Great Neapolitan Earthquake of 1857/Part II. Ch. XI

by Robert Mallet

CHAPTER XI.

PADULA AND ITS NEIGHBOURHOOD.

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Below the town, and nearly upon the level of the piano, and founded upon the deep clays, stands the monastery of St. Francisco. Its greatest length stood transverse to the general wave-path, and it has suffered much. Its walls present fractures complicated by the double shock; but those whose planes approached a north and south direction, gave good measures of angle of emergence, which appeared a good deal less, down on the deep clays, than up on the rocky eminence of the town.

The average of the measurements taken from fissures and fractures, some of which were in the portions of the monastery seen in Photogs. No. 223 and No. 224 (Coll. Roy. Soc.), gave an emergence of 18° to 20° from the north, or 5 1/2° to 7 1/2° less in the clays than in the limestone rock.

The Syndic of Padula, who accompanied me over the whole place, was of opinion that the great shock came from the northward, but that it was also "vorticoso," or at least in various directions transverse to the main one, and so close together in time, that it was impossible to regard the earthquake (here) as other than a prolonged and irregular succession of oscillations, lasting several seconds, he could not say how many. The second distinct shock was about an hour after that; they had no means of telling the exact time of the occurrence. He heard the sound, he thought, about the same instant that he perceived the first movement. It was "a deep rolling murmur," and lasted as long as the movement. In these statements I found the Judice, and three or four of the better class of inhabitants who accompanied us coincided.

From the town and its neighbourhood I proceeded about a mile and a quarter to the magnificent monastery, the Certosa de St. Lorenzo. Where, then as well as on my return from the country further south and west, I was lodged with a graceful hospitality deserving of record. Within those quiet walls I remained two days for the purpose of writing up my journal from the pencil note-books, whose legibility was not to be trusted, having been written, for four or five days past, under almost continuous rain; and also to examine carefully the many instructive damages which the vast building had sustained. In both of these, I was inconvenienced by severe swelling and acute rheumatic inflammation of the backs of my hands, produced by their constant exposure to the wet, &c.

This noble old monastery (whose size and architectural grandeur rendered it worthy of lodging royalty, before it had been despoiled and defaced, in the French occupation under Murat) is built wholly of 'the best and hardest quality of the white limestone of the higher adjacent mountains, and founded altogether upon the deep clays and gravels of the piano. An eye-sketch plan, of that portion of the whole mass of buildings which I examined seismically, is given in Diagram Nos. 238 and 240. Its architecture will be gathered from the several Photogs., &c. It is shattered and shaken to its foundations in every portion, by the violent effort of the earthquake, and presents characteristics of much more formidable dislocation, than the town of Padula did.

All its walls, its vaulted church, and refectory, and very many other grand roofs, the noble groining of its cloisters, and the painted and richly stuccoed ceilings of its library, and of many a royal chamber, are split, fissured, and falling. The light and the rain now find their way through acres of shattered tiling. Innumerable chimneys, obelisks, parapets, vases, bassi-relievi, statues, are thrown down, disfigured or destroyed. Even the internal framing of the heavy-timbered roofs, has been in several places crushed, by the fall of heavy masses from above. Nearly all the superb columnal arcades around its cloistered courts, are bulged at the groining levels, and lean out towards the court. The groining is split along the soffits in almost every gallery except one, where alone iron tye-bars across the arch-chord (originally placed in all), remained, after the French division that was quartered here; a proof of the value of such bars in seismic construction, as well as in the eye of the brigands that pillaged them.

Opposite the front entrance gate of the monastery, at D, (Diagram No. 240,) but at a considerable distance to the south beyond what the diagram admitted, stands a monument to St. Bruno (Photog. No. 225). The general plane of the structure runs east and west almost exactly. Several of the little obelisks and finials upon it, have been twisted from left to right (looking south at it), or in the same

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direction as the hands of a watch move. Some of its smaller are thrown down.

In the entrance square, within the walls, as seen in Photog. No. 226 (Coll. Roy. Soc.), looking south from the steps S (Diagram No. 240, Fig. 1), the whole of the square pyramidal chimney caps upon the east side building, from B to B, are thrown down, and on to the roof tiling; and several of the balustrades and finials over the mural fountain, in in the centre of the length of this side, are twisted also.

The great axial line of the whole mass of buildings is north 5° W.

