Ventimiglia—Internecine conflicts—Republics—Genoa obtains the Ligurian coast—Siege of Ventimiglia—Guelf and Ghibellines—The Lascaris family: Paul Louis Lascaris—The Cathedral and Baptistery—S. Michaele—Camporosso—Dolceacqua—Bordighera—San Ampelio—Relics—Retreat of the sea.

VENTIMIGLIA, crowning a rocky ridge above the Roya, was formerly the capital of a county comprising of all the coast to Porto Maurizio. What Mr. Adington Symonds says of Italian towns generally in the Middle Ages applies equally to those on the Riviera:—

“It would seem as though the most ancient furies of antagonistic races, enchained and suspended for centuries by the magic of Rome, had been unloosed; as though the indigenous populations, tamed by antique culture, were reverting to their primeval instincts. Nor is this the end of the perplexity. Not only are the cities at war with each other, but they are plunged in ceaseless strife within the circuit of their ramparts. The people with the nobles, the burghs with the castles, the plebeians with the burgher aristocracy, the men of commerce with the men of arms and ancient lineage, Guelfs and Ghibellines, clash together in persistent fury. One half the city expels the other half. The exiles roam abroad, cement alliances, and return to extirpate their conquerors. Fresh proscriptions and new expulsions follow. Again alliances are made and revolutions are accomplished. All the ancient feuds of the towns are crossed, recrossed, and tangled in a web of madness that defies analysis.”[18]

Certain prominent and prevailing features pertain to this portion of the Ligurian seaboard. The towns, even the villages, are planted in spots as inaccessible as could be obtained; they were all walled about in the rocks whereon they stood, and were so crowded within their walls that the “high street” does not attain to a width beyond nine feet, and every lateral street is six feet and even less in width. The houses run to a great height, and hold themselves up mutually by throwing out buttresses, arched beneath, for their stay one against another. The inhabitants of the seaboard were driven to this by fear of the Moorish pirates.

These little communities organised themselves as republics, with their consuls, freely elected. But the nobles, living in their castles, looked upon them with jealous eyes. They had their serfs under them, and they saw that these villages and towns were growing in consequence and in wealth. Unhappily every town was at enmity with every other town—each was jealous of the other; and the nobles offered their services, generally to a distant town against that nearest at hand. When they had served against the rival place, they asked for, and were allowed, a town residence. Then the palace of the noble in the walled city, or even village, became a centre of intrigue. Parties were formed in every town, and the nobles and wealthy burghers arrogated to themselves supreme control over the affairs of the place. This led to revolts and fighting in the streets. On the Ligurian coast, the Republic of Genoa stepped in, took advantage of these civic broils, and, by plausible assurances of good government under her strong hand, managed to get nearly the whole seaboard, with its towns, under her protection. The protection Genoa afforded soon turned to exaction and interference with the liberties of the towns she protected. Thenceforth ensued a series of revolts.

Ventimiglia, which was a place under the rule of its count, was taken and sacked by the Genoese in 1140, and its count constrained to make submission. The mouth of the Roya, with its harbour, excited the jealousy and ambition of Genoa, as did in like manner Nice and Villefranche; for Genoa desired to monopolise the whole of the trade of the Mediterranean along the Ligurian coast and Corsica. Allies and friendly towns could traffic freely with Genoa; but the ships of independent states were taxed, and their freights almost crushed by onerous duties, before they could enter the port. The sea-coast towns like Ventimiglia and Villefranche, not under Genoese control, were a hindrance to the control and monopoly of the entire trade by the grasping Republic, consequently the Genoese were persistent in their attempts to force them to submission.

In 1196 the count and the Genoese combined against the city of Ventimiglia, and failing, in spite of a siege of two months, to capture the town, they organised a league of the whole of Liguria against the gallant and resolute place. The allies established their camp on the Cape of S. Ampelio and ravaged the country, but could not reduce Ventimiglia. Then the Genoese spread a report that a large Ventimiglian galley which had been cruising off the Spanish coast had been captured, and that all the crew would be hung unless the town surrendered. The Ventimiglians, in great alarm for their kinsmen, submitted, and the Genoese entered and took possession of the town.

