Picturesque Sicily

Front matter

CORNELL

UNIVERSITY

LIBRARY

Preface

Sicily is little known to the world of to-day; few travellers visit the island ; of American books on modern Sicily there are none, of English books there is a plentiful lack ;, and, even in these days of magazines and newspapers, but little information concerning the mysterious country finds its way into the public prints of Europe or the United States. Nevertheless, Sicily presents to historians and archaeologists a field the more tempting that it has been so little tilled, and a new world to travellers who delight in the romantic and the picturesque. The discovery in all parts of the island of a great number of Greek temples, theatres, and other edifices must excite the interest of antiquarians, while the mere sight of these grand ruins challenges the admiration of all beholders. To me these relics of classic times were revelations of a forgotten — indeed an almost unknown — era in the history of a highly civilized and art-loving people. With great surprise, I learned that there are more ruins of Greek temples in the island of Sicily than are to be found in the Peloponnesus, or in all Greece besides.

Not only in examples of Greek architecture, but also in the more or less perfect architectural relics of

VI PREFACE

other nations that at one time or another have held dominion in the island, is Sicily surprisingly rich. Nowhere else in Europe (within the limits of so small a territory) are there to be seen so many well-preserved specimens of the work of the master builders of ancient and mediaeval times. It has been well said that " Sicily is the Archaeological Museum of Europe "; for in Sicily are to be seen the caves of the cliff-dwellers; fragments of cyclopean structures reared by prehistoric builders ; foundations of walls laid by Phcenicians and Carthaginians ; temples, theatres, and fortresses of Greek construction ; bridges, aqueducts, and amphitheatres erected by Roman engineers; remains of edifices built by Byzantine architects ; mosques and towers of Saracenic origin ; while of Norman churches, castles, palaces, who can tell the number or describe their magnificence?

When the Mediterranean was the only ocean whose expanse had been explored by civilized people,- the lands washed by its waves composed the whole of the known world of antiquity, and Trinacria was the very centre of ancient civilization. The nations that have dwelt around the Mediterranean waged almost incessant war for the possession of the island, and these wars were of paramount importance to mankind. For more than fifteen hundred years it was the battlefield upon which men of European blood contended with men of Asiatic blood for the dominion of the world. In Sicily, no less than in old Greece, was waged the war of civilization against barbarism, of philosophy against mysticism, of science against astrology ; and it is no exaggeration to say that upon the result of battles fought in Sicily, or on

Preface vu

the sea near her coast, oftentimes have hung the fate and future history of Europe.

Sicily has been the battle-ground not only of race against race and nation against nation, but of creed against creed. On Sicilian soil innumerable battles were fought between Shemitic men who bowed down to Baal, Ashtoreth, and Moloch, and Aryans who worshipped Jove and all his starry host — Phoenicians against Greeks, Carthaginians against Romans. Then came the Moslems, followers of Mohammed, to fight against Greeks who called themselves " the servants of the Nazarene "; and, later, Saracens warred against Normans.

In all these wars Europeans battled with Asiatics, or Africans of Asiatic ancestry ; the " men of the West " against the " men of the East" ; and oftentimes these Sicilian campaigns, carried on in and for the possession of Sicily, determined the course of history far beyond the limits of the island battle-ground. As, for instance, on the day commonly said to be the Day of Salamis, when the rnen of old Greece saved their country from the invading Persians, the Greeks of Sicily won the battle of Himera, and so not only delivered their native land from the yoke of the Carthaginians, but turned back a tide of conquest that threatened to orientalize Europe.

In Sicily were fought many of the battles of the Punic Wars. Pyrrhus of Epirus, and after him Belisarius, played their short but brilliant parts on Sicilian soil. In Sicily the Moslems temporarily established the dominion of the Khalifs of Africa. In Sicily the Normans won for themselves a kingdom, and established a government which, for a time, was the most via PREFACE

liberal, the most powerful, the richest and most magnificent of the governments of Europe.

