Our day began at the Chapel of the Annunciation, commissioned by a cardinal Pedro Fernández de Frías, exiled from Castille, with frescoes commissioned by the free comune of Cori in the early fifteenth century. The interior is entirely covered with frescoes, from various different times in history, including some of the school of Giotto, in amazingly bright hues.
The devil in this Last Judgement was erased during the counter-Reformation
Here we received a pilgrim blessing and a stamp for our pilgrim passports and the Diary of the Ragazze in Gamba, which I will be writing starting today!
The stage of the Via Francigena between Cori and Sezze is more than 30 km long, and as there are some very special sights to see on the way, we didn't have time to walk all the way. So our courteous chaperones from Il Gruppo dei Dodici accompanied us by motorised means as far as the archaeological site of ancient Norba, which dates back to the fifth century BC. It is said that rather than submit to conquest in thevwar with Silla, the citizens of Norba committed mass suicide and destroyed their own town. The archaeological site where the town once stood was covered by wheat fields and olive groves until recently but is now open to visitors.
From here we enjoyed a magnificent view over Castello Caetano with its botanical gardens, the Agro Pontino, a marsh until it was drained in the 1930s, with the towns of Latina and Sabaudia and the Circeo peninsula and the sea.
Break for refreshments at the Trattoria degli Antichi Sapori in Norma, which offers a pilgrim menu
A 5 km descent on a steep, rocky path took us the Abbey of Valvisciolo, where we celebrated the birthday of one of our walkers with more refreshments and a bottle of bubbly!
The prior of the 13th century Abbey of Valvisciolo took us on a brief tour. The highlight for me was the Sator Rotas in the cloister.
A word about the Sator Rotas
Sator Rotas, also known as the Sator Square: a two-dimensional palindrome with four symmetries. If written in a square, it reads the same in whatever direction you read it:
R O T A S
S A T O R
O P E R A
A R E P O
T E N E T
T E N E T
A R E P O
O P E R A
S A T O R
R O T A S
The text may be read top-to-bottom, bottom-to-top, left-to-right, or right-to-left; and it may be rotated 180 degrees and still be read in all those ways.
There is much debate as the meaning of the palindrome, particularly as arepo is not known to be a word in Latin; it may be a proper name, in which case the meaning of the sentence would be something like The farmer (Arepo) uses his plow as his form of work; it has also been suggested that the word arepo borrowed from the Gauls, for whom it means cart. In this interpretation, the meaning would be something like The sower with the cart takes good care of his wheels. Neither of these sound particularly profound, or worth engraving on a church wall; but more esoteric meanings have also been suggested. Arepo could be a Hebrew or Aramaic rendition of the Greek Ἄλφα ω, or "Alpha-Omega"; or it might be a version of the Egyptian name Ḥr-Ḥp, meaning "the face of Apis" (the sacred bull); or yet, arepo might be a Latinized abbreviation of the name Harpocrates, god of the rising sun.
The oldest known specimen of the Sator Rotas was found in the ruins of Pompeii, making it likely that the palindrome was not originally associated with Christianity; but it was soon attributed Christian connotations, and may have been used by Christians under Roman persecution as a secret identifying code, due to the fact that the letters can be rearranged to form the words pater noster in the form of a cross, with a couple of extra A's and O's representing, again, alpha to omega, symbol of the omnipresence of God.
Whatever its original meaning and subsequent associations, examples of the Sator Rotas may be found at several locations in Europe, as far apart as Portugal and Sweden; there are several specimens in Italy (including one on the wall of Siena cathedral), France, and England (in Manchester, Cirinchester, and Livingston).
Sator Rotas on the wall of the cathedral in Siena
The specimen in the Abbey of Valvisciolo is unique in that it is written in circular form, in which the letters form five concentric rings, each one divided into five sectors.
The Sator Rotas in Valvisciolo is hard to photograph because it's under glass
So here's a better picture I found on the Internet, with a schematic representation!
Another steep uphill path awaited us on the way to Sermoneta, a medieval village where the streets are paved with white stone from the Monti Lepini mountain range.
This is normally where pilgrims stop overnight, and have all evening to explore this beautiful town. We enjoyed a break with refreshments and a photo with one of the town councillors in the Loggia del Mercato, built in 1446.
This is a spot familiar to many Italians as the location of this classic and oft-quoted scene from the film Non ci resta che piangere, starring Roberto Benigni and (in this scene) Massimo Troisi, best known in the English-speaking world as the star of Il postino.
After our break in this well-known spot we continued on toward Sezze, on a pleasant trail through the woods and among fields of grazing cattle to our final destination for the day.
Setia plena bonis gerit albi signa leonis
Sezze piena di beni porta l'insegna del bianco leon
"Sezze, full of good things, bears the sign of the white lion"
Sezze is where Hercules completed the first of his twelve tasks: the slaying of the Nemean lion. And once we had accomplished the Herculean task of arriving at the highest point in the town, we were treated as heroes, photographed, fêted and cheered by the locals, the authorities, and, last but by no means least, a whole crew of talented young chefs from the town's new school of hospitality, I.S.I.S.S."Pacifici e De Magistris".
What a spread they laid out for us! Pizzas of all kinds, sandwiches, sweets and a new recipe they invented just for us: a "pilgrim bread" made with whole wheat flour and nuts to add extra protein and energy. I tucked a couple of slices away in my bag for my breakfast tomorrow: the perfect fuel for another day on the Via Francigena south of Rome!
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