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Tuesday Nov 21. Benevento. 21 km.

This is a second posting of this entry, with pictures.

For some reason, I can’t get photos into the blog at present.  So I’ll try adding a bit more description in words. Hopefully the internet will get better, or else I’ll be able to figure out some other kind of solution…

It was a varied walk this past Tuesday, and Morgane and I arranged to meet up in Benevento at the end of the day and share a small flat. There are several interesting things to talk about in Benevento.  The history here is somewhat familiar.  An ancient city, it was inhabited by the Samnites (peoples of the mountainous south of Italy) before the Romans conquered it in 298 BC.  The Roman Empire fell, and the Longobards arrived in the sixth century.  After the death of the last Longobard king, the town came under the rule of the Popes (1077) and stayed that way until the unification of Italy in 1860.

One of the best preserved churches of the Longobards is the seventh century Santa Sophia here in Benevento.  Although Romans would have called this invading tribe from the north “barbarians”, the Longobards converted to Christianity and played a pivotal role in developing the arts and culture of the medieval period.  The church is smallish compared to later ones.  On the inside eight stone columns (undoubtedly repurposed Roman ones) hold up an octagonal dome.  Everything in the church is arranged in a circle around these eight columns. Morgane remarked on how “feminine” this church feels.  The light from the dome spreads all through where the congregation would be seated, and the circular form seems to invite inclusivity and equality.


Bit of surviving fresco in Santa Sophia




In the Arcos Museum in town are fragments from an older temple, the Temple of Isis. The Emperor Diocletian built this temple in 88 AD, bringing materials and statues directly from Egypt. Archaeologists today can’t say for certain where the temple was located, but all sorts of statues and bits and pieces of stonework have been found in Longobard wells or in foundations for Longobard buildings - obviously used as filler. The cult of Isis was the most popular of the Eastern cults to come to Italy, and temples to Isis were found in Pompeii, Rome, Florence and several other places.   In 395 Emperor Theodosius suppressed all non-Christian cults in Rome, so at that point the temple of Isis would have closed.  I can’t help thinking that the cult of Isis resembles the Catholic veneration of Mary.  In many churches Mary has as prominent a position as Jesus - but the Marian cult apparently didn’t start until several centuries after the Isis cult had disappeared, so scholars don’t think the connection was all that significant.

Head of Isis from temple



Finally, Benevento is proud of the well preserved Triumphal Arch of Emperor Trajan.  Although the Via Appia already connected Rome to the eastern coastal port of Brindisi, a faster road was desired, and this Arch commemorates the completion of the Via Triaiana in 114 AD.  Emperor Trajan and his wife were concerned with the suffering of the poor, and one of the sculptures on the Arch shows the opening of a “Soup Kitchen “ to provide food to the needy in Benevento.  Not much changes in our world!




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