Road to Home 2023 Day 71: San Germano Vercellese - Vercelli

May I be no one’s enemy, and may I be a friend of that which is eternal and abides. May I never quarrel with those nearest me: and if I do, may I be reconciled quickly. May I love, seek and attain only that which is good. 

- prayer by Saint Eusebius of Vercelli (283 - 371)

For four minutes I enjoyed the thrill of speeding through the landscape at 70 kilometres an hour rather than four kilometres an hour, on a regional train back to San Germano Vercellese, where I stopped walking yesterday. San Germano looked nicer in the morning sunshine, and was somewhat less of a ghost town: the bakery was open,  and I bought a cake to eat along the way.

But the highlight of San Germano at this time in the morning,  for me, was a café on the way out of the town, which I hadn't spotted the day before, where I was served a cup of coffee made by a hundred-year-old espresso machine (1922)! The café, across from the village primary school, also has a collection of ventriloquist's dolls in a glass case, and a clean (modern) washroom - an important feature for pilgrims!

Steampunk espresso machine (1922)

The confluence of two irrigation canals at San Germano 

Pilgrim buddies

Into the rice paddies 

There is no shade on the stage between Santhià and Vercelli, and the humidity rises from the rice paddies. I cannot imagine walking it in summer, when mosquitoes are also a problem! But today, the only challenge was the mud puddles left by yesterday's rainstorm. 

Fresh snow was visible on the Alps in the distance behind me, and here and there patches of rice had been flattened in the storm.

The Via Francigena follows a dirt road through the fields parallel to the railway tracks, then veers off past an irrigation pond to Castellone, a yellow plaster and brick farm complex where a group of farming families would have lived and worked in past centuries.  It is still a working farm, and the Rotary Club of Vercelli has set up a picnic table just outside for pilgrims on the Via Francigena. 

Looking back towards the Alps

Castellone

Rest stop in the shade

Important information for walkers: detour!

There is a detour in effect with respect to the official route of the Via Francigena between Montonero and Vercelli, due to a landowner deciding that he no longer wants people walking through his estate. He has barred the way. At this point, walkers have three choices: 

1. Walk past the barrier- and risk getting shot at by the landowner 

2. Walk on the side of a busy highway - and risk getting run over

3. Be sensible and follow the alternative route waymarked by the "friends of the Via Francigena" of Vercelli!

You can either pick up the alternative route right after Montonero, or take it from Cascina Strà and save one kilometre. This is what I did. 

A sign behind Santa Maria del Cammino, the yellow chapel shown in the last picture above, warns of the change in the route. A few hundred metres later, the old official route turn right, but to take the new route, you walk through Cascina Strà, right between the abandoned farm buildings, cross the highway and the canal and walk a short way northwards, that is, back in the direction you came from, but on the other side of the highway; you then make a right turn and walk eastwards, parallel to the mountains, a short way before finally turning right and starting to walk in the direction of Vercelli, which you can see in the distance. 

It may look on the map like you ought to be able to take a shortcut,  but you can't because of the canal. 

The new route through Cascine Strà

The new route (thicker green line above) vs. the old route (thinner yellow line below)

Le mondine

It's interesting to walk through Cascina Strà, among the old dormitories from the days before tractors, when the back-breaking labour in the rice paddies was done by hand, by seasonal migrant workers from other parts of northern Italy, mostly women: the mondine, who transplanted the rice and then weeded the rice paddies during the flooding of the fields, between the months of April and June. They worked bent over double and up to their knees in water, wearing shorts and broad-brimmed hats with scarves to protect themselves against the sun and the mosquitoes. Their world was immortalised in Giuseppe De Santis' 1949 film Riso Amaro, starring Silvana Mangano and Doris Dowling, considered a masterpiece of neo-realist cinema. 

The long hours and atrocious conditions led to dissatisfaction and rebellion: it was the mondine who first sang the song Bella ciao, a song of protest against the bosses and landowners which was popularised by Yves Montand in the 1963 Spoleto festival and subsequently adopted as an anthem of protest movements all over the world. Contrary to popular opinion, however, the song was rarely if ever sung by Resistance fighters during the second World War. 

Grains of rice

The rice paddies today are, thankfully, worked by tractors, but they are still full of life, as I realised when I stopped moving and sat down on the grass by the path to eat my lunch. Once the sound of my movements fell silent, the frogs started chirping, the birds sang, and a nutria (coypu) wandered out of the irrigation ditch and onto the path. 

The new route of the Via Francigena takes you right from the rice paddies into the light industries and big box stores of the outskirts of Vercelli. Including my favourite big box store - in fact, the only one that interests me these days: the sporting goods store Decathlon! I stopped by to look for a new hat, as I realised yesterday that my old one is not only faded and floppy but less waterproof than it used to be! However they were all out of rain hats, so I settled for an electrolyte drink and a new shirt instead.

