An Armchair Traveller's History of Apulia

by Seward, Desmond

  I saw children with the faces of wizened old men, their bodies reduced by starvation almost to skeletons, their heads crawling with lice and covered with scabs. Most of them had enormous, dilated stomachs, and faces yellow and worn with malaria.

  During the 1950s the Sassi’s inhabitants were rehoused on the plateau above, although a few stuck stubbornly to their old homes in the ravine.

  Today these once verminous lairs have been re-invented as a tourist attraction and at least half-a-dozen have been converted into high-priced hotels. There have been plans to build an underground car park – supposedly adapting modern ways to old, but in practice undermining many of the old dwellings. Even so, the place has kept enough of its menacing atmosphere for Mel Gibson to use it as Jerusalem in his film, “The Passion of the Christ”. In 2004, locusts devoured every crop in the area, a plague that affected only a handful of farmers, but which, in former times, would have meant death by starvation for the entire population.

  Part VIII

  Trulli and the Difesa di Malta

  34

  Trulli

  One sees a great number of dry-stone cabins made of limestone or tufa,

  scattered over the countryside. They are called trulli... lodgings for

  beasts and country people.

  Galanti, “Della descrizione geographica e politica delle Sicilie”

  THE MURGIA DEI TRULLI is famous for strange, bee-hive shaped houses, the trulli, and for horses. Despite the area’s lush appearance, it has a bitter history of poverty and outlawry, thankfully long over.

  Alberobello, which takes its name from Sylva Arboris Belli (the wood of fine trees) has over a thousand trulli in the old quarter. They also appear around Ceglie Messapico, Cisternino, Martina Franca and Locorotondo, each district having its own version of the basic design – a cone of stones built without mortar. The historian Guelfo Civinino claims that trulli are identical to the specchie of the Messapians which, besides being burial chambers, were used for religious rites.

  The Murgia dei Trulli was once heavily forested, an ideal refuge for brigands, which may explain why early travellers avoided the area. The woods were not cleared until the twentieth century, to make way for vineyards and orchards. Nowadays the Val d’ Itria is like a garden, with an unmistakable air of prosperity, but it was very different a hundred years ago. “Their poverty may be imagined by the food of the day labourers, polenta made of boiled beans” says Mrs. Ross, describing the trulli people.

  The inhabitants of some of the towns on the Murge eat “la farinella” (pounded maize, peas, chestnuts, &c., which have first been roasted in ovens), which they eat just as it is, never attempting to cook it. These towns, Noci, Albaribello &c., are called by the others “Paese di Farinella”, to indicate their poverty.

  Even if overrun by trippers, Alberobello is well worth seeing. Selva, as it was first called, was given to the Counts of Conversano in the fifteenth century as a reward for fighting the Turks, and became part of estates that stretched from Putignano to within five miles of Martina Franca. Since Selva was uninhabited and uncultivated, the Counts encouraged labourers to settle there, living in rough wooden huts. In 1550 Count Giovanni Antonio gave them leave to build in stone, for protection against the wind, but without mortar. This meant that each house could be quickly pulled down before a tax collector arrived to count the dwellings – and quickly rebuilt after his departure. In 1635, when enough trees had been cleared and sufficient land cultivated, a town was founded by the fearsome Count Giangirolamo II, who built an inn, a mill and a communal oven for the labourers, charging them heavily for the compulsory use of these facilities.

  The first trulli were very like the stone huts called caselle that are seen in every olive grove. Without any windows or chimneys, they had square bases and conical roofs, and often a spiralling outside staircase. According to Civinino, this was the ladder Messapian priests climbed to worship the stars. The only light came through the open door. In many ways such houses were less sophisticated than the cave dwellings of the ravines, but they were very much healthier; dry all the year round, cool in summer and warm in winter. Probably they did not improve in design until the end of feudalism at Selva in 1797, since with a constant threat of demolition there was too little incentive.

  Then the trulli gradually became much more elaborate, with a small window and a tall chimney. As a family grew, more cones were added. The walls were white-washed inside and out, but the roofs were usually left unpainted, save for a large cross, swastika or heart, magic charms to ward off evil. A cistern was dug for rain-water coming off the roof, the sole water supply. Beds were placed in alcoves round the main living room, while an attic reached by a ladder held flour, dried pulses, fruit and firewood.

