...she wanted it...
t
t
-
Sign up or login, and you'll have full access to opportunities of forum.
The Devil In The Convent
- Thread starter Velut Luna
- Start date
Velut Luna
Sibilla Cumana
Velut Luna
Sibilla Cumana
Devil in the Convent 14
14
Gennaro is back in the trench with two workers. I arrive while they are removing the old bricks by hand, revealing a very narrow passage that turns right at the bottom of, a narrow spiral stone staircase that a normal-sized man of our day couldn’t get up. I can just squeeze into it, but there’s a lot of rubble, so one of the workmen goes off to find a colleague who was once a jockey at Agnano racecourse, he’s the right size for this job!
Two hours later, the staircase is cleaned of debris, the jockey climbs it ahead of me. Cautiously we proceed along a passageway that appears to be identical to the one from which we’ve come, except that any connection to the house of Theatines is absent.
It turns around the apse and follows the same path until the end, at the wall that’s on the Via Sant' Arcangelo. Even here, in the silence we can hear the voices and noises that come from the rooms now occupied by tenants of the buildings that were restored in the nineteenth century.
On the left side of the corridor, the one alongside the Convent, at every second metre there’s a niche that corresponds to one of the nuns’ cells, or to a bed in the novices’ dormitory.
These were above the rooms opening onto the cloisters, it was from this passage that the devilish eye watched its future victims.
To map this new corridor, the jockey returns with the laser rangefinder and the camera, as Gennaro isn’t able to get up the stairs. But I pause at a particular point, at the end of the curved portion that goes around the apse – there’s another wall here that’s been built in a hurry.
Now everything is becoming much clearer! This was the point from which you could get into the convent, because it would give access to the interior of the drum supporting the dome of the Church, where there’d be stairs up from the ground floor to the upper one, and so to the corridors leading to the nuns’ private rooms.
As I expected, removing this weak wall reveals a straight staircase leading down to the door that gave access to the main stairs inside the convent, but here we go cautiously. The door has been walled up, I suppose in the nineteenth century, when the convent building was converted and allocated for housing of poor families from the neighborhood.
But I don’t need to know anything else, I’ve found the access point to the Convent, in a maze where you could lose track of your steps going up and down between different levels, with hidden doors later replaced by the weak walls that we’ve now demolished. But how do you get under the Church?
Gennaro- 'Doctor! Doctor! Has something happened? Answer me! '
Gennaro 's voice comes to us, as if amplified by the long tunnel and stairwell.
Luna- 'Don't panic Gennaro, there are a few surprises, but we haven’t got lost! Just coming!'
We all go down to the meeting room to plan the schedule for the work to be done in the coming days: the electricians will install the temporary lighting in the rest of the corridor we explored yesterday, the jockey will remove the debris from the upper passage, we’ll photograph and measure everything and then install temporary lighting. Then we’ll have to open a hole in the lower corridor for switches to the air conditioning systems and other technology so that they can be extended to the upper floors of the museum - another saving of time and money that will make you happy, Don Carmelo!
Gennaro would like to take me home , he taken a liking the rogue!
Luna- 'This evening I’m going back to Eulalia, I’ll see you tomorrow' - there are still more questions to be answered. He's disappointed, but resigned.
I get home, I'm not going to Eulalia, as I lied to Gennaro, she’s away from Naples. Tonight I want to be alone so I can begin examining the contents of the little box. A nice hot shower takes away the tiredness of the day. Lying naked on my bed, I let my thoughts run free, trying to put together the pieces of this architectural puzzle, trying to create in my mind a three-dimensional model of everything. But I’ve still not solved the problem which intrigues me still more, but me, or Cynthia?
14
Gennaro is back in the trench with two workers. I arrive while they are removing the old bricks by hand, revealing a very narrow passage that turns right at the bottom of, a narrow spiral stone staircase that a normal-sized man of our day couldn’t get up. I can just squeeze into it, but there’s a lot of rubble, so one of the workmen goes off to find a colleague who was once a jockey at Agnano racecourse, he’s the right size for this job!
Two hours later, the staircase is cleaned of debris, the jockey climbs it ahead of me. Cautiously we proceed along a passageway that appears to be identical to the one from which we’ve come, except that any connection to the house of Theatines is absent.
It turns around the apse and follows the same path until the end, at the wall that’s on the Via Sant' Arcangelo. Even here, in the silence we can hear the voices and noises that come from the rooms now occupied by tenants of the buildings that were restored in the nineteenth century.
On the left side of the corridor, the one alongside the Convent, at every second metre there’s a niche that corresponds to one of the nuns’ cells, or to a bed in the novices’ dormitory.
These were above the rooms opening onto the cloisters, it was from this passage that the devilish eye watched its future victims.
To map this new corridor, the jockey returns with the laser rangefinder and the camera, as Gennaro isn’t able to get up the stairs. But I pause at a particular point, at the end of the curved portion that goes around the apse – there’s another wall here that’s been built in a hurry.
Now everything is becoming much clearer! This was the point from which you could get into the convent, because it would give access to the interior of the drum supporting the dome of the Church, where there’d be stairs up from the ground floor to the upper one, and so to the corridors leading to the nuns’ private rooms.
As I expected, removing this weak wall reveals a straight staircase leading down to the door that gave access to the main stairs inside the convent, but here we go cautiously. The door has been walled up, I suppose in the nineteenth century, when the convent building was converted and allocated for housing of poor families from the neighborhood.
But I don’t need to know anything else, I’ve found the access point to the Convent, in a maze where you could lose track of your steps going up and down between different levels, with hidden doors later replaced by the weak walls that we’ve now demolished. But how do you get under the Church?
Gennaro- 'Doctor! Doctor! Has something happened? Answer me! '
Gennaro 's voice comes to us, as if amplified by the long tunnel and stairwell.
Luna- 'Don't panic Gennaro, there are a few surprises, but we haven’t got lost! Just coming!'
We all go down to the meeting room to plan the schedule for the work to be done in the coming days: the electricians will install the temporary lighting in the rest of the corridor we explored yesterday, the jockey will remove the debris from the upper passage, we’ll photograph and measure everything and then install temporary lighting. Then we’ll have to open a hole in the lower corridor for switches to the air conditioning systems and other technology so that they can be extended to the upper floors of the museum - another saving of time and money that will make you happy, Don Carmelo!
Gennaro would like to take me home , he taken a liking the rogue!
Luna- 'This evening I’m going back to Eulalia, I’ll see you tomorrow' - there are still more questions to be answered. He's disappointed, but resigned.
I get home, I'm not going to Eulalia, as I lied to Gennaro, she’s away from Naples. Tonight I want to be alone so I can begin examining the contents of the little box. A nice hot shower takes away the tiredness of the day. Lying naked on my bed, I let my thoughts run free, trying to put together the pieces of this architectural puzzle, trying to create in my mind a three-dimensional model of everything. But I’ve still not solved the problem which intrigues me still more, but me, or Cynthia?
Velut Luna
Sibilla Cumana
Devil in the Convent 15
15
I turn my talisman, the golden almond, between my fingers. My body’s caressed and kissed by a silver moonbeam.
Cynthia appears to me, wearing only a cloth knotted at the waist like a short sarong. She holds out her hands as if to start dance around the altar in the temple of the moon where a silvery light shines from a flame arising from water set in a large bowl. The central rotunda of the temple has twenty-four columns in groups of three, set in a circle around the octagonal altar, which is raised above a shallow layer of water covering the mosaic floor that surrounds it.
