An Armchair Traveller's History of Apulia

by Seward, Desmond

  Since wine was another staple of Apulian agriculture, there were vineyards as well as olive groves near every masseria, which always contained a wine-press. In some places the masserie stood among seemingly endless almond groves while those around Conversano, Monopoli and Putignano were encircled by no less beautiful cherry orchards. Cherries were preserved in grappa as early as the eighteenth century. With fewer olives and vines, masserie on the otherwise tree-less sheep runs of the Alta Murgia or the northern Tavoliere specialised in cheese and butter, employing professional dairy men to process the ewes’ milk.

  Charles Macfarlane, who came to Apulia in 1817 and knew it better than any other early traveller save Pacichelli, has an unusually helpful description. “The masserie in Apulia and the provinces of Bari, Òtranto and Tàranto, are all built on the same plan”, he tells us:

  A square wall of enclosure, sufficiently high and solid, generally surrounds the dwelling-house, built against one side, and containing three or four large habitable rooms, and sometimes a small chapel. The vast stables, granaries, and out-houses, within the walls, form a right-angle with this dwelling-house, but without touching it. In the midst of the enclosure, at some distance from the surrounding walls, rises a round or square tower of two storeys, standing quite alone. The ascent to the upper storey is either by stone steps, inserted in the tower, or by a drawbridge, or by a ladder easily drawn up into the tower.

  General Sir Richard Church was also in Apulia in 1817, hunting down brigands. He too describes a masseria, “a very good specimen of its class”, when prepared for a sudden attack by horse-men, the Masseria del Duca:

  Its thick walls dated from the middle ages, and were loopholed and protected by great solid gates and an avenue of trees, which was now effectually blocked up by carts with the wheels taken off, and logs and tree-trunks laid crosswise. At one corner of the enclosure rose a square tower, from the top of which you might overlook the great plain, dotted with white towns and villages, patched with brown leafless vineyards, green meads, silver-grey olive-orchards, and bounded by the shining sea.

  The general recalled what he found here, “in a very large room, comfortably furnished after the manner of these Apulian masserie”, obviously, the quarters of the massaro, the steward who ran the estate for its absentee landowner.’ At this date, few proprietors ever dared to visit such a dangerous countryside, not even for the hunting.

  Great chests, some for holding meal, some for holding clothes and linen, a heavy oaken table, some stools and benches, were on the floor; jars of olives, figs and raisins, stood upon a shelf against the smoke-dried wall; strings of onions, sausages, and dried fish dangled from the rafters. Cheeses were there too, and huge jars of olive-oil, and half-a-dozen demi-johns (great stone bottles), stoppered with oiled cotton, and containing the wine of the country, stood under the table.

  Externally, the Masseria del Duca, at the foot of the little hills just south of Martina Franca, still looks much as it must have done in General Church’s day, with caciocavallo cheeses hanging up under the eaves to mature, even if its outbuildings house battery hens and a very modern dairy.

  Although deserted, the vast Masseria Jesce between Altamura and Laterza, in the Murgia Catena on the border with Basilicata, is a particularly impressive example, almost a castle. Built of tufa, on the ground floor there were stalls for oxen and horses, with store-rooms; on the floor above, more store-rooms and living accommodation; sheep-pens ran along the walls outside. Small look-out towers projected at roof level. The lower part dates from the sixteenth century, the upper from half-way through the seventeenth, added by the de Mari family, Princes of Gioia del Colle, who were lords of Altamura nearby. The de Mari also restored a medieval chapel underground, building a passage down to it. Far inland and intended as a defence against brigands and starving peasants rather than North Africans, this gigantic masseria is an eloquent monument to the chronic insecurity and dangers of life in the remoter areas of the Apulian Murge.

  Nearer the sea, further south, there was another scourge. “The Masserie, or farmhouses, in this part of Apulia are generally built on elevated ground, to avoid the malaria”, wrote Janet Ross, after a visit to the masseria of Leucaspide between Massafra and Tàranto. She continues:

  Round the large courtyard are high walls, and one side is occupied by a vaulted ox-shed, built of stone, with a manger running all round, divided off for each animal... At one end an archway leads into a vaulted room with stone benches all round, on which the shepherds sleep, and in the middle is a huge slab of stone on which olive branches smoulder, and where the massara prepares the meals for the men.

