Road between Spello and Collepino

After lunch I set off on what started as a Club Alpino Italiano (CAI)-signposted trail to San Silvestro…or a monastery…or something. The trail turned up a steep and stony forest track.  Among the trees it was cool, but I was not, because the trail seemed to go straight up.  (Will the Camino be like this?  Hmmm.)  The fresh air was silent except for the thumping of my heart.  I managed the 100-meter elevation gain in about fifteen minutes.  On the gravel road at the top, a trickle of water flowed into a big stagnant trough labeled “San Silvestro.”  Indeed.  I walked to an intersection and a sign suggested there was an eremo…somewhere.  Eventually I spotted a CAI sign and continued that direction.  The path widened and the forest started looking more like a lawn with a lot of trees.  Neat placards informed me this was a place of prayer and asked me to respect the silenzio.  All was as silent as the forest I had just left, except for the twittery birds and the cuckoo, who were definitely not obeying instructions.  At a sharp turn in the path a gray-habited sister stood in front of the stone convent. We looked at each other and nodded; I dared not break the silence.

A little farther along in a sunlit glade stood a simple Romanesque chapel and a little cloister (perhaps) with a tiny garden built into the remains of a tower.  The chapel door stood open, welcoming me inside, a polite handwritten sign asking only that I leave my dirty boots and hiking poles outside because of i beni architettonici antichi, which I presumed to be the beautiful red stone floor, very rough but bright and clean.  The cool air inside the chapel was refreshing.  As my eyes adjusted to the dark, a beautiful and spare space materialized.  Benches lined the walls and kneelers were in two corners.  A niche held quotes from saints (probably local fellows), a couple small paintings and a Bible open to Ecclesiastes.  In the small apse a worn but still elegant Roman sarcophagus had new life as the altar.  A stone in the floor in front of it was also recycled, bearing neatly graven but now meaningless letters: A M A D D V.  Across the front of the chapel three small arrow-slit windows held vases of wildflowers.  On the apse wall was one final remnant of a medieval fresco, Mary holding her little Jesus boy.  Plain wooden beams supported a white ceiling. Everything looked renovated and lovingly cared for.

Just inside the door to the left, a dark railingless stone staircase beckoned.  I descended slowly, feeling my way, and emerged into the undercroft, gray of stone and dim of light.  The reused marble altar slab held another vase of wildflowers in front of the small window. Three recycled and unmatched columns of granite and marble supported the vaults.  Daylight seeped into the back right corner. There I found a passageway lit by glass blocks in the ceiling (with buckets beneath them to catch leaks).  The short passage turned and was blocked by an iron grill through which I saw steps and doorways heading in the direction of the cloister.  A secret tunnel between convent and chapel?  How romantic and mysterious!  Did the nuns use it to arrive for the night offices of matins or lauds?  Do they still? Perhaps it’s a winter entrance.

In any case, the undercroft was too dingy for meditating, so I went back upstairs.  Outside the day was bright and quiet with no one else around; inside, the chapel was cool and silent and, for a brief time in its thousand-year history, mine.  I prayed.  I declared God’s reign over all creation.  I worshiped our Lord Jesus.  Then I stepped back into the sunshine, collected my pacer poles, had a look behind the cloister where the solar panels were hidden (a nun was gardening and a line of white undies was hung out to dry), and walked back out the way I had come.