The saints had work to do. Each divine protector fought for his own town
or village, and sometimes we see the pleasing spectacle of two patrons
of different localities joining their forces to ward off a piratical
attack upon some threatened district by means of fiery hail, tempests,
apparitions and other celestial devices. A bellicose type of Madonna
emerges, such as S. M. della Libera and S. M. di Constantinopoli, who
distinguishes herself by a fierce martial courage in the face of the
enemy. There is no doubt that these inroads acted as a stimulus to the
Christian faith; that they helped to seat the numberless patron saints
of south Italy more firmly on their thrones. The Saracens as
saint-makers. . . .
But despite occasional successes, the marine population suffered
increasingly. Historians like Summonte have left us descriptions of the
prodigious exodus of the country people from Calabria and elsewhere into
the safer capital, and how the polished citizens detested these new
arrivals.
The ominous name "Torre di Guardia" (tower of outlook) - a cliff whence
the sea was scanned for the appearance of Turkish vessels - survives all
over the south. Barbarossa, too, has left his mark; many a hill,
fountain or castle has been named after him. In the two Barbarossas were
summed up the highest qualities of the pirates, and it is curious to
think that the names of those scourges of Christendom, Uruj and
Kheir-eddin, should have been contracted into the classical forms of
Horace and Ariadne.
