This castle is now used as a place of confinement. Sentries warned me at
one point not to approach too near the walls; it was "forbidden." I had
no particular desire to disobey this injunction. Judging by the number
of rats that swarm about the place, it is not exactly a model prison.
One of the streets in this dilapidated stronghold bears to this day the
inscription "Giudea," or Jewry. Southern Italy was well stocked with
those Hebrews concerning whom Mr. H. M. Adler has sagely discoursed.
They lived in separate districts, and seem to have borne a good
reputation. Those of Castrovillari, on being ejected by Ferdinand the
Catholic in 1511, obligingly made a donation of their school to the
town. But they returned anon, and claimed it again. Persecuted as they
were, they never suffered the martyrdom of the ill-starred Waldensian
colonies in Calabria.
The houses of this Jewry overlook the Coscile river, the Sybaris of old,
and from a spot in the quarter a steep path descends to its banks. Here
you will find yourself in another climate, cool and moist. The livid
waters tumble gleefully towards the plain, amid penurious plots of beans
and tomatoes, and a fierce tangle of vegetation wherever the hand of man
has not made clearings. Then, mounting aloft once more, you will do well
to visit the far-famed chapel that sits at the apex of the promontory,
Santa Maria del Castello. There is a little platform where you may
repose and enjoy the view, as I have done for some evenings
past - letting the eye roam up-country towards Dolcedorme and its sister
peaks, and westwards over the undulating Sila lands whose highest point,
Botte Donato, is unmistakable even at this distance of forty miles, from
its peculiar shape.
The Madonna picture preserved within the sanctuary has performed so many
miracles in ages past that I despair of giving any account of them. It
is high time, none the less, for a new sign from Heaven. Shattered by
earthquakes, the chapel is in a dis-ruptured and even menacing
condition. Will some returned emigrant from America come forward with
the necessary funds?
That would be a miracle, too, in its way. But gone, for the present, are
the ages of Faith - the days when the peevishly-protestant J. H. Bartels
sojourned here and groaned as he counted up the seven monasteries of
Castrovillari (there used to be nearly twice that number), and viewed
the 130 priests, "fat-paunched rascals, loafing about the streets and
doorways." . . .
From my window in the hotel I espy a small patch of snow on the hills. I
know the place; it is the so-called "Montagna del Principe" past which
the track winds into the Pollino regions.
