Nineteenth Week in Ordinary Time

NINETEENTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME

I always love being by the seaside, even the Italian, with its rather ridiculous beach clubs – only a tiny public beach and the rest covered in rows of blue deck chairs and beds and shade from a glaring sun.

But the sea is warm and I miss it as we drive during the late afternoon to Lucca. I cannot see the attraction of sitting by a noisy swimming pool, so I cycle into Lucca and amazingly find the evening mass at St Paulinus. It is all in Italian but luckily there is a mass sheet so I can follow bits.

After supper in the piazza, a magical ride with Mary through the empty dark streets of Lucca, gliding past these ancient buildings.

MONDAY

I visit the cathedral of Lucca: all wandering tourists but kneel in front of the black cross, the source of pilgrimage in the Middle Ages, the best part of the visit to the cathedral, which is too museum-like, even if the Tintoretto Last Supper is incomparable.

Then an amiable drive through the increasingly hilly Tuscan countryside to Pignano.

WEDNESDAY

We went for a drive to the Santo Antino monastery, then on to the Benedictine monastery at Monte Oliveto, twenty-six kilometres south west of Siena.

St Antino is still a working monastery, with a small group of French monks serving it. Set in a valley of vineyards the abbey church has an austere Cistercian grandeur.

We drove on to Monte Oliveto, a very different place. A vast set of buildings set in a countryside of stone called Le Crete. The abbey church there is a baroque disappointment but the Chiostra Grande is a wonder. It is entirely surrounded by frescoes detailing the life of St Benedict undertaken by Il Sodoma and Luca Signorelli at the end of the sixteenth century. I am reading Benedict’s life at present but it is much more inspiring to view it by fresco as generations of new monks have done.

Here are all the scenes of this beloved story: the rich young nobleman at school in Rome towards the end of the fifth century; he sets off for his hermitage at Subiaco; the Devil tempts him; he performs miracles such as the mending of the sieve; he helps people with their problems (someone who is over-ambitious for office, the poor sinner in debt); and here is described his death.

How much more lovely to read a man’s life in pictures than in text.

“Come Benedetto fa tornare nel manico uno roncare che era caduto nel fondo del cago.”

THURSDAY

I do a long drive to Assisi. It is hot and busy on the Italian race tracks and people are irritated. But I spend a quiet two and a half hours in the Basilica. At first I am just a tourist, listening to the audio guide about the Giotto frescoes but then the atmosphere seeps into the soul. You go down steps through the cloister and into the lower basilica and finally into the crypt chapel and the tomb of St Francis. The crowds are large, a continuous stream of people, yet prayerful and respectful; many people just sitting quietly in the pews.

I sit next to a Franciscan monk who blesses me. Sitting again quietly in the upper basilica, the frescoes have a new force. It is healing and peaceful to see St Francis giving away his very clothes and lending his cloak to the poor knight. It is so much better to pray a fresco than just see it as another art object, a fairly primitive one at that

FRIDAY

We walked for three hours to San Giminignano. It is of course the number one tourist trap in Italy so it is nice to spend three hours walking there through a national park, looking at the sunset. Of course the church was closed but if you walk up the ramp and look through the metal grille you can see a nice fresco of the Annunciation.

SATURDAY

What can one say about the Uffizi, the scale of the collection of Italian art dwarfs anything in the Louvre or the National Gallery. The beauty of the Filippo Lippi Virgin and Child is stunning or in the Annunciation in the first room – Mary reels back in shock and anguish – and of course Leonardo’s Annunciation which once I attempted to paint as a copy. But when it comes to religious art, keeping them in rooms in galleries is rather sad. It is the message that is important.