  She tells us too that “The hoeing, weeding corn, &c., is all done by gangs of women, who come from the nearest towns, chiefly from those on the Murgie hills, sometimes twenty miles off, and stay for six weeks or two months, sleeping all together in a big vaulted room on the ground floor.”

  Life at a masseria was very much that of a community:

  On Sundays and saints’ days a priest with a small boy came together, on a donkey, from Massafra to say mass in the wee chapel near the threshing floor at Leucaspide... The fervour with which the labourers beat their breasts when they said “mea culpa”, was most edifying, but must have been very painful. Vito Anton, the guard, always served mass with an immense pistol stuck into his belt behind, and was quite the most important person of the ceremony.

  On rare occasions they celebrated, dancing a local dance, the Pizzica-Pizzica. Mrs. Ross describes the orchestra at a masseria party:

  a guitar, a fiddle and a guitar battente, which has only five thin wire strings, and is a wild, queer, inspiriting instrument which would “make a buffalo dance”, as they say; a tambourine, and a cupa-cupa, a large earthenware tube, with a piece of sheepskin stretched tight over the top, and a stick forced through a hole in the centre. The player begins by spitting two or three times into his hand, and then moves the stick up and down as fast as he can; this makes an odd, droning sound, rather like a bag-pipe in the far distance.

  The result reminded her of “Arab music”.

  Life was just the same at masserie on the Murge or the Tavoliere until almost the Second World War.

  28

  The Via Appia

  The Appian Way is less tiresome...

  Horace, “A Journey from Rome to Brundisium”

  THE VIA APPIA, most celebrated of the great Roman roads, was the main route between ancient Rome and Southern Italy. Begun by Appius Claudius Caecus in 312 BC, originally ending at Capua, it was extended through Benevento, Venosa, Tàranto and Oria to Brìndisi – a length of 350 miles. A road for all weathers, it provided fast and easy transport to Rome, bringing more trade with the East and prosperity for the Apulians. Before Tàranto the road went through some of Roman Apulia’s most beautiful countryside, and even now you can imagine what it was like when Horace lived at Venosa and Cicero owned a villa there. With the decline of Tàranto, however, and the creation of the Via Traiana linking the cities of the Adriatic coast, the Via Appia lost much of its importance. Eighteenth century travellers preferred the Via Traiana, anxious not to risk meeting brigands for longer than absolutely necessary.

  A map of the borders of Apulia and Basilicata can be deceptive. A quick glance shows hilly, even mountainous country, but this is not what you experience. A gently rolling landscape is broken up by small hills, yet the ground rises so gradually and imperceptibly that until reaching Monte Vulture, which for miles can be seen towering above the plateau, you are not aware of being at any height. It is easy to understand why it held such attraction for Horace, the Normans and the Emperor Frederick II, who spent the last summer of his life at Melfi and Castel Lagopesole. Melfi and Venosa figure so prominently in the story of Hautevilles and Hohenstaufen that modern boundaries mean little – spiritually, they are still part of Apulia.

  Venosa was sacked by the Emir of Bari, rebuilt by the Frankish Emperor Louis II and won back for the Eastern Empire by Basil the Bulgar Slayer. B
eneath its walls the Normans won their first crushing victory over the Byzantines. All that remains of the medieval city is the ancient abbey of La Trinità. Robert Guiscard, greatest of the pioneer Norman leaders, founded its church in 1065 on the site of several earlier churches, beneath which lay a temple of Hymen. His tomb disappeared long ago, his bones being thrown with those of his brothers – William Bras-de-Fer, Humphrey and Drogo – into a simple marble sarcophagus. Visiting Venosa in 1848, Edward Lear saw “a single column, around which, according to the local superstition, if you go hand in hand with any person, the two circumambulants are certain to remain friends for life.”

  After Lear’s visit there was a terrible earthquake. Part of the hill north of the abbey fell into the valley below, revealing Jewish catacombs. There were Jews in Apulia from the fourth century until their final expulsion in the seventeenth, who followed the Palestinian practice of using grottoes as cemeteries. Those at Venosa were wealthy landowners and supplied several mayors. Frederick II saw that they were left in peace, but vicious persecution broke out when the Hohenstaufen were replaced by the Angevins. Lenormant found inscriptions in Latin, Greek and Hebrew, some in a strange bastardised Italian written in Hebrew characters.

