Daily prayers in the Kingdom Season with USPG: (7) 11 November 2023

The Duomo, facing the Piazza Vescovado) is the spiritual and social centre of Ravello (Photograph: www.ravello.com)

Patrick Comerford

In this time between All Saints’ Day and Advent Sunday, we are in the Kingdom Season in the Calendar of the Church of England, and tomorrow is the Third Sunday before Advent (12 November 2023) and Remembrance Sunday.

The Calendar of the Church of England in Common Worship today (11 November) remembers Saint Martin (ca 397), Bishop of Tours.

Before today begins, I am taking some time for prayer and reflection early this morning.

In recent prayer diaries on this blog, my reflections have already looked at a number of Italian cathedrals, including the cathedrals in Amalfi, Florence, Lucca, Noto, Pisa, Ravenna, Saint Peter’s Basilica and Saint John Lateran, Rome, Siena, Sorrento, Syracuse, Taormina, Torcello and Venice.

So, this week, my reflections look at some more Italian cathedrals, basilicas and churches in Bologna, San Marino, Pistoia, San Gimignano, Mestre, Sorrento and Ravello.

Throughout this week, my reflections each morning have followed this pattern:

1, A reflection on an Italian cathedral or basilica;

2, the Gospel reading of the day in the Church of England lectionary;

3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary.

Entering the duomo in Ravello through the museum on a side street on the north side of the cathedral (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

The Duomo, Ravello:

Ravello on the Amalfi coast is a small town (population 2,500), but it was once an independent city state and today it is a Unesco World Heritage site. It is known for its beautiful views of the coast below, for the Ravello Festival and for the Villa Rufolo, built in 1270, and its gardens.

Boccaccio mentions the villa in his Decameron, it inspired Richard Wagner’s stage design for his opera Parsifal (1880), and it was there DH Lawrence wrote part of Lady Chatterley’s Lover.

But visitors often miss out on Ravello’s much older duomo or cathedral on the other side of the square, built in 1080 in a combination of Baroque and Romanesque styles with the support of the Rufolo family. The duomo, dedicated to the Assumption and Saint Pantaleone, h has undergone extensive modifications and restorations over the past 900 years. The shining white façade dates back to the last major restoration in 1931.

The entrance to the cathedral has two bronze doors depicting 54 scenes of the life and Passion of Christ. The doors, which were temporarily removed for restoration in 2010, were built in 1179 by Barisano da Trani. These bronze doors are one of only two dozen pairs of bronze doors in Italy, three of them by Trani.

Although the cathedral was being prepared for a wedding on the afternoon I was visiting, I was welcomed inside, entering through the museum on a side street on the north side of the cathedral.

Inside, the cathedral’s richly ornamented interior is a riot of sculpted white marble, which holds a third century sarcophagus, marble slabs decorated with mosaics, and the skull of Saint Barbara. Behind the altar, there is a vial that is said to hold the blood of Saint Pantaleone, the town’s patron saint, and a fragment of the hand Saint Thomas placed in the side of the Risen Christ.

But the gems in the cathedral are the two 13th century, decorated, marble pulpits in the central nave, adorned with glittering mosaics: the Gospel Pulpit on the right of the central nave, and the Epistle Pulpit on the left.

The Gospel Pulpit, dating from 1272, displays dragons and birds on spiral columns, supported by six carved lions, and the heraldic arms of the Rufolo family who built the Villa Rufolo, with profiles of family members above the doors of the pulpit. The Epistle Pulpit depicts the story of Jonah and the Whale.

The Chapel of Saint Pantaleone the Healer commemorates a third century physician who was beheaded on orders of the Emperor Diocletian after he converted to Christianity. The chapel has a small phial of the saint’s blood, which is said to liquify every year on 27 July, the anniversary of his martyrdom. The chapel also has a silver bust of the town’s venerated saint.

The benefits of learning a new language go beyond mere words

Saying it with meaning on Ryanair, in more ways than one (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2017)

Patrick Comerford

One of the joys of travel is engaging in another language and being surrounded by languages I have never learned. Although its is almost 40 years since I was a student in Japan, I can still count to four in Japanese, exchange basic formalities like Good Morning, Please and Thank You, and still mimic some of the subway announcements I heard in the commuter rush in Tokyo.

At first, I used to take phrasebooks with me on every new venture. Eventually I gave up on this exercise in Europe when I found both Magyar or Hungarian and Turkish confusing and impenetrable.

But the experience of being surrounded by foreign languages begins these days long before landing in another country. I noticed on one recent flight, the variety in expressive uses of language on one ‘No Smoking’ notice.

While that notice says in English, ‘Smoking is not permitted onboard this aircraft,’ the French equivalent says, ‘Smoking is prohibited on this plane.’ Failing to comply with the law in English becomes an outrage against the law in French, and not showing respect for the law in Italian.

Wine and Drugs … perhaps something was lost in translation in Ravello (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Anyone who tries to learn another language knows it is not enough to learn the vocabulary and try simply to replace the words with their equivalent. Translation programmes such as Google Translate not only miss nuance and subtlety, but also miss out on beauty and grace.

Stumbling and struggling

A taste of Italy and a taste of Italian in Bologna (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2017)

I should admit that I am not a linguist and I am not good at learning languages. I barely managed to scrape through with a pass on the pass paper in Irish in the Leaving Certificate, despite having spent a month in Ballinskellings in the Kerry Gaeltacht a few years before. But I sat four languages for the Leaving Certificate – English, Irish, Latin and Spanish – and later studied both Biblical and Classical Greek, which have minor uses when trying to order food and drink off a menu in modern Greek.

I grew up often hearing the phrase ‘the Greeks have a word for it.’ But sometimes in Greece I struggle to find the words for flowers and everyday fruits, although there is no need to – every Greek in resorts and shops speaks fluent English, and I speak very poor Greek.

Starters on a Greek menu … not to be confused with a covering letter (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2017)

I try – but usually struggle, very badly – to read menus in restaurants in Greece in Greek and in Italian in Italy. But sometimes I can get it wrong, often with humorous consequences. One night last summer, in a restaurant in Crete, a menu opened with ψωμί με Συνοδευτικά (psomí me sinodeftiká). Why would I be interested in bread with a covering letter? But starters are also ‘little things brought together.’

School Latin and school Spanish provided basic tools for making sense of menus, signs, newspapers and even legal notices in a variety of other languages, including Romanian, Italian and French. But despite my poor abilities in learning a new language, I enjoy attempting in what must sound gibberish to make myself understood.

Reduced to apologies

I got the wrong trains to and from Viareggio because of my bumbling Italian (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

I never learned French at school. But on an early journey to Paris in my 20s, I was coached carefully and sent into a shop to buy a present. Hesitantly, I explained, ‘Excusez-moi, je ne parle pas français. Parlez vous anglais?’ I got a quick response that I knew immediately and instinctively meant, ‘I understand you perfectly, how can I help you in French?’ I blushed and was reduced to the conversational competence of a two-year-old, pointing and making silly sounds.

On one holiday, I insistied on making myself understood by rail staff who probably had better English than my Italian. I managed to get the wrong train – not just once, but twice … on the same day. Well, it was the right train, but on the first journey it was going in the opposite direction, and on the last journey that day I was going in the right direction, from Viareggio to Florence, but by another route that bypassed the stop I needed.

For Catalans in Barcelona, Spanish is often a foreign language (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

On another occasion, I apologised in a restaurant in Barcelona, explaining that I did not speak adequate Spanish and had learned it in school, a long time ago. ‘Same here,’ came the response, ‘I don’t speak Spanish; I had to learn it in school too, but that was a long time ago. I speak Catalan.’ Restaurateur 1, Patrick 0.

The benefits of French

English is heavily indebted to Greek, French and other languages (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2017)

I was surprised on a train from Brussels to Bruges, as the language for announcements changed from French (Walloon) to Dutch (Flemish). After that early experience in Paris in the 1970s, I had expected Dutch sounds would be easier to the ear of an English-speaker.

English resembles French in more ways than we realise. About 20 to 25 per cent of English vocabulary is based on French; other estimates say about 60% of our English vocabulary comes either directly from French or through a Romance language, when we include words from Gaulish and Germanic languages such as Old Frankish. Until the late Middle Ages, French remained the language of the ruling class in both England and Ireland, while ordinary people continued to speak in dialects based largely on Saxon or Irish.

8, The Greeks have more than one word for it, and sometimes more than one word … a café in Rethymnon (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2017)

In conversation to this day, many of our polite words are still based on French, while the words in ordinary conversation can have Anglo-Saxon roots. Beef comes from the French boeuf, while cow is an Anglo-Saxon word; poultry has French roots, while chicken has Anglo-Saxon roots.

Which all goes to explain how we are talking about the same thing when we say someone else has a very rich Anglo-Saxon vocabulary but can ask of ourselves ‘Pardon my French.’

Whatever it is called, the food on holidays always seems to taste better (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2017)

While I was working as a journalist, I often enjoyed sitting around at the end of a working day with international colleagues, enjoying multilingual exchanges and conversations. We hardly needed to know precisely what someone else was saying, but we made up for linguistic weaknesses because of context, facial expressions, body language and the responses, whether in humour or in anger.

To this day, I can understand a lot more that is said to me in another language than I can say myself.

Many names and many words in Siena … but they all mean wine in Tuscany (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

But the two European languages that have completely floored me are Hungarian or Magyar and Turkish.

Even reading road signs in long journeys across Hungary proved difficult. Although Hungarian is not an Indo-European language, it has many words from Slavic and Turkic languages, and from German too. But while the English alphabet has 26 letters, Hungarian has 44.

Hungarian has no grammatical gender, so while there is one pronoun (ő), there are no separate words for ‘he’ and ‘she.’ Instead of prepositions such as ‘from’ and ‘with’ in English, Hungarian has suffixes that are added to the end of main words. In this way, ‘From Budapest’ becomes ‘Budapestről,’ and ‘with Barbara’ in English becomes ‘Barbarával’ in Hungarian.

Another feature of Magyar is vowel harmony. In addition, the stress is always on the first syllable of words.

Coffee in Cappadocia … the word is loanword from Turkish (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

For its part, Turkish is the most widely spoken of the Turkic languages, with 60 to 65 million native speakers in West Asia, mostly in Anatolia, and a further 10 to 15 million in south-east Europe, mostly in East and West Thrace, but also in significant numbers in Greece, Cyprus, Bulgaria, the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Germany. Although Turkey is not a member state of European Union, Cyprus has already asked the EU to make Turkish an official EU language.

The characteristic features of Turkish include vowel harmony, agglutination, and, as with Hungarian, the lack of grammatical gender.

The lion on the rectory door in Dundela that inspired CS Lewis … Aslan’s name is the Turkish word for lion (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Despite these complexities, Turkish loanwords have been appearing in the English language since the late Middle Ages. They include Balaclava, Balkan, bulgur, caïque, cassock, coffee, doner kebab, kiosk, lackey, tulip, turquoise and yoghurt. Even Aslan, the lion in the Narnia chronicles by CS Lewis, takes his name from a Turkish loanword.

Avoiding the literal

Tulips in the rectory garden in Askeaton … tulip is a Turkish loanword (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2017)

There is no such thing as a literal translation. Trying to translate poetry from one language into another is almost impossible. In the same way, idioms are rendered meaningless in translation. The Swedish saying ‘to slide on a prawn sandwich’ means to have an easy life. What would a non-English speaker think when I say something is as rare as hen’s teeth? … although the French say ‘quand les poules auront des les dentes.’

Trying to translate Biblical, theological and liturgical texts needs even greater subtlety and sensitivity given that people’s beliefs, faith and practice are involved.

A phrase like ‘saved by the skin of my teeth’ comes from a mistranslation of a passage in the King James Version of the Bible: ‘My bone cleaveth to my skin and to my flesh, and I am escaped with the skin of my teeth’ (Job 19: 20). The original phrase refers to the thin porcelain exterior of the tooth, rather than the gums. In other words, Job escaped with his teeth, but just barely. Job is comparing the narrow margin of his escape with the shallow ‘skin’ or porcelain of a tooth, the equivalent, I suppose, of a ‘hair’s breadth.’

We speak at times of the ‘wrath of God.’ But wrath is not a Biblical word, it is an Anglo-Saxon word. Yet Isaiah’s words would not have the same impact if they were translated as saying, ‘Behold the day of the Lord comes with irritation’ or ‘with pique’ (Isaiah 13: 9).

A hairdresser’s shop in Rethymnon … liturgy has many meanings beyond liturgical worship in Greece (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

The Orthodox think many of the problems with Saint Augustine’s thinking derives from his distinct lack of knowledge of Greek. But one of the major divisive arguments in the Roman Catholic Church today is the imposition of a literal translation from Latin into English of liturgical texts, robbing them of their ability to be dynamic and poetic.

