DOI Kapitel:
Chapter V: To the West of Naples
DOI Seite / Zitierlink:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.59000#0176
To the West of Naples
The church of Piedigrotta, which lies to our right
before we reach the Grotto itself, is extremely old in
its history. Boccaccio, in a letter written to a friend
from Naples, swears by “ the Madonna di Piedigrotta,”
showing that it must have been a common enough term
in the fourteenth century. The name itself may have
arisen from the lowness of the near Grotto, which
admitted at one time foot passengers only.
But it was not until Charles III.’s time that the
famous Parade, which may be seen represented in two
pictures of the eighteenth century in the Museum of
San Martino, was instituted. It lasted on and off till
i860, when, I believe, Garibaldi intervened and its
character was changed. The poetic feature of the
great Festa belongs, however, to a time only about
half a century ago. Until 1835, at least, nothing
approaching a chorus had existed ; and the sudden
birth of it in that year is sufficiently illustrative of the
wild enthusiasm of the Neapolitan people, and the way
in which a small incident will arouse it.
There lived at that time a certain Don Rafaello
Sacco, born in 1787, who had grown up in the very
midst of the horrors of the closing century. He
loved to improvise light verse ; but the writing of
poetry was no more a lucrative business in those days
than it is now in Naples, where the two best-known
and most popular poets cannot draw a livelihood from
their works. So Sacco took to the study of optics,
and became celebrated for the invention of a machine
directed towards discovering forgeries in stamps, seals,
85
The church of Piedigrotta, which lies to our right
before we reach the Grotto itself, is extremely old in
its history. Boccaccio, in a letter written to a friend
from Naples, swears by “ the Madonna di Piedigrotta,”
showing that it must have been a common enough term
in the fourteenth century. The name itself may have
arisen from the lowness of the near Grotto, which
admitted at one time foot passengers only.
But it was not until Charles III.’s time that the
famous Parade, which may be seen represented in two
pictures of the eighteenth century in the Museum of
San Martino, was instituted. It lasted on and off till
i860, when, I believe, Garibaldi intervened and its
character was changed. The poetic feature of the
great Festa belongs, however, to a time only about
half a century ago. Until 1835, at least, nothing
approaching a chorus had existed ; and the sudden
birth of it in that year is sufficiently illustrative of the
wild enthusiasm of the Neapolitan people, and the way
in which a small incident will arouse it.
There lived at that time a certain Don Rafaello
Sacco, born in 1787, who had grown up in the very
midst of the horrors of the closing century. He
loved to improvise light verse ; but the writing of
poetry was no more a lucrative business in those days
than it is now in Naples, where the two best-known
and most popular poets cannot draw a livelihood from
their works. So Sacco took to the study of optics,
and became celebrated for the invention of a machine
directed towards discovering forgeries in stamps, seals,
85