There are four large columns supporting a stone portico in front of the place, where a cascading fountain pours spring water into the pool of purification. There are statues of nymphs and naiads, and above the fountain a statue of the Goddess sitting on the rock whence the spring flows, with the nymphs at her feet, on her head a lunar crown topped with the thin crescent of the waning moon.
The four sides of the portico give access to the rooms of the virgins. Between each pair of columns stands a pedestal with a statue of a girl almost like in the Temple of Athena (the Erechtheum on the Acropolis in Athens). Everywhere on the walls there are frescoes with hunting scenes, and on the floor mosaics depicting a beautiful sea with fish. On the side opposite the entrance is a garden with ancient olive trees.
Then, as if in a rapid journey through time, I see the temple ruined by the earthquake and the rain of ash that has partly covered the entire city. It has become deserted, crumbling, ghostly.
Then the slow recovery, the reappropriation of the, the new, the temples of the new religion. My house is a house of women engaged in an ancient craft considered shameful, the alley is called Vico Bajano, and by an irony of the fate that turns into Christian churches the temples of the pagan gods, there was erected in this place of prostitution a cloister for noble ladies who wanted to live apart from the world under the protection of St. Benedict. .
(It was the wish of King Charles I of Anjou, who approved of these ladies, to establish a rule-governed Convent called La Casa di Carlo with its church dedicated to St. Michael the Archangel, eventually called the Nunnery of Sant'Arcangelo.
During the rule of the Angevins the ladies lived in harmony and practised virtue, but in the sixteenth century during the reign of Ferdinand the Catholic and even more so during the reign of Charles the Fifth, corruption took possession of the whole kingdom, and a tragic succession of Viceroys brought social breakdown.
The seductions of the world and sin trespassed into the cloister, Powerful men got access to the seductive of the girls by deception, and to make it the more desirable, a crowd of young beauties was immured within the walls of the convent, innocent girls condemned to live in deprivation and misery, young women sacrificed in the interest of their elder brothers, and they tried to find compensation in intrigue, pleasure, fancy, unwholesome desires.
Disorder took possession of every religious house because of the fiery character of the female Neapolitans and the excited imaginations of the involuntary recluses defrauded of their hereditary rights and, by wicked deception, deprived of their right to a family life.
Delirium seized of the spirits of young girls, and things got even worse after the Council of Trent imposed on them solemn vows of enclosure, poverty, chastity and obedience, while the abuse of the intrusive power of the priests that permeated every aspect of life they chose to investigate gave rise to the Tribunal of the Inquisition.
The exasperation of spirit caused by this oppressive reign of religious terror led to the death of innocence, the onset of a deep hatred against the duties imposed by force to increasing debauchery, depravity descending into crime.
Already the convents of Santa Patrizia , the Magdalena, and Santa Maria Egiziaca all'Agnone were the scenes of appalling scandals that preceded the disaster at the Convent of Bajano, where the most heinous corruption and debauchery took the place of meditation and prayer, Mass and Confession, where disgusting immorality took the place of virtue, and where fierce rivals competed to prey on the young consecrated virgins, shedding their blood on the steps of the sanctuary, detonating the catastrophe that befell with the unprecedented violence of the Inquisition against the sinners segregated in their fortress of horror.)
15
I turn my talisman, the golden almond, between my fingers. My body’s caressed and kissed by a silver moonbeam.
There are four large columns supporting a stone portico in front of the place, where a cascading fountain pours spring water into the pool of purification. There are statues of nymphs and naiads, and above the fountain a statue of the Goddess sitting on the rock whence the spring flows, with the nymphs at her feet, on her head a lunar crown topped with the thin crescent of the waning moon.
The four sides of the portico give access to the rooms of the virgins. Between each pair of columns stands a pedestal with a statue of a girl almost like in the Temple of Athena (the Erechtheum on the Acropolis in Athens). Everywhere on the walls there are frescoes with hunting scenes, and on the floor mosaics depicting a beautiful sea with fish. On the side opposite the entrance is a garden with ancient olive trees.
Then, as if in a rapid journey through time, I see the temple ruined by the earthquake and the rain of ash that has partly covered the entire city. It has become deserted, crumbling, ghostly.
Then the slow recovery, the reappropriation of the, the new, the temples of the new religion. My house is a house of women engaged in an ancient craft considered shameful, the alley is called Vico Bajano, and by an irony of the fate that turns into Christian churches the temples of the pagan gods, there was erected in this place of prostitution a cloister for noble ladies who wanted to live apart from the world under the protection of St. Benedict. .
(It was the wish of King Charles I of Anjou, who approved of these ladies, to establish a rule-governed Convent called La Casa di Carlo with its church dedicated to St. Michael the Archangel, eventually called the Nunnery of Sant'Arcangelo.
During the rule of the Angevins the ladies lived in harmony and practised virtue, but in the sixteenth century during the reign of Ferdinand the Catholic and even more so during the reign of Charles the Fifth, corruption took possession of the whole kingdom, and a tragic succession of Viceroys brought social breakdown.
The seductions of the world and sin trespassed into the cloister, Powerful men got access to the seductive of the girls by deception, and to make it the more desirable, a crowd of young beauties was immured within the walls of the convent, innocent girls condemned to live in deprivation and misery, young women sacrificed in the interest of their elder brothers, and they tried to find compensation in intrigue, pleasure, fancy, unwholesome desires.
Disorder took possession of every religious house because of the fiery character of the female Neapolitans and the excited imaginations of the involuntary recluses defrauded of their hereditary rights and, by wicked deception, deprived of their right to a family life.
Delirium seized of the spirits of young girls, and things got even worse after the Council of Trent imposed on them solemn vows of enclosure, poverty, chastity and obedience, while the abuse of the intrusive power of the priests that permeated every aspect of life they chose to investigate gave rise to the Tribunal of the Inquisition.
The exasperation of spirit caused by this oppressive reign of religious terror led to the death of innocence, the onset of a deep hatred against the duties imposed by force to increasing debauchery, depravity descending into crime.
Already the convents of Santa Patrizia , the Magdalena, and Santa Maria Egiziaca all'Agnone were the scenes of appalling scandals that preceded the disaster at the Convent of Bajano, where the most heinous corruption and debauchery took the place of meditation and prayer, Mass and Confession, where disgusting immorality took the place of virtue, and where fierce rivals competed to prey on the young consecrated virgins, shedding their blood on the steps of the sanctuary, detonating the catastrophe that befell with the unprecedented violence of the Inquisition against the sinners segregated in their fortress of horror.)
well written, sounds a lot like Tree's modern Order of Punishment and Penance!!!
T
T
RacingRodent
Consul
A complex and riveting tale, I suspect there are as yet hidden depths to the intrigues yet to be unveiled
Bravo
Bravo
Velut Luna
Sibilla Cumana
Devil in the Convent 16
16
So I’ve got to look for water, that will lead me to the site of the temple alongside the house of the Theatines, among the buildings erected in the eighteenth century. From the seaward side there runs a narrow alley called Vico Canalone, ‘Fountain of Snakes’, surely the path of the watercourse.
I’ve not opened the box, the memory of that first hard impact is holding me back. I have some concerns about the objects contained in it - yes it's true I found my talisman there and the and silver bowls, but of the rest I'm afraid. I don’t know why, but I have a strange premonition. Hostile forces have been hidden in the casket, and my amulet revealing a threat to me.