  Lear stayed with Don Nicola Rapolla in a large rambling mansion at the end of the square in which there is a statue of Horace. They dined with Don Nicola’s brother, discussing Shakespeare, Milton and “quel autore adorabile, Valter Scott” (that adorable author, Walter Scott). Lear found everything delightful, food, wine (“superexcellent”), beds and furnishings – which, with the cleanliness of the paved streets, came as a surprise in the depths of the South. One wonders what his hosts made of this very odd Englishman, with his simian features and green glasses. They probably sneered at his watercolours. But he had those letters of introduction that were all important in the old Regno.

  In Lear’s day the fifteenth century castle had not yet become the squalid rooming house seen by Norman Douglas. Built by Pirro del Balzo, Prince of Altamura, on top of the old Norman fortress, the walls of its dungeons were still covered with mournful inscriptions by prisoners.

  Melfi’s name is associated with Frederick II’s “Constitutions” of 1231, the first written law in Western Europe since Roman times. In his own words, “we do not wish to make distinctions in our judgements but to be fair. Whether a plaintiff or a defendant is Frank, Roman or Lombard, we want him to have justice”. Women could inherit property and widows were entitled to free legal advice. Rape, even of a prostitute (so long as she had put up a good fight), was a capital offence. Pimps were sentenced to slavery.

  During the sixteenth century Apulians preferred Spaniards to Frenchmen, and Melfi would never have fallen to Lautrec in 1530 had not a traitor opened its gates. Lautrec sacked the city, killing many of its citizens. The Spaniards swiftly retook it, slaughtering the French garrison. In the municipio courtyard there is a stone pillar with a ring, said to have been the Spanish ‘gallows’ – presumably they used the garrotte.

  Little remains of old Melfi, whose great castle over a precipice was considered “perfectly Poussinesque” by Edward Lear. “One of the towers of Roger de Hauteville still exists, but the great hall, where Normans and Popes held councils in bygone days, is now a theatre.” Lear found Melfi attractive, with its clear streams and pretty valleys scattered with walnut trees, black goats clustering on the crags or lying outside the valley’s many caves. There were innumerable sleepy convents and pretty wayside shrines. He may well have been the last Englishman to see Melfi like this. On 13 September, 1851, the Athenaeum Journal printed the following report:

  The morning of the 14th of August was very sultry, and a leaden atmosphere prevailed. It was remarked that an unusual silence appeared to extend over the animal world. The hum of insects ceased, the feathered tribes were mute, not a breath of wind moved the arid vegetation. At about half-past two o’clock the town of Melfi rocked for about sixty seconds, and nearly every building fell in.

  The castle, especially the modern part where Lear had stayed, was badly damaged, convents and churches obliterated. The houses of the poor ceased to exist, the campanile collapsed, and a new inn with 62 customers and 25 horses inside became a heap of rubble. In all 840 people were killed. King Ferdinand came to direct the relief operations, spending a night of torrential rain in a hut. Next morning he toured the ruins, handing out money. He pardoned prisoners who had helped dig people out from under the rubble, and sacked the mayor for stealing most of the funds sent by charities.

  The woods of Monte Vulture were the haunt of brigands until the late 1860s. An expensive safe conduct was essential for a traveller who wished to avoid being held to ransom; unless it was paid immediately, reminders in the form of an ear or a nose were sent to the victim’s family. When the brigands were finally routed, their place in the woods was taken by wolves returning to their old home. They had always been a problem in these remote upland forests, Frederick II ordering poison to be laid for them around his hunting lodge of Lagopesole. Some of the woodland still remains, but the wolves have disappeared.

  29

  Horace, the Apulian

  I, born by sounding Aufidus...

  Horace, “Odes”

  ONE OF APULIA’S GLORIES is to have given birth to Quintus Horatius Flaccus. You have to know Latin fairly well to read Horace properly, which is a pity, since his poetry is so beautiful. He has been compared to Bach varying a theme or Chopin developing a cadence, and his verse has lasted down the centuries, its devoted admirers including the Emperor Augustus, Milton, King Louis XVIII and Rudyard Kipling. “No ancient writer has been at once so familiarly known and so generally appreciated”, a Horatian addict wrote in the 1880s. “We seem to know his tastes and his habits, and almost to catch the tones of his conversation.” Nowadays, most people read him in translation –although almost impossible to translate – yet he still casts a spell.