In the year 1238 ensued a general rising in places of importance along the coast occasioned by the intolerable exactions of Genoa, and its interference with the liberties of the towns. The governor of Ventimiglia took refuge in the castle and sent a messenger to Genoa for help.

Fourteen Genoese galleys were despatched to his aid, and hovered about the mouth of the Roya. After a severe conflict, the Genoese succeeded in landing and taking the city. At this time a number of the citizens migrated and founded a colony at Bordighera, but of this the Genoese disapproved, and they sent a fleet in 1239 and destroyed the little settlement. The contests of Guelfs and Ghibellines broke out, to aggravate the disorder and misery of the country.

Some clear-headed men saw that Italy was, like ancient Greece, a congeries of conflicting atoms with no bond, no consistence, and no chance of becoming a nation, a power, that no chance existed of domestic strife being stayed unless there were some strong central government to hold all the jarring elements in compulsory quietude. They looked back to the grand days of Rome, and hoped, under an emperor, to make of Italy once again what she had been, a dominant power in the world, and one in which, within her Italian borders, peace would be maintained. This was the Ghibelline dream and policy. But the opposed faction was for the maintenance of the present disintegration, the continuance of the independence of every little town, or rather of its own party in the town. The Pope naturally was zealous on this side. He dreaded an united and strong Italy, which would control him. His only chance of occupying the most prominent place and exerting the greatest power in the Peninsula lay in fomenting disorder, in setting every princeling and every town by the ears. Accordingly, whilst posturing as champion of the liberties of the republics, he was actuated solely by self-interest, which lay in keeping all powers in Italy weak by periodical blood-letting. The Papacy was the great and persistent enemy to national unity. The party of independence was that of the Guelfs.

Frederick II. united the empire and the kingdom of the Two Sicilies under one sceptre. Master of the South, he sought to recover the lost prerogatives of the empire in Lombardy and Tuscany, and it is probable that he would have succeeded and consolidated Italy into one kingdom but for the bitter hostility of the Papacy, which carried on an implacable war of extermination against the house of Hohenstaufen. The struggle was for an united Italy, a strong Italy, a peaceful Italy, and this was precisely what the Popes would not endure to have. They dreaded the formation of a single kingdom in Italy, with, as a consequence, the presence there of a rival and predominant power. But this purpose of the Popes was not seen clearly at the time. Dante saw it; he knew that the future of Italy was involved in the contest, and he could not understand aloofness in the strife. He terms those who did not feel the pangs and ecstasies of partisanship in this mortal strife, “wretches who never lived,” and he consigned them to wander homeless on the skirts of limbo, among the off-scourings of creation.

Banners, ensigns, heraldic colours, followed the divisions of faction. Ghibellines wore the feathers in their caps on one side, Guelfs on the other. Ghibellines cut up their fruit at table crosswise, Guelfs straight down; Ghibellines sported white roses, Guelfs affected those that were red. Yawning, throwing of dice, gestures in speaking, and swearing, served as pretexts for distinguishing the one half of Italy from the other. So late as the middle of the fifteenth century, the Ghibellines of Milan pulled down the figure of Christ from the high altar of Crema, and burnt it, because the face was turned towards the Guelf shoulder.[19] The Grimaldi were strong Guelfs; the county of Nice was so as well, but the town was Ghibelline. The Lascaris of Tende and Ventimiglia, the Dorias of Dolceacqua and Oneglia were Ghibelline.

The county of Ventimiglia had been formed in 778 by Charlemagne, and given by him to a Genoese noble, Guido Guerra, with the title of Marquess of the Maritime Alps, on condition that he should maintain at his own cost a company of soldiers to defend the littoral within his Marquisate. The county passed in the thirteenth century to William, son of the Greek Emperor Lascaris II., of NicÆa, who married the heiress and descendant of the Guido Guerra family. But William Lascaris soon after ceded the county to Charles of Anjou, in exchange for diverse other fiefs in the interior of Provence, amongst others that of TourvÈs, between Brignoles and S. Maximin, where may be seen the ruins of the noble castle of the Lascaris. In 1266, Charles of Anjou, in his turn, ceded the county of Ventimiglia to the Grimaldi and Fieschi, consuls of the Republic of Genoa, on the condition that they should furnish provisions and munitions to the ProvenÇal troops occupying the kingdom of Naples.

