The Baroque was still unfashionable during the 1890s when Paul Bourget visited the city. “Here the bad taste is too intense, fancy carried to such extremes with such genius, that the term loses its meaning.”
However, in 1902 an architect called Martin Briggs “discovered” Lecce. Eight years later, he published a book, “In the Heel of Italy: a Study of an Unknown City”, calling Lecce “a veritable seventeenth century museum”, and claiming that here “Baroque architecture may perhaps be seen at its best.” Brigg’s book persuaded the Sitwells to visit Lecce in 1922, the city elders insisting on paying their bill since they were obviously so distinguished. Sir Osbert Sitwell admired the city even more extravagantly than Mar-tin Briggs: “Lecce, peer of any Italian city in loveliness”, was his verdict.
Its citizens are still passionately proud of Lecce. They tell strangers how until only recently the palazzi were occupied by duchi, marchesi, conti, baroni, and how they speak better Italian than the Florentines. They talk of Bari as a hideous, heathen place, inhabited by decadent Levantines who have vile manners.
44
Don Cirò, the Bandit Priest
...a robber by profession – an unholy wizard in the imagination of other
men – a devil in reality.
Charles Macfarlane, “The Lives and Exploits of Bandits and Robbers”
ONE WET, WINDY NIGHT in December 1814, a wayfarer hammered on the gate of the castle of Martano in the Terra d’Òtranto. Because of the torrential rain the old steward let him in, only to be shot down at once. Fifty horsemen galloped into the courtyard, then ran through the castle, murdering every single servant, including the chaplain and the housekeeper. The ‘wayfarer’, whose name was Don Cirò Annichiarico, burst into the bedroom of the Princess of Martano – twenty years old, famous for her beauty, a great heiress and still unmarried – demanding her strongbox and her jewel-chest. After finding in them 36,000 gold ducats with diamonds, rubies and pearls, he stabbed the princess and her maid to death, shouting, “Philosophers say that dead bitches don’t bite!”
Then Don Cirò and his followers banqueted in the castle hall, drinking the health of La bella principessa with her fine wines, before riding off into the night and the rain. The only person they left alive was the princess’s eight year old cousin, who had hidden under a heavily draped table. But for this little boy, no one would ever have known who was responsible for the massacre at Martano.
Brigands took full advantage of the confusion after Murat’s fall in 1815. The harvest that year was the worst on record, causing famine and then starvation, followed by outbreaks of plague and scarlet fever; in the Terra d’Òtranto 17,000 people would die from cerebro-spinal meningitis in 1817. Law and order collapsed, brigands raiding ware-houses and ambushing grain-convoys, besides robbing and kidnapping. After unsuccessfully campaigning for five months against them in the Capitanata, Colonel del Caretto warned, “They are endangering the realm’s food supplies since, as we all know, Apulia is its granary.” The campaign that at last broke the brigands was directed from Lecce, by an Irishman.
The Neapolitan commander-in-chief, General Count Nugent (an Irishman formerly in the Austrian service) called in his old friend, Colonel Richard Church. Born in 1784 at Cork, during the Napoleonic Wars, Church had served in Egypt, Calabria and Capri, and in the Ionian Islands, where he commanded a regiment with the unlikely name of “The Duke of York’s Greek Light Infantry”. Military governor of the Terra di Bari and the Terra d’Òtranto with the rank of General, he established his headquarters at Lecce in 1817, and brought the situation under control in less than two months, after a ruthless campaign of what would now be called counter-insurgency, with shrewd intelligence work and cynical bargaining.
Hunting down Cirò Annichiarico was among his greatest successes. In retrospect one can see that Don Cirò never had much chance of escaping General Church. Yet at the time it did not seem at all like that to the Leccesi, who feared the terrible Annichiarico more than any other living man.
Cirò Annichiarico, the son of a prosperous farmer and nephew of a canon, was born in Grottaglie in 1773. At twenty he entered the Tàranto seminary, studying under Archbishop Capecelatro and acquiring the prelate’s revolutionary politics. But in 1803, by then a priest and choir-master, he committed a murder. Some reports say he killed a rival for the favours of a local beauty, or even the girl herself. The most likely version, however, is that Cirò cut the throat of a certain Gisuseppe Mottolese because he refused to marry his sister after seducing her. Sentenced to fifteen years in the galleys, he spent four in an underground dungeon at Naples, before escaping with another prisoner, who introduced him to a secret society known as the Decisi (the Resolute).
At that date the Fratelli Decisi were a group of young men recruited by Pietro Gargano, a cavalry trooper who had deserted from Murat’s army. Political outlaws and hardened criminals, they terrorised the Terra d’Òtranto, while at the same time enjoying a certain amount of popular support. In order to join this organisation, whose real name was “The Society of Jupiter the Thunderer”, the applicant had to commit at least two murders and then undergo tests of courage before his final acceptance. Senior members possessed the power of passing death sentences on somebody they disliked. Writing to a victim selected for extortion, they would add four dots in blood to their signature to show they were serious. The society had some of the trappings of freemasonry, such as signs of recognition, passwords and far from empty threats of dire consequences if secrets were betrayed. But although professing liberal opinions and recruited “to make War against the Tyrants of the Human Race”, the society – certainly after Cirò became its leader – appears to have been primarily a means of lining its members’ pockets or settling vendettas by murder.
There is a vivid description of Don Cirò Annicchiarico in General Church’s reminiscences. Although coarse-featured and scarfaced, with an upturned nose and red, pig-like eyes, the unfrocked priest had become a dandy:
His usual dress was of velveteen, highly laced, with many rows of buttons, and belts in every direction. He also always wore several silver chains, to one of which was attached the silver death’s-head, the badge of the secret society, the Decisi... On his breast he wore rows of relics, crosses, images of saints, and amulets against the Evil-Eye. His head-dress was a high-peaked drab-coloured hat, adorned with gold band, buckle, and tall black feather, and his fingers were covered with rings of great value.
Armed to the teeth with carbine, pistols and daggers, he carried poison hidden in a red pocket book.
Even if Cirò denied killing Giuseppe Mottolese, he admitted to many other murders during his career as a brigand, lasting for nearly ten years. Often disguised as Punchinellos (Neopolitan puppets), he and his band terrorised the Terra d’Òtranto. When a girl refused to sleep with him, he went to a dance at her parents’ home in Carnival time, wearing his clown’s costume, and gave her a last chance. She still refused, so he drugged the party’s wine, left the house and then burnt it to the ground with the entire family inside.
Sometimes he said Mass for his men in an underground chapel before galloping out under his black standard to rob and kill. Macfarlane comments, “banditti... will send a knife into your bosom while a crucifix and a reliquary repose on their own.” He also tells us, “Not one of his band could fire his rifle with so sure an aim, or mount his horse like the priest Don Cirò”. Living in caves or the forest toughened him and, always well mounted, he would ride forty miles a night along lonely paths to gravine where he could hide. His amazing escapes convinced the peasants that “the Abate Annichiarico” must be a necromancer protected by demons and they always gave him warning of approaching troops.
Cirò shared the Decisi’s dream of a Carbonari republic, persuading them to ally with another secret society, the Patrioti Europei, and try to build an army. Late one night during spring 1817 two of Church’s officers were riding to Barletta when they saw a light flickering in the distance. The guides claimed it w
as a will-o’-the-wisp, but as the horses approached, the officers hid in the under-growth beside the road. The horsemen halted a few yards away, and they heard them say that Cirò and Gaetano Vardarelli, another brigand leader, were at Castel del Monte to discuss joining forces. Since both were Carbonari supporters and might well have led their united bands in a full scale rising, the government hastily signed a treaty with Vardarelli to prevent a link-up. Cirò immediately offered to clear the Terra d’Òtranto of brigands in return for a similar agreement, but was refused.
Church gave a dinner at Lecce where he publicly promised, “I swear never to rest till I have destroyed Cirò Annichiarico and all his blood-hounds.” He met with constant obstruction, local troops arguing that Cirò was a popular hero. The general had to rely on his Swiss officers and Greek irregulars. Often Cirò left a Masseria or a wood just before their arrival, alerted by peasants. When the soldiers raided a safe-house, the Masseria del Duca near Martina Franca, where he and his brigands had been enjoying a hearty meal, they simply slipped away through the olive groves.
At last, Church learnt that Don Cirò was attending a wedding at San Marzano di San Giuseppe, some miles off the Manduria-Tàranto road. “A mountain village, straggling up and down among crags and walls, the houses jumbled among patches of olives”, is how Church remembered it, “At the top of all a castle, and below the village a belt of woods.” The Marchese Bonnelli’s castle (still there) had been lent for the wedding by a terrified steward. “The bride, a strapping brigandessa, did not depend on her splendid costume, bright eyes, and straight black brows entirely for her conquests”, says the general, “The wine flowed freely, the people gathered round and swore fidelity to Cirò and the Decisi with brimming glasses and ringing cheers.”
However, the troops had followed close on Don Cirò’s heels. After fighting for several hours, the guests surrendered. Including the bride and bridegroom, caught hiding in a cellar, the survivors were taken prisoner to Francavilla Fontana with 130 horses and 2,000 muskets. Among those executed was the bridegroom, who confessed to having committed twenty-three murders. Cirò, however, had escaped on his fast English mare.
Even so, the brigand-priest knew he was doomed. He had already tried vainly to make his peace with the government, and then to take a ship from Brìndisi but he could not find the 2000 ducats demanded by the skipper. He realised too that his friends, the Decisi, were betraying his hiding places. Ten days later he was trapped in the Masseria Scaserba, only ten miles from General Church, who was at Francavilla Fontana. For forty-eight hours, he held out with three companions in the Masseria’s tower, against 130 regular troops and numerous militia, killing or wounding over a dozen of them. Finally, the usual Apulian lack of water forced him to surrender.
Asked by the military tribunal at Francavilla Fontana how many people he had murdered, he replied “E chi lo sa? Saranno tra sessanta e settanta.” (“Who knows? Maybe between sixty and seventy.”) When a fellow-priest offered him the last rites, the Abate Annichiarico declined the offer with a grin: “Lasciate queste chiacchiere! Siamo dell’ istessa professione – non ci burliamo fra noi.” (“Let’s not bother about that nonsense! We belong to the same profession – we don’t want to laugh at each other.”)
On 8 February 1818 he was marched through crowded streets to his death in the main piazza at Francavilla Fontana, which was guarded by troops with cannon. Again refusing the last rites, he was blindfolded and made to kneel down with his back to the firing-squad. After a first volley, he was still breathing, muttering to himself. Later a soldier explained what happened next. “Seeing that he was enchanted, we loaded his own musket with a silver bullet, and this destroyed the spell”. His head was cut off, and displayed with the words, “Here is the head of the chief of assassins, Cirò Annichi-arico of Grottaglie.” Then it was taken away, to be hung in an iron cage above the main gate of Grottaglie, his birthplace.
Shortly after, Church arrested Don Cirò’s betrayers, the council of the Decisi, when they met at Grottaglie to plan the general’s murder. The troops found them sitting beneath a black banner, not a band of brigands filthy from living rough in the gravine, but ten of Grottaglie’s leading citizens, grown rich on extortion and blackmail. They were shot and then beheaded in the same piazza as Cirò.
45
Baroque in the Salento
The Baroque does not know what it wants...
Eugenio d’Ors, “Du Baroque”
THERE IS A MISTAKEN BELIEF that the Baroque in Apulia is confined to Lecce. There are fine examples of Baroque at Apulian cities further north, like the Palazzo del Monte di Pietà at Barletta or the duomo of Monopoli. But it is certainly true that there is far more in the Salento than anywhere else in Apulia. Many of the smaller Salentine cities have churches with wildly extravagant façades and campanili, palazzi with frenziedly elaborate balconies and doorways. Although the style, as at Lecce, sometimes seems to be ornament for the sake of ornament, these are often delightful buildings.
After being destroyed by an earthquake in 1743, the city of Nardò spent over forty years rebuilding itself in imitation of Lecce. Even by Leccese standards the church and convent of San Domenico in the piazza of that name are ornate. The façade of the church, attributed to Tarantino, which survived the earthquake of 1743 was built in two phases; the lower part covered with caryatids typical of the earlier period and the upper very much more restrained. There are attractive little palaces in and around the triangular Piazza Antonio Salandra, like the white Palazzo della Pretura, which has an elegant loggia on the first floor over an open arcade. The guglia of the Immacolata in this piazza erected in 1769, is one of only three in Apulia – the others being at Ostuni and Bitonto. (A guglia is a Neapolitan folly of Austrian origin, a fantastically decorated, free-standing column.) The streets in the city centre are full of ironwork balconies with swags and caryatids.
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 A
bate 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.
An Armchair Traveller's History of Apulia Page 22
