Byways in southern Tuscany . To Santa Fiora CHAPTER IX San Salvatore—Piancastagnajo—^The Legend ofTHE Little Hebrew—Santa Fiora OOKING across from Radicofani towardAbbadia San Salvatore, it is hard to de-tect it, peering out as it does from a cov-ert of chestnut woods on that grandly-sweeping eastern slope of Monte Ami-ata; but a drive of an hour between theOrcia, on the north, and the Paglia, run-ning south to join the Tiber, brings oneto its gate. The way lies by many ahill and vale, passing harsh tracts of creia, which alter-nate with farms, hedges, and groups of trees, and at lastgradually
Byways in southern Tuscany . To Santa Fiora CHAPTER IX San Salvatore—Piancastagnajo—^The Legend ofTHE Little Hebrew—Santa Fiora OOKING across from Radicofani towardAbbadia San Salvatore, it is hard to de-tect it, peering out as it does from a cov-ert of chestnut woods on that grandly-sweeping eastern slope of Monte Ami-ata; but a drive of an hour between theOrcia, on the north, and the Paglia, run-ning south to join the Tiber, brings oneto its gate. The way lies by many ahill and vale, passing harsh tracts of creia, which alter-nate with farms, hedges, and groups of trees, and at lastgradually climbing to those beautiful forests of chestnutand beech through which the road winds under a leafycanopy till it reaches the famous old Benedictine abbeyand its dependent village. In its day it was one of the. BYWAYS IN SOUTHERN TUSCANY most important foundations in central Italy, and whenbishops and abbots were potent temporal rulers, its terri-tory extended from Chiusi to Grosseto and the sea, andsouth beyond the present boundary of Tuscany. To-dayit still clings there in the beauty of its forest surrounding,a gray and hoary reminder of what it once was. Not thatit is a solitary ruin; on the contrary, it is still populous,but the high authority that dwelt in the abbey has de-parted, an authority that was even then often questionedand struggled against in the humble town beside it thatlonged for communal independence. The fortunate preservation of its form and charactershow the distinctive features of the place still, the abbeyand its village standing on opposite sides of a ravine, eachwalled and entered by a separate gate. It is not the mosthospitable of places; ruffianly boys greeted us with yellsand one or two threw stones. They were gently rebukedby their elders, but they capered away
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1910, booksubjecttuscany, bookyear1919