The word liturgy (λειτουργία, leitourgía) is Greek and means ‘the work of the people,’ referring even to the rowdy, the masses or the populace, and not just the polite people. But in Greece ‘liturgy’ is not necessarily a sacred word, and is neither technical nor purely theological. Supermarkets and shops in Greece have signs that regularly announce ‘Opening Hours’ as ores leitourgías (ώρες λειτουργίας) – the hours of service, or the hours for serving the public.

The story is told of a tourist who once asked whether there is a Greek word that translates mañana. The Greek who was asked the question thought long and pondered for a while on the word αύριο (avrio), but then replied: ‘Yes, but it does not convey the same sense of urgency.’

Everyday Greek has at least four different words for blue, so that blue can be seen by Greeks as four distinct colours. It is never too late to learn a new language. It can be enriching, and it could be a very exciting New Year’s resolution.

Turquoise jewelry on sale in Turkey, the land of turquoise (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

This feature was first published in January 2018 in the ‘Church Review’ (Dublin and Glendalough) and the ‘Diocesan Magazine’ (Cashel, Ferns and Ossory).

Which way to Maroulas? … signs can be confusing in any language (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2017)

Art for Advent (23): ‘Ten Saints’ by Giovanni D’Angelo D’Amato

Ten saints depicted on two panels of a 16th century predella in Ravello by Giovanni D’Angelo D’Amato (Photographs: Patrick Comerford, 2013)

Patrick Comerford

While I was travelling through the Sorrento and Amalfi region of Italy earlier this year, I was delighted to find that each town and city had its own cathedral or duomo, and that each duomo, almost invariably had its museum, often with a treasure of art works collected locally but largely unknown beyond the locality.

Typical of these cathedrals is the Duomo in Ravello. Although Ravello is a small town with only 2,500 inhabitants, it is known for its annual opera festival and the town is a Unesco World Heritage site that includes the Villa Rufolo, where the gardens inspired the setting for Wagner’s Parsifal.

The Duomo in the town centre was originally built in 1086, although the later façade dates from the 16th century. Inside, there is a pair of striking pulpits.

The cathedral museum has a small but interesting collection of religious artefacts, and I have chosen two 16th century paintings from this museum as my choice of Art for Advent this morning [23 December 2013].

These two paintings, which are oil on wood, are the work of Giovanni D’Angelo D’Amato, and are part of a polyptych he painted for the Trinity Benedictine Monastery in Ravello, depicting the Transfiguration, Our Lady of the Rosary, and the Mysteries of the Rosary.

The abbey was suppressed in 1812, and the Benedictine nuns there were moved to the Monastery of Salerno. However, the convent and its possessions became the property of the Church of Saint Michael the Archangel in Torello. Later, the paintings were later moved from Torello to the cathedral museum in Ravello.

This morning’s paintings form a predella that depicts an array of saints and martyrs.

The first painting depicts (from left):

1, Saint Benedict, the founder of western monasticism.
2, Saint Hieronymus or Jerome, who translated the Bible into Latin (the Vulgate).
3, Saint Augustine of Hippo, one of the first systematic theologians; in a famous sermon, Saint Augustine said: “God was made man, that man might be made God.”
4, Saint Aniello, an Italian Franciscan saint.
5, Saint Pantaleon, a fourth century martyr who was the patron of medicine.

The second painting depicts (from left):

6, Saint Francis of Assisi.
7, Saint Leonard, a sixth century abbot and the patron of prisoners.
8, Saint Mary Magdalene.
9, Saint Scholastica, the twin sister of Saint Benedict.
10, Saint Ursula, who was martyred on a pilgrimage to Rome; she was from south-west Britain, and is shown here with the flag of England, the cross of Saint George.

I have not chosen these paintings because of their tenuous associations with Christmas – Saint Francis is credited with creating the first Christmas crib, while Saint Leonard was converted to Christianity at Christmas 496. Instead, I have chosen them because, with only two days to go to Christmas we should remember that our Christian faith has been handed down through the centuries by saints and martyrs, by faithful monks and nuns, by bishops and theologians, by writers and translators, and by the whole heavenly company.

Our Christmas celebrations should never forget how the faith has been passed on down the generations, often at a cost but always by people who trusted more in advent of the Kingdom of God than in the present attractions of the kingdoms of this world.

And these saints remind us that the Incarnation is an ever-present reality. As Saint Augustine once said: “Do not grieve or complain that you were born in a time when you can no longer see God in the flesh. He did not in fact take this privilege from you. As he says, ‘Whatever you have done to the least of my brothers, you did to me’.”