The glory of the Normans soon departed, and Sicily became the football of popes, emperors, and kings. Suabians, Angevins, Aragonese, Catalans, Castilians, Savoyards, Spaniards, Austrians — all these, in turn, holding dominion in the island — ruled despotically, unwisely, unjustly. At last — blackest of all the curses that have fallen upon ill-fated Sicily- — the Bourbons set up their despotism, which Gladstone described as " the negation of God erected into the form of a government," the government of the three F's (as King Ferdinand called it), " Feste, Farine, Furche," that is to say, government by feast-days, free distribution of grain, and the gallows for all who complained too loudly in their rtiisery and hopelessness.

Not until i860 did Garibaldi break the yoke of their bondage, and then, for the first time in many centuries, the Sicilians were free to work out their social and political salvation.

Thus for ages the possession of Sicily was disputed by the leading political powers of the world, because its central position made it a strategic point of first importance, and its possessors held the key to " The Midland Ocean."

Constantly in danger of foreign invasion, Sicily was " armed to the water's edge," and when threatened from without, the Siceliots united for the time being to repulse the fleets and armies of their would-be conquerors. But having defeated the common enemy, they fell to fighting among themselves, so that the island was seldom at peace for long. Most disastrous of all their civil conflicts was that into which the

PREFACE IX

Siceliots were drawn when the scene of the wars between Athens and Sparta was transferred from old to new Greece, for in Sicily, not in Hellas, was waged the decisive battle of the Peloponnesian wars. Under the walls of Syracuse, not in Attica, nor yet in LacedjEmon, the momentous conflict between Dorian and Ionian Greeks, which had lasted for centuries, was fought out to the end. The great harbor of Syracuse was the scene of that tremendous naval combat so marvellously described by Thucydides in the grandest of all the passages in his prose epic. When in 415 B.C., the combined fleets of Sparta and her Siceliot allies prevented the escape to the open sea of the Athenian fleet commanded by Nicias, Athens paid the merited penalty for her unreflecting rashness in deserting the democratical principles of Pericles. The Athenians had chosen to follow Alcibiades, who had infected them with aristocratical ideas, " land hunger," and an unholy lust for foreign conquest, and judgment fell upon the city which Pericles had enfranchised and raised to the supreme height of her power and magnificence. The foundations of the Attic commonwealth were shaken, the glory departed from Athens ; she never recovered her former greatness, and Sparta, Thebes, Macedon, in turn, dominated the Greek world.

The authentic, as distinguished from the legendary and fabulous, history of Sicily opens with an account of the founding, by Ionian Greeks, of Naxos, at the foot of ^tna, in 736 B.C. ; but the dawn of Sicilian civilization preceded the arrival of the invading Hellenes. Nevertheless, the Sicilians owed their more perfect enlightenment to the new masters of the isl-

X PREFACE

and, the world-compelling, civilizing men of Hellas. While the Greek colonists — the Siceliots — cherished an intellectual connection with their kin beyond the sea, they gave birth to independent native tendencies, discovered improved forms of art, employed new methods of thought, fostered new ideas, and contributed more than all the other colonies of Hellas to the inestimable store of Panhellenic learning. First and greatest of all Sicilian poets, Stesichorus of Himera, the contemporary of Arion, reviving popular interest in the Homeric hymns, charmed the Greek world with lyric song, developed choral poetry, adapting it for public representations accompanied by the cither and dances. Ibycus, born at Rhegium, fired the hearts of youths and maidens with the passion and realism of his love songs ; Aristoxenus of Selinus invented iambic verse and wrote " The Megarean Comedies," which, after many representations in Syracuse, won the applause of Athenian audiences. Sophron of Syracuse portrayed in his mimes the life and character of the Sicilians, and by the originality of his compositions greatly influenced the poets of Athens, and, later, of Rome. The names of many other Sicilian singers might here be mentioned, but it must suffice to recall the fact that when in old Greece the Muses became silent, as if affrighted by the approaching catastrophe — the subjugation of ancient Hellas by the young giant, Rome — in new Greece, Theocritus, the master of all pastoral poets, sang clearly and sweetly by the pleasant waters of the Anapus, awakening strains that entranced the spirit of Virgil, and even after the lapse of twenty-two centuries found an echo in the songs of Robert Burns.

