An Armchair Traveller's History of Apulia (31 page)

The largest city in the Salento after Lecce, Nardò has had a peculiarly tragic history. During the breakdown of Spanish and feudal authority in 1647, many of its citizens rose in revolt against their tyrannical feudal lord, the Count of Conversano, Giangirolamo II Acquaviva d’Aragona, who was also Duke of Nardò. The count-duke crushed the rebels with a systematic, murderous savagery that has never been forgotten. Even today, the blood-stained Giangirolamo is still one of the great ogres in local folklore, ‘
Il Guercio di Puglia
’ – ‘The Squinter of Apulia’.

There have been other tragedies at Nardò, and in more recent times, some of them almost within a very bitter living memory. Because the city was the centre of a highly profitable wheat-growing enclave, during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries its people suffered all the horrors of labour gangs. In April 1920 they disarmed the
carabinieri
, seized their weapons and hoisted the red flag over the
Municipio
. The authorities had to use artillery and armoured cars to regain control.

Copertino was home to that supremely Baroque figure, Giuseppe da Copertino, the ‘Flying Saint’ of whom Norman Douglas makes fun in “Old Calabria”. In his ecstasies Fra Giuseppe flew into the air, usually up to the chapel ceiling though, if outside, to the treetops; occasionally he took a passenger, such as his confessor whom he held by the hair. More than seventy flights were logged, the most famous being in 1645, in the presence of a Spanish viceroy. As soon as the great man entered the church, the friar shot up to kiss the feet of a statue above the altar, then flew back over the congregation. The viceroy’s wife fainted. He repeated the performance for Pope Urban VIII, flying on the day before his death in 1663.

The ancient castle of Copertino is the largest inland fortress in the Salento other than Lecce. Given to the family of the Albanian hero Skanderbeg, in 1540 they employed a local architect, Evangelista Menga, to add diamond-shaped bastions, sumptuous apartments, gardens on the ramparts and a slanted terrace to channel rainwater into the only bathroom. When Pacichelli visited Copertino during the 1670s, it had passed to the Genoese Pinelli, Dukes of Acerenza, who were clearly excellent hosts, the
Abate
remarking on “very comfortable and well arranged accommodation.”

There is some dramatic Apulian Baroque at Ruffano, a city unvisited by any early traveller, on an unexpected hill rising sharply out of the Salentine plain. The hill is crowned by two palaces and a church. Built in 1626 by Prince Rinaldo Brancaccio, according to an inscription in the courtyard, Palazzo Brancaccio is linked by a great bridge to Palazzo Licci, smaller and of about the same date. The early eighteenth century
chiesa madre
in the tiny city’s main square is another typical piece of Leccese Baroque with an exuberant high altar. A first glimpse of Ruffano is unforgettable.

Most of the Salento’s Baroque churches were inspired by Lecce; a good example is that at Galàtone, near Nardò, where the Sanctuary of the Crocefisso della Pietà has a façade of 1710. Several towns here are a mixture of Romanesque and Baroque, but Galatina is Gothic as well. During the 1390s its Italian-speaking citizens collected 12,000 ducats to ransom their lord, Raimondello del Balzo Orsini, who had been captured by the Turks. In gratitude he built a Latin rite church for them since the
chiesa madre
, San Pietro, used only the Greek rite. This new church, Santa Caterina, has fine frescoes that were painted during the 1430s. They seem Western enough, with their kings and knights, until you realise that most of the subjects and nearly all of the saints are those venerated by Eastern Christians, such as the Virgin’s Dormition or the Emperor Theodosius. Even Raimondello’s patron saint turns out to be that Byzantine favourite, Antonio Abate.

Janet Ross was so overwhelmed by the frescoes, “a perfect glory of colour”, that a local antiquarian had dark suspicions about her motives for visiting the church. He “dropped behind my artist friend and inquired whether I was a spy of the English government; such things had been heard of, and England was so rich that she could afford to buy the whole church of Santa Caterina and carry it bodily away. It certainly was a curious thing to see a woman travelling about and reading inscriptions on old tombs; he thought it praiseworthy, but very odd.”

She was intrigued by much else about the city, including the fast disappearing local language, Greek with many Italian words. “Galatina so enchanted us that when we went to lunch at the small inn we asked whether we could sleep there for the night”, she recalls, “It was with difficulty that we could make the people understand but at last they showed us a long room with five beds in it close together. Two were already engaged, and they offered us the other three. So reluctantly we had to go back to Lecce late in the evening.”