The county of Tende was founded by Charles of Anjou for the Princess Irene, daughter of Theodore Lascaris, and sister of the above-mentioned William, when she married Robert Guerra of the family of the Counts of Ventimiglia, and Robert then abandoned his patronymic of Guerra and assumed that of Lascaris. The county of Tende subsisted till 1579, and was then ceded by Henrietta, Duchess of Maine, last descendant of the Lascaris-Guerra to Emmanuel-Philibert, Duke of Savoy.

Theodore Lascaris I. had married Anna, daughter of Alexis III., and he was chosen Emperor of Constantinople at the time when the Crusaders occupied Byzantium and founded there a Latin empire, under Baldwin of Flanders, 1204. Theodore was constrained to fly into Anatolia and make of NicÆa the capital of the Greek empire; so it remained till the expulsion of the Latins in 1261. The only daughter of Theodore Lascaris I. married John Ducas, who succeeded to the Empire of NicÆa. Ducas died in 1255, leaving a son, Theodore Lascaris II., who died in 1259, and his eight-year-old son John remained to be the victim of the unscrupulous Michael PalÆologus, who had his eyes torn out. This John had, however, five sisters, and one of these, Eudoxia, in 1263 married William, Count of Ventimiglia; and another, Irene, became, as already said, the mother and ancestress of the Lascaris Counts of Tende. The Lascaris arms are: gules, a two-headed eagle displayed, or.

Paul Louis Lascaris, who entered the Order of Malta, belonged to the Ventimiglian branch of the family. He was born in Provence in 1774. He was on the isle when Napoleon appeared before Malta in 1798. Hompesch was Grand Master, a weak old man; the knights of the Order might easily have defended the island till the English fleet under Nelson came to its aid, but French gold and promises had created a party of traitors within; of these Lascaris was chief, and on June 11th La Valetta capitulated. “On my word,” said General Caffarelli, “it is well that there was someone inside to unlock the gates to us, for otherwise we should never have got in.”

After his treason Lascaris did not venture to remain in Malta, but attended Bonaparte to Egypt. Upon the rupture of the Treaty of Amiens in 1803, Napoleon, having resolved on attacking the English in India, commissioned Lascaris to go to the East, there make the necessary studies for the execution of his plan, and explore the frontiers, map down roads, wells, etc. Whilst Lascaris was in the East he married a beautiful Georgian akin to Soliman Pacha. In 1810 he visited in succession the Arab tribes in Mesopotamia, and turned his face homewards in 1814. On reaching Constantinople he heard of the fall of Bonaparte, and departed for Cairo, where he died shortly after, and all his notes and maps fell into the hands of the British consul there. All known of his adventures in the East comes from a narrative given to the world by his dragoman Fatalba.

Ventimiglia is not only in itself a marvel of picturesqueness, occupying a ridge above the Roya, but its situation, with the sea before and the snow-clad Alps behind, is exquisitely beautiful.

The streets are narrow, as space was precious, but the Strada Grande is lined with quaint old houses of the city nobility and well-to-do citizens, and have marble balconies, their sculptured entrances, and heraldic decorations. The cathedral occupies a terrace, with the palace of the Lascaris having an open loggia and staircase on one side of the piazza. The cathedral, dedicated to S. Barnabas, fondly deemed to have founded it, is a fine church of the thirteenth century, vaulted without groining ribs. Beneath it, at the east end, is the very early baptistery, unhappily remodelled in the seventeenth century. This contains a huge stone baptismal basin, with stage inside on which children could stand, whereas it is deep in the middle for adults. Two recesses are at the sides; one of these is for the priest performing the ceremony. In the vestries are portraits of the bishops, several in surplice and rochet, looking very much like English prelates.

But more interesting even than the cathedral is S. Michaele, at the farther end of the town, a church of the twelfth century, with a rich west doorway, having on the capitals a range of quaint carving of human beings. The church is vaulted in the same manner as the cathedral. Beneath the choir is a crypt, one pillar of which is a milestone from the Via Aurelia, of the time of the Emperor Antoninus. A slab in the floor bears rich early interlaced work.

The side aisles of this church had fallen into ruin, but have been judiciously restored, along with the body of the church.

Outside the walls of the town, towering above it, are the remains of a castle, which is held to date from Roman times, but which was enlarged, altered, and mainly rebuilt in mediÆval days.

