There Are Undeniable
Suggestions Of Hell About The Place.
A pathway runs adown this vale of
Hinnom, and if you follow it upwards to the junction of the streams you
will reach a road that once more ascends to the town, past the old
church of Saint Mark, a most interesting building.
It has five little
cupolas, but the interior, supported by eight columns, has been
whitewashed. The structure has now rightly been declared a "national
monument." It dates from the ninth or tenth century and, according to
Bertaux, has the same plan and the same dimensions as the famous
"Cattolica" at Stilo, which the artistic Lear, though he stayed some
time at that picturesque place, does not so much as mention. They say
that this chapel of Saint Mark was built by Euprassius, protos-padarius
of Calabria, and that in the days of Nilus it was dedicated to Saint
Anastasius. Here, at Rossano, we are once more en plein Byzance.
Rossano was not only a political bulwark, the most formidable citadel of
this Byzantine province. It was a great intellectual centre, upon which
literature, theology and art converged. Among the many perverse
historical notions of which we are now ridding ourselves is this-that
Byzantinism in south Italy was a period of decay and torpid dreamings.
It needed, on the contrary, a resourceful activity to wipe out, as did
those colonists from the east, every trace of Roman culture and language
(Latin rule only revived at Rossano in the fifteenth century). There was
no lethargy in their social and political ambitions, in their military
achievements, which held the land against overwhelming numbers of
Saracens, Lombards and other intruders.
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