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CHAPTER XVIII
MILAN AND THE PLAINS OF LOMBARDY
THE great artichoke of Lombardy, whose petals have fallen one by one before its enemies of Piedmont, is now much circumscribed in area compared with its former estate.
From Como to Mantua and from Brescia to Pavia, in short the district of Milan as it is locally known to-day, is the only political entity which has been preserved intact. Tortona, Novara, Alessandria and Asti have become alienated entirely, and for most travellers Milan is Lombardy and Lombardy is Milan. To-day the dividing line in the minds of most is decidedly vague.
Lombardy is the region of all Italy most prolific in signs of modernity and prosperity, and, with Torino, Milan shares the honour of being the centre of automobilism in Italy. The roads here, take them all in all, are of the best, though not always well conditioned. That from Milan to Como can be very, very good and six months later degenerate into something equally as bad. The roads of these parts have an enormous traffic over them and it is for this reason, as much as anything, that their maintenance is difficult and variable. For the greater part they are all at a general level, except of course in entering or leaving certain cities and towns of the hills and on the direct roads leading to the mountain passes back of Torino, or the roads crossing the lake region and entering Switzerland or the Oberland.
Lombardy in times past, and to-day to some extent, possessed a dialect or patois quite distinct from the Franco-Italian mélange of Piedmont, or the pure Italian of Tuscany. The Lombard, more than all other dialects of Italy, has a decided German flavour which, considering that the Lombard crown was worn by a German head, is not remarkable. In time – after the Guelph-Ghibelline feud – Lombardy was divided into many distinct camps which in turn became recognized principalities.
The Viscontis ruled the territory for the most part up to 1447, when the condottière Francesco Sforza developed that despotism which brought infamy on his head and State, a condition of affairs which the Pope described as conducive to the greatest possible horrors.
Lombardy has ever been considered the real paradise and land of riches of all Italy, and even now, in a certain luxuriousness of attitude towards life, it lives up to its repudiation of the days of the dominating Visconti and Sforza.
Milan is to-day the luxurious capital of Lombardy, as was Pavia in the past. At one time, be it recalled, Milan was a Duchy in its own right. Years of despotism at the hands of a man of genius made Milan a great city and the intellectual capital of Italy. Milanese art and architecture of the fifteenth century reached a great height. It was then, too, that the Milanese metal workers became celebrated, and it was a real distinction for a knight to be clad in the armour of Milan.
“Well was he armed from head to heel
In mail and plate of Milan steel.”
Milan has a history of the past, but paradoxically Milan is entirely modern, for it struggled to its death against Pavia, the city of five hundred and twenty-five towers, and was born again as it now is. One should enter Milan in as happy a mood as did Evelyn who “passynge by Lodi came to a grete citty famous for a cheese little short of the best Parmesan.” It was a queer mood to have as one was coming under Milan’s spell, and the sculptured and Gothic glories of the Cathedral, as it stands in completion to-day, are quite likely to add to, rather than detract from, any preconceived idea of the glories of the city and its treasures.
Milan is one of the most princely cities of Europe, and lies in the centre of a region flowing with milk and honey. In Evelyn’s time it had a hundred churches, seventy monasteries and forty thousand inhabitants. To-day its churches and monasteries are not so many, but it has a population of half a million souls.
The comment of the usual tourist is invariably: “There is so little to see in Milan.” Well, perhaps so! It depends upon how hard you look for it. Milan is a very progressive up-to-date sort of city, but its storied past has been most momentous, and historic monuments are by no means wanting. Milan is modern in its general aspect, it is true, and has little for the unexpert in antiquarian lore, but all the same it has three magic lode stones; its luxuriously flamboyant Gothic Duomo; its Ambrosian Library and its Palace of arts and sciences, La Brera.
Tourists may forget the two latter and what they contain, but they will not forget the former, nor the Arch of Triumph built as a guide post by Napoleon on his march across Europe, or the Galleria Victor-Emmanuel, “as wide as a street and as tall as a Cathedral,” a great arcade with shops, cafés, restaurants and the like.
There is the Scala opera house, too, which ranks high among its kind.
Milan’s “eighth wonder of the world,” its great Cathedral, is the chef d’œuvre of the guide books. Details of its magnitude and splendours are there duly set forth. Milan’s Cathedral has long sheltered a dubious statue of St. Bartholomew, and tourists have so long raved over it that the authorities have caused to be graven on its base: “I am not the work of Praxiteles but of Marcus Agrates.” Now the throngs cease to admire, and late experts condemn the work utterly. Such is the follow-my-leader idea in art likes and dislikes! And such is the ephemeral nature of an artist’s reputation!
The Palazzo Reale occupies the site of the Palazzo di Corte of the Visconti and the Sforza of the fourteenth century, “one of the finest palaces of its time,” it is recorded. The Palazzo of to-day is a poor, mean thing architecturally, although the residence of the King to-day when he visits Milan. The Archiepiscopal Palace of the sixteenth century is perhaps the finest domestic establishment of its class and epoch in Milan.
Milan’s Castello, the ancient castle of Milan, was the ancient ducal castle, built by Galeazzo Visconti II in 1358, to keep the Milanese in subjection. It was demolished after his death, but rebuilt with increased strength by Gian Galeazzo. On the death of the Duke Filippo Maria, the Milanese rose (1447), and, having proclaimed the “Aurea respublica Ambrosiana,” destroyed the castle. It was rebuilt (1452) by Francesco Sforza, “for the ornament (he said) of the city and its safety against enemies.” This building, completed in 1476, is the one now standing. In the interior is a keep, where the dukes often resided. Philip II added extensive modern fortifications, and caused to be pulled down all the neighbouring towers which overlooked them. The castle was taken by the French in 1796, and again in 1800, when Napoleon ordered the fortifications to be razed. It has since been converted into a barrack. Of the round towers at the angles, those towards the north have been replaced by modern brick ones, while the two towards the city, formed of massive granite blocks, remain. During the vice-royalty of Eugene Beauharnais, