prizegiving for a fun run. But what a magnificent place it is to hold any kind of ceremony.

The frescoes date from the 13^th Century, and some depict biblical stories, Aesop’s Fables, and other improving maxims. There are also commemorations of the medieval podestàs of Perugia in the form of their coats of arms. All were, however, heavily restored in 1860 by a local artist named Tassi – and show it, especially the podestà memorials. The style is 19^th-Century and the writing is in the sort of Victorian mock-gothic script that one sees in calligraphy by Augustus Pugin and William Morris. Nonetheless the effect is still very striking, and what is more, this was not just a simple exercise in nostalgia or fashionable neo-gothicism, but a historically significant act. Look at the date. 1860 was the year that Perugians finally – after several bloody failures – threw off the Papal yoke and became part of united Italy. Of course they were going to emphasise and celebrate anything that reminded them of their historical autonomy.

A selection of these commemorations follows, with my attempts at translating the (often abbreviated) Latin.

I am struck by how far away some of these podestàs come from: Bologna, Siena, Lucca and so on. But these are all other independently-minded cities, and presumably shared the Perugians’ commitment to self-determination. It is appropriate, therefore, that the Perugini should have honoured them at the time, appropriate too that their descendants should have renewed the honour in 1860 after the end of Papal domination, and appropriate still that their coats of arms should look down on the Perugini today as they get married, debate council taxes, and hand out medals.

In Umbria, at the very top of Monte Torre Maggiore, is a site that was sacred for thousands of years. In June 2023 I resolved to make a trip there, as it was something I had had in mind for a while. Monte Torre Maggiore is the southernmost and highest peak in the chain called the Monti Martani which divides the Middle Tiber Valley from the Valle Umbra. Roughly speaking, the Middle Tiber Valley runs from Perugia in the north to Todi in the south, while the Valle Umbra runs from Assisi in the north to Spoleto in the south.

My desire to see the place came from reading a book titled simply Umbria by an English journalist called Patricia Clough, in which she describes heading up the mountain to the very summit, where she found the remains of a temple that dates from pre-Roman times. She makes much of how hard it was to find, and the difficulty of distinguishing it from some medieval remains a bit further down the mountain, but these days it is on Google Maps which solves both problems. “Pagan Sanctuary”, says Google – adding, a bit superfluously, “(ruin)”.

To get there one heads for a town called Cesi which is spectacularly located on a steep mountainside. It is however difficult to find a good spot from which to photograph Cesi, but if I ever get one I will update this post. Once in Cesi I turned off the car’s satnav and relied on Google Maps to find the road – which turned out to be steep, narrow, and in appalling condition even by the standards of Umbrian rural roads. Uncomfortably aware that my leased Peugeot didn’t have a spare tyre, just one of those silly repair kits, I crawled up the mountain in first gear, easing the car into and out of potholes when I couldn’t go round them. It took half an hour or so, and I only passed two cars. One, stationary in a clearing, had a couple of shifty-looking fellows in it who looked at me with suspicion. I decided they must be drug dealers. A bit later I passed a couple of lady carabiniere in one of their little green forestry patrol 4WD Fiat Pandas. The driver mouthed a friendly “buongiorno” to me as we passed, which I took to mean that what I was doing was neither illegal nor extremely foolish. Carabinieri carry military-grade weapons (they are in fact part of the military) so I assumed they would be a match for the drug dealers. In the event I saw nothing in the local online newspaper about a shootout on a lonely mountain road, so maybe I was wrong about them being drug dealers.

Sant’Erasmo

After having passed an astronomical observatory which appeared to be mothballed, about a third of the way up I reached a flat spot with somewhere to park, and got out. The scent of the wildflowers – of which there were many – was very strong. Big black shiny bumblebees, and little black insects with bright red wings, were feeding from them.

From the car park a ridge went out to a flat-topped outcrop, falling almost perpendicularly on three sides to the Terni valley a bit over two thousand feet below. On the flat top of the outcrop there is a church called Sant’Erasmo that dates from the 12th Century. It seemed unused but not abandoned, as there was a large padlock on the door.

Around Sant’Erasmo I saw various large stone blocks which looked ancient – from what I have been able to find out there was a settlement here called Clusiolum in Roman times, and in the early Middle Ages a Benedictine monastery for which Sant’Erasmo was presumably the church. Little remains of the Roman town, and nothing of the monastery as far as I could see, although doubtless much is hidden under the grass. In some places Sant’Erasmo is referred to not as a chiesa (church) but as an eremo (hermitage). There is a rather roughly-built stone extension out of the side of the church which doesn’t really fit any of the conventions of ecclesiastical architecture, so I speculate that might have been the hermit’s cell.

