Tedesco, hereabouts, signifies an Austrian - a
detested nationality, even at this distance of time. I have wondered,
since writing the above, whether this is really the place of which Rossi
speaks. He calls it Grottole (the difference in spelling would be of
little account), and says it lies not far distant from Copertino. But
there may be a place of this name still nearer; it is a common
appellation in these honeycombed limestone districts. This Grottaglie
is certainly the birth-place of another religious hero, the
priest-brigand Ciro, who gave so much trouble to Sir R. Church.] No, I
replied; I came from Scotland.
"A Calvinist," he remarked, without bitterness.
"A Presbyterian," I gently corrected.
"To be sure - a Presbyterian."
As we walked along the street under the glowing beams of midday I set
forth the object of my visit. He had never heard of the flying monk - it
was astonishing, he said. He would look up the subject without delay.
The flying monk! That a Protestant should come all the way from "the
other end of the world" to enquire about a local Catholic saint of
whose existence he himself was unaware, seemed not so much to surprise
as positively to alarm him.
Among other local curiosities, he pointed out the portal of the parish
church, a fine but dilapidated piece of work, with a large rosette
window overhead. The town, he told me, derives its name from certain
large grottoes wherein the inhabitants used to take refuge during
Saracen raids. This I already knew, from the pages of Swinburne and
Sanchez; and in my turn was able to inform him that a certain Frenchman,
Bertaux by name, had written about the Byzantine wall-paintings within
these caves. Yes, those old Greeks! he said. And that accounted for the
famous ceramics of the place, which preserved the Hellenic traditions in
extraordinary purity. I did not inform him that Hector Preconi, who
purposely visited Grottaglie to study these potteries, was considerably
disappointed.
At the door of the decayed convent my guide left me, with sundry polite
expressions of esteem. I entered a spacious open courtyard; a well stood
in the centre of a bare enclosure whereon, in olden days, the monks may
have cultivated their fruit and vegetables; round this court there ran
an arched passage, its walls adorned with frescoes, now dim and faded,
depicting sacred subjects. The monastery itself was a sombre maze of
stairways and cells and corridors - all the free spaces, including the
very roof, encumbered with gleaming potteries of every shape and size,
that are made somewhere near the premises.
I wandered about this sunless and cobwebby labyrinth, the old woman
pensioners flitting round me like bats in the twilight. I peered into
many dark closets; which of them was it - Joseph's famous
blood-bespattered cell?
"He tormented his body so continuously and obstinately with pins,
needles and blades of steel, and with such effusion of blood, that even
now, after entire years, the walls of his cell and other places of
retirement are discoloured and actually encrusted with blood." Which of
them was it - the chamber that witnessed these atrocious macerations?
