by David Perry
“I told you, it sounds like something out of one of my video games—SimCity goes ancient. Let’s go!”
The necropolis was a two- or three-acre excavation, a mossy Pompeii. Several dozen tombs spread across the flats directly beneath the cliff, most of them open for inspection, with weatherworn inscriptions in the lost Etruscan language carved in the lentils above. Lee and Adriano were the only visitors.
Inside, the tomb was completely dark and musty.
“Spooky,” said Lee, repeating Adriano’s earlier apt description. “Not a place I’d like to get trapped in at night, but no rats. Come on down.”
Adriano ventured in, holding his iPhone on flashlight mode in front of him like a low-rent Indiana Jones. “Don’t push me. You know I don’t like tight spaces.”
“I know, dear.”
Inside, the abandoned tomb was just that—abandoned. It smelled of wet earth and moist leaves, but not unpleasantly so. A stone bench was carved against the wall and covered with moss, except for a worn spot in the middle.
“What’s this?” Lee motioned for Adriano to shine his iPhone.
The flashlight beam revealed a pile of wax, as if from a long-burning candle.
“When I was a teenager, it was the back of a car,” said Lee. “I guess in Orvieto, the Etruscan tombs are where one escapes for a bit of hormone therapy with your significant other.”
“Yuck,” said Adriano. “I can’t imagine a less sexy place for romance than this. Let’s go. Wait, what’s this?”
Just next to the exit, on the wall next to a display of Etruscan artifacts dug up at the site, was a bronze plaque, faded and patina-covered. It read:
Ministero per i Beni e le Attivita
Soprintendenza per i beni Archeologici dell’ Umbria PERUGIA
----------
Necropoli di Crocifisso Del Tufo
CENTRO VISITA
DOCUMENTAZIONE
Nicolo Volsini
1914–1969
“Volsini. La Donna’s husband?”
“Hmm,” Lee said. “Possibly.”
Leaving the necropolis behind, they continued on with Lee in front. A few minutes later, the path led upward in a gentler slope than the path from where they started. Up ahead, they could see the turn to the largest of Orvieto’s four gates, Porta Maggiore.
“This is it.”
Lee stopped in his tracks in front of a small door cut into the rock face, secured by an iron gate and rusty padlock. Flanking the door were two bar-covered windows with stone sills, one adorned with a bottle of water from Lourdes, the other with a plastic vase of freshly cut flowers. Above the door was a stone overhang paved with tiles, several of which were chipped and broken in the front, jagged teeth in a stony smile.
“Il Chiesa del Crocefisso del Tufo,” Adriano said simply. “This is where Deacon Andrea jumped.”
“Where he landed, at least.” Lee was already standing up on tiptoe to see inside the darkened cave through the tiny aperture of an iron-barred window. There was no light except for a single glass-enclosed votive candle on a simple stone altar against the back wall of the grotto. Lee could just make out a cross carved into the back wall.
“It looks deserted.”
“Except for that candle and these fresh flowers,” Adriano said. “Peg did say that once a year there was a ceremony.”
“You’re right, but that’s not a Padre Pio battery-powered job. That’s one of your wax seventy-two-hour long-burning specials. Someone has been here to light that candle recently, not to mention the bouquet.”
“In memory of Andrea, no doubt,” said Adriano, gently putting his hands on his husband’s shoulders.
“Or not,” Lee said flatly. “They light candles for everything. They’re Catholic.”
Lee shaded his eyes from the late afternoon sun and peered up the near-vertical rock face. There was nothing on the cliff above them except a solitary olive tree, its aged and gnarled branches clinging to the summit over a hundred feet above.
“What’s this?” Adriano pointed.
Turning back to look, Lee’s eyes caught sight of a line of squiggled white lettering, painted onto a stone next to the path in front of the chapel.
مكيف هللا كراب :ايردنأ
“Looks vaguely Arabic,” Adriano said.
“It’s still a bit wet,” Lee said, touching the letters. “Maybe the same person who lit the candle?”
“Oh yeah,” said Adriano in his most faux ironic tone. “Muslims are always leaving inscriptions at shrines to sixth-century Christians.”