The view was tremendous, with a near-vertical slope down to the industrial outskirts of Terni on the left, and away to the right the town of Narni, sitting beside the gorge where the ancient military road (still called the Via Flaminia) heads down to Rome.

At the end of the ridge there are the remains of a medieval tower which would also have had a tremendous view. Presumably if the garrison saw an invading army they would have lit a fire or something. I didn’t go out to the tower, partly because it looked like a bit of a scramble, and partly because there were signs saying that it was both very dangerous and very illegal to approach within 15 metres.

Monte Torre Maggiore

Sant’Erasmo was very interesting, but not the object of the trip, so I climbed back in the car and kept going uphill. Shortly beyond Sant’Erasmo the road became unmetalled, and actually a lot smoother, so I made better progress. Eventually I got to where Google thought it would be a good idea to get out and continue on foot, so I found a place in which to park the car out of the hot sun, and did so. It was very steep. At first it was through woodland, then it came out onto a bare hillside with lots of white stones. It was hard going; the sun was quite fierce and the hillside continued to be steep. I was going very slowly and stopping frequently, and my smart watch kept asking if I had finished my workout. Given how hard I was gasping for air I found this rather insulting.

On another hill a couple of kilometres away members of a mountain rescue team were practising being winched up and down from a helicopter, so it wasn’t hugely peaceful. A large raptor circled overhead for a while then, presumably deciding that I wasn’t about to expire, headed away. After a while the helicopter left too, presumably deciding I didn’t need rescuing.

Eventually I got to the summit. The site is surrounded by a metal fence but there was no lock on the gate so I assumed it is just there to keep cattle out, and let myself in. It is on the highest point of the mountain so the view is indeed spectacular – almost 360 degrees from Assisi in the northeast to Todi in the northwest. To the southeast are the high Apennines of Abruzzo, range after range fading into the distance.

To the south, beyond a range of hills, are the plains of northern Lazio that lead down to Rome. Clough’s book says that locals claim that from here one could see the dome of St Peter’s in Rome on a clear day, and nowadays the tower blocks on the outskirts of Rome. That seems a bit plausible, but not in a summer heat haze.

As for the ruins themselves, they are the remains of two rectangular buildings. One has been dated to the 3^rd Century BC, and a larger one from the 3^rd or 4^th Century AD, both erected over buried remains of a much earlier structure. There is also a smaller structure made of more haphazardly-arranged stones. I have no idea if that was part of the original or dates from some later period.

Being a good journalist rather than a cavalier blogger like me, Clough chased down the archaeologist who led the excavation of the site and who explained its pre-Roman origins. The excavations apparently revealed Bronze and Iron Age traces including ritual items in a grotto nearby, but to my untutored eye what remains above ground looks all Roman – large evenly-dressed stone blocks without mortar, fragments of fluted columns and the like.

It seems that as Rome’s dominions expanded to take in Umbria the site was redeveloped in Roman style. It is well-known that the Romans would co-opt local deities into their pantheon, so a shrine on some foggy British riverside or one on a baking Syrian hilltop would be rededicated to , for example, Jupiter plus the British name or Minerva plus the Syrian name. It could be that something similar happened here, or perhaps the original deity was just extinguished. Either way, the name of that original deity is lost now.

Given what we know, assimilation seems more characteristic of Roman practice and therefore more likely. It is seen as a strength of Roman imperialism – helping to encourage the locals into the new dominant culture, and presumably preventing local sacred sites from becoming centres of resistance.

In due course, something analogous happened with Christianity. It was not as explicit as pagan Roman syncretism, because the whole point of the Judeo-Christian god was that you were not allowed any other ones (although with the Trinity, the Virgin Mary, apostles, martyrs and other saints, in practice there was no shortage of additional subjects for veneration). What happened instead was that sacred sites continued to be co-opted, but the object was replacement rather than assimilation. Pagan temples were replaced by Christian churches on the same sites. Temples to Minerva, the goddess of wisdom, were frequently (or always? I don’t know) replaced by churches dedicated to the Virgin Mary.

That did not seem to have happened in the case of the temple on Monte Torre Maggiore. I haven’t seen any references to a Christian church on the site, and Clough’s archaeologist source suggests that the temples may have been violently destroyed. Whether that was part of the suppression of paganism, or was the result of war or earthquake, I do not know.

Sources

As I said, the inspiration for my visit to Monte Torre Maggiore, and the source for most of the information on the temple is Umbria by Patricia Clough, Haus Publishing, London, 2009. Although not a long book, it ranges across several aspects of living in Umbria, from history and culture to food and home renovation. I recommend it to anyone interested in the area.

