A weekend in the footsteps of St. Francis, delivering the pilgrim diary to the Little Museum of Diaries

In September/October 2021 I walked the southern part of the Via Francigena not only to participate in the Road to Rome 2021 - Start Again project, but also as a member and representative of the Ragazze in Gamba movement, carrying and writing in our collective pilgrim diary. This rather lengthy post explains what became of that diary, and how it ended up in the Piccolo Museo del Diario in Pieve Santo Stefano! 

Who are the Ragazze in Gamba?

For those who don't speak Italian: "in gamba" is a common idiomatic expression in Italian, meaning cool, smart, capable, on the ball... you get the idea. By fortunate coincidence, gamba also means leg, so what better name for a group of smart, cool and capable ragazze (girls, of all ages) who like to walk? 

Ragazze in gamba is an open social network published via Facebook through which over 60,000 walking women from all parts of Italy connect, share stories and advice, and even arrange to walk together. 

According to the group's philosophy, walking is more than just going for a stroll: it's a way of discovering the inner strength that we all have, even if we don't always realise it. 

Walking can be a way of establishing a new harmony with yourself, other people, and the natural and cultural environment around you, and a key to unlocking a whole new world of friendships and mutual support. 

Ragazze in Gamba focuses on and promotes walking routes in Italy, but its membership also includes women from outside of the country, and the group is open to male members too!  

The Ragazze in Gamba network is run by Rete nazionale donne in cammino, a nation-wide association of women walkers established by Ilaria Canali whose mission is to promote female empowerment through walking: walking as a way of bringing about greater awareness of oneself and one's place in the world. 

Women have always walked just as much as men, if not more. At least half of medieval pilgrims were women; well-known female pilgrims of the early centuries of the Christian era included Paula, Melania and Etheria, also known as Egeria, who left us a diary of her travels around the Holy Places between 381 and 386, the Itinerarium Egeriae ("Travels of Egeria"), written in the form of a long letter to her "sisters" back home. 

The collective pilgrim diary

Following in the long tradition established by Etheria, the Ragazze in Gamba also kept a diary of their pilgrimage during the Road to Rome 2021 - Start Again last year. The members of the group who participated in various sections of the Road to Rome expedition along the Via Francigena recorded their experiences in a collective diary, written by hand every evening in a notebook which was passed along from one Ragazza in Gamba to the next as the walkers proceeded southwards, in a sort of diary-writing relay. 

A number of the writers who contributed to the collective diary participated in the final stage of the Road to Rome on October 18, 2021: the arrival in Santa Maria di Leuca!

 

A year later...

Almost a year after the completion of Road to Rome 2021 and the writing of the collective pilgrim diary, on the weekend of September 16th to 18th, 2022 a small group of Ragazze in Gamba gathered to hand over the collective pilgrims' diary one last time: to the Piccolo Museo del Diario, the Little Museum of Diaries in Pieve Santo Stefano. This fascinating museum showcases a number of diaries that tell of the history of the past century (or two) through the stories of ordinary individual Italians from all walks of life. I first had occasion to visit the Piccolo Museo del Diario on my Long Walk to Assisi in June 2021, as it is right on the route of the Way of St. Francis. 

But... could a group of women walkers simply drive to the museum to deliver the diary? Of course not! And so a small group of representatives of the diary's authors met in Chiusi della Verna on the afternoon of Friday, September 16 to walk to the museum, arriving just in time for the annual festival of diary writing and announcement of the winners of the museum's annual competition for autobiographical writing: Premio Pieve.  

The Sanctuary of La Verna

On our first afternoon together, we walked the short but steep path from Chiusi della Verna to the Sanctuary of La Verna, perched atop a rocky outcrop on Mount Penna. The mountain was donated to St. Francis by Count Orlando of Chiusi on May 8, 1213, "for the health of my soul", as the Count put it. 

La Verna is considered one of the holiest sites in Italy, because this is where St. Francis received the stigmata in September of 1224. And though we hadn't planned it, we arrived at the Sanctuary on the day of the celebrations commemorating this event! That very night, a group of pilgrims walked the same steep path to the Sanctuary that we had walked in the afternoon, but by torchlight, celebrating a midnight mass in the church. 

We Ragazze in Gamba, however, were all exhausted, not so much from our brief climb but from the effort involved in travelling to La Verna from our homes all over Italy: members of our group had come from distant Alpine valleys and from far-off Tricase, where I was two weeks ago, at the southern end of Puglia! So after a tour of the Sanctuary with Sister Terenzia, who provided her own entertaining and ironic explanation of the life of St. Francis, as illustrated in the frescoes under the arcades built to shelter the friars on their daily procession from their monastery to the chapel of the stigmata, and a dinner in the monastery guesthouse, we retired to our accommodations in the pilgrims' dormitory. 

From the warmth of my bed, I heard singing in the distance as the group of pilgrims arrived at the Sanctuary and filed into the church late at night.      