The chimney caps B B, 13 in number, are thrown to various horizontal distances, varying between 3 and 5 feet, on to the tiling, as in Fig. 2 (Diagram No. 240), but all with a very nearly uniform direction of 136° E of north. None of the chimney shafts, which stand about 5 feet above the roof, have been overthrown, though some have been shattered at top by the chucking off of the caps, which, like the shafts, are of brick set in mortar.

Entering the front court or square, the campanile is over the south-east corner, as seen in Photogs. No. 227 and 227 bis (Coll. Roy. Soc.), and from the summit, two large balls, of stone, A and B, have fallen, one of which, with its pedestal A, remains buried amidst the broken parts of the roof upon which it descended, while the other, B, failing without its pedestal (which still is in situ), upon a more solid part of the roofing, rolled down over the eave, and described a trajectory from B to B². (Figs. 1 and 2, Diagram No. 238), down into the marble-paved court, breaking the nosing of the step at B³, rolling thence across to B⁴, and striking the base of the fountain, "made a cannon" over to B⁵, where it remains.

In the north-west corner of this square, beneath the arcades of the west side, a statue of the Madonna, standing in a niche, has been twisted on its base, and shifted in a final direction, 115° E of north, as seen in Photog. No. 228 (Coll. Roy. Soc.), and Fig. 3, Diagram No. 240.

Very near the Campanile, but far below its summit level, upon the east gable of the front range of buildings, at F (Fig. 1, Diagram No. 238, and Fig. 4, Diagram No. 240), are two remarkable chimney stalks, one of which has been twisted upon its base, at a horizontal fracture close to the level of the gable, the other standing uninjured.

To the eastward of the front square, the roofs of the church, and of the grand refectory, groined and arched buildings of great magnitude, have been heavily fissured. In the refectory both end gables, (Fig. 239,) run up originally against the ends of the brick vault, have parted off from it, and

present east and west fissures open 3 inches at top on the north, and 1 3/4 inch at the south end, while longitudinal fissures of half an inch to one inch wide run north and south along the soffit. The roof of the church is still more dislocated; both roofs are brick vaults. At the upper end of the refectory the great fresco by Elia, of the Marriage of Cana, is fissured and nearly destroyed. Photog. No. 229 (Coll. Roy. Soc.) shows this, and the great vault fissure at the end.

In the Priors' Square, one of the most richly decorated portions of the monastery, the whole of the buildings are in a falling state, the vaulting of the surrounding arcade being split on each side of the square, the north and south sides, most formidably, and next to these the east side, the front pilasters and the story which they carry above them, all leaning out, and heavily fissured, as in Photogs. No. 231 and No. 232 (Coll. Roy. Soc.)

Entering the great square to the north-east of the last, which in magnitude rather seems the "place d'armes" of some immense "caserne," than the court of a monastery, the groined arcades are similarly fractured; the pilasters and story above, bulging out into the court, are seen from within, and from without, in the line of one of the galleries in Photogs. No. 233 (Coll. Roy. Soc.), and No. 234.

To the westward of the great square, in the private garden of the "Priure," amid much other destruction, a limestone vase has been thrown, from the summit of the south pier of the gate at the west side of the garden, as seen in Photog. No. 230 (Coll. Roy. Soc ), and in Figs. 1, 5, and 6, (Diagram No. 240), the direction of throw 122° E. of north.

The blocks of stone of the pier itself, have been thrown or shoved upon each other, eastward about half an inch, and the whole of both piers more or less dislocated.

I have thus briefly recapitulated the objects to be specially referred to, for the information they convey. The vast mass of buildings, however, presented almost an unvarying spectacle of destruction—few of the walls or roofs actually prostrate, but everywhere fissured, dislocated, and tottering; all their beauty, and magnificence of architectural form and coloured decoration still addressing the eye, but along with gaping rents, that sadly told that their glory was departed; if repair were possible the vastness of the cost precluded it; and thus in a few years hence, the work of one terrible hour, will have made the owl and the bat, the tenants of this Cistercian palace.

Almost the only part of the edifice that has escaped serious injury, is the grand elliptic staircase leading to the park, at the extreme northern end. This noble work, said to have been constructed from a design by Buonarotti, is built of fine sawed ashlar, in the hard white Apennine limestone, everywhere polished withinside. Its preservation seems to have arisen from its form, the support to the north given by the broad flights of steps within and without, and the careful nature of its workmanship.