Tomorrow: ‘The Nativity,’ by Edward Burne-Jones

Four cathedrals and a missed opportunity for mission in Italy

Everyone wants to squeeze into the Piazzetta in Capri town, which is crowded by day and by night (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2013)

Patrick Comerford

The Piazzetta, in the heart of Capri town, is crowded by day and by night, with available space packed. The square buzzes with life, as the café tables fill what is officially known as Piazza Umberto I, and tourists crane their necks, hoping to catch a glimpse of preening glitterati and glamorous celebrities who can afford to holiday here while day trippers return to the resorts before evening falls.

I Faraglioni ... Capri’s striking offshore rock stacks that soar out of the sea (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2013)

Everyone who comes to Capri wants to see I Faraglioni, the striking offshore rock stacks that soar out of the sea, and the Blue Grotto or Grotta Azzurra. Others want to see the Villa San Michelle, the home of Sweden’s best-known writer Axel Munthe, the site of the Villa Jovis, the luxurious home of the decadent Emperor Tiberius, and the Giardini di Augusto, once owned by the German industrialist Krupp. And some come to see the villa that inspired Gracie Fields lived as she sang On the Isle of Capri.

Everyone who comes to Capri seems to end up in the Piazzetta, enjoying the blue sea below or simple “people watching.”

The best views of the square – and of other people – are from the top of the flight of steps leading up to Santo Stefano, Capri’s former cathedral, built in the square in the 17th century, on the site of a sixth century Benedictine monastery. The church was built in Capri’s flamboyant baroque style, with small cupolas, vaulted ceilings and molded chapels. The cathedral clock tower and the archbishop’s palace nearby are now used as the Municipio or town hall.

Around the corner from the square, the façade of Santo Stefano is squeezed into a narrow side street. Inside, the inlaid marble floor surrounding the main altar includes fragments from the Villa Jovis, and the treasures include a silver statue of San Costanzo, the island’s patron.

But few tourists get to see inside the former cathedral. Outside, a sign warns people against sitting on the steps, and the church opens in the evening only. By then, the last day-trippers have caught the hydrofoils and ferries back to Sorrento and Naples, leaving behind only the rich and the famous who can afford the high prices of Capri’s hotels.

Peace and calm in the gardens of the Villa San Michele (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2013)

It seems the church in Capri is missing a great opportunity for welcome and mission. Instead, we communed with nature in the gardens of the Villa San Michele, and said our prayers in the chapel in a small cemetery in Anacapri on the corner of Via Cimitero and Via Caproscuro.

The grave of Major John Hamill from Co Antrim in Anacapri (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2013)

In a quiet corner of the Cimitero acattolico di Capri – literally “the non-Catholic Cemetery of Capri” – we came across the grave of Major John Hamill from Co Antrim, who was killed on 4 October 1808 while fighting with the British garrison resisting Napoleon’s invasion of Capri. The first plaque was placed on his grave by his kinsman, John Hamill, on 3 October 1831, and the grave was restored in 1914, after an appeal in The Irish Times, by the military historian and philanthropist Sir Lees Knowles, who was also involved in the Guinness Housing Trust.

Ravello’s pair of pulpits

Ravello is known for its beautiful views of the coast below (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2013)

If we were disappointed by the closed doors of Santo Stefano, we found warmer and heartier welcomes in three other cathedrals during our week in the Sorrento and Amalfi area: the cathedrals in Ravello, Amalfi and Sorrento.

Tiny Ravello (population 2,500) is known for its beautiful views of the coast below, for the Ravello Festival and for the Villa Rufolo, built in 1270, and its gardens. Boccaccio mentions the villa in his Decameron and it inspired Wagner’s stage design for his opera Parsifal (1880).

Preparing the cathedral in Ravello for a wedding (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2013)

But visitors often miss out on Ravello’s much older Duomo or cathedral on the other side of the square, built in 1080. The entrance to the cathedral has two bronze doors depicting 54 scenes of the life and Passion of Christ. These bronze doors are one of only two dozen pairs of bronze doors in Italy.

Although the cathedral was being prepared that afternoon for a wedding, we were welcomed inside, entering through the museum on side street on the north side of the cathedral.