At dinner in the Sanctuary's guesthouse 

Racing the storm, from La Verna to Pieve Santo Stefano 

We set off early the following morning in the hopes of beating the thunderstorms forecast for the middle of the day. It was too early for breakfast in the refectory, and so in addition to our picnic lunch, we had requested a "picnic breakfast" and a large thermos of tea, which we consumed on the steps of the Sanctuary's confessional chapel at sunrise.

We then began another short but steep climb from the Sanctuary of La Verna (1128 metres) up Monte Calvano (1254 metres) before the long descent toward Pieve Santo Stefano. 

There are several paths in these mountains, and the proliferation of signposts can be confusing... but luckily we had a professional hiking guide with us, the valiant Linda Tambosi, who had come all the way to La Verna from Trentino a couple of days early to scout out the route and identify possible "escape routes" in the event that the thunderstorm should roll in early and catch us still out on the mountain. 

The signage can be confusing on this stage of the Way of St. Francis!

The weather held out for most of the morning, and the rain didn't begin until we had stopped for a snack and a break in the woods not far from the final descent into the town. We put on our raingear and speeded up our pace, ponchos blowing in the wind, hurrying down the hill toward the town... and we almost made it without getting seriously wet! 

Big clouds blowing in

By the time the rain was seriously coming down, and the thunderclaps growing closer, we were already on the paved road into the town, and so we ducked into the first public establishment we came across: Il Ghiandiao, a restaurant run by pig farmers with a menu which, of course, features homemade hams, salamis and sausages. Just the thing for a vegetarian! 😁 

But all we wanted at the time was a hot cup of coffee and a place to shelter from the weather, and that was exactly what we got! 

When the weather let up, we went into the town of Pieve Santo Stefano and visited an exhibition of illustrated diaries written by immigrants to Italy. One of them perfectly summed up the day's weather! 

 

Pieve Santo Stefano, and memories of the past

Pieve Santo Stefano is the perfect place to keep an archive of memories, for the town has lost its own memory. In the month of August 1944, Pieve was almost completely destroyed: the German army relocated all the town's inhabitants and planted mines in every single building with the intention of hindering the Allied advance. The entire town was destroyed, with the exception of the three most important (and evidently strongest) constructions: the town's two churches, and the municipal hall that now houses the Little Museum of Diaries. 

I had visited the Piccolo Museo del Diario before, but it was just as interesting to see it again, and to observe the reactions of other members of the group who had never been. For more about the museum, I refer my readers to last year's post, and offer here only a couple of samples of the items on display! 

Original pages from the diary of Vincenzo Rabito, Terra Matta

A poem on a bedsheet, by Clelia Marchi

A very special place: Il Cerbaiolo

In June of last year I had to cut off my tour of the museum to allow enough time to walk the remaining kilometres uphill to the Hermitage of Cerbaiolo. But this time our organiser, Ilaria Canali, was there with us - and with her car, to drive us most of the way up the winding gravel road to the hermitage. We then walked the remaining distance - where the road is too rough for regular on-road vehicles - and crept silently into our room so as not to disturb the hermit, Father Claudio, at his evening prayers in the chapel. 

Cerbaiolo was originally a Benedictine abbey, commissioned in 706. By the year 1150 it was already old - just think about that for a moment - and the abbey was abandoned. The town of Pieve Santo Stefano donated the disused abbey to Saint Francis and his community of Franciscan friars in the year 1217, and St. Anthony of Padua visited the site in the following year. 

The hermitage was mined and severely damaged by the retreating German army in 1944. Following repair and reconstruction, it became the home of a female hermit, Chiara, who lived here for 44 years with her herd of goats and sixty cats. 

Following Chiara's death in 2010, the hermitage was abandoned for a decade, until Father Claudio came here to live the life of a hermit. After many years of social service, working with drug addicts and prostitutes on the lively streets of Italy's Riviera Romagnola, on the Adriatic coast, Father Claudio not surprisingly felt a need to retire in solitude and contemplation of nature. 

Our bedroom window in the hermitage

The hermitage is built right into the rock of the mountain

Father Claudio occasionally agrees to take in pilgrims on the Way of St. Francis, providing a monk's cell, dinner and breakfast, provided the visitors respect the spirit of the hermitage: silence, and recognition of the sacredness of the place. He wishes it to be clear that he is not running a bed and breakfast, or even a pilgrim hostel, but can open the hermitage doors to pilgrims wanting to spend an evening in silence and contemplation along the Way of St. Francis. Provided it is not a Sunday, when he is busy with Sunday services!

Also living in the hermitage, and giving Father Claudio a hand running the hermitage and receiving pilgrims, is the amazing Carla: a widow and a lay member of the same order as Father Claudio who claims to be 85 years old, though we had a hard time believing her! Carla tends the hermitage grounds, keeps house and cooks meals for Father Claudio, herself and passing pilgrims - and makes the hermitage's fabulous herbal liqueurs, which we had an opportunity to sample after dinner!

I feel truly honoured to have had the privilege of staying at the hermitage of Cerbaiolo on two occasions now! 

In the morning, our guide Linda and I rose early and climbed to the cross at the top of the hill to watch the sunrise.

