Dirt and vermin, their horror of learning, their unkempt
hair, their ferocious independence, their distrust of sunshine and
ordered social life, their foul dieting, their dread of malign spirits,
their cave-dwelling propensities. All bestial characteristics!
This atavistic movement, this retrogression towards primevalism, must
have possessed a certain charm, for it attracted vast multitudes; it was
only hemmed, at last, by a physical obstacle.
The supply of caves ran out.
Not till then were its votaries forced to congregate in those unhealthy
clusters which afterwards grew to be monasteries. Where many of them
were gathered together under one roof there imposed itself a certain
rudimentary discipline and subordination; yet they preserved as much as
they could of their savage traits, cave-like cells and hatred of
cleanliness, terror of demons, matted beards.
Gradually the social habits of mundane fellow-creatures insinuated
themselves into these hives of squalor and idleness. The inmates began
to wash and to shave; they acquired property, they tilled the ground,
they learnt to read and write, and finally became connaisseurs of books
and pictures and wine and women. They were pleased to forget that the
eunuch and the beggar are the true Christian or Buddhist. In other
words, the allurements of rational life grew too strong for their
convictions; they became reasonable beings in spite of their creed. This
is how coenobitism grew out of eremitism not only in Calabria, but in
every part of the world which has been afflicted with these
eccentrics. Go to Mount Athos, if you wish to see specimens of all the
different stages conveniently arranged upon a small area. . . .
This convent of Patir exercised a great local influence as early as the
tenth century; then, towards the end of the eleventh, it was completely
rebuilt without and reorganized within. The church underwent a thorough
restoration in 1672. But it was shattered, together with the rest of the
edifice, by the earthquake of 1836 which, Madonna Achiropita
notwithstanding, levelled to the ground one-half of the fifteen thousand
houses then standing at Rossano.
These monastic establishments, as a general rule, were occupied later on
by the Benedictines, who ousted the Basileans and were supplanted, in
their turn, by popular orders of later days like the Theatines. Those
that are conveniently situated have now been turned into post offices,
municipalities, and other public buildings - such has been the common
procedure. But many of them, like this of Patir, are too decayed and
remote from the life of man. Fiore, who wrote in 1691, counts up 94
dilapidated Basilean monasteries in Calabria out of a former total of
about two hundred; Patir and thirteen others he mentions as having, in
his day, their old rites still subsisting. Batiffol has recently gone
into the subject with his usual thoroughness.
Nothing is uglier than a modern ruin, and the place would assuredly not
be worth the three hours' ride from Rossano were it not for the church,
which has been repaired, and for the wondrous view to be obtained from
its site.
