private reasons, keeping, as it were, their cards close to their chests.
That is also if they hadn’t got wives or mothers or grandmothers taking part in these processions. If they had, and if they had any sense and wanted a quiet life, they would keep a much lower profile and get on with watching TV, or playing briscola , a sort of whist, and not start looking out of the window with that superior expression on their faces.
By now the wind was tremendous. At one point we came out on some ramparts below the Castello and there a savage blast caught the crucifix, bringing the bearers to their knees and almost throwing it the ground, which would have been a malaugurio – and forcing the men carrying the banner to furl it.
Now we were rounding the foot of the keep of the Castello, a huge fortress in which Dante had been put up in 1306, while he wrote some stanzas of the Inferno , as he had apparently been, that same year, in the castle at Castelnuovo di Magra, the one we had seen the first time we had driven up the road from Caniparola, before making one of his mysterious disappearances from circulation. And as we were following this trench-like alley which ran between the dwellings and the walls, we could see the castle domestics looking down on us from overhead.
From now on most of the processional route was downhill. The first and last stop was at the Church of San Remigio in the middle of the town, the principal church of Fosdinovo.
Here the Crucified Christ was taken in, together with the now unfurled banner and followed by the rest of us, for the Adoration of the Cross.
Now the priest sang Ecce Lignum Crucis (Behold the Wood of the Cross), removed his shoes and adored it, prostrating himself three times and finally bending down and kissing the feet on the crucifix. Immediately after this the rest of the congregation went up to the crucifix two by two and prostrated themselves, while a number of Improperia , tender reproaches of Christ to his people, were sung, such as Popule meus, quid feci tibi? aut in quo contristavi te? Respondi mihi. (My people, what have I done to thee? or in what have I grieved thee? Answer me.)
The interior of the church was painted in a cold, bluish-grey colour, as cold as the air inside the church, and our breath smoked. Originally a Romanesque church, it had been destroyed by fire in 1600 and rebuilt as a baroque church by the Marchese Pasquale Malaspina with large numbers of magnificent side chapels, ornamented with alternating smooth and twisted Corinthian columns. It also had a barrel roof decorated with an abundance of frescoes but these were all destroyed in the fighting for the Gothic Line in the last year of the war when the town was bombarded.
In it under a Gothic arch, high up to the left of the altar, near the presbytery, was the tomb of Galeotto Malaspina, feudal lord of the region – the Malaspina acquired the castle in 1340 – and he died in 1367. Wearing armour his effigy reclined on a marble tomb chest, its panels ornamented with bas-reliefs.
Much higher still above the altar there was another marble effigy, carved by an unknown sculptor in the fourteenth century,the seated figure of San Remigio, patron saint of Fosdinovo, otherwise St Remigius, Bishop of Reims. Said to be the greatest orator of his age, on Christmas Day AD 496, he baptized Clovis, King of the Franks in the cathedral there, with the greatest imaginable pomp and ceremony, and the words, ‘Bow thy head meekly, O Sicambrian. Adore what thou hast burnt and burn what thou hast adored.’ (The Sicambrian cohort of the Franks was raised by the Romans on the spot where Budapest now stands.) Some of the bones of the saint were kept in the church at Fosdinovo in a silver reliquary ornamented with branching candlesticks.
For us this was the end of the procession. Now Christ was dead. We were all wet and cold but when I turned to offer Attilio a lift down the hill to I Castagni, he was nowhere to be seen and
That is also if they hadn’t got wives or mothers or grandmothers taking part in these processions. If they had, and if they had any sense and wanted a quiet life, they would keep a much lower profile and get on with watching TV, or playing briscola , a sort of whist, and not start looking out of the window with that superior expression on their faces.
By now the wind was tremendous. At one point we came out on some ramparts below the Castello and there a savage blast caught the crucifix, bringing the bearers to their knees and almost throwing it the ground, which would have been a malaugurio – and forcing the men carrying the banner to furl it.
Now we were rounding the foot of the keep of the Castello, a huge fortress in which Dante had been put up in 1306, while he wrote some stanzas of the Inferno , as he had apparently been, that same year, in the castle at Castelnuovo di Magra, the one we had seen the first time we had driven up the road from Caniparola, before making one of his mysterious disappearances from circulation. And as we were following this trench-like alley which ran between the dwellings and the walls, we could see the castle domestics looking down on us from overhead.
From now on most of the processional route was downhill. The first and last stop was at the Church of San Remigio in the middle of the town, the principal church of Fosdinovo.
Here the Crucified Christ was taken in, together with the now unfurled banner and followed by the rest of us, for the Adoration of the Cross.
Now the priest sang Ecce Lignum Crucis (Behold the Wood of the Cross), removed his shoes and adored it, prostrating himself three times and finally bending down and kissing the feet on the crucifix. Immediately after this the rest of the congregation went up to the crucifix two by two and prostrated themselves, while a number of Improperia , tender reproaches of Christ to his people, were sung, such as Popule meus, quid feci tibi? aut in quo contristavi te? Respondi mihi. (My people, what have I done to thee? or in what have I grieved thee? Answer me.)
The interior of the church was painted in a cold, bluish-grey colour, as cold as the air inside the church, and our breath smoked. Originally a Romanesque church, it had been destroyed by fire in 1600 and rebuilt as a baroque church by the Marchese Pasquale Malaspina with large numbers of magnificent side chapels, ornamented with alternating smooth and twisted Corinthian columns. It also had a barrel roof decorated with an abundance of frescoes but these were all destroyed in the fighting for the Gothic Line in the last year of the war when the town was bombarded.
In it under a Gothic arch, high up to the left of the altar, near the presbytery, was the tomb of Galeotto Malaspina, feudal lord of the region – the Malaspina acquired the castle in 1340 – and he died in 1367. Wearing armour his effigy reclined on a marble tomb chest, its panels ornamented with bas-reliefs.
Much higher still above the altar there was another marble effigy, carved by an unknown sculptor in the fourteenth century,the seated figure of San Remigio, patron saint of Fosdinovo, otherwise St Remigius, Bishop of Reims. Said to be the greatest orator of his age, on Christmas Day AD 496, he baptized Clovis, King of the Franks in the cathedral there, with the greatest imaginable pomp and ceremony, and the words, ‘Bow thy head meekly, O Sicambrian. Adore what thou hast burnt and burn what thou hast adored.’ (The Sicambrian cohort of the Franks was raised by the Romans on the spot where Budapest now stands.) Some of the bones of the saint were kept in the church at Fosdinovo in a silver reliquary ornamented with branching candlesticks.
For us this was the end of the procession. Now Christ was dead. We were all wet and cold but when I turned to offer Attilio a lift down the hill to I Castagni, he was nowhere to be seen and
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