It is the mother church of these parts
and dates from the eighth or ninth century. The frescoes inside
the apse were once fine, but have been repainted and spoiled. The
tower is much later, but is impressive. It was begun in 1524 and
left incomplete in 1527, probably owing to the high price of
provisions which is commemorated in the following words written on
a stone at the top of the tower inside
1527
Furm. [fromento - corn] cost lib. 6.
Segale [barley] lib. 5.
Milio [millet] lib. 4.
I suppose these were something like famine prices; at any rate, a
workman wrote this upon the tower and the tower stopped.
CHAPTER XXV - Fusio
We left Locarno by the conveyance which leaves every day at four
o'clock for Bignasco, a ride of about four hours. The Ponte
Brolla, a couple of miles out of Locarno, is remarkable, and the
road is throughout (as a matter of course) good. I sat next an old
priest, an excellent kindly man, who talked freely with me, and
scolded me roundly for being a Protestant more than once.
He seemed much surprised when I discarded reason as the foundation
of our belief. He had made up his mind that all Protestants based
their convictions upon reason, and was not prepared to hear me go
heartily with him in declaring the foundation of any durable system
to lie in faith. When, however, it came to requiring me to have
faith in what seemed good to him and his friends, rather than to me
and mine, we did not agree so well. He then began to shake death
at me; I met him with a reflection that I have never seen in print,
though it is so obvious that it must have occurred to each one of
my readers. I said that every man is an immortal to himself: he
only dies as far as others are concerned; to himself he cannot, by
any conceivable possibility, do so. For how can he know that he is
dead until he IS dead? And when he IS dead, how can he know that
he is dead? If he does, it is an abuse of terms to say that he is
dead. A man can know no more about the end of his life than he did
about the beginning. The most horrible and loathed death still
resolves itself into being badly frightened, and not a little hurt
towards the end of one's life, but it can never come to being
unbearably hurt for long together. Besides, we are at all times,
even during life, dead and dying to by far the greater part of our
past selves. What we call dying is only dying to the balance, or
residuum.