The yellow pilgrim has also popped in for some electrolytes!

Through the outskirts of Vercelli and a multi-ethnic neighbourhood of kebab sellers, Chinese shops and restaurants, a Romanian grocery store and an African hairdresser... I eventually came to the central square.

I had one more stop to make before heading for the hostel: my favourite ice cream parlour in Vercelli, hidden in an alleyway off the square in the photo below!

Hospitale Sancti Eusebio

Vercelli

I am no stranger to the town of Vercelli: in February 2019 I spent a weekend learning to be a pilgrim host with Accoglienza Pellegrina/Hospitaleros Voluntarios, and twice since then I have volunteered at the town's pilgrim hostel. On my first two visits I stayed a few days longer to visit with my good friend and walking buddy Mariella, whose home is just around the corner from the hostel. So I didn't feel the need to tour all the city's sights, which definitely make it worth spending an extra day in town, if you are looking for somewhere to take a day off walking on the Via Francigena!

Basilica di Sant'Andrea 

The historic pilgrim hostel (no longer used for the purpose)

16th-century frescoes in the church of San Cristoforo

On this visit I decided to dedicate some attention to the city's cathedral, which I felt I had neglected on my previous visits in favour of the Cistercian Basilica of Sant'Andrea. The cathedral is no longer the original one, but has been reconstructed and enlarged between the 16th and 19th centuries; however its great treasure is a 10th-century silver and gold plated crucifix. 

I sat for some time in the cathedral listening to a choir rehearsing polyphonic early Baroque music, Palestrina perhaps, in the side chapel dedicated to Saint Eusebius. 

Saint Eusebius of Vercelli 

Saint Eusebius, the first bishop of Vercelli, was born on or about March 2, 283, in  Sardinia and died on August 1, 371, in Vercelli. During his very long life he had occasion to travel far and wide, though not always as a matter of choice. He was in fact exiled first to Syria, then to Cappadocia and Egypt between the years 355 and 360 by the Roman Emperor Constantius II, who supported the Arian version of Christianity and exiled all bishops who refused to agree with what later came to be known as the Arian heresy, which basically denies the divinity of Christ. This non-trinitarian theology holds that Christ is not eternal like God, but was made or begotten by him at a later point, and that the Son is therefore subordinate to the Father. As Arius stated, "if the Father begat the Son, then he who was begotten had a beginning in existence, and from this it follows there was a time when the Son was not."

Ordinary people didn't understand what the controversy was about, because, then as now, they didn't bother themselves to think too hard about such fine distinctions of theology. But the Arian belief system was adopted by a number of Roman emperors, and by Goth and Vandal warlords upon their conversion to Christianity. By 325, the theological dispute had become significant enough that the Emperor Constantine called an assembly of bishops, the First Council of Nicaea, which condemned Arius's doctrine and formulated the original Nicene Creed of 325. But Constantine's son Constantius II encouraged the Arians and attempted to reverse the Nicene creed, exiling bishops who adhered to it such as Eusebius of Vercelli. 

Upon the death of Constantius in 361, his successor Emperor Julian rehabilitated the bishops who had been exiled, and Eusebius was able to return to his post in Vercelli, where he served as bishop for another ten years, until his death.

The Codex Vercellensis and the Vercelli Book 

 

10th-century gilded silver cover of the Codex Vercellensis,  in the cathedral museum

The Codex Vercellensis Evangeliorum is the oldest existing manuscript of the Old Latin gospels, dated between 345 and 371, and is believed to have been produced on the order of Bishop Eusebius. Most of the pages are in poor condition and scarcely legible, as the book was used for swearing oaths in medieval times, so people kept putting their hands on it! 

The volume is now kept in the Biblioteca Capitolare, the library of the Cathedral of Vercelli, one of the most prestigious in Italy, which also houses the Vercelli Book, a late 10th-century parchment manuscript produced in southeast England. A collection of 23 sermons and six poems in the Anglo-Saxon language, the manuscript was most likely brought from England to the Hospitale di Santa Brigida, a hostel in Vercelli founded in the 11th century specifically for British pilgrims on the Via Francigena. Books were rare and valuable, and the Vercelli Book may well have been a part of the "treasure" donated to the church by one Bishop Ulf of Dorchester in order to obtain pardon for his shortcomings in the fulfilment of his official duties.

Copy of the Vercelli Book on display in the cathedral museum

Sorry about the length of this post, but it barely scratches the surface of all that there is to see in Vercelli, a city of great historical importance in relation to pilgrimage routes, located at the confluence of the Via Francigena and the Camino de Santiago!

San Germano Vercellese  - Vercelli 21.5 km