  Conventional houses began to be built with mortar after 1797, but many peasants still preferred the trulli either because they were poor or simply because “what was good enough for my father is good enough for me.” As late as the 1920s a church was built at Alberobello in the trulli style.

  The original church here, a tiny edifice built by the peasants on land given to them by the Count, was served by a priest from Martina Franca, who rode out on his donkey to celebrate Mass each Sunday. Giangirolamo II endowed an oratory next to a house he had built for his visits to the town, placing in it a painting of the saints to whom it was dedicated, Cosmas and Damian. When he was packed off to a Spanish prison, the peasants moved it to their own church. Since then the town has been devoted to the two saints. During the terrible drought of 1782, a statue of San Cosma was borne in procession through the streets of Selva with immediate results, a downpour falling out of a cloudless sky.

  The last feudal lord of Selva, Count Giulio Antonio IV, Gentleman of the King’s Bedchamber and Knight of San Gennaro, was hand-in-glove with the brigands who terrorised the little town. Eventually, in desperation, its long suffering inhabitants sent a deputation to King Ferdinand when he was staying at Tàranto with Archbishop Capecelatro, a well-known foe to brigands, petitioning that their town should be administered by the Crown. The petition was granted in May 1797 and Selva renamed itself Alberobello.

  In the centre of the Murgia dei Trulli, the round, gleaming white city of Locorotondo sits on a small hill. Unlike some of its neighbours, it is untouched by modern development, which has been diverted to a new town in the valley below. Locorotondo contains little of interest, apart from the church of Santa Maria della Greca, but there is a superb view of the Val d’ Itria from the public gardens at the top of the hill. Trulli can be seen in every direction, from single houses to great clusters forming masserie, from aged trulli with tiny orchards and hens scratching round the doors to brand-new trulli with wrought-iron gates and crazy-paving. Dry-stone walls divide the fields and, on either side of the valley, herds of silvery grey cattle and black Murgesi horses graze on the green hills.

  Until quite recently, hundreds of big, pure black horses were imported to the Murgia from Calabria, Northern Italy, Albania and Montenegro. All they had in common was their colour and their amount of bone. However, during the 1920s they were glorified with the impressive new name of Murgesi. Such horses must not be confused with the Conversano horse, a far more glamorous beast. The Val d’Itria used also to be renowned for its donkeys, which when crossed with Murgesi horses produced exceptionally tough mules.

  While the old woodmen of the Murgia dei Trulli and Selva have vanished, together with their dense forests, their odd little houses continue to be built. Some are bought as weekend cottages by business men from Bari, who no doubt fancy that they are returning to their roots.

  35

  The Difesa di Malta

  Lambs at the sound of a church bell,

  lions at the blast of a trumpet.

  R. dall Pozzo, “Historia della Sacra Religione Militare di San Giovanni”

  THE COAST NEAREST the Murgia dei Trulli was known as the Difesa di Malta (Challenge of Malta), because it was so well guarded by the Knights of Malta. These w
ere the Knights Hospitallers, the warrior monks who had defended Crusader Jerusalem, still waging an unceasing war on the Infidel. In Italy they were popularly known as ‘Hierosolomitan’ or ‘Jerusalem’ Knights. Even after the decline of the Ottoman Empire ended the threat of invasion, Apulia suffered from raids by North African and Albanian pirates, and the brethren’s policing of the Adriatic and Ionian Seas was of vital importance, often saving the crews of Apulian merchantmen and fishing boats from enslavement. Locals saw the corn, wine and oil that went out to Malta by felucca as a very good investment indeed. By the mid-eighteenth century raids on the Apulian coast had ceased, but they began again after Napoleon evicted the Knights from Malta in 1798, continuing well into the 1830s. Apulia must have sighed for the galleys of Malta.

  Apulian brethren also took part in wars on the mainland. During the 1670s Fra’ Giovanni Gadaleta from Trani fought as a captain of horse in the Spanish service against the French when they tried to relieve the rebellious citizens of Messina. Pacichelli heard about him when he visited Trani, “A true Hierosolomitan... who died soon after in the flower of his youth and his courage”, comments the Abate.

