THE " SANTITARIO " OF SAVONA.
SAVONA is not in itself a place of great interest. It has fine views of sea and mountains, formal squares, streets of heavy arcades, handsome buildings ; the shops are practical and unattractive ; the guardians of the churches do not encourage strangers. After a drive through the wonderful romance and beauty of the Riviera di Ponente, Savona seems at first rather a tame conclusion. But this impression passes away with a visit to its " Santuario," the curious place of pilgrimage in the Valley of San Bernardo, where the religious poetry and sentiment of Savona seem to have retired three or four miles into the mountains. The road, raised on one bank of a stony river-bed, varied with mills and washerwomen, runs winding up the rocky valley, through which the line of railway from Savona to Turin also runs, higher on the same left bank. As is the way with these valleys, the scenery grows wilder and more beautiful as we ascend. At a turn in valley and river, stands the picturesque village of San Bernardo, its church-spire white against the mountains. Not far above, another valley runs into this one : a mountain brook comes down to join the thin brown stream of the river, flowing right under the curious platform of buildings to -which we are bound. We drive up over the bridge into a large square of white and grey buildings, with trees, leafless now, and a fountain playing in the sun: Two or three old men, on this warm March day, are sitting on white benches outside the doors of the great many-windowed house on the right. A priest comes out of the dark open door of the church, which stands white and shining, with a certain stateliness, across the principal side of the square ; he strolls quietly across to talk to the old mien. It is all very still in the warm afternoon, and only certain ranges of stables and sheds in the background suggest that it is not always as lonely and peaceful as to-day.
This church has been a famous place of pilgrimage since some time in the sixteenth century, when the Virgin Mary herself appeared to a poor man on the hill above. The people of Savona at first refused to believe in his story, and were only convinced by miracles, after which they built the present Church, and the great hospital for the poor which adjoins it, in honour of our Lady. The darkness of the church is dazzling at first, as one goes into it from the sunshine, but very soon one is sufficiently used to it to see all the riches.of the interior. Walls encrusted with precious marbles, festoons of gold and silver hearts, the votive offerings of generations, as well as the curious votive pictures of which the side chapels are full,— our Lady appearing to the rescue in every kind of sickness, or accident by sea or land. When we went in, the sacristan and his helpers were busy pulling up to the front of the choir an immense double festoon of gold and silver hearts, a very difficult affair, which meant a great deal of pulling, rattling, and talking. When this was at last arranged, the sacristan obligingly showed us a very pretty " Presenta- tion of the Virgin" by Domenichino, a marble bas-relief of " The Salutation," by Bernini, and the chapel under the choir, the richest part of the church, with its glitter of marbles and offerings, and the marble statue of our Lady, hidden from common view by a screen. After this, the sacristan had done with us, and as the church, with all its splendour, did not feel like a place to linger in, we went out again into the sunshine, and climbed a stony path behind, which brought us up by gradual windings to the top of the hill, the scene of that famed appearance in the sixteenth century. And not of that only : the poor countryman was not the only person honoured in this spot, if we are to trust the inscription cut in marble above the door of the little chapel on the hill :—
" La Vergine Madre della Misericordia volgendo it rx. lustro dalla sua apparizione, it mattino dell 18 Marzo fu vista su quests colle dal P. Agostino da Genova, Cappuccino, in atto di benedire al clero e al popolo.—A monument° del nuovo prodigio quests tempietto eresse Pietro Paolo do' Franchi, Patr : Genov : l'an 1680."
The morning of March 18th. We were very near the exact anniversary, then, of the day on which Padre Agostino of
Genoa was so highly honoured. He, praying on this little mountain-top, had the same surroundings in Nature as our- selves to-day. The tempietto was not built, it is true ; and it now seems almost a part of Nature, a piece of the mountain, this little octagonal pink and grey chapel, with its domed grey roof, its old red door, its loophole window, through which one can see the decent and graceful arrangements of its altar, with the little
white muslin cloths lying on the rail. This little stone court was not there, perhaps, with its low wall on the edge of the rocky slope, and its red wooden cross on a pyramid of stone. But the colour and atmosphere all round, the warm sun and clear air, were probably the same on that March day two hundred years ago.
This gentle sunshine falls on a great circle of terraced hills, brown and purple and green, with valleys breaking off in two or three directions. The rocks, cropping out constantly, near and far off, are grey and green and red ; they are very rugged, and stained with lichen to the loveliest colours ; on the purple rocks it is grey-green, and orange on the grey. A few olive- trees are scattered on the hill-sides, but they are small, and very different from those we have left behind us. Down from
a valley a stream comes rushing through the purple shadows of the hills, all shadowed themselves by passing clouds ; this stream, the same which runs under the church, fills the air with its monotonous song. Looking down towards Savona, one sees the pretty spire of San Bernardo, with its background of hills ; and just below us is the white Santuario with its yellow campanile, from which a bell, as we listen, slowly and loudly
strikes four.
The grey and yellow houses in the valley seem themselves like part of the hills. There is perfect stillness all round, except the rushing of the river. The little chapel, with all its marks of care and reverence, stands alone upon its hill-top ; the whole place and country, in the warm afternoon light, has the solemn feeling that seems naturally to belong to the time of dawn, when the world lies very still, waiting for the day. And down in the courtyard, before the great poor-house, the old people come out to sun themselves, and to watch the splashing of their fountain. If this Sanctuary is not really a holy place, it feels wonderfully like one, and those old men and women ought to be happy. Probably they are happy, being Italian, at least when the sun shines.
As we drove down the valley on our return to Savona, the afternoon changed; great rain-clouds came mounting up over the hills, and a cold wind whistled down their gorges. It seemed that we had left the Sanctuary and its own especial weather behind in a different world.
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