There Is
Also A Queenly Portrait Declared To Represent Catherine Of Siena.
I
would prefer to follow those who think it is meant for Sigilgaita.
Small as it is, this place - the church and the abbey - is not one for a
casual visit. Lenormant calls the Trinita a "Musee epigra-phique" - so
many are the Latin inscriptions which the monks have worked into its
masonry. They have encrusted the walls with them; and many antiquities
of other kinds have been deposited here since those days. The ruin is
strewn with columns and capitals of fantastic devices; the inevitable
lions, too, repose upon its grassy floor, as well as a pagan altar-stone
that once adorned the neighbouring amphitheatre. One thinks of the
labour expended in raising those prodigious blocks and fitting them
together without mortar in their present positions - they, also, came
from the amphitheatre, and the sturdy letterings engraved on some of
them formed, once upon a time, a sentence that ran round that building,
recording the names of its founders.
Besides the Latin inscriptions, there are Hebrew funereal stones of
great interest, for a colony of Jews was established here between the
years 400 and 800; poor folks, for the most part; no one knows whence
they came or whither they went. One is apt to forget that south Italy
was swarming with Jews for centuries. The catacombs of Venosa were
discovered in 1853. Their entrance lies under a hill-side not far from
the modern railway station, and Professor Mueller, a lover of Venosa,
has been engaged for the last twenty-five years in writing a ponderous
tome on the subject.
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