I’ve got permission from the Department of Infrastructure, Public Works and Transport (which has authority over urban transport, roads, soil and subsoil, public water and the integrated water system) to make an excavation in the Vico Canalone accompanied by an officer of the city police. With Gennaro and a couple of workers I enter into the narrow passage between the houses in order to see what might be the best way to proceed with the underground inspection. We inform the occupants of the houses, and put up a sign stating that the Superintendent of Architecture and Archaeology is authorised to perform the excavation.
The workers erect barriers to prevent access by outsiders into the alleyway. The space is small, we can’t use any machinery, so the workers begin to remove the pavement of lava rock with picks and shovels, then they position a platform of scaffolding and textured sheets and we begin with great caution to deepen the excavation, installing bulkheads to support the banks of the excavation, with metal braces between the sides. They dig down about two metres, and finally we come upon the exterior of the vault that must cover the underlying channel.
They place a wooden platform on the scaffolding supporting a ladder, so I can get down to the deepest point. In the silence, I place my ear on the stones of the vault to sense the flow of water, I gasp, seized by a mysterious agitation of inner joy. Taking extreme care, I lift with one of the stones of the vault and faint light pours down to illuminate the water of the underground stream. Lowering a bottle hanging from a rope to collect a sample of water, at about two metres down I feel the contact with the water. I wait for a minute to fill the bottle, then and draw up the sample. The water is crystal clear and very cold. I was afraid that it could be contaminated with sewage if it came from a source is in the middle of Naples, but a few drops on the test plate reveals the absence of any nitrate or nitrite and confirms that it’s free from organic pollution. Another reagent gives me an amazing finding: it’s even the purest drinking water!
My well, the source of our sacred temple is below our feet! A worker removes some of the stones of the vault to create a gap where I can squeeze myself through. I can’t risk the safety of a of workers in an inspection that (at least for now) doesn’t seem closely related to the renovation and without the permission of Don Carmelo. So I 'll I put myself into the channel and don’t want anybody with me.
I’m wearing the pair of boots, helmet and safety harness that Gennaro supplied for me to take onto the construction site, with a hoist and a rope, a simple apparatus supported on a triangle of metal pipes over which the rope passes attached to the hoist to lower me to the bottom of the channel. A safety rope is hooked on, with a quick-release ring attached to the harness. The torch gives me the necessary light, and a camera and laser rangefinder will allow me to record the structure.
The water’s not very deep, a couple of feet, I proceed against the stream towards its source, I keeping in contact with those on the ground via a walkie talkie. After an initial stretch of culvert beneath a barrel vault, probably built in the eighteenth century to divert the water, I turn right into a wider channel, with very ancient flat basalt stones forming the wall to the right, which is curved like the outside of a walkway around the exterior of my Temple. The channel continues, to the left there is a room where the floor is covered by water gushing from the spring – my heart’s beating wildly, I’m filled with irrepressible joy!
Gennaro calls me on the radio :
Gennaro- 'You all right down there? No rats, scorpions , snakes , spiders? '
Luna- 'That’s a nice way to give me courage, Gennaro – no I don’t think so! It's wonderful, I’ve got past the end of the church, between the convent and the house of the Theatines, now I’m under the yard. This certainly justifies our intervention, it will allow us to proceed with further investigation.'
But how do you get into the Temple? At each step there’s a new obstacle, a riddle to be solved.
Gennaro- 'Doctor, it’s getting late - best to come out from under there now, we’ll need to secure and close the excavation before evening '
Luna- ' Okay Gennaro , I’m coming.'
The workers rewind the safety rope, I’m hauled back up with the hoist with no problem and so resurface from the bowels of the earth.
Gennaro- ' Doctor, you’ve got a face like a kid who’s been in the playground! Whatever's under there ? '
Luna- ' I'll have to go back Gennaro. If I’ve got it right, all that hollow space could compromise the stability of the buildings, so we’ll have to download the data from the laser and plot the survey location of these underground channels.'
16
So I’ve got to look for water, that will lead me to the site of the temple alongside the house of the Theatines, among the buildings erected in the eighteenth century. From the seaward side there runs a narrow alley called Vico Canalone, ‘Fountain of Snakes’, surely the path of the watercourse.
I’ve not opened the box, the memory of that first hard impact is holding me back. I have some concerns about the objects contained in it - yes it's true I found my talisman there and the and silver bowls, but of the rest I'm afraid. I don’t know why, but I have a strange premonition. Hostile forces have been hidden in the casket, and my amulet revealing a threat to me.
I’ve got permission from the Department of Infrastructure, Public Works and Transport (which has authority over urban transport, roads, soil and subsoil, public water and the integrated water system) to make an excavation in the Vico Canalone accompanied by an officer of the city police. With Gennaro and a couple of workers I enter into the narrow passage between the houses in order to see what might be the best way to proceed with the underground inspection. We inform the occupants of the houses, and put up a sign stating that the Superintendent of Architecture and Archaeology is authorised to perform the excavation.
The workers erect barriers to prevent access by outsiders into the alleyway. The space is small, we can’t use any machinery, so the workers begin to remove the pavement of lava rock with picks and shovels, then they position a platform of scaffolding and textured sheets and we begin with great caution to deepen the excavation, installing bulkheads to support the banks of the excavation, with metal braces between the sides. They dig down about two metres, and finally we come upon the exterior of the vault that must cover the underlying channel.
They place a wooden platform on the scaffolding supporting a ladder, so I can get down to the deepest point. In the silence, I place my ear on the stones of the vault to sense the flow of water, I gasp, seized by a mysterious agitation of inner joy. Taking extreme care, I lift with one of the stones of the vault and faint light pours down to illuminate the water of the underground stream. Lowering a bottle hanging from a rope to collect a sample of water, at about two metres down I feel the contact with the water. I wait for a minute to fill the bottle, then and draw up the sample. The water is crystal clear and very cold. I was afraid that it could be contaminated with sewage if it came from a source is in the middle of Naples, but a few drops on the test plate reveals the absence of any nitrate or nitrite and confirms that it’s free from organic pollution. Another reagent gives me an amazing finding: it’s even the purest drinking water!
My well, the source of our sacred temple is below our feet! A worker removes some of the stones of the vault to create a gap where I can squeeze myself through. I can’t risk the safety of a of workers in an inspection that (at least for now) doesn’t seem closely related to the renovation and without the permission of Don Carmelo. So I 'll I put myself into the channel and don’t want anybody with me.
I’m wearing the pair of boots, helmet and safety harness that Gennaro supplied for me to take onto the construction site, with a hoist and a rope, a simple apparatus supported on a triangle of metal pipes over which the rope passes attached to the hoist to lower me to the bottom of the channel. A safety rope is hooked on, with a quick-release ring attached to the harness. The torch gives me the necessary light, and a camera and laser rangefinder will allow me to record the structure.
The water’s not very deep, a couple of feet, I proceed against the stream towards its source, I keeping in contact with those on the ground via a walkie talkie. After an initial stretch of culvert beneath a barrel vault, probably built in the eighteenth century to divert the water, I turn right into a wider channel, with very ancient flat basalt stones forming the wall to the right, which is curved like the outside of a walkway around the exterior of my Temple. The channel continues, to the left there is a room where the floor is covered by water gushing from the spring – my heart’s beating wildly, I’m filled with irrepressible joy!