PREFACE xi

While the SiceHots were quick to recognize and reward the genius of native singers, they welcomed poets, and especially dramatists, from foreign lands. Cinaethus of Chios, the countryman of Homer, rendered the Homeric epos familiar to Syracusan scholars ; Arion, the Lesbian, lived at ease at the court of Gelon ; Epicharmus of Cos made his home at the palace of Hieron, who also invited Pindar, ^schylus, Simonides, and Bacchylides to visit him in Syracuse. Corax, " the founder of Sicilian oratory, the first Greek who applied the principles of science to the art of speech," * was the cherished friend of this same Hieron, who gathered around him the most eminent sages, poets, and artists of his time. Under Corax, Tisias studied oratory, and he in turn instructed Gorgias in the art of public speaking, an art which was cultivated at Acragas, by Empedocles, whom Aristotle called " the founder of rhetoric." Antiochus of Syracuse, Timseus of Tauromenion, Diodorus Siculus of Agira, wrote histories that entitled them to honors only less distinguished than those paid to Herodotus and Thucydides. In philosophy, practical statesmanship, law, no less than in poetry, oratory, and history, Sicilian scholars won high renown. In Sicily, the plastic and tectonic arts flourished from an early age ; Sicilian architects reared the superb temples of Acragas, Selinus, and Syracuse, and the magnificence of those cities at least rivalled, if it did not eclipse, the glory of all other Greek cities, with the exception of Athens, and possibly of Corinth. Greek literature was enriched by the contributions of Siceliot men of let-

* Ernst Curtius. History of Greece.

xii PREFACE ters, and in later days Roman poets and dramatists drew inspiration from the works of Sicilian masters. Virgil — to mention him only — the greatest of all Latin poets, frankly admits his indebtedness to the Sicilian muse :

All the races and nations that have dwelt in Sicily have left relics and monuments of their occupancy ; but of all nations, two — the Greeks and the Normans — have most distinctly and most enduringly commemorated their conquests of the island. Without an intimate and correct knowledge of the history of the Siceliots, no historian can hope to understand the history of Greece and Rome, and he who ignores the chronicles of the Normans of Sicily can never comprehend, in its full significance, the wonderful story of the " Making of Modern Europe."

The Norman conquest of Sicily has not found its historian — a magnificent era awaits its Motley, its Prescott, its Macaulay. And yet the day of modern Italian literature dawned in Sicily at the court of its Norman kings, who, discarding Greek, Latin, and Arabic, and in time disusing the speech of their ancestors, as well as the Provencal, made " La Lingua Ciciliana " (the vernacular of Sicily) popular and fashionable. Long before a word of Tuscan speech became familiar to Sicilian tongues and ears the scholars who graced the court of Frederick IL had established their claim " to be looked upon as the founders of that ItaHan language which first assumed distinct-

PREFACE Xlll

ive shape " at the Sicilian court of the grandson of Roger the Norman and Frederick Barbarossa. While the Tuscans were still writing in Provencal, Sicilian poets were singing in the "vulgari eloquio," as Dante calls the speech of the common people, and proclaiming the advent of a new and glorious era of Italian letters. Long before Dante was born in Florence, in the year 1265, the first composition in " La Nuova Lingua Italiana " was written, and "II Contrasto d'Amore," attributed to Ciullo d' Alcamo, was imitated by a host of his disciples, Enzio, Manfredi, Guido delle Colonne, Pier delle Vigne, among others, the last named the favorite minister, secretary, and counsellor of the great emperor Frederick II.