“Maybe it’s not for Floriano,” Lee said. “Maybe it is for Deacon Andrea after all.”
Adriano nodded. “But why in Arabic?” He pulled out his iPhone to take a photo. “I’ll check it out later.”
They trudged on, past Porta Magiorre, and then fifteen uphill minutes later walked past Orvieto’s main vehicular entrance, the Porta Romana.
“Remember that picture I showed you the other night?” said Lee. “Porta Romana is the one where the Allied tanks entered during World War II to liberate Orvieto from the Germans. Orvieto should have been leveled by the Allies, who were fighting their way up the Italian peninsula, like Monte Cassino was. But there was a German colonel who spared the town.”
“I thought you said the Allies would have bombed it? How did the Nazis save it?”
“Orvieto was occupied by the Germans,” Lee explained. “After the Allies landed on the Italian mainland, Mussolini was still officially in charge, but the real power lay with Hitler’s forces. The German commander overseeing Orvieto was a devout Catholic. He didn’t speak Italian, and a young local priest didn’t speak German, so they communicated in Latin. The colonel knew he couldn’t stop the Allies, but he also knew that der Führer would expect the Germans to fight to the last man, so he coordinated with the priest and sent a message to the advancing British troops proposing to declare Orvieto an open city.”
“Like Rome,” said Adriano.
“Exactly. In fact, Orvieto was only the second such open city, after Rome. So, to escape the bombing and inevitable destruction of the city, they agreed to spare Orvieto and its priceless cathedral and medieval buildings and moved the battle. The Germans and the Brits slugged it out, with many casualties, about twenty kilometers away.”
“I have to admit,” said Adriano, “this town has had more than its share of history. What happened to the Nazi?”
“No one knows,” said Lee, “or to the priest. They both kind of disappeared after the war. The article I found was an interview with the British officer who accepted the German’s terms. He survived the war and became quite the hero. He’s actually been back to Orvieto a few times—received like a conquering hero, you know. According to him though, it really was the mystery German who should get the credit.”
For the final forty-five minutes, their walking path was again vehicular free. They were alone with their thoughts and the occasional gecko scurrying for cover among the tufo. To their right, other, smaller hilltop towns encircled Orvieto like a charm bracelet with glittering highlights: a medieval abbey now turned into a Euro-swank B and B; the ruins of Pope Clement’s restored aqueduct; some prehistoric fossilized trees; and, cradled in an especially scenic notch, a Cappuchin monastery whose sequestered monks must have a truly spectacular view of Orvieto across the valley. A little more than twenty minutes later they were back at their starting point, Porta Soliano.
“Look!” Lee was practically jumping up and down. “There over the gate! I can’t believe we didn’t see it when we left this morning! If we’d just turned around and looked up, we would have seen it. The Medici crest! The city must have put it there in gratitude to Giulio de Medici—Pope Clement VII—to thank him for building St. Patrick’s Well!”
“More like, Clement put it there himself to remind people.”
“St. Patrick’s Well wasn’t finished by the time Clement left, cynic,” said Lee, snapping a photo of the iconic shield with six round balls
. “Come on. There’s only one more stop on today’s grand tour.”
“I’m actually quite tired,” said Adriano, citing one of their favorite lines from Erin Brockovich. Is it much farther? There’s an Orvieto Classico with my name on it waiting for me at home.”
“Not much farther,” said Lee, leading them down the Corso and onto the Via del Duomo.
“This better be worth it.” Adriano raised his eyebrows. “I know you. You make it sound like Chartres or the Sagrada Familia. How famous can it be if I haven’t heard of it?”
Lee made shooshing motions with his hand and pulled up Peg’s breathlessly hyperbolic blog on his iPhone. He read as they walked.