  The Apulian Knights included the odd black sheep, however, such as “a tall, wild-looking man with red hair”, Fra’ Vincenzo della Marra, who belonged to a family from Sannicandro Garganico. Notorious for brawling and duelling, he “would have sold his Order for a crust of bread”, but his bravery was admired; when taken prisoner by the Turks during a battle at sea, his brethren ransomed him immediately. In 1633 – with some friends – he dragged an enemy from his coach in the streets of Naples, and smashed his skull with an iron-tipped stave. Outlawed, Fra’ Vincenzo fled to Malta and then became a colonel in the Papal army, only to be dismissed for insulting a cardinal. After joining the Venetian service, he was killed fighting the Turks in Greece.

  Until confiscated by Murat in the early nineteenth century, the Order of Malta’s estates in Apulia stretched from Venosa to Trani, from the Gargano down to Lecce and Òtranto, in a network of commanderies under the Prior of Barletta. Ever mindful of status, Pacichelli lists members of the nobility in each city he visits, who have “taken the Hierosolomytan habit”. A successful Knight was rewarded with a commandery, retiring to administer it, sending the revenues to Malta, but keeping enough to support himself in the style of a nobleman. Rich old bachelors, the commanders entertained lavishly, occupying a prominent place in Apulian society.

  The travellers’ normal itinerary, from Bari to Brìndisi, went along the coast of the Difesa di Malta, passing through Mola, Polignano, Monopoli and Egnatia. Bishop Berkeley describes the country along this coast as extremely well planted and fruitful, but almost entirely lacking in houses, due to “fear of the Turks, which obligeth families to live in towns.” He rode through great forests of olive trees interspersed with pears and almonds. At Mola, where the low, rocky coast was covered with figs, he found “no place in the town to dress or eat our victuals in; a merchant of the town gave us the use of an apartment to eat our meat in, as likewise a present of cherries.” The town owes its existence to a fortress built here by Charles of Anjou in 1278, as linchpin in a line of coastal towers down to Brìndisi, that were intended to be a protection against piracy. At that time the Knights were still in the Holy Land and not yet active in these waters.

  Monopoli was an important port under the Byzantines. There are Byzantine grotto churches in the city and in the fields outside, hidden among olive groves. However, the cathedral, the best piece of late Baroque in Apulia, did not exist in Berkeley’s time, being begun only in 1742 on the site of a Romanesque predecessor. The Difesa di Malta was discreetly in evidence, the Knights’ tiny medieval hospice standing next to their small thirteenth century church. Both survive, identifiable by the eight-pointed cross on the church. In 1358 the Knights had established an important commandery in the former Benedictine abbey of Santo Stefano di Monopoli, three miles down the coast, but moved it to Fasano during the seventeenth century.

  All the travellers agree that the countryside around Monopoli was delightful. Today, fields of fruit trees and olives are still interspersed with pretty villages and handsome villas set on the slopes of the Murgia. But on reaching Egnazia, Horace’s Gnathia, Bishop Berkeley went inland, a footnote in his Journal explaining: “This left on our left for fear of the Turks.” Clearly, raiders were still slipping through the Order’s patrols.

  Sitting on the edge of the escarpment above the coast road, Ostuni – the same place as Pliny’s Stulnium – was visible to every traveller on his way to Brìndisi. The Normans wrested it from Byzantium only as late as 1070. It has some fine churches, in particular its Gothic cathedral begun in 1435, and is certainly one of the most attractive of the Difesa di Malta’s whitewashed towns. The citizens owed a good deal to the Knights’ activities, even if some of the travellers were ungrateful.

  On his way to Ostuni, Swinburne stopped for refreshment at what must have been part of the charming Masseria Difesa di Malta nearby, built amid the olive groves by the Knights during the 1770s:

  We arrived at a small single house, consisting of a kitchen, loft and stable, lately erected for the convenience of travellers, by the agents of the Order of Malta, to which the land belongs. The kitchen was too hot for me to breathe in, and the other two apartments as full of fleas as Shakespeare’s inn at Rochester, so that my only refuge was the narrow shade of the house, which was contracted every minute more and more, as the sun advanced towards the meridian. Behind the house then I sat down, to dine upon the fare we had brought in our wallets. Unluckily I had not thought of wine or water, neither of which were now to be had tolerably drinkable; so that I was obliged to content myself with the water of a cistern full of tadpoles, and qualify it with a quantity of wine, that resembled treacle much more than the juice of the grape. While I held my pitcher to my lips, I formed a dam with my knife, to prevent the little frogs from slipping down my throat. Till that day I had had but an imperfect idea of thirst.