Gennaro calls me on the radio :
Gennaro- 'You all right down there? No rats, scorpions , snakes , spiders? '
Luna- 'That’s a nice way to give me courage, Gennaro – no I don’t think so! It's wonderful, I’ve got past the end of the church, between the convent and the house of the Theatines, now I’m under the yard. This certainly justifies our intervention, it will allow us to proceed with further investigation.'
But how do you get into the Temple? At each step there’s a new obstacle, a riddle to be solved.
Gennaro- 'Doctor, it’s getting late - best to come out from under there now, we’ll need to secure and close the excavation before evening '
Luna- ' Okay Gennaro , I’m coming.'
The workers rewind the safety rope, I’m hauled back up with the hoist with no problem and so resurface from the bowels of the earth.
Gennaro- ' Doctor, you’ve got a face like a kid who’s been in the playground! Whatever's under there ? '
Luna- ' I'll have to go back Gennaro. If I’ve got it right, all that hollow space could compromise the stability of the buildings, so we’ll have to download the data from the laser and plot the survey location of these underground channels.'
Velut Luna
Sibilla Cumana
Devil in the Convent 17
17
Gennaro and the municipal law enforcement officer accompany me to the office while the workmen get on with the job of closing the access and securing the safety of the site by putting a fence between the walls of the buildings. I compose a letter requesting permission to continue with the investigations in the channel, citing the need to ensure the safety of the new works for the museum complex, and e-mail it the official who has to sign it off.
I change my clothes, taking off my wet boots and dirty overalls, pull on my jeans and T-shirt. Gennaro has downloaded the memory of the laser-meter which produces a plan of the channel and the well-chamber. Overlaying what we’ve already discovered reveals that the coincidence between the walkway around the temple and the apse of the church is exact, and that the source is located between the monastery and the house of the Theatines just where the space between them widens, all of which makes it a most interesting and complicated site.
I work late into the night at home, thinking of Eulalia's house and filling my time. I bring up from the computer memory our collection of floor plans of the individual sections we’ve recorded, putting them together and eliminating those that appear to show walls built later. From that I derive an estimated plan of the whole complex of buildings that made up the convent, with the church in the centre, a cloister to the right, and a chapel beside the pathway, then a wall to the north which formed the boundary of the area, now with neighboring buildings built up against it.
To the west lies the probable apartments of the abbess, separated from the church by what appears to be the sacristy or a side chapel of the church. The apse is at the center of the west side, then there are two rooms whose use has yet to be identified – if there was a second chapel or sacristy to the right of the apse, these often consisted of two separate rooms. Further to the left was the main staircase leading to the upper floors, then another three rooms and two large halls on the south side, ending alongside the road leading to Sant' Arcangelo.
Beside one of these rooms was the parlour, the main entrance, and the gatehouse with its lodge, adjacent to the south wall of the church. In the centre was the large cloister, with arcades covering the three sides corresponding to the residential buildings, while the south wall of the church had no structure adjacent to it, just the central garden.
All this could be verified just by looking at the present-day satellite maps on the internet, where you can also see the drum of the dome over the presbytery, and the drum of the semi-dome of the apse. The latter hemispherical structure probably collapsed of in the disastrous earthquake that accompanied the eruption of Vesuvius in 1631.
Later, when the buildings were restored in the nineteenth century to make homes for poor families, it was covered with a flat masonry roof.
By superimposing the plans of the interior walkways I can see an exact match with the perimeter walls, things seem entirely clear - but they’re not, at least not entirely – why is there so much space between the house of the Theatines and the buildings of the Convent? Why is the walkway on the ground floor of the south side shorter than the upper one by more than a metre? Why in the secondary chapel of the church and in the hall on the ground floor the of the abbess’s apartments is there a space that looks like an entrance porch but now leads nowhere except up against the wall bordering the house of Theatines?
Abbeys, convents, such ancient buildings never reveal everything about themselves, often a series of mysteries remain unsolved as long as no-one probes the remains as if in a post-mortem examination, and here there is not only the body of the Convent, I'm afraid there’s something else that remains unsolved: the way into to the Temple below the church.
I'm beginning to fear that it's all underground, but if the dream that was sent to me by Cynthia told me the truth, that’s not right, because I saw that they built the new walls of the Convent using structures that formed the foundations of the Temple.
17
Gennaro and the municipal law enforcement officer accompany me to the office while the workmen get on with the job of closing the access and securing the safety of the site by putting a fence between the walls of the buildings. I compose a letter requesting permission to continue with the investigations in the channel, citing the need to ensure the safety of the new works for the museum complex, and e-mail it the official who has to sign it off.
I change my clothes, taking off my wet boots and dirty overalls, pull on my jeans and T-shirt. Gennaro has downloaded the memory of the laser-meter which produces a plan of the channel and the well-chamber. Overlaying what we’ve already discovered reveals that the coincidence between the walkway around the temple and the apse of the church is exact, and that the source is located between the monastery and the house of the Theatines just where the space between them widens, all of which makes it a most interesting and complicated site.
I work late into the night at home, thinking of Eulalia's house and filling my time. I bring up from the computer memory our collection of floor plans of the individual sections we’ve recorded, putting them together and eliminating those that appear to show walls built later. From that I derive an estimated plan of the whole complex of buildings that made up the convent, with the church in the centre, a cloister to the right, and a chapel beside the pathway, then a wall to the north which formed the boundary of the area, now with neighboring buildings built up against it.
To the west lies the probable apartments of the abbess, separated from the church by what appears to be the sacristy or a side chapel of the church. The apse is at the center of the west side, then there are two rooms whose use has yet to be identified – if there was a second chapel or sacristy to the right of the apse, these often consisted of two separate rooms. Further to the left was the main staircase leading to the upper floors, then another three rooms and two large halls on the south side, ending alongside the road leading to Sant' Arcangelo.
Beside one of these rooms was the parlour, the main entrance, and the gatehouse with its lodge, adjacent to the south wall of the church. In the centre was the large cloister, with arcades covering the three sides corresponding to the residential buildings, while the south wall of the church had no structure adjacent to it, just the central garden.
All this could be verified just by looking at the present-day satellite maps on the internet, where you can also see the drum of the dome over the presbytery, and the drum of the semi-dome of the apse. The latter hemispherical structure probably collapsed of in the disastrous earthquake that accompanied the eruption of Vesuvius in 1631.
Later, when the buildings were restored in the nineteenth century to make homes for poor families, it was covered with a flat masonry roof.
By superimposing the plans of the interior walkways I can see an exact match with the perimeter walls, things seem entirely clear - but they’re not, at least not entirely – why is there so much space between the house of the Theatines and the buildings of the Convent? Why is the walkway on the ground floor of the south side shorter than the upper one by more than a metre? Why in the secondary chapel of the church and in the hall on the ground floor the of the abbess’s apartments is there a space that looks like an entrance porch but now leads nowhere except up against the wall bordering the house of Theatines?
Abbeys, convents, such ancient buildings never reveal everything about themselves, often a series of mysteries remain unsolved as long as no-one probes the remains as if in a post-mortem examination, and here there is not only the body of the Convent, I'm afraid there’s something else that remains unsolved: the way into to the Temple below the church.
I'm beginning to fear that it's all underground, but if the dream that was sent to me by Cynthia told me the truth, that’s not right, because I saw that they built the new walls of the Convent using structures that formed the foundations of the Temple.