The ‘Gospel Pulpit’ in Ravello is supported by six roaring lions (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2013)

Inside, the cathedral’s richly ornamented interior is a riot of sculpted white marble, which holds a third century sarcophagus, marble slabs decorated with mosaics, and the skull of Saint Barbara. Behind the altar, there is a vial that is said to hold the blood of Saint Pantaleone, the town’s patron saint, and a fragment of the Saint Thomas placed in the side of the Risen Christ.

But the gems in the cathedral are the two 13th century, decorated, marble pulpits in the central nave, adorned with glittering mosaics: the Gospel Pulpit on the right of the central nave, and the Epistle Pulpit on the left.

The ‘Epistle Pulpit’ in Ravello tells the story of Jonah and the Whale (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2013)

The Gospel Pulpit, dating from 1272, displays dragons and birds on spiral columns, supported by six roaring lions, and the heraldic arms of the Rufolo family who built the Villa Rufolo, with profiles of family members above the doors of the pulpit. The Epistle Pulpit depicts the story of Jonah and the Whale.

Wedding bells in Amalfi

Behind Amalfi’s lively seafront is an attractive small town with narrow alleyways and hidden courtyards (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2013)

Earlier that day, down on the coast below Ravello, we visited Amalfi, once an independent Byzantine republic, then from 839 to 1135, one of Italy’s four great maritime republics with a fleet to rival the naval powers of Pisa, Genoa and Venice. Later, it was the Knights of Saint John were founded here. Today it has a lively seafront but it is an attractive small town, with narrow alleyways, hidden courtyards and a population of 5,500 – before the tourists and day-trippers arrive in the morning, or once they have left in the evening.

Amalfi also claims to be the home of Flavio Gioia, an imaginary 14th century mariner and inventor who never existed but who, nevertheless, is said to have perfected the compass and to have determined the direction of true north.

The Cloister of Paradise is enclosed by rows and colonnades of Moorish-style, white, slender, interlaced columns (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2013)

A few steps north of the statue of Flavio Gioia on the seafront, the town’s main square, Piazza Duomo, is dominated by Amalfi’s Duomo or cathedral which stands over the town centre at the top of a steep flight of steps.

At the top of the steps, this cathedral also has an impressive pair of bronze doors, dating from 1066, but originally from Constantinople.

But the cathedral in Amalfi is, in fact, a pair of cathedrals: the Duomo di Sant’Adrea (Cathedral of Saint Andrew) and the older Duomo del Crocifisso (Cathedral of the Crucifixion). Beside the paired cathedrals is the Chiostro del Paradiso or Cloister of Paradise, and below the crypt with relics of the Apostle Andrew.

Once again, although the cathedral was preparing for a wedding, I was welcomed and allowed to enter through the Cloister of Paradise. This was once ancient cemetery of the nobility of Amalfi, and is enclosed by rows and colonnades of 120 Moorish-style, white, slender, interlaced columns erected in 1266.

The cathedral dates from 596, but the original cathedral now serves as a museum. The newer cathedral, built in 1100, was originally in Romanesque style, concealed by the sumptuous baroque reordering of the 18th century.

The shrine of Saint Andrew in the crypt in Amalfi’s cathedral (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2013)

In the crypt below, the cathedral claims its greatest relic – the head and bones of Saint Andrew, the first Apostle. During the Fourth Crusade in 1204, the head and bones were removed from a church in Constantinople by the papal envoy, Cardinal Pietro Capuano, and were buried in the crypt in Amalfi in 1208.

To this day, a crystal phial is placed on top of the sepulcher on some days in the church calendar for the past 750 years, and a dense liquid is collected. But similar sepulchers and similar miracles are claimed in Rome and in Patras in Greece. The “miracle of the phial” overshadows the other treasures of the crypt, including statues by Michelangelo and Bernini.

The atrium in Amalfi is built of striped marble and stone in a mixture of Spanish baroque, Moorish-Arabesque and Italian Gothic styles (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2013)

As the wedding was about to begin, I stepped out into the extravagant atrium, built of striped marble and stone in a mixture of Spanish baroque, Moorish-Arabesque and Italian Gothic styles, with open interlaced arches. Below me spread the delights of Amalfi as the clock in the campanile above chimed mid-day. The bride had arrived to applause from tourists and shopkeepers and was climbing the 62 steps covered with a long red carpet to.