These Sicilian canzone — lyric songs — were the earliest syllables of a literature whose glory culminated in the " Divine Comedy " of Dante. It is true the Sicilian dialect was superseded by the nobler Tuscan speech, but the fact remains that at Palermo, not at Florence, Italian literature had its beginning. Dante admits this, and Petrarch writes, " The Sicilians were before us." As in the days of Virgil Roman poets had sought instruction from Sicilian masters, so again, in the days of Dante, Italian singers turned once more for inspiration to the Sicilian muse.

Although in this volume I have in the main confined myself to a description of the picturesque island as it is to-day, I have striven to impress my readers, as I myself was impressed at all stages of our Sicilian journey, with the historical interest which heightens the effect of every Sicilian landscape and adds a charm to the aspect of every city, town, and hamlet in the island.

XIV PREFACE

" To know Europe, one must know Italy." To know Italy, one must be well versed in Sicilian history, archaeology, art, and literature ; for, as Goethe declares,'" Italy without Sicily leaves no image in the soul ; Sicily is the key to all." /

William Agnew Paton.

Contents

I

From Naples to Palermo— Capri to Pellegrino — A Storm from the yEneid — The ^olian Islands — Post Niibila Phcebus— Snow Peaks and Orange Groves — " II Conco d' Oro " — "Palermo the Superb" — "The Land of Brigands. Earthquakes, and Social Disorders " . . ... Page i

II

" Knowest Thou the Land.?" — "The Pearl of the Mediterranean ' — A Transformed Palace— A Picturesque Wreck — " The Bells, Bells, Bells "—Street Cries— The Wonderful Palermo Carts — A Picture-gallery on Wheels — A Land of a " Strange, Eventful History " . .... . . 9

III

Italian Cavalry — The Soldiers of Hamilcar Barca — " La Strada di Montagna " — Satyrs and Pan-pipes — May-flowers in December— An Ancient Monastery — The Shrine of Santa Rosalia — A Saintly Daughter of Kings — The Vision of Girolama — View from the Summit of Pellegrino . . 19

XVI CONTENTS

IV

"I Quattro Canti" — "II Corso" — Via Macqueda — Ancient City Gates — The Four Quarters of the City — Baroque Architecture — Saracenic-Norman Churches — San Cataldo — La Martorana Page 28

V

LA CAPPELLA PALATINA

La Porta Nuova — The Royal Palace — King Roger's Chapel — Jewelled Walls — La Stanza di Ruggiero — Tapestries in Stone 39

VI

King William the Good — The Cathedral of Santa Maria Nuova — The Basilica on Mount Royal — The Benedictine Cloisters— Treasures of Architecture — Norman Splendor . 48

VII Il Duomo DI Palermo

Cathedral of Santa Maria Assunta — " Walter of the Mill " — Tombs of Norman Kings — King Roger II. — Emperor Henry VI. — Constance, " The Last of the d'Hautevilles " — Emperor Frederick II., '' The Wonder of the World ". 59

VIII

San Giovanni degli Eremiti — La Chiesa dei Vespri — Campo di Santo Spirito — ^The War of the Sicilian Vespers in Pantomime—Giovanni di Procida .... . . . 67

CONTENTS XVU

IX

Rione Castellamare — Rione Palazzo Reale — The Slums of Palermo — "Rag Fair" — Albergheria — A Victim of the Triple Alliance Page 76

X

The Genius of Palermo — La Piazza della Rivoluzione — La Chiesa della Gangia — Volfango Goethe — La Villa Giulia — L' Orto Botanico — La Via Borgo — Le Belle Donne — Interesting Sights — "The Sailors' Rest" — La Cala — II Foro Italico 85

XI Sunny Winter Days

La Villa Belmonte — La Favorita — Mondello — La Villa Scalea — San Martino — A Noble Charity — Ancient Trees . . 96

XII At The Opera

A Study of Sicilian Character — The Rival Claques — Initiating a New Opera Troupe — " Carmen " — " Toreador Attento " — A Musical " Sicilian Vespers " — Moral 105