Considered the ultimate expression of Italian Renaissance architecture, the Cathedral of Orvieto is at the pinnacle of ecclesiastical design. No trip to ‘The Rock’ is complete without a visit. Located next to the Papal Palace—now a museum of the Renaissance and Etruscan archaeology—the cathedral and its environs have been a safe haven for more than one pope during times of political duress. The Borgia, the Medici, several others, all have decamped to Orvieto’s castle-like slopes when danger threatened. Started in 1290 by Pope Nicholas IV and completed over three centuries later, Orvieto’s cathedral, Il Duomo, was built specifically to house the relics from the Miracle of Bolsena. It also contains the bones of Orvieto’s patron saint, famously murdered by a band of Cathar heretics, and priceless artworks by the renowned Fra Angelico and Signorelli. Quite simply, Il Duomo is considered one of earth’s great masterpieces, and the most complete and unaltered example of Italian High Middle Ages art, culture, design, and spirituality given form. Il Duomo de Orvieto—man’s aspirations for the afterlife and his devotion to God set in marble, tile, and paint.
“Peg never met an adjective she didn’t like.” Lee frowned.
Like a giant jack-in-the-box, Il Duomo popped into view around the last corner of the street leading to it.
“Sweet Jesus. That is the most gorgeous church I have ever seen,” Adriano said, with none of his usual edge.
“Wow,” was all Lee could manage.
Even in the gathering twilight, the cathedral fairly glowed, as if lit by an independent power source, its four delicate towers and entire facade clad in a golden skin of mosaic tiles with Biblical themes. The four evangelists, as represented by their winged symbols, St. Matthew’s angel; St. Mark’s lion; St. Luke’s ox; and the eagle of “the beloved disciple,” St. John, crowned pilasters above the doors. Over the two-story bronze great doors was perched a pietà, Mary holding the body of her dead son, Jesus.
Peg, it seemed, hadn’t been overstating.
“It’s locked.” Adriano pulled harder on the handles marked “Tourist Entrance” in four different languages.
“Let’s check around the back. Catholic cathedrals almost always have a small side door where the faithful enter.”
“How do you know this stuff?”
Lee shrugged.
Sure enough, to the left and rear of the cathedral was a smaller, almost hidden entrance, two simple wooden doors and a sign.
“Ingresso risvervato al culto. Entrance reserved for religious worship,” Adriano read aloud. “You were right. Let’s go!”
“So suddenly you’re devout?”
“For this, I’m a member of the faithful. Plus, praying is free. The tourist entrance costs four euros.” Adriano had already taken off his hat and was entering, a practical if not practicing Catholic. Lee followed.
The cathedral’s interior was vast, and surprisingly stark in its simplicity.
“It’s huge,” Lee whispered, crossing himself with holy water from the font to the right of the entrance. A few yards away, an elderly security guard walked back and forth.
“Let’s check it out,” said Adriano as he crossed himself with holy water. Seeing Lee’s raised eyebrow, he replied, “If I don’t bless myself, he’ll think I’m just a heathen tourist trying to sneak in without paying.”
“Aren’t you?”
“Let’s go see the relics.”
Except for the guard, they were alone. Their steps echoed in the cavernous space, as unadorned as the exterior was spectacularly over-the-top. The glittering exception to the nave’s echoing two-tone gray-and-white marble was the high altar, behind which the walls were completely covered in frescoes depicting scenes from the life of the Virgin. Framing the altar, like nearly identical bookends, were two side chapels.
“That will be the Chapel of the Madonna,” Lee said as quietly as possible, motioning to the right. “It’s the one with frescoes by Fra Angelico. I read about it on the plane. It also has the priceless works by Signorelli, including the Preaching of the Antichrist and the Resurrection of the Flesh. Quite racy actually, the ‘flesh’ being resurrected is generally beefy and male.”
“I’ll drink to that.” Adriano leered.
“Apostate.” Lee smiled.
“It’s closed.”
“What?” Lee was downcast, but his husband was correct. The chapel was locked up tight with the lights off. Lee peered through the bars and could just make out the muscled thigh of a naked man clawing his way out of the earth with Jesus beckoning overhead.
“Of course, it’s closed. This is the Church. Praying comes for free but viewing priceless fifteenth-century masterpieces…” Adriano rubbed in fingers together in the universal sign for “pay me.”
“The Chapel of the Corporal is open, on the other side.”
“Corporal who?”
“Jesus, you really are a bad Catholic. The ‘corporal’ as in the ‘corpus.’ The body of Christ. Come on. I’ll show you.”