I have found very little else – there is a brief mention of Sant’Erasmo in Cadogan Guides: Umbria (2009 edition), and nothing at all in the usually comprehensive Umbria, a Cultural Guide by Ian Campbell Ross. Online there are cursory mentions on a few tourism and outdoor walking sites, and only the stub of a Wikipedia page. It is an unusual experience for me to think that I might be making a substantial addition to the amount of online material on a subject.

On a hillside in Umbria, a quiet chapel contains countless tiny memorials to deliverance from peril – the ex-votos of the Santuario della Madonna dei Bagni.

An ex-voto is a votive offering in thanks for divine intervention. It might take the form of a small model of a body part that was afflicted by disease or injury, or a picture of an incident in which someone was was healed, or injury or death was averted. It might even take the form of a motorcycle helmet that had protected the wearer in an accident. These tend to be found in chapels, churches and cathedrals in Italy. In the case of pictures, the interceding saint is usually shown as well. Frequently the letters P.G.R. appear, short for per grazia ricevuta – “by grace received”, or “for favours received”.

That this is deep-rooted in our culture is shown by the large number of votive objects that have been recovered from wells and springs known to have been sacred to pagan deities or demigods (and for that matter, have you ever thrown a coin in a wishing well or fountain?). The continuation of this practice into the Christian era has been described as the pragmatic appropriation of pagan practices by the early Church, in the same way that they built churches on the site of pagan temples. But if it is such a fundamental impulse, it may be that people were going to do it anyway, whatever the church fathers thought.

I’ve wanted to do a post on ex-votos for a while, but a couple of things have inhibited me. One reason is that if I put phrases like per grazia ricevuta in these articles then various algorithms will group this site with religious websites, which is already happening due to some of the historical, artistic and architectural subjects I have covered. So be it, but I fear that those who come across this site by that route will be disappointed.

A more important reason for caution is that I am worried that any treatment of this subject will come across as condescending. And it is hard not to smile indulgently when you see an ex-voto of a child surviving a fall from a merry-go-round through divine intervention, like this one in a museum in Taormina in Sicily.

You can find votive pictures like these in many museums and galleries across Italy, typically folk museums and small municipal galleries, and of course the churches in which they were originally displayed. Most of the pictures which accompany this post are from a particular church – the Santuario della Madonna dei Bagni in Umbria. It is located south of Perugia, in rolling hills which descend to the middle Tiber valley, just near the town of Deruta. The name “dei Bagni” apparently refers to mineral springs nearby.

The story of the sanctuary’s origin is that in the early 17th Century a wandering Franciscan friar found a pottery fragment depicting the Virgin and Child lying in the road. He picked it up and placed it reverently in a young oak tree. Over the following decades the tree grew around the image and fixed it in place, making a natural version of a roadside shrine. Travellers who prayed there, either to seek divine assistance, or to give thanks for assistance received, would often have left ex-votos.

It is the proximity to Deruta that makes this place special. Then as now, Deruta was a centre for glazed pottery, and not surprisingly one of the things that Deruta’s potters would make you was an ex-voto illustrated to your requirements. Traditional Deruta ware, with its folk designs and its cheerful primary colours, is not much in fashion at the moment, as it doesn’t really go with contemporary design taste. But one thing you can say about it is that kiln-fired and glazed ceramic is a good deal more durable than pictures painted on bits of wood. The style and appearance of the pictures have changed little over the centuries – for they are still being offered by the faithful. In deference to the story of the origin of the sanctuary, the image of the Virgin and Child in the pictures appears in an oak tree.

In 1687 the present church was built to house the shrine and growing collection. Since most of the pictures bear dates, many can be seen to predate the building of the church, and perhaps even started their lives attached to that oak tree.

Behind the altar, behind a pane of glass, a piece of oak is preserved. It would be wonderful if it were from the original tree of the story.

These days the main road is the busy E45 motorway, and the trucks that thunder through its concrete channel are thankfully a bit further away from the church than the old road.

As you look at the illustrations you will be struck by how the details remind you that these are real things that happened to real people.

As I said, it is hard not to smile indulgently at some of these, and feel a bit superior when seeing mental illness ascribed to demonic possession, and recovery from it attributed to miraculous intervention.

Or at the modern kid on the motor scooter who has had an accident when racing the traffic lights (honest officer, the light was still amber, just look at this ex-voto). Other contemporary disasters include car accidents, close encounters with trains, and the crash of a light aircraft.

But then you might reflect that in some ways it is not the metaphysical explanation that is important. It is the fears and hopes and gratitude of real people that you are seeing recorded before you, whether it is the husband whose wife has survived a dangerous childbirth, or the wife whose husband has returned safe from the wars.

And if in that moment of empathy you find yourself wiping away a tear, then you might have just received your own gift of grace, in some sense.

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Postscript: we returned to the Santuario in September 2022, and sure enough, found an ex-voto giving thanks for a family’s survival of the COVID pandemic.