Old Calabria by Norman Douglas
page 260 of 451 (57%)
page 260 of 451 (57%)
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of Turner or Claude Lorraine. . . .
For the college, as befits its grave academic character, stands by itself among fruitful fields and backed by a chestnut wood, at ten minutes' walk from the crowded streets. It is an imposing edifice--the Basilean convent of St. Adrian, with copious modern additions; the founders may well have selected this particular site on account of its fountain of fresh water, which flows on as in days of yore. One thinks of those communities of monks in the Middle Ages, scattered over this wild region and holding rare converse with one another by gloomy forest paths--how remote their life and ideals! In the days of Fiore (1691) the inmates of this convent still practised their old rites. The nucleus of the building is the old chapel, containing a remarkable font; two antique columns sawn up (apparently for purposes of transportation from some pagan temple by the shore)--one of them being of African marble and the other of grey granite; there is also a tessellated pavement with beast-patterns of leopards and serpents akin to those of Patir. Bertaux gives a reproduction of this serpent; he assimilates it, as regards technique and age, to that which lies before the altar of Monte Cassino and was wrought by Greek artisans of the abbot Desiderius. The church itself is held to be two centuries older than that of Patir. The library, once celebrated, contains musty folios of classics and their commentators, but nothing of value. It has been ransacked of its treasures like that of Patir, whose _disjecta membra_ have been tracked down by the patience and acumen of Monsignor Batiffol. Batiffol, Bertaux--Charles Diehl, Jules Gay (who has also written on San |
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