An Armchair Traveller's History of Apulia

by Seward, Desmond

  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.

  46

  A Band of Brigands – the Vardarelli

  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.

  Th
ere 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.”

  When Macfarlane last visited the bridge at Ponte di Bovino in 1824, “General del Caretto has decorated it with the heads and mangled quarters of some half dozen of more modern, but less conspicuous brigands.” He adds that even when there were not organised comitive, the locals lay in wait in the pass: “In some places the hill and the wood, or concealing thicket, is so close to the road on the one hand, and the ravine on the other, that it is really enticing. A shot from the one, and the man’s business is done – and there yawns a dark capacious grave, to receive his body when deprived of what it is worth.”

  Ramage came across brigands four years later, but he was unmolested since they were only interested in rich landowners who could pay a big ransom. Nevertheless, when in 1836 Saverio Mercadante from Altamura wrote the opera “I Briganti”, its theme still remained unpleasantly familiar to Apulians.

  47

  Tarantismo

  St Vitus’s dance and that other one which cured,

  they say, the bite of the Tarentine spider.

  Norman Douglas, “Old Calabria”

  DESPITE TELEVISION and consumer society, a very old Apulia lingers on secretly, with amazing tenacity. Tarantismo is a dramatic example of pagan survival in this ultra-conservative land. An ancient form of therapeutic magic, no doubt familiar to the shamans during the Stone Age, it is popularly supposed to be a cure for the bite of the venomous tarantula. In reality, tarantism is a form of exorcism, a means of healing mental disturbance.

  Because one of its churches is dedicated to St Paul, Galatina is said to be free from snakes and poisonous spiders, although surrounded by mile upon mile of vineyards. Throughout Southern Italy the Apostle Paul is invoked against venomous creatures, since he was unharmed by the viper that bit his hand when he was washed ashore at Malta. This is why the church of S.Paolo at Galatina is a place of thanksgiving for those cured by tarantism.

  Some writers believe tarantismo is a relic of the Bacchic rites but most think it is caused by a bite from a tarantula. In the early eighteenth century Maximilien Misson was fascinated by the affliction:

  The true tarantula resembles a spider and lives in the fields. There are many, it is said, in the Abruzzi and in Calabria, and they are also found in some parts of Tuscany. When bitten by this accursed insect one takes a hundred postures at once – dancing, vomiting, trembling, laughing, turning pale, swooning – and one suffers very greatly. Finally, without help, death follows in a few days. Sweatings and antidotes relieve the sufferer, but the best and only remedy is music.

  Bishop Berkeley records:

  The P. Vicario [Superior of the Theatines at Barletta] tells us of the tarantula, he cured several with the tongue of the serpente impetrito, found in Malta, and steeped in wine and drunk after the ninth or last dance, there being 3 dances a day for three days; on the death of the tarantula the malady ceases; it is communicated by eating fruit bit by a tarantula. He thinks it is not a fiction, having cured among others a Capuchin, whom he could not think would feign for the sake of dancing.

  There was some confusion about the precise definition of a tarantula. Sandys, in his “Relation of a Iourney begun in An. Dom, 1610”, says it is:

  a serpent peculiar to this country; and taking that name from the city of Tarentum. Some hold them to be of the kind of spiders, others of effts; but they are greater than the one, and lesse than the other, and (if it were a Tarantula which I have seen) not greatly resembling either. For the head of this was small, the legs slender and knottie, and the body light, the taile spiny, and the colour dun, intermixed with spots of sullied white. They lurke in sinks and privies, and abroad in the slimy filth betweene furrows; for which cause the country people do reap in bootes.

  Sandys appears to have seen a scorpion.

  Misson (who did not visit Apulia) wrote in 1722 to a certain Domenico Sangenito of Lucera, asking for information. He was told: “They vary in colour and I have seen ashy ones and those of a dark tawny hue, like a flea, and with markings which look like little stars. We have them in the mountains as well as in furthest Apulia, but however their bite does no harm.” Sangenito was apparently referring to a spider. Yet it is likely that the spider exists only in the sufferer’s imagination and is an illusion caused by hysteria.

  “In the seventeenth century the belief in the tarantula bites began to subside, and nothing now remains of tarantismo”, Hare declared in 1882. But two reliable witnesses told us that during the 1980s they had been to Galatina and seen women, and on one occasion a man, dancing to relieve the malady. The tarantolata, or supposed sufferer from the bite, believes the cure can only work if she is surrounded by the right colours and the right tune is played. Red, green, yellow or black are most likely to suit a spider and the music must match its mood, happy or sad. The musicians, who play the violin or guitar battente accompanied by cymbals and an accordian, need a large repertoire to find the right tune, as well as the stamina to go on playing for hours on end. The dancing generally takes place in a room, occasionally in the street. A sheet with a portrait of St Paul is spread on the floor and the tarantolata starts to move in imitation of a spider, while the musicians try various tunes for her. When they find the right one she begins to dance, not alone, but with anyone among her friends who is wearing the spider’s colour. She dances for a few minutes, then takes another partner. At first she dances lethargically, but after a few hours becomes increasingly elated, ending in a state of ecstasy.

  Perhaps half a dozen tarantolate go secretly each year to the church of S.Paolo, to imitate a spider, crawling and running, flinging themselves on the altar. Their torn stockings are left hanging up as votive offerings. The decline in tarantismo seems to be due to fewer people working in the fields, rather than disbelief in the spider’s bite. (One should not confuse the colourful dancing displays for tourists with the real thing.)

  No one has ever been able to give a really convincing expl
anation. The travellers disagree on the details, if not on the importance of colour and music. Some describe the woman as dancing in front of mirrors, others with a drawn sword in her hand. Keppel Craven says she dresses in white and is decked in “ribands, vine leaves and trinkets of all kinds.” He considers the whole thing an excuse for a party:

  While she rests at times, the guests invited relieve her by dancing by turns after the fashion of the country; and when overcome by restless lassitude and faintness she determines to give over for the day, she takes a pail or jar of water, and pours its contents entirely over her person, from the head downwards. This is a signal for her friends to undress and convey her to bed; after which the rest of the company endeavour to further her recovery by devouring a substantial repast which is always prepared on the occasion.

  Janet Ross heard a story which should be a warning for anyone inclined to be sceptical. There was a master mason living near Taranto, who:

  got new-fangled ideas into his head and mocked at the idea of a spider’s bite being venomous, threatening to beat any of his female belongings who dared to try the dancing cure in case they were bitten by a “Tarantola”. As ill-luck or San Cataldo would have it, he was himself bitten, and after suffering great pain and being in a high fever for several days, at last sent for the musicians, after carefully locking the door and closing the windows of his house. But the frenzy was too strong, and to the malicious delight of all who believed in “Tarantismo”, he tore open the door and was soon seen jumping about in the middle of the street, shrieking, “Hanno ragion’ le femine! Hanno ragion’ le femine!” (The women are right! The women are right!)