The Glory Of Rossano Is The Image Of The Madonna Achiropita.
Bartholomaeus Tells Us, In His Life Of Saint Nilus, That In Olden Days
She Was Wont To Appear, Clothed In Purple, And Drive Away With A Divine
Torch The Saracen Invaders Of This Town.
In more recent times, too, she
has often saved the citizens from locusts, cholera, and other calamitous
visitations.
Unlike most of her kind, she was not painted by Saint Luke.
She is acheiropoeta - not painted by any human hands whatever, and in
so far resembles a certain old image of the Magna Mater, her prototype,
which was also of divine origin. It is generally supposed that this
picture is painted on wood. Not so, says Diehl; it is a fragment of a
fresco on stone.
Hard by, in the clock-tower of the square, is a marble tablet erected to
the memory of the deputy Felice Cavalotti. We all remember Cavalotti,
the last - with Imbriani - of the republican giants, a blustering
rhetorician-journalist, annihilator of monarchs and popes; a fire-eating
duellist, who deserved his uncommon and unlovely fate. He provoked a
colleague to an encounter and, during a frenzied attack, received into
his open mouth the point of his adversary's sword, which sealed up for
ever that fountain of eloquence and vituperation.
Cavalotti and the Virgin Achiropita - the new and the old. Really, with
such extreme ideals before his eyes, the burghers of Rossano must
sometimes wonder where righteousness lies.
They call themselves Calabrians.
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