At Camporosso, up the Nervia, is a little church of the early part of the twelfth century, now serving as chapel to the cemetery. It has apse and tower of this period; the rest has been rebuilt. It is constructed of rolled stones from the river-bed. The roof consists of slabs of nummulite limestone.

Above Camporosso on the Nervia is Dolceacqua.

“After winding through woods of olives, carpeted in spring by young corn and bright green flax, Dolceacqua suddenly bursts upon the view, stretching across a valley, whose sides are covered with forests of olives and chestnuts, and which is backed by fine snow mountains. Through the town winds the deep blue stream of the Nervia, flowing under a tall bridge of one wide arch, and above frowns the huge palatial castle, perched upon a perpendicular cliff, with sunlight streaming through its long lines of glassless windows. The streets are almost closed in with archways, which give them the look of gloomy crypts, only opening here and there to let in a ray of sunlight and a strip of blue sky. They lead up the steep ascent to the castle where the Doria once reigned as sovereign princes.”[20]

An electric tram connects Ventimiglia with Bordighera. This latter place is unceremoniously dismissed by Hare in these words: “The town contains nothing worth seeing.” The statement is certainly incorrect. Old Bordighera contains a good deal that is worth seeing—the quaint town gates, the steep and picturesque streets, and the glorious view from the little piazza before the church. There also by the seaside is the chapel of S. Ampelio with its cave, in which the apostle of the district lived and died.

Little authentic is known of S. Ampelio, for there is no early life of him extant. Tradition says that he was a blacksmith from the Thebaid, who left Egypt and settled here. His bones were carried off in the twelfth century to San Remo, and thence later to Genoa. The fÊte of S. Ampelio is on May 14th. The chapel was enlarged and restored in 1852.

The transfer of the relics of S. Ampelio to San Remo exhibits a curious feature of mediÆval enthusiasm. In 1140 the citizens of San Remo, at war with Ventimiglia, took a number of the townsmen prisoners. They would release them on one condition only, that they should reveal where were secreted the bones of S. Ampelio. The Ventimiglians, to obtain their liberty, betrayed the secret; the old hermit had been laid in the grotto he had inhabited during his life. Thereupon the people of San Remo carried off his body.

What is the peculiar fancy for possessing a few pounds of phosphate of lime? Whence comes the devotion to relics?

S. Chrysostom tells us of pilgrims travelling from the ends of the earth to Arabia to see Job’s dunghill, and he says that they drew “much profit and philosophy” from the sight.

One can understand how that certain churches should be greedy to possess relics, and steal, or even invent them, because the possession brought money into their coffers; but the money would not have come had there not been, deep-seated in the hearts of the people, a conviction that there was something supernatural, a divine power surrounding and emanating from these relics.

For my own part I think it is a survival of the worship of ancestors that existed among the prehistoric races of Europe. We know that to them the sepulchre, the dolmen, the kistvaen, the cairn, were the most holy spots in the world, the centres of their common life, the tie that bound a clan together. When these primeval people became absorbed in conquering races, and adopted other religions, they carried along with them the cult of old bones and ashes. The ancestor was forgotten, and the spiritual father, the saint, took his place, and the worship of the dead was transferred from the ancestor of the tribe to the apostle of the new religion in the district.

Bordighera was founded in 1470 by thirty-two families, who migrated to it from Ventimiglia. There was, however, at the time some portion of walls standing, and these new settlers completed the enclosure, and squatted within.

At one time, perhaps even then, the sea came up to the foot of the rock, where are now orange and lemon orchards, but the current that sets from west to east along this coast filled it up. On digging, the old sea-shore is found, and the name Bordighera signifies a creek provided with stakes and nets for catching fish.

Bordighera is happy in having had an exhaustive historian, Mr. F. F. Hamilton (Bordighera and the Western Riviera, London, 1883), and this work is supplemented by Mr. W. Scott’s Rock Villages of the Riviera, London, 1898, by which he means the villages built upon rocky heights. He describes only such, however, as are near Bordighera. This book will be a help to such as desire to make excursions from that winter resort, and these two works together render it unnecessary for me to enter more fully into the history of Ventimiglia and its offspring Bordighera, and into minute description of them and their neighbourhood.