A loggia opened here, with a view over
stretches of gnarled olives, shining all silvery under the immaculate
sky of noonday and bounded by the sapphire belt of the Ionian. Sunshine
and blue sea! Often must the monks have taken pleasure in this fair
prospect; and the wiser among them, watching the labourers returning
home at nightfall, the children at play, and all the happy life of a
world so alien to their own, may well have heaved a sigh.
Meanwhile a crowd of citizens had assembled below, attracted by the
unusual novelty of a stranger in their town. The simple creatures
appeared to regard my investigations in the light of a good joke; they
had heard of begging monks, and thieving monks, and monks of another
variety whose peculiarities I dare not attempt to describe; but a flying
monk - no, never!
"The Dark Ages," said one of them - the mayor, I dare say - with an air of
grave authority. "Believe me, dear sir, the days of such fabulous
monsters are over."
So they seem to be, for the present.
No picture or statue records the life of this flying wonder, this
masterpiece of Spanish priestcraft; no mural tablet - in this land of
commemorative stones - has been erected to perpetuate the glory of his
signal achievements; no street is called after him. It is as if he had
never existed. On the contrary, by a queer irony of fate, the roadway
leading past his convent evokes the memory of a misty heathen poet,
likewise native of these favoured regions, a man whose name Joseph of
Copertino had assuredly never heard - Ennius, of whom I can now recall
nothing save that one unforgettable line which begins "O Tite tute Tati
tibi - - "; Ennius, who never so much as tried to fly, but contented
himself with singing, in rather bad Latin, of the things of this earth.
Via Ennio. . . .
It is the swing of the pendulum. The old pagan, at this moment, may be
nearer to our ideals and aspirations than the flying monk who died only
yesterday, so to speak.
But a few years hence - who can tell?
A characteristic episode. I had carefully timed myself to catch the
returning train to Tarante. Great was my surprise when, half-way to the
station, I perceived the train swiftly approaching. I raced it, and
managed to jump into a carriage just as it drew out of the station. The
guard straightway demanded my ticket and a fine for entering the train
without one (return tickets, for weighty reasons of "internal
administration," are not sold). I looked at my watch, which showed that
we had left six minutes before the scheduled hour. He produced his; it
coincided with my own. "No matter," he said. "I am not responsible for
the eccentricities of the driver, who probably had some urgent private
affairs to settle at Taranto.