Sorrento’s cathedral and cloisters

The cathedral in Sorrento is used by local Anglicans on Sunday afternoons (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2013)

The fourth cathedral we visited was the Cattedrale dei Santi Filippo e Giacomo (Cathedral of Saint Philip and Saint James) in Sorrento (16,500 people). It is used at 5 p.m. on Sunday afternoons by the local Anglican community, which is linked with Saint Mark’s Church in Naples, as well as Bari and Capri.

Although it was the height of summer, the parish was between incumbents, the parish website was down, and there was no Anglican service that afternoon. But we were not disappointed.

The Nativity scene inside the main doors of Sorrento’s cathedral is on display all year (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2013)

Yet again, this cathedral, which stands halfway along the Corso Italia in the heart of the town, has 12th century doors from Constantinople. It was first built in the 11th century was rebuilt in the Romanesque style in the 15th century, and has a marble altar, pulpit and throne dating from the 16th century. It seems as it is forever Christmas in this cathedral, for the large presepio just inside the main doors is on display all year.

The Franciscan Cloisters, beside the Villa Comunale in Sorrento (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2013)

Away from the buzz of Piazza Tasso and tourist attractions of the Marina Grande and Marina Piccola, once again we found peace and quiet the shady gardens of the Villa Comunale and the 13th century cloisters next door to the Franciscan church, shortly before yet another wedding ceremony began.

Offering a warm welcome

The closed doors and the cold reception at Santo Stephano in Capri reminded me of a similar experience many years ago in Santorini, where I was stunned into silence as I watched a priest brush tourists off the steps of the church as they watched the setting sun. He had missed an opportunity for mission once again. With a little imagination, he could have affirmed their joy in God’s creation, and invited them in to pray and see the church once the sun had set.

Both experiences were in sharp contrast to the open doors we experienced in other three small towns, and with the liturgical and cultural vitality we experienced later this summer in Christchurch Cathedral, Dublin, and Saint Canice’s Cathedral, Kilkenny.

In those two Irish cathedrals, the dean and the community know visitors are neither a nuisance nor an easy source of income through entry charges. Cathedrals and their liturgical and cultural life are at the heart of the ministry and the mission of the church; otherwise, they are in danger of being irrelevant to the life of the world around us.

A secret garden with a decorative majolica wall in the courtyard of the Casa Grande Correale, the 18th century Correale Mansion, in Sorrento (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2013)

Canon Patrick Comerford is Lecturer in Anglicanism, Liturgy and Church History, the Church of Ireland Theological Institute. This essay and these photographs were first published in October 2013 in the Church Review (Dublin and Glendalough) and the Diocesan Magazine (Cashel, Ferns and Ossory).

Three weddings and some cathedrals on the Amalfi coast

Looking down on the Amalfi coast from Ravello (Photograph: Patrick Comerford (2013)

Patrick Comerford

I spent Saturday [6 July 2013] along the Amalfi Coast, which stretches along the southern coast of the peninsula east of Sorrento.

With its steep shoreline, towering cliffs, rocky outcrops, hairpin bends, with the shimmering blue sea below and one pretty coastal town or pastel-coloured village after another, the Amalfi Coast is a popular location for motor advertising shots and the weekend traffic also showed how this a popular destination for both Italians and the thousands of tourists staying in the Naples and Sorrento area.

I had no mid-life-crisis, open-topped red sports car for today’s journey. Instead, I travelled by coach with the four dozen or so people in our group along the only land route on the Amalfi Coast – the 40 km stretch along the Strada Statale 163, running along the coastline from Positano in the west to Vietri sul Mare in the east.

The rocks of Sirenuse ... home to the Sirens who may have given their name to Sorrento (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2013)

Below us in the blue sea for the most part of the journey we could see the tiny islands that form Li Galli Archipelago. United the 19th century there were known as Sirenuse and the said to be the home of the mythical Sirens who lured sailors unto the rocks and who may have given their name to Surrentum or Sorrento.

In the 10th and 11th centuries, the Duchy of Amalfi was an independent statelet based on the town of Amalfi. This coastline was part of the Principality of Salerno, until Amalfi was sacked by the Republic of Pisa in 1137.

The Amalfi Coast is known for limoncello, a liqueur produced from locally-grown lemons (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2013)

In 1997, the Amalfi Coast was listed as a Unesco World Heritage Site and as a cultural landscape. This area is also known for limoncello, a liqueur produced from lemons grown between February and October in the terraced gardens along the coast.

After the unification of Italy, the Amalfi coast has enjoyed a huge economic revival, boosted in the late 20th century by international tourism.

Our first stop was in Positano, a village and commune , mainly in an enclave in the hills leading down to the coast. It was a port in the mediaeval Amalfi Republic.

The church of Santa Maria Assunta has a dome made of majolica tiles and a 13th century Byzantine icon of a black Madonna. According to local legend, the icon was stolen in Byzantium and was being shipped across the Mediterranean by pirates when a terrible storm blew up in the sea near Positano. The frightened sailors heard a voice on board saying: “Posa, posa!” (“Put down! Put down!”) The sacred icon was taken off the boat and carried to the fishing village, and only then the storm abated.

Positano prospered in the 16th and 17th centuries. However, by the mid-19th century, the town had fallen on hard times, and more than half the population emigrated, mostly to Australia.

By the first half of the 20th century, Positano was a relatively poor fishing village. It began to attract large numbers of tourists in the 1950s, especially after John Steinbeck published his short story ‘Positano’ in Harper’s Bazaar in May, 1953.

“Positano bites deep,” he wrote. “It is a dream place that isn’t quite real when you are there and becomes beckoningly real after you have gone.”

After we gone through Positano and stopped briefly on the eastern edge of the town for the panoramic view and freshly squeezed orange juice and once again at a ceramic shop at Grotta dello Smeraldo before continuing on to the harbour town of Amalfi.

I had an internal debate between boats and architecture: would I go on a boat trip with the others out into the Bay of Salerno? Or would I visit the Duomo in Amalfi on my own?

The portico of the Duomo di Sant’Andrea looks down onto the Piazza Duomo below (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2013)

I plan to visit Capri on Monday, so architecture won the day today, and I climbed the broad steep steps to the Duomo di Sant’ndrea. And I was just in time too, for a wedding was about to begin, and by the time the boat-trippers returned the bride had arrived and the cathedral was closed to visitors.

The Cloisters of Paradise with their ornate Moorish-style colonnades (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2013)

The cathedral doors were cast in bronze in Constantinople in the 11th century. But the entrance to the cathedral is through the beautifully named Chiostro del Paradiso or Cloisters of Paradise, with its ornate Moorish-style colonnades of white-washed, interlaced arches, palm trees, and inner garden.

The cloisters lead into the museum in the former Basilica di Crocifissio, with bare walls and an eclectic collection of ecclesiastical artefacts, including a bishop’s sedan chair made in Macao in the 18th century, along with paintings, mitres and vestments.

The richly decorated ceiling of the crypt below the Duomo in Amalfi (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2013)

Steps lead down to the crypt, with its richly decorated baroque ceiling and a shrine containing the body of Saint Andrew, who gives his name to the cathedral above. The apostle’s body was brought to Amalfi by the Knights of Saint John of Jerusalem, who brought it here in 1204, having plundered it in Constantinople which contains.

The body is buried deep beneath the shrine – although the saint’s head is in Patras in Greece – but the shrine includes a small vessel placed above the coffin to catch a miraculous fluid that is said to flow from the saint’s body ever since the 14th century.

Away from the bustle of the square in the front of the cathedral and back from the busy beach and harbour, the back streets and the stepped side streets were quiet and cool in the mid-day sun.

From Amalfi, we climbed up through the cultivated terraced mountainside and the hairpin bends to Scala, where we had lunch in the Margheritta Hotel, in a balcony looking down on the road we had had climbed in our two small buses.

The ornate Gospel pulpit in the Duomo in Ravello (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2013)

From Scala, we travelled back down to Ravello, once an independent city state. This was also the setting for part of Richard Wagner’s Parsifal, and here DH Lawrence wrote part of Lady Chatterley’s Lover.

The Duomo, dedicated to Saint Pantaleone, was being prepared for a wedding, but once again I had arrived in time to see the inside of the cathedral and its museum.

The duomo has two ornately decorated pulpits – an Epistle pulpit and a Gospel pulpit. The Gospel pulpit has twisted columns patterned with mosaics resting on six carved lions.

There was time to look inside the tropical gardens of the Villa Rufolo, which inspired Klingsor’s magic garden and the stage design of Wagner’s Parsifal.

Although we could see it from the balconies of Ravello, we never got as far as Salerno.

As we sat to dinner back in the Grand Hotel Moon Valley, a wedding was taking place by the pool, and some of us joined the happy families until late in the evening.

The bride dances at the third wedding in a day (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2013)