Velut Luna
Sibilla Cumana
Here the map of the Convent:
north in the right, east bottom, south in the left side, west on top.
the map of ancient Napoli with site indication:
the street:
the satellite view:
the 'piazzetta Sant'Arcangelo' with the main entrance
on the left of Church:
the panorama view with the sign of Convent place and the street named 'Spaccanapoli':
north in the right, east bottom, south in the left side, west on top.the map of ancient Napoli with site indication:
the street:the satellite view:
the 'piazzetta Sant'Arcangelo' with the main entrance
on the left of Church:
the panorama view with the sign of Convent place and the street named 'Spaccanapoli':
Last edited:
in the 'on the left of the Church' picture it seems several are airing their 'dirty laundry'.
Tree
...yes, Ulrika, that was a pun...
Nice post, I even found the flat roof where a dome used to be...
Tree
...yes, Ulrika, that was a pun...
Nice post, I even found the flat roof where a dome used to be...
Velut Luna
Sibilla Cumana
Hi! Thanks! Yes it's all true in my story! and yesterday late night a very interesting television broadcast on secret city of Napoli. The under ground from Greek to renaissance and a theatre of Nerone built in the 60 a.C. under a building of XVII century.in the 'on the left of the Church' picture it seems several are airing their 'dirty laundry'.
Tree
...yes, Ulrika, that was a pun...
Nice post, I even found the flat roof where a dome used to be...
And 'dirty laundry', better washed laundry, exposed are a costant 'furniture' of panorama of the city!
messaline
Crucified Amazon
All is true and the story promit to be full of surprises ...
I found this ...
"
27. THE CONVENT OF SANT’ARCANGELO AT BAIANO
The Church of Sant’Arcangelo at Baiano was one of the first structures the Angevins
wanted built to consecrate their victory over the Swabians. It was built on the site of a preexisting
religious building dedicated to San Michele Arcangelo, this in turn being erected on
a previous pagan shrine. The addition “at Baiano” comes from the old name given to the
area because a colony of citizens from Baia lived there.
The convent was built in the Forcella area, in the square of the same name,
Sant’Arcangelo a Baiano. The structure is now abandoned, and, it is said, infested by ghosts
and wandering spirits, but it was once the scene of bloody, licentious and sacrilegious acts.
Around 1540, under the Viceroy Don Pedro de Toledo, Laura Baiano was the head of the
convent when a group of young noblewomen (Agata Arcamone, Chiara Frezza, Laura
Sanfelice and Giulia Caracciolo) were “sacrificed” by their parents and forced to take the
vows. The young women had already taken part in society life and dreamt of freedom and of
love. The convent lifestyle, therefore, did not embody their greatest ideals in life; the
monotony, the silence and the repression of desires created only anger and indignation in
their hearts. So, with the passing of time, the nuns became rivals, malign and disrespectful,
and it was then that the convent started to be tainted by the most brutal happenings.
Agata Arcamone, the youngest and prettiest nun, together with Giulia Caracciolo and Livia
Pignatelli received a correctional penance from the bishop for having love affairs with young
noblemen within the convent. Some of these young noblemen, including Pier Antonio
Terracina and Giacomo Crispo, were later victims of a vendetta and were killed in the most
atrocious ways at the hands of henchmen. In addition, the Abbess and two nuns were
poisoned. An “inspector” was appointed to investigate the ever more insistent rumours of
orgies of nuns and of brutal crimes taking place inside the convent building. The result was
the suppression of the convent in 1577.
In 1829 a libellous book, Cronache del Convento di Sant’Arcangelo a Baiano, which
revealed the presumed vile and immoral sexual acts of the nuns, appeared in France. The
book was then translated into Italian and reprinted in Naples in 1860.
Today it is said that the ruins of the convent are still haunted by the ghost of Agata
Arcamone, who, after the decision to close the convent, escaped from Naples leaving no
trace."
It's coming from a PDF edited by the Napoli'town ...
I found this ...
"
27. THE CONVENT OF SANT’ARCANGELO AT BAIANO
The Church of Sant’Arcangelo at Baiano was one of the first structures the Angevins
wanted built to consecrate their victory over the Swabians. It was built on the site of a preexisting
religious building dedicated to San Michele Arcangelo, this in turn being erected on
a previous pagan shrine. The addition “at Baiano” comes from the old name given to the
area because a colony of citizens from Baia lived there.
The convent was built in the Forcella area, in the square of the same name,
Sant’Arcangelo a Baiano. The structure is now abandoned, and, it is said, infested by ghosts
and wandering spirits, but it was once the scene of bloody, licentious and sacrilegious acts.
Around 1540, under the Viceroy Don Pedro de Toledo, Laura Baiano was the head of the
convent when a group of young noblewomen (Agata Arcamone, Chiara Frezza, Laura
Sanfelice and Giulia Caracciolo) were “sacrificed” by their parents and forced to take the
vows. The young women had already taken part in society life and dreamt of freedom and of
love. The convent lifestyle, therefore, did not embody their greatest ideals in life; the
monotony, the silence and the repression of desires created only anger and indignation in
their hearts. So, with the passing of time, the nuns became rivals, malign and disrespectful,
and it was then that the convent started to be tainted by the most brutal happenings.
Agata Arcamone, the youngest and prettiest nun, together with Giulia Caracciolo and Livia
Pignatelli received a correctional penance from the bishop for having love affairs with young
noblemen within the convent. Some of these young noblemen, including Pier Antonio
Terracina and Giacomo Crispo, were later victims of a vendetta and were killed in the most
atrocious ways at the hands of henchmen. In addition, the Abbess and two nuns were
poisoned. An “inspector” was appointed to investigate the ever more insistent rumours of
orgies of nuns and of brutal crimes taking place inside the convent building. The result was
the suppression of the convent in 1577.
In 1829 a libellous book, Cronache del Convento di Sant’Arcangelo a Baiano, which
revealed the presumed vile and immoral sexual acts of the nuns, appeared in France. The
book was then translated into Italian and reprinted in Naples in 1860.
Today it is said that the ruins of the convent are still haunted by the ghost of Agata
Arcamone, who, after the decision to close the convent, escaped from Naples leaving no
trace."
It's coming from a PDF edited by the Napoli'town ...
Last edited by a moderator:
Velut Luna
Sibilla Cumana
It's exactly the story I'm writing but with more differencies in the path and a true document of the Inquisition trial.
But in the document found by you in Internet, that I know, they are more errors!
My original documents are almost 500 pages!
The French text is supposed by Stendhal.
Last edited:
messaline
Crucified Amazon
Certainly ! It's only a little resume of the historical story: it's impossible to tell the History of 5 or 6 centuries in around 30 lines ! I know that well, I'm studying the History of art and also some old Architecture ...
No doubt that your story will be more complete and will show us many surprising things ...
Oh, astonishing !
Velut Luna
Sibilla Cumana
Devil in the Convent 18
18
Luna- 'Ma ch'e'cazze Gennà?! E'ttu c'e'ggiuochi a scacchi?' (Fuck it, Gennà! Do you play chess?)
Gennaro- 'Giuoco solo a'ddama' . (I only play Draughts)
Luna- 'A'ddammiggelle Gennà! E'se vede! Hai fatto nu'ccapolavoro ma tt'e'se'fottuto a'torre!' . (Girlie Gennà! Can’t you see! It’s a masterpiece but it’s lost a tower!)