During the early seventeenth century, egged on by Jesuits the bishops of Apulia banned Mass in the Greek rite. To suppress it at Galatina, the former parish church of the Greeks, SS Pietro e Paolo, was rebuilt between 1633 and 1663 in the style of Zimbalo. A vigorous example of Counter Reformation triumphalism, its façade is one of the best pieces of Baroque in Apulia.

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Well armed and accoutred, and excellently mounted, their troop was

also trained to the most rigid discipline; and Don Gaetano, the elder of

the brothers Vardarelli, as well as commander of the band, displayed an

activity and skill worthy of a nobler profession.

Keppel Craven, “A Tour through the Southern Provinces of Italy”

A nother of GENERAL CHURCH’S problems was Gaetano Vardarelli. He had deserted from the Borbone army in 1815, reassembling a
comitiva
of fifty, and within a year, says Macfarlane, the Vardarelli were “in high feather”. They lived off the country, plundering
masserie
, extorting money and the grain that was so valuable because of the famine. A raid on Alberobello was beaten off, largely by a farmer’s wife, ironically known as ‘La Brigantessa’ on account of her skill with a musket. Although they seldom murdered travellers, they often kidnapped them or made them change horses with their own tired mounts. The Vardarelli’s sister rode with the band, dressed as a man, but she was so badly wounded during a skirmish with troops that Don Gaetano killed the girl to save her from falling into the hands of the soldiers.

A peasant himself, during the famine he tried to help the starving country people. He wrote to the mayor of Foggia, demanding that
massari
leave nearly harvested fields to be gleaned as formerly, instead of grazing animals on them. Otherwise, he threatened he would burn everything that belonged to the landowners.

Throughout the French occupation, brigands had regularly lain in ambush in the vital Bovino pass, eluding all attempts to hunt them down. When they had not been heard of for months, they would suddenly strike, attacking the royal mail coach especially when it had bullion on board, or holding travellers to ransom. The Vardarelli appear to have joined the bands which preyed on the pass.

“I passed by the Ponte di Bovino early in the year 1816, when the mere mention of its name caused fear and trembling”, recalled Macfarlane:

The pass is in general steep, and in some points very narrow; a deep ravine, through which froths and roars a mountain stream in the winter season, is on one side of the road – hills covered with trees or underwood lie on the other. In its whole length, which may be about fifteen miles, there are no habitations, save some curious caves cut in the face of the rock, a post-house, and a most villainous-looking taverna... And then, as regards security, who would follow the experienced robber through the mountain-wood, or down the ravine, or be able to trace him to the hiding-places in the rocks that abound there? Across the mountains he has a wide range of savage country, without roads – without a path; on the other side of the chasm the localities are equally favourable; here he can, if hard pressed... throw himself into the impenetrable forests of Mount Garganus, or into the not less remote and safe recesses of Monte Vulture.

Macfarlane tells us that a journey by coach from Apulia to Nap-les, the capital, was “to the peaceful inhabitants (always, be it said, rather timid travellers) an undertaking of solemn importance and peril; before embarking on which, not only were tapers burning under every saint of the calendar, and every Madonna that could show a portrait, but wills were made, and such tearful adieus, that one might have thought the Val de Bovino the real valley of death”.

As for escorts, “four miserable-looking gendarmes
á pied
, with their carbines slung over their shoulders, got up in front of our still more miserable-looking vettura for our protection”, Macfarlane recalled. Travellers who were ambushed were forced to lie on the ground to shouts of
Faccia in terra
(Face to the ground), brigands holding guns to their heads while others rifled their pockets. “Of one thing I was quite sure – that the soldiers, in case the robbers condescended to assault us, would be the first to run away, or per-form the
Faccia in terra
movement.”

General Church met Gaetano as soon as he arrived in Apulia. Spending the night in a
masseria
just outside Cerignola, with only his ADC and his batman and, learning that the Vardarelli
comitiva
– by now over a hundred strong – was nearby, he boldly sent an order for them to present themselves:

“Am I not King of Apulia?”, boasted Don Gaetano, when he came. “Have I not beaten three of your sovereign’s generals? The troops in Apulia are on my side, the civil inhabitants do what I tell them. I can take as many travellers’ purses as I please. All the aristocracy, the entire middle classes, fear me. You know very well, Your Excellency, that (King) Ferdinand can do nothing against me”.