XIII A Mountain Excursion

The Alpine Club — Boccadifalco — The Summit of Cuccio — A Vision of ^tna — San Martino— Monreale 115

XIV SOLUNTO Winter Scenes — Blossoms and Snowflakes — Bagheria — Ancient Solous — A Carthaginian Town — Men in Sheepskins — A Shipwreck 125

XVIU CONTENTS

XV

A Mysterious Hill Town — Spectral Trees — Parco — " La Scala Santa " — A Dreary Ride through a Lone Land — An Albanian Colony — Greek Churches — Picturesque Costumes — Curious Customs — Weddings " to Order" . . . Page 134

XVI Along The North Shore

The Coast-line — The Madonian Mountains — La Mafia — Termini— Himera — The Sacrifice of Hamilcar — " The Happy Fields " — Cefalu . . . 143

xvn

CEFALU

An Ancient Sicel Town — Roger 11. — His Escape from Shipwreck— Cefalu Cathedral — The Norman Bishop's Church — Its Rich Adornments — "The Finest Mosaics in the World" 151

XVIII Rambles About Cefalu

La Porta Garibaldi — La Via Liberta — Cloisters of Cefalu — A Cefalu "Trattoria" — Along the Water-front — Diana and Actaeon — " II Trovatore " 157

XIX Through Era Diavolo's Country

To Corleone — " Village of the Emirs "— Roccabianca, " Castle of Diana " — Baths of Gefala — Chiarastillo Mountains — Fra Diavolo, "The Prince of Brigands" — His Betrayal and Death 166

CONTENTS XIX

XX Corleone

Mezzojuso — An Albanian Town — Rocca Busambra — II Bosco di Ficuzza — Corleone — A Sicilian Locanda — "The King of Mexico " — " The Annals of the Poor " . . . Page 173

XXI

An Early Start — Starlight — Sunrise — Birthplace of Lais — Cyclops, Giants, and Chimeras Dire — Acres of Wild Flowers — Ancient Rivers — Saracen Strongholds — Calatafimi — Hosts of Beggars 183

XXII

A Distant View of a Doric Temple — The Valley of the Gaggera — "The Rolling Scamander " — Fording the Torrent— "A Wild and Lonely Land" — Ancient Segesta — Its Glorious Temple — A Greek Theatre — Wonderful Landscapes . . 190

XXIII

The Quarrel of Selinus and Segesta — Salemi — Castelvetrano — The Ruined Temples of Selinus — A Scene of Desolation 199

XXIV A Mysterious Excursion

"Sleepless Activities" — Trapani at Dawn — An Uncanny Guide — Monte San Giuliano — The Field of Hercules — " Gobbo Brings us Luck " — " A Guide-book in Breeches " . . 209

XX CONTENTS

"THE LAND OF DEMETER"

Enna — Castrum Enna — Castrogiovanni — Worship of Ceres — Pagan Rites — Christian Ceremonies — Lake Pergusa — " Flowers of Persephone " . . 246

XXIX

" L' Usurajo " — A Sicilian Shylock — The Rival Cities — Valley of the Chrysas — Distant Hill Cities — " Faithless Sperlinga " — Hercules — St. Philip of Agira — .(Etna — Catania . . 255

CONTENTS XXI

XXX

" Under ^tna " — La Via Lincoln — " II Duomo " — Tomb of Bellini — Elephant of Heliodorus — Feast of Sant' Agata — " The World that is Never at Rest " . . . . Page 262

XXXI

vETNA

Homer, Virgil, Dante — Ascent to Nicolosi — Monti Rossi — Eruption of 1886 — " I Santarelli " — Veil of Sant' Agata 272

I XXXII S YRACUS E

" Fields of the Laestrygones " — Lago di Lentini — Leontinoi — Augusta — " The Town of Honey " — Promontory of Thapsus — First Impressions of Syracuse 283

FAREWELL TO SICILY

Spellbound — Messina — Scylla and Charybdis — In the Grasp of Charybdis — Messina to Naples — The Rocks of the Sirens 349