Stray Studies from England and ItalyGreene, John Richard
History
Stray Studies from England and Italy
Greene, John Richard
Italy -- Description and travel
There is little interest in the later story of St. Honorat, from the
days of the Saracen massacre to its escape from conversion into a
tea-garden. The appearance of the Moslem pirates at once robbed it of
its old security, and the cessation of their attacks was followed by new
dangers from the Genoese and Catalans who infested the coast in the
fourteenth century. The isle was alternately occupied by French and
Spaniards in the war between Francis and Charles V.; it passed under the
rule of Commendatory abbots, and in 1789, when it was finally
secularized, the four thousand monks of its earlier history had shrunk
to four. Perhaps the most curious of all the buildings of Lerins is that
which took its rise in the insecurity of its mediæval existence. The
Castle of Lerins, which lies on the shore to the south of the church, is
at once a castle and an abbey. Like many of the great monasteries of the
East, its first object was to give security to its inmates against the
marauders who surrounded them. Externally its appearance is purely
military; the great tower rises from its trench cut deep in the rock, a
portcullis protects the gate, the walls are pierced with loopholes and
crowned with battlements. But within, the arrangements, so far as it is
possible to trace them in the present ruined state of the building, seem
to have been purely monastic. The interior of the tower is occupied by a
double-arched cloister, with arcades of exquisite first-pointed work,
through which one looks down into the little court below. The visitor
passes from this into the ruins of the abbot's chapel, to which the
relics were transferred for security from the church of St. Honorat,
and which was surrounded by the cells, the refectory, and the domestic
buildings of the monks. The erection of the castle is dated in the
twelfth century, and from this time we may consider the older abbey
buildings around the church to have been deserted and left to ruin; but
we can hardly grumble at a transfer which has given us so curious a
combination of military and monastic architecture in the castle itself.
Something of the feudal spirit which such a residence would be likely to
produce appears in the abbot's relations with the little town of Cannes,
which formed a part of his extensive lordship on the mainland. Its
fishers were harassed by heavy tolls on their fishery, and the rights of
first purchase in the market and forced labour were rigorously exacted
by the monastic officers. It is curious to compare, as one's boat floats
back across the waters of the bay, the fortunes of these serfs and of
their lords.
SKETCHES IN SUNSHINE.
II.
CARNIVAL ON THE CORNICE.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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