  No doubt the water here was like that from all too many cisterns in waterless Apulia and the wine vile, but at least the Order was providing humble travellers with free food in the kitchen, free bedding in the loft and free stabling for their mules. This “small single house” was one of many maintained by the Knights in the Difesa di Malta.

  Some idea of the Knights’ wealth and standing can be gained at Fasano and Putignano. At Fasano, the palace of the Bailiff (now the Municipio) dates from the sixteenth century, but, with the adjoining church, was rebuilt in the eighteenth by a Knight of the Falcone family; his coat-of-arms, a bird of prey, can be seen on both buildings together with the eight-pointed cross. The cross of Malta is on other buildings too, while the city’s main street is still Via del Balì. The Bailiff’s role in the life of Fasano resembled the Count’s at Conversano or the Duke’s at Martina Franca; he was its feudal lord, the Order holding it in fee from the Crown. He spent the summer months at a villa in Selva di Fasano, on the edge of the escarpment looking out to sea, where he escaped from the heat and mosquitoes.

  Nowadays Putignano, to the west, is a busy commercial centre, but the old city survives behind its white walls, amazingly intact. Here too, in what has been renamed Piazza Plebiscito, there is a Baroque Palazzo del Balì. This stands next to the ancient chiesa madre of San Pietro, rebuilt by the Knights in the seventeenth century with an imposing campanile, a double-decker high altar and an exuberant painted ceiling. The Knights prayed here and at the little Rococo church of the Purgatorio nearby, which has Maltese crosses over the portico. Putignano, with its white-washed houses and wrought-iron balconies, is the Difesa di Malta at its most elegant.

  The Order of Malta’s palazzi in Apulia have become offices or flats. Yet there are still one or two Apulian Knights, whose towers or masserie are decorated with the eight-pointed cross.

  36

  The Duel at Ostuni

  The fencer is by fencing overcome...

  Tasso, “Gerusalemme Liberata” />
  IN 1665, OSTUNI in the Difesa di Malta was the scene of a duel that, after the Disfida of Barletta, is the most famous personal combat in Apulian history. It was fought by two great noblemen, both of whose families had given many Knights to the ‘Hierosolomitan Order’ – Cosmo, Count of Conversano and Petracone V, Duke of Martina Franca.

  Son of the terrible Giangirolamo II, Count Cosmo was thirty-eight years old. Just as his unloved father had been given a nickname, ‘Il Guercio’ (the Squinter), he himself was known as ‘O Sfidante’ (the Challenger). A lethal swordsman, the count was a veteran duellist who had already killed an alarming number of opponents. He had also taken a leading part in the bloodthirsty repression of the Neapolitan riots of 1661. Savagely morose, he was as dangerous as he was quarrelsome.

  Count Cosmo nursed an especially bitter hatred for his Apulian neighbour, the elderly Michele Imperiali, Prince of Francavilla. This stemmed from a long-running family vendetta, that had begun when Cosmo was a child – erupting into a full-scale battle in a Neapolitan street in 1630 – between the Acquaviva of Conversano and the Caracciolo of Martina Franca, supported by their kinsmen, the Imperiali of Francavilla Fontana. Friends and servants joined in the fighting. By the time the police arrived several combatants had been killed while twelve were badly wounded. Everyone still on his feet was arrested, only Fra’ Titta Caracciolo, a Knight of Malta, managing to escape.

  Prince Michele had taken a leading part in the “battle”. Meeting the Prince by chance one day in 1664 at the viceregal court at the royal palace in Naples, the count immediately challenged him to a duel and thrashed him with the flat of his sword. The Viceroy at once placed both men under arrest, hoping that their tempers would cool. But when they were released, Prince Michele, who was too aged and decrepit to fight, asked his nephew Petracone Caracciolo, Duke of Martina Franca, to do so in his place. The unfortunate Duke could not refuse. Since he was only seventeen, the duel was postponed until he came of age in twelve months time.