So I thought, as I laboriously scrambled up the stairs once
more, solaced by this incident of the competition-grotto and slightly
giddy, from the tobacco-smoke. And here, leaning against the door-post,
stood the coachman who had divined my whereabouts by some dark masonic
intuition of sympathy. His face expanded into an inept smile, and I
quickly saw that instead of fortifying his constitution with sound food,
he had tried alcoholic methods of defence against the inclement weather.
Just a glass of wine, he explained. "But," he added, "the horse is
perfectly sober."
That quadruped was equal to the emergency. Gloriously indifferent to our
fates, we glided down, in a vertiginous but masterly vol-plane, from the
somewhat objectionable mountain-town.
An approving burst of sunshine greeted our arrival on the plain.
IV
CAVE-WORSHIP
Why has the exalted archangel chosen for an abode this reeking cell,
rather than some well-built temple in the sunshine? "As symbolizing a
ray of light that penetrates into the gloom," so they will tell you. It
is more likely that he entered it as an extirpating warrior, to oust
that heathen shape which Strabo describes as dwelling in its dank
recesses, and to take possession of the cleft in the name of
Christianity. Sant' Angelo is one of many places where Michael has
performed the duty of Christian Hercules, cleanser of Augean stables.
For the rest, this cave-worship is older than any god or devil. It is
the cult of the feminine principle - a relic of that aboriginal obsession
of mankind to shelter in some Cloven Rock of Ages, in the sacred womb of
Mother Earth who gives us food and receives us after death.
Grotto-apparitions, old and new, are but the popular explanations of
this dim primordial craving, and hierophants of all ages have understood
the commercial value of the holy shudder which penetrates in these
caverns to the heart of worshippers, attuning them to godly deeds. So
here, close beside the altar, the priests are selling fragments of the
so-called "Stone of Saint Michael." The trade is brisk.
The statuette of the archangel preserved in this subterranean chapel is
a work of the late Renaissance. Though savouring of that mawkish
elaboration which then began to taint local art and literature and is
bound up with the name of the poet Marino, it is still a passably virile
figure. But those countless others, in churches or over house-doors - do
they indeed portray the dragon-killer, the martial prince of angels?
This amiable child with girlish features - can this be the Lucifer of
Christianity, the Sword of the Almighty? Quis ut Deus! He could
hardly hurt a fly.
