CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION.



In the preface to "Alps and Sanctuaries" I apologised for passing
over Varallo-Sesia, the most important of North Italian sanctuaries,
on the ground that it required a book to itself. This book I will
now endeavour to supply, though well aware that I can only
imperfectly and unworthily do so. To treat the subject in the detail
it merits would be a task beyond my opportunities; for, in spite of
every endeavour, I have not been able to see several works and
documents, without which it is useless to try and unravel the earlier
history of the sanctuary. The book by Caccia, for example, published
by Sessali at Novara in 1565, and reprinted at Brescia in 1576, is
sure to turn up some day, but I have failed to find it at Varallo,
Novara (where it appears in the catalogue, but not on the shelves),
Milan, the Louvre, the British Museum, and the Bodleian Library.
Through the kindness of Sac. Ant. Ceriani, I was able to learn that
the Biblioteca Ambrosiana possessed what there can be little doubt is
a later edition of this book, dated 1587, but really published at the
end of 1586, and another dated 1591, to which Signor Galloni in his
"Uomini e fatti celebri di Valle-Sesia" (p. 110) has called attention
as the first work ever printed at Varallo. But the last eight of the
twenty-one years between 1565 and 1586 were eventful, and much could
be at once seen by a comparison of the 1565, 1576, and 1586 [1587]
editions, about which speculation is a waste of time while the
earlier works are wanting. I have been able to gather two or three
interesting facts by a comparison of the 1586 and 1591 editions, and
do not doubt that the date, for example, of Tabachetti's advent to
Varallo and of his great Calvary Chapel would be settled within a