Gennaro- 'Ch'e'centra a'torre?' . ('What tower?)
Luna- 'U'campanile Gennà, u'campanile! Lì c'e'stava u'ccampanile!'
(A bell tower, Gennà, a bell tower! There was a bell tower, here!)
I’m pointing to the space at the side of the passage between the house of Theatines and the apse of the church.
Gennaro- 'Ma'un'c'è!' . (There isn’t one! )
Luna- 'Ma cc'era! Anzi c'è ancora!' . (No, but there was – and it’ll be there again!)
Silence for a minute.
Luna- 'Mò Gennà hai da ffà a'spia, senza scassà ù patre e'figlioli, tenne vai a'ffà n'giro e'cun a'scusa entre n'chillo curtile e a'occhia bbene ch'e'cc'è stà!'.
(Now Gennà, you are going to investigate the spot without delay, you’ll keep going around that courtyard until you can see exactly where it was.)
Gennaro runs his hands through his curls.
Gennaro- 'S'à d'annà co'i'Carabbinieri!'. (I have to go there with the police!)
Luna- 'Nun c'e'penzà! Vvede chiu'ttosto s'e'c'e stà n'a'bbella figliuòla... ma nun ora ch'è tardi, jamme!'
(Don't think so! You can watch whether there it's being a good girl... but it’s getting late now, let’s go!)
Gennaro came to work today on his motorbike, so we climb aboard and take a ride to the Via Sant’Arcangelo. We stop in the square, pretending to look for a shop, but taking a good look at the buildings on the side of the Convent. This is our first inspection of this belly of Naples, it’s inhabited by disreputable people, a thousand prying eyes are watching us, following us … we leave as quick as we can.
Again, Gennaro would like to come home with me this evening, though he does not say so explicitly, he makes more of a job if he is working alone on the computer! Using the excuse of having to go to my parents, I avoid trouble and go home alone.
Now it’s the day of reckoning with the box. I open the store-room and empty the contents out onto a mat, wearing a pair of latex gloves, so as not to spoil the paper – and so as not to come in contact with something I fear as if it were infected! I take the two bundles of sheets bound as booklets. I daren’t even touch the rest of the contents, I let them slide back into the chest by lifting the mat, and then close it up again, all safe.
I lay a large sheet of tracing paper on the desk over the top of the two bundles. The first one, the one I found in the main compartment , has dimensions of about 36x25 cm, and the other, from the secret compartment, is 28x20 cm.
The only thing I can see is on the cover of the bigger one is 'ACTA', then maybe a date written in Roman numbers but backwards IIVXXL D M, that is MDLXXVII (1577); then there are some words: ‘innA sifneM eiD’, again reversed so Die Mensis Anni, ‘on the day of the month of the year’.
The rest of the text is practically illegible even though it’s organised with numbered pages, paragraph numbers, and strange signs. Whoever wrote it was probably left-handed and wrote from right to left.
The second package is a real puzzle. There are some Arabic numerals, and many strange symbols. The handwriting is still more disordered, sometimes seeming unsteady, even though this seems to have been set out from right to left by the same hand.
I’m surprised to find that there are drawings: on last gathering of pages, there seem to be some upside-down maps of the convent… but then my heart misses a beat, there are some incredibly obscene drawings, certainly not by any artist, but whoever made them knew what they were about, they don’t need any caption to describe the brutal violence of their content.
I remain in a state of shock for some minutes.
I work at photographing all the pages for about six hours, there are about five hundred in total, then I download the data onto my computer, and put the two books under lock and key.
I throw myself on my bed exhausted, but I can’t sleep, those designs have upset me – it’s one thing to see an obscene drawing done just to show off, but here I’m faced with something that is documentation, photography avant la lettre, of things that actually occurred, the bodies of poor living wretches, mangled by the most savage torture, real blood. And something that’s even more horrifying than photographs of corpses, victims of the violence of the war, exterminated Jews, the author of these has participated in the event, and not just as a spectator - the hand that drew it was soiled with that blood, now mine freezes in my veins!
18
Luna- 'Ma ch'e'cazze Gennà?! E'ttu c'e'ggiuochi a scacchi?' (Fuck it, Gennà! Do you play chess?)
Gennaro- 'Giuoco solo a'ddama' . (I only play Draughts)
Luna- 'A'ddammiggelle Gennà! E'se vede! Hai fatto nu'ccapolavoro ma tt'e'se'fottuto a'torre!' . (Girlie Gennà! Can’t you see! It’s a masterpiece but it’s lost a tower!)
Gennaro- 'Ch'e'centra a'torre?' . ('What tower?)
Luna- 'U'campanile Gennà, u'campanile! Lì c'e'stava u'ccampanile!'
(A bell tower, Gennà, a bell tower! There was a bell tower, here!)
I’m pointing to the space at the side of the passage between the house of Theatines and the apse of the church.
Gennaro- 'Ma'un'c'è!' . (There isn’t one! )
Luna- 'Ma cc'era! Anzi c'è ancora!' . (No, but there was – and it’ll be there again!)
Silence for a minute.
Luna- 'Mò Gennà hai da ffà a'spia, senza scassà ù patre e'figlioli, tenne vai a'ffà n'giro e'cun a'scusa entre n'chillo curtile e a'occhia bbene ch'e'cc'è stà!'.
(Now Gennà, you are going to investigate the spot without delay, you’ll keep going around that courtyard until you can see exactly where it was.)
Gennaro runs his hands through his curls.
Gennaro- 'S'à d'annà co'i'Carabbinieri!'. (I have to go there with the police!)
Luna- 'Nun c'e'penzà! Vvede chiu'ttosto s'e'c'e stà n'a'bbella figliuòla... ma nun ora ch'è tardi, jamme!'
(Don't think so! You can watch whether there it's being a good girl... but it’s getting late now, let’s go!)
Gennaro came to work today on his motorbike, so we climb aboard and take a ride to the Via Sant’Arcangelo. We stop in the square, pretending to look for a shop, but taking a good look at the buildings on the side of the Convent. This is our first inspection of this belly of Naples, it’s inhabited by disreputable people, a thousand prying eyes are watching us, following us … we leave as quick as we can.
Again, Gennaro would like to come home with me this evening, though he does not say so explicitly, he makes more of a job if he is working alone on the computer! Using the excuse of having to go to my parents, I avoid trouble and go home alone.
Now it’s the day of reckoning with the box. I open the store-room and empty the contents out onto a mat, wearing a pair of latex gloves, so as not to spoil the paper – and so as not to come in contact with something I fear as if it were infected! I take the two bundles of sheets bound as booklets. I daren’t even touch the rest of the contents, I let them slide back into the chest by lifting the mat, and then close it up again, all safe.
I lay a large sheet of tracing paper on the desk over the top of the two bundles. The first one, the one I found in the main compartment , has dimensions of about 36x25 cm, and the other, from the secret compartment, is 28x20 cm.
The only thing I can see is on the cover of the bigger one is 'ACTA', then maybe a date written in Roman numbers but backwards IIVXXL D M, that is MDLXXVII (1577); then there are some words: ‘innA sifneM eiD’, again reversed so Die Mensis Anni, ‘on the day of the month of the year’.
The rest of the text is practically illegible even though it’s organised with numbered pages, paragraph numbers, and strange signs. Whoever wrote it was probably left-handed and wrote from right to left.