Almost a mirror image of its sister sanctuary, the Chapel of the Corporal was indeed open, and empty save for a white-habited nun sitting at the very front, clutching a rosary and staring fixedly at an enormous and elaborately adorned silver-and-gilt reliquary, the Miracle of Bolsena.
“Luther was right,” Adriano huffed. “The cost of that alone would have fed a lot more than the five thousand. Grotesque.”
The couple walked quietly to a rear pew and sat down to look at the grandiose sanctuary, crawling with gold leaf and ringed with various papal coats of arms and religious iconography. Just visible inside a two-foot-by-two-foot locked glass door was an ancient piece of cloth, marked by two dark stains. A dozen candles flickered and danced in reflection.
“According to legend,” Lee whispered, “a priest who was doubting his faith, specifically the presence of the body and blood of Christ during communion, was in the town of Bolsena—”
“Volsini? The town that the Romans built to relocate the Etruscans they had defeated here in Orvieto?” Adriano interrupted.
“Exactly. It’s very close. Peg mentioned it too, the other night. Anyway, while he was saying Mass, right at the moment of transubstantiation—”
“The moment that Jesus miraculously pops down from heaven and enters the Holy Communion Twinkie.”
Lee ignored him and continued. “Yes, that moment when, according to Catholic teaching, the sacred host actually becomes the incarnate body of Christ, and the wine, his blood. At that very moment, the host began to actually bleed onto the altar and onto the corporal, the cloth under the chalice. That up there above the altar in that orgy of gold, silver, and precious stones, behind the glass, is the actual cloth with the bloodstains.”
“The bloodstains of Jesus Christ?”
“If you believe.”
“Let’s go, I’m done.” Adriano got up to leave.
Lee made the sign of the cross, habitually, and followed, leaving the nun to her vigil.
Outside, darkness had fallen and the Duomo’s facade was bathed in carefully focused spotlights. The effect was breathtaking.
“Well, I’ll give it to the Church,” said Adriano. “They do know how to build gorgeous buildings. Gaudy, obscenely expensive, and a testament to the hypocrisy innate in its nature. But impressive.”
Lee didn’t say anything.
“You don’t actu
ally believe that stuff, do you? I mean, the blood of Jesus, the stain, yada yada yada.”
“What I believe is that for over eight hundred years, people have been coming here to see it,” said Lee. “The history is what I believe in. It’s fascinating.”
“It’s troubling.”
“Apostate.”
The couple walked on, stopping several times for Adriano to get pictures (“I don’t have to believe to believe that it’s fabulous”). A few minutes later and they were back in the apartment.
“I’m going to cook dinner now, Your Holiness. Want a drink?”
“Yes,” Lee answered. “I promise not to bless it.”
“It’s Orvieto Classico, anyway. I don’t think the Miracle of Bolsena bled white.”
While Adriano started dinner, Lee settled in on the couch with an especially challenging acrostic crossword puzzle themed “Medici, Borgia, and the Renaissance.” Right up his alley. On the coffee table lay a new book titled 41.43 N; 49.56 W, indicating the coordinates of Lee’s other obsession, the Titanic. It was a present from Magda that had arrived in the morning post. Ah, a perfect moment, glass of wine, a cryptogram to untangle, a new book for bedtime reading, and his talented husband cooking dinner. Lee surveyed their sabbatical surroundings: small, even cramped, but tastefully laid out. Ikea for the Dark Ages. Phillip the Fair meets Philippe Starck. All the furniture was sleek, simple, and small. And, even though you hit your head on a stone arch if you weren’t careful after its use, the bathroom had a bidet. You gotta love Europe.
“Suicide is a mortal sin.”
Lee looked up from his cocoon on the sofa.
“What?”
Adriano stood in the entrance between the kitchen and living room, his hands coated in flour, the sound and aroma of sizzling olive oil in the background. “Peg said that young deacon killed himself by jumping off the cliff, right?”
“Yeah, so?”
Now it was Adriano’s turn to pierce his lover with an “I thought you were a good Catholic” glare. “Disgraced gay deacons who kill themselves don’t have elaborate funerals in the Catholic Church, presided over by a bishop, much less in the biggest church in town and the depository of a supposed miracle. Suicide is a mortal sin.”