"You really should see it," the guy said. "It's the most beautiful place in Florence, especially at sundown. It's way up there, but even the kids made the climb," he told us retirees. "You can do it." Maybe a wink.
He wasn't wrong. The Abbey of San Miniato al Monte offered a most grand panorama of all things Florentine.
And he was right that a bunch of retirees could make it all the way up the hill. We did, although there was, at least for me, some question. Just simply to arrive was a religious experience, a pilgrimage in reverse, not a blessing but a test of faith. All those stairs reminded me of Luther, on his knees at Wittenburg, his cloak in shreds, right there determining the time had come for revolution.
By the time you walk through the door of your fifth or sixth Italian cathedral, on'es sheer astonishment is proportionally decreased. Even though guidebooks insist San Miniator Church is one of the most beautiful cathedrals in Florence, it's hard to go all agog when your lungs are prune-sized and you're sweating like a blacksmith on the Chisholm Trail.
Yes, The Abbey of San Miniato al Monte was gorgeous, unfailingly so.
But we'd come for Gregorian Chants promised by a tourist guide. We'd ascended all those stairs to hear the music sung here since the 1200. Yes, you read that number right. But nothing was happening really, and the time the chanting was supposed to begin passed without announcement.
So we went downstairs to a chapel whose altar was strangely protected from the public by an iron gate. And there we waited. And waited. And waited--mostly, in silence. Here and there enough movement suggested that something-or-other was in the offing, so we waited longer, until a monk or two finally appeared, recited the mass in Latin and sang, the real thing, the Gregorian chants sung here almost forever in The Abbey of San Miniato al Monte.
For as long as we'd been in Italy, we'd lived in the chambers of the very heart of the Roman Catholic Church, its theology, traditions, and culture. It's difficult to explain exactly how it felt, right then, to witness the monks in a thousand year-old liturgy and listen to haunting melodies echo throughout the stone walls of the Abbey.
James Joyce, the Irish novelist, had more than his share of problems with the church. For most of his life, he stayed away from the mass, from the nourishment of the host, of the body and blood of Christ. When his mother was dying, he went to her bedside; and she asked him if, for her sake alone, he could attend to the sacrament--for his dying mother's sake.
Joyce thought about what it was she wanted, about how his receiving the host would be a blessing to his mother. But he decided against it and told her he wouldn't because he couldn't, not because he wanted to hurt her, not that at all. He couldn't because he felt he would be profaning a ritual so sacred that his participation would do the sacrament disservice.
And thus--or it so it's always seemed to me--James Joyce, in his refusal, may well have honored the sacrament more than many hundreds who participated that day without giving the bread and wine a second thought.
I couldn't help thinking of James Joyce when we were up there at the top of the hill above Florence, in a darkened chapel where two monks did what has been done way up there in the Abbey for more than a thousand years, the sacrament Joyce honored, oddly enough, by his refusal to participate.
That's the music I heard up there at the mountain top. That's who and what I thought of through the chanting. That's what I experienced at The Abbey of San Miniato al Monte.
Honestly, when I left, I felt blessed. All those steps--they're much easier going down.
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