The second package is a real puzzle. There are some Arabic numerals, and many strange symbols. The handwriting is still more disordered, sometimes seeming unsteady, even though this seems to have been set out from right to left by the same hand.
I’m surprised to find that there are drawings: on last gathering of pages, there seem to be some upside-down maps of the convent… but then my heart misses a beat, there are some incredibly obscene drawings, certainly not by any artist, but whoever made them knew what they were about, they don’t need any caption to describe the brutal violence of their content.
I remain in a state of shock for some minutes.
I work at photographing all the pages for about six hours, there are about five hundred in total, then I download the data onto my computer, and put the two books under lock and key.
I throw myself on my bed exhausted, but I can’t sleep, those designs have upset me – it’s one thing to see an obscene drawing done just to show off, but here I’m faced with something that is documentation, photography avant la lettre, of things that actually occurred, the bodies of poor living wretches, mangled by the most savage torture, real blood. And something that’s even more horrifying than photographs of corpses, victims of the violence of the war, exterminated Jews, the author of these has participated in the event, and not just as a spectator - the hand that drew it was soiled with that blood, now mine freezes in my veins!
Last edited by a moderator:
Velut Luna
Sibilla Cumana
Devil in the Convent 19
19
I'm woken by the phone ringing. Gennaro is anxious, not to seeing me at the office , I reply with a voice that he can’t recognize, a stammering an apology as if to an unknown caller, even I hardly recognised my own voice.
Before calling him back, I get myself a coffee.
Luna- 'Hello Gennaro, did you call me earlier? I was still asleep. I’m afraid I'm not feeling too well this morning, I didn’t sleep all last night, I need a rest. So I won’t come to the yard today ... '
Gennaro- 'No problem Doctor, we’ll carry on with the usual work here, I just needed to know whether we needed to prepare for a few different activities. Later on I’ll go to the Via Sant'Arcangelo, Mimmo, the builder from Nola, will come with me. He knows someone who sells car accessories, stolen of course, who’s got their right at the back there, I can buy some wipers – I actually do need some as mine got screwed up outside my house last night, so I’ve got a good excuse to go there without arousing suspicion. I was only wondering if anyone might know where I could find car parts when Mimmo came forward and said it wouldn’t need to go far ... '
Luna- 'A nice kick in the pants, Gennaro! Look, if you don’t see me tomorrow – I’ve got to go to the Superintendent to formalize permission for excavating in Vico Canalone - I'll see you day after tomorrow at the latest. Thanks for calling me so I woke, up otherwise I’d have slept all day.'
Gennaro- 'Goodbye , Doctor, all’s quiet here, everything’s fine, no hurry.
(It's strange – I’ve already been rammed twice. And why does he keep on calling continues me Doctor? Maybe there’s someone else in the office?)
I’d better get a move on or I’ll lose valuable time. Today I’ll go and find Ciro. After the shower I prepare a representative selection the photos I took last night and download them onto a memory stick. Then I set off.
Ciro is a young man working in the Superintendent’s office as a programming expert – he’s a genius. He’s had a tragic past, he grew up in an orphanage: when he was new-born, he was chucked into a skip, a woman found him when she going to throw in some rubbish and heard him crying. He’s got the face of a Neapolitan street urchin, with two black eyes and a piercing look reads into your soul, that’s why they call him 'o'zingaro' (gypsy).
Ciro- 'Hello Lucia, I was waiting for you, I knew you'd come today.'
This takes me by surprise, I don’t know how to respond, I don’t know if he says such things because he wants to make an impression, or if there’s really more to it.
Luna- 'Hello Ciro - how did you know I was coming? It was only an hour ago I decided to come here!'
His smile’s so beautiful it charms me, his eyes have already stolen my soul.
Ciro- 'Come on! Give me the key that let's solve the problem ' .
He’s saying exactly what I’m thinking, how does he know? It's not as if I’ve got what I want written on my face.
We sit at the desk, and without my explaining anything, he’s already uploaded and opened the photos. He looks at them for a few minutes.
Ciro- 'Fine. There’s a story behind this writing. He’s learned to write from right to left when he was already an adult, he’s lost his right hand or arm, wounded in war, but he had studied, then become a priest. But has a wicked soul!'
I stay silent for a long time, I daren’t utter a word.
Ciro- 'Okay! I have to test my new software, this is just what we want!'
I looked at him surprised, maybe now I have got the face of an idiot!
Ciro- 'STELE will do the job in less than no time '
Luna- 'What’s STELE?'
Ciro- 'It's like the Rosetta Stone. It stands for “Software di TransLitterazione ed Elaborazione Linguistica” (Software for Transliteration and Linguistic Ermeneutics). It’ll be a no-brainer here, as it is in Latin, the characters belong to our alphabet, they’re just in mirror-writing from right to the left, but that’s no problem because as the texts, transformed by the vector graphics format, can be read in any direction. All that’s needed is to create a database of the alphabetic characters and their corresponding modern forms. In a couple of hours you'll have the decryption key.'
I’m about to faint !
Luna- 'Ciro, you came out of Aladdin's lamp!'
19
I'm woken by the phone ringing. Gennaro is anxious, not to seeing me at the office , I reply with a voice that he can’t recognize, a stammering an apology as if to an unknown caller, even I hardly recognised my own voice.
Before calling him back, I get myself a coffee.
Luna- 'Hello Gennaro, did you call me earlier? I was still asleep. I’m afraid I'm not feeling too well this morning, I didn’t sleep all last night, I need a rest. So I won’t come to the yard today ... '
Gennaro- 'No problem Doctor, we’ll carry on with the usual work here, I just needed to know whether we needed to prepare for a few different activities. Later on I’ll go to the Via Sant'Arcangelo, Mimmo, the builder from Nola, will come with me. He knows someone who sells car accessories, stolen of course, who’s got their right at the back there, I can buy some wipers – I actually do need some as mine got screwed up outside my house last night, so I’ve got a good excuse to go there without arousing suspicion. I was only wondering if anyone might know where I could find car parts when Mimmo came forward and said it wouldn’t need to go far ... '
Luna- 'A nice kick in the pants, Gennaro! Look, if you don’t see me tomorrow – I’ve got to go to the Superintendent to formalize permission for excavating in Vico Canalone - I'll see you day after tomorrow at the latest. Thanks for calling me so I woke, up otherwise I’d have slept all day.'
Gennaro- 'Goodbye , Doctor, all’s quiet here, everything’s fine, no hurry.
(It's strange – I’ve already been rammed twice. And why does he keep on calling continues me Doctor? Maybe there’s someone else in the office?)
I’d better get a move on or I’ll lose valuable time. Today I’ll go and find Ciro. After the shower I prepare a representative selection the photos I took last night and download them onto a memory stick. Then I set off.
Ciro is a young man working in the Superintendent’s office as a programming expert – he’s a genius. He’s had a tragic past, he grew up in an orphanage: when he was new-born, he was chucked into a skip, a woman found him when she going to throw in some rubbish and heard him crying. He’s got the face of a Neapolitan street urchin, with two black eyes and a piercing look reads into your soul, that’s why they call him 'o'zingaro' (gypsy).
Ciro- 'Hello Lucia, I was waiting for you, I knew you'd come today.'
This takes me by surprise, I don’t know how to respond, I don’t know if he says such things because he wants to make an impression, or if there’s really more to it.