Church rather liked the brigand chief and his band, recalling years later, “They harassed the provinces, fought the troops, robbed right and left, but seldom if ever committed murder in cold blood.”

A treaty signed by King Ferdinand in July 1817 enrolled the Vardarelli
comitiva
as highly paid auxiliary troops in the royal army, with the job of clearing the brigands out of the Bovino valley. Don Gaetano performed his new duties admirably, but he had made too many enemies. In September 1817 he was ordered to leave the Capitanata for the Molise. He obeyed very reluctantly, only leaving in February the following year. At Ururi, just inside the Molise, during a morning inspection of his men, he and his brothers were shot from the balcony of a nearby
palazzo
. Their killer was Don Nicola Grimani, a landowner whose sister Gaetano had raped – he bathed his face and hands in Vardarelli blood, shouting “I am avenged.”

About forty of the
comitiva
escaped. In April 1818 they rode into Foggia, reporting to the district commander, General Amato, who ordered them to go to Lucera. They objected so strongly that, after a long argument, shots were exchanged and one of the band fell dead. Some galloped off, firing as they went, while the remainder barricaded themselves in a cellar. Four who surrendered were sent in to tell them they would be smoked out, and were promptly murdered. Sporadic shooting came from the cellar, killing a soldier. Bales of straw were lit and pushed through its entrance, which was then blocked by huge stones. After two hours soldiers went in, to find seventeen men dead or dying; several had stabbed each other. Once the citizens realised the danger was over, the dead brigands became objects of pity, the general being blamed for the tragedy.

Keppel Craven had arrived in Foggia at the moment when the firing started. He was taken into the ground floor of his inn, with his guide, servants and horses, and not allowed to emerge for several hours. That evening, he was shown the corpses at the prison:

They had been stript of every article save the reliquaries or consecrated images, which the lower classes in Italy invariably wear around their neck, and which now rested on the ghastly wounds that disfigured their bodies, some of which were also blackened by smoke.

There were other Apulian
comitive
besides those of Gaetano Vardarelli. When Craven went on to Cerignola he was informed that a band had kidnapped the
sindaco
. (As ransom, its members were demanding 1,200 ducats, 100 yards of pantaloon velveteen and silver buckles.) A raid described to Janet Ross seventy years later by the old inn-keeper at Manfredonia, Don Michele Rosari di Tosquez, a ‘baron’ from Troia who had lost everything at the hands of brigands, may have been by a Bovino
comitiva
. “‘My ancestors were Spaniards and I was born at Troia; but when I was a small child the brigands came, burnt the
masseria
, hung my father from the pigeon tower, and killed my two elder brothers. My mother died of fright. Curse them,’ he exclaimed, bringing his fist heavily down on the table, ‘that ruined us.’”

While General Church was able to put down brigandage and secret societies in the Terra d’Òtranto, he failed to crush the Carbonari revolutionaries, who were demanding a constitution. In 1820 they marched on Naples. General Nugent fled and King Ferdinand reluctantly granted a constitution. Church was briefly imprisoned in the Castel del’ Ovo and, on being released, continued to serve the king until 1825. Two years later he was persuaded by Theodore Colocotrones, a former bandit and member of the Duke of York’s Greek Light Infantry, to fight in the Greek War of Independence. Sadly his career in Greece was undistinguished – at Pireus and the Siege of the Acropolis he never left the safety of his yacht.

In 1824, when staying with the Prince of Ischitella at Peschici in the Gargano, Macfarlane met a survivor from the Vardarelli
comitiva
called ‘Passo di Lupo’, who described the reality of brigand life. Most of the loot was taken by the
guappi
(bullies) while Passo di Lupo could not go into a town to spend his small share; often he could not even buy pasta or wine. Stolen sheep were roasted whole in their wool, sometimes eaten raw. Since they were without doctors or medical supplies, wounds were left to fester, so that many of them were covered in sores. For years after ceasing to be a brigand, Passo di Lupo “could never enjoy a sound sleep in his bed, but... was constantly starting up convulsively, and shrieking out his former companion’s names.”