  Horace was born on 8 December 65 BC, at Venosa, then a staging post of the Via Appia and the largest colonia (colony) of veteran soldiers in the Roman world, with a population of 20,000. Although he left for Rome when he was about twelve, and spent most of his life there or in the villa given to him by Maecenas, he never lost his love of the country around Venosa. The River Aufidus is mentioned in many of the “Satires” and the “Odes” – as in the prophetic “Exegi monumentum”:

  I have achieved a monument more lasting

  than bronze, and loftier than the pyramids of kings...

  I shall be renewed and flourish in further praise,

  where churning Aufidus resounds, where Daunus

  poor in water governed his rustic people...

  His father, a freed slave, had settled at Venosa, becoming a tax-collector and auctioneer. He prospered, buying a small farm, sending his son to Rome and to Athens for his education. In 42 AD Horace joined the Roman republican army at Athens and, despite his being an insignificant young man, small and plump with a paunch, Brutus gave him command of a legion; he fought at Philippi against Octavian and Mark Antony, throwing away his shield and fleeing during the subsequent rout. Pardoned and given a post in the treasury at Rome, his wonderful verses soon gained him patrons.

  In 37 BC he travelled to Brìndisi with Virgil and his patron Maecenas, who, as a friend and adviser of Octavian – afterwards the Emperor Augustus – was hoping to negotiate a reconciliation with Mark Antony. Horace immortalised the journey in the “Satires”.

  A staging post whose name he does not give, because the water he bought there was “the worst in the world”, may have been Venosa where the road forked to join the future Via Traiana. At Canosa the bread was so vile that he thought the bakers must have mixed sand with the flour. No doubt he consoled himself with the excellent Canosan wine, afterwards much admired by Pliny the Elder. (Good even today, and getting better all the time.) Perhaps it was on this journey, too, that he heard of a miracle in a temple at Egnatia on the coast, when incense was said to have liquefied without being burned,
a story that made him laugh.

  Horace’s lifelong affection for Apulia stemmed from his love of its countryside, not of its inns, which sound on a par with those experienced by later travellers. The landscape around Venosa has apparently changed comparatively little during the last two thou-sand years. There are fewer of the woods that the poet loved, but it is still agricultural, with little or no industry. The beautiful, extinct volcano of Monte Vulture now has a road up to the lake in its crater, yet even now Horace would feel at home here, perhaps more than anywhere else in Italy. This is rolling, upland country, very different from the Murge, with pretty valleys and small towns perched on crags. This was where he had spent his childhood:

  On pathless Vultur, beyond the threshold

  of my nurse Apulia, when I was exhausted

  with play and oppressed with sleep,

  legendary wood-doves once wove for me

  new fallen leaves, to be

  a marvel to all who lodge in lofty

  Acherontia’s eyrie and Bantia’s woodlands

  and the rich valley farms of Forentum.

  Crauford Tait Ramage, one of the few travellers to visit Venosa during the last century, describes the area as thickly wooded in 1828: “you cannot stroll through such a country as this without feeling that its poets develop a rich and animated conception of the life of nature.” The farms Horace knew had been given over to sheep from the Abruzzi and the hills of Basilicata, but today the farms have come back.

  A famous link with Horace may lie a few miles to the east of Venosa, at Palazzo San Gervasio, possibly his “Fons Bandusiae” (“Spring of Bandusia”). Although most think that the spring is near the poet’s villa at Tivoli, as late as the twelfth century the district round Palazzo San Gervasio was called Bandusino Fonte. Two fountains claim to be the spring, the Fontana del Fico and the Fontana Grande. Norman Douglas preferred one of the many springs on the northern edge of the hill on which the village stands, suspecting that the terrain had been altered by earthquakes. Certainly, it would be pleasant to think of the shade of Horace coming here every October, to sacrifice a kid in celebration of the Fontinalia at the “Bandusian spring more brilliant than glass, worthy of flowers and classic wine.”