Then we met the others for breakfast, packed our bags and said goodbye to our hosts, after explaining our project and presenting Carla with one of our T-shirts: she definitely qualifies as a Ragazza in Gamba!

A morning at the Premio Pieve literary festival

The theme of this year's Premio Pieve is "searchers for peace"

On Sunday morning we attended one of the final events of Premio Pieve, the festival and competition for autobiographical writing organised by the Piccolo Museo del Diario. The diaries, and diarists, included in this year's list of honour were presented, with actors reading an excerpt from each, commented by the author (or a representative thereof) and the member of the museum's diary reading commission who selected the diary in question. This year's list of honour included the pandemic diary of 13-year-old Emma; the memoirs of the white-haired Rosa De Marsico, present at the festival, who was born in poverty and spent her life working hard to maintain four younger siblings, a husband and three children from an arranged marriage; the story of Francesco, who emigrated from Reggio Calabria in the south to seek work in the industrial north, a story which, he noted, is common to thousands of people of his generation; and the memoirs of two survivors of the concentration camps, Don Ricci, a priest from Stresa, and Altero Ciaccio of Asciano, now 99 years old, captured by the Germans at the age of 19. 

All "stories which must not be lost", as the member of the jury who presented Altero's diary remarked! But perhaps no-one's story should be lost, for every human being, however ordinary they may seem at first glance, has a unique story to tell. 

The morning concluded with the presentation of two special prizes, one for the memoirs of Ottorino Orlandini, resistance fighter in the Spanish civil war and partisan in Italy, later to become a Christian Democrat politician, presented by the history professor who put his memoirs in order, and another for "best original manuscript" awarded to two diaries written by Patrizia Calovini fifty years apart: as a 15-year-old during the student revolt of 1968, and during the pandemic lockdown of 2020. 

Patrizia's diaries, with their rich graphic content, in a showcase in the museum

Presentation of the collective pilgrim diary

But before these last two prize-winning diaries came the moment we had been waiting for: the presentation of the collective pilgrim diary to the National Archive and the Little Museum of Diaries.

Ilaria Canali, coordinator of the Ragazze in Gamba group, presented the diary in the name of all 21 of the women who wrote in it along the Via Francigena in September and October 2021. 

Our collective pilgrim diary will now be kept as part of the museum's permanent collection, joining almost 10,000 diaries, memoirs and collections of letters written by ordinary Italians since the early 19th century in the National Archive of Diaries (Archivio Nazionale del Diario). 

Our diary may not be as spectacular as some of the others, or its stories as dramatic, but we hope it will make a valuable edition to the collections of the Piccolo Museo del Diario, where you will be able to go and see it for yourself!!

 

The diary at the end of the walk, in Santa Maria di Leuca

A sneak preview: one of my entries!

Now that the diary is finally off our hands... it's time to celebrate! 

Following the presentation of the diary, we gave one of our T-shirts to the MC, Natalia Cangi, another honorary Ragazza in Gamba. One of our diarists, Adele Mintrone, who wrote about the stages closest to her hometown of Corato, on the part of the Via Francigena referred to as the "Direttrice Traiana" (the Trajan Way route between Troia and Bari), presented Daniela and each of the diary writers participating in the ceremony with a sample Biscotto del Pellegrino, a special "pilgrim cookie" made to a recipe by an award-winning chef, with ingredients such as local wheat, olive oil  and almonds. 

I ate my cookie for "bedtime supper", with a cup of hot chocolate, when I got home that night, and I can tell you it really is delicious - be sure to drop by the offices of the Comitato Via Francigena del Sud Corato to sample one and get your credential stamped, when you pass through Corato on the Via Francigena of the South!   

My cookie, shortly before it disappeared, in the company of the pilgrim cut-out also given to me by the committee in Corato!

As we were preparing to leave the festival and go for lunch, Ilaria and I were interviewed by representatives of the Memories Across Europe project, who expressed a lot of interest in our pilgrim diary! 

Perhaps one day they will ask me to translate it all into English, for an international audience! 😊

We then returned to Il Ghiandiao, the restaurant where we had sheltered from the storm the previous day, for a marvelous lunch in the company of Gigi Bettin, one of the key custodians of the Way of St. Francis, during which I seem to have managed to get grease all over the lens of my camera, judging from the photos that follow! 😆

Pig farmer and cook Giuseppe expounds on the menu

Vin santo with cantucci and goodbyes in the garden  

The Road to Home

It's just as hard to get home from Pieve Santo Stefano as it is to get to there - or to where we started, in Chiusi della Verna, a day's walk away. Each of us faced a different odyssey: a long drive to Rome, a night on the Flixbus to Puglia... Or, in my case, hitching a ride with fellow Ragazza in Gamba Marcella and accidentally ending up in the very centre of Florence, navigating the narrow streets and squares thronging with tourists around the Uffizi Gallery and Palazzo Strozzi, followed by an hour and a half on the train to Siena, then the last bus of the day to Buonconvento and a two-kilometre walk by starlight, along the Via Francigena and up my own road home! 

The only part of the Via Francigena I know well enough to walk it in the dark!