Luna- 'Hello Ciro - how did you know I was coming? It was only an hour ago I decided to come here!'
His smile’s so beautiful it charms me, his eyes have already stolen my soul.
Ciro- 'Come on! Give me the key that let's solve the problem ' .
He’s saying exactly what I’m thinking, how does he know? It's not as if I’ve got what I want written on my face.
We sit at the desk, and without my explaining anything, he’s already uploaded and opened the photos. He looks at them for a few minutes.
Ciro- 'Fine. There’s a story behind this writing. He’s learned to write from right to left when he was already an adult, he’s lost his right hand or arm, wounded in war, but he had studied, then become a priest. But has a wicked soul!'
I stay silent for a long time, I daren’t utter a word.
Ciro- 'Okay! I have to test my new software, this is just what we want!'
I looked at him surprised, maybe now I have got the face of an idiot!
Ciro- 'STELE will do the job in less than no time '
Luna- 'What’s STELE?'
Ciro- 'It's like the Rosetta Stone. It stands for “Software di TransLitterazione ed Elaborazione Linguistica” (Software for Transliteration and Linguistic Ermeneutics). It’ll be a no-brainer here, as it is in Latin, the characters belong to our alphabet, they’re just in mirror-writing from right to the left, but that’s no problem because as the texts, transformed by the vector graphics format, can be read in any direction. All that’s needed is to create a database of the alphabetic characters and their corresponding modern forms. In a couple of hours you'll have the decryption key.'
I’m about to faint !
Luna- 'Ciro, you came out of Aladdin's lamp!'
Velut Luna
Sibilla Cumana
Devil in the Convent 20
20
He transforms the image into a vector file, selecting any area of the image where it sees a character:
screenshot from right to left:
and matches it with a modern character:
Pov(ere) leter rimon mist(e) ispero.
(I am inspired by shuffling the individual letters. )
This brief phrase indicates the use of anagrams
On one single page we can read statistics that include almost all the letters of the alphabet, numerals and punctuation marks. Having examined the document and completed the database, the program processes the data, then up comes a transcript in plaintext.
Ciro- ' Interesting! It records the launch of Inquisition proceedings against the nuns of the Convent of Sant’Arcangelo in Bajano for alleged crimes committed by those within the walls of the cloister, dating back to July 1577.
However, the names of the Inquisitor, the Bishop (who’d be represented by replaced his Vicar), nor the Notary are entered. It seems to be a draft of the document.
This is a page of the live record, not the official document, it would have been subsequently transcribed by another scribe – or, perhaps more likely, changed with a falsified version will have been preserved in the episcopal archives ... '
Luna- 'Ciro please, do not say anything to anyone about this, first I want to understand it myself ... '
Ciro- 'Don’t worry Lucia. Now I’ll copy the software onto your memory stick, the software doesn’t require installation, it works independently from the operating system, so you can do the work at home. If you need help call me .'
Luna- 'You're great!'
I get back home with my heart in my throat.
With the unexpected help of Ciro’s software I can solve the problem of the texts, but now I want to devote myself to the sketch-maps of the convent, even though they’re such basic drawings, I can recognize the main lines of the layout of the premises: the church, the cloisters, the buildings to the north, south , east and west, the house of the Theatines, all corresponding astonishingly well with Gennaro’s extract from land records.
But there's more, evident subdivisions - the cells of the nuns, the novices’ dormitory, the abbess’s residence, even the routes of the tunnels within the walls. There are numbers and symbols, I’ll have to work out their meaning. And between the house of the Theatines the and the Convent there’s the bell-tower.
The north side of the tower is the right-hand wall of the passage to the right of stairs, the left-hand wall of the passage is formed by the buttress of the border wall between the house and the Convent, then there’s the gap in the wall which leads into the tunnels.
The bell tower is square edifice with thick walls against which abuts an internal staircase that rises from the ground to the belfry; it’s accessed via a passage on the ground floor from the tunnel that we first discovered, through a door in the west wall of the secondary chapel to the north of the high altar, where there’s a flying butress which supports the north wall.
The door of the chapel to the passage was surely closed off, as were all other entrances, in the nineteenth-century rebuild, or even earlier.
I'll have to find a way to get into the tower.
Now it’s clear that the end wall of the channel from the spring is the south side of the tower. I’ll never be able to get into the tower from the channel, but I’ve found the apse of the temple, and the spring.
I study these maps for ours, I produce a sketch that will serve my purpose at the site. Exhausted by the intense work of the day and insomnia the night before, I fall asleep.
20
He transforms the image into a vector file, selecting any area of the image where it sees a character:
screenshot from right to left:
and matches it with a modern character:
Pov(ere) leter rimon mist(e) ispero.
(I am inspired by shuffling the individual letters. )
This brief phrase indicates the use of anagrams
On one single page we can read statistics that include almost all the letters of the alphabet, numerals and punctuation marks. Having examined the document and completed the database, the program processes the data, then up comes a transcript in plaintext.
Ciro- ' Interesting! It records the launch of Inquisition proceedings against the nuns of the Convent of Sant’Arcangelo in Bajano for alleged crimes committed by those within the walls of the cloister, dating back to July 1577.
However, the names of the Inquisitor, the Bishop (who’d be represented by replaced his Vicar), nor the Notary are entered. It seems to be a draft of the document.
This is a page of the live record, not the official document, it would have been subsequently transcribed by another scribe – or, perhaps more likely, changed with a falsified version will have been preserved in the episcopal archives ... '
Luna- 'Ciro please, do not say anything to anyone about this, first I want to understand it myself ... '
Ciro- 'Don’t worry Lucia. Now I’ll copy the software onto your memory stick, the software doesn’t require installation, it works independently from the operating system, so you can do the work at home. If you need help call me .'
Luna- 'You're great!'
I get back home with my heart in my throat.
With the unexpected help of Ciro’s software I can solve the problem of the texts, but now I want to devote myself to the sketch-maps of the convent, even though they’re such basic drawings, I can recognize the main lines of the layout of the premises: the church, the cloisters, the buildings to the north, south , east and west, the house of the Theatines, all corresponding astonishingly well with Gennaro’s extract from land records.
But there's more, evident subdivisions - the cells of the nuns, the novices’ dormitory, the abbess’s residence, even the routes of the tunnels within the walls. There are numbers and symbols, I’ll have to work out their meaning. And between the house of the Theatines the and the Convent there’s the bell-tower.
The north side of the tower is the right-hand wall of the passage to the right of stairs, the left-hand wall of the passage is formed by the buttress of the border wall between the house and the Convent, then there’s the gap in the wall which leads into the tunnels.
The bell tower is square edifice with thick walls against which abuts an internal staircase that rises from the ground to the belfry; it’s accessed via a passage on the ground floor from the tunnel that we first discovered, through a door in the west wall of the secondary chapel to the north of the high altar, where there’s a flying butress which supports the north wall.
The door of the chapel to the passage was surely closed off, as were all other entrances, in the nineteenth-century rebuild, or even earlier.
I'll have to find a way to get into the tower.
Now it’s clear that the end wall of the channel from the spring is the south side of the tower. I’ll never be able to get into the tower from the channel, but I’ve found the apse of the temple, and the spring.
I study these maps for ours, I produce a sketch that will serve my purpose at the site. Exhausted by the intense work of the day and insomnia the night before, I fall asleep.
Last edited:
Velut, you are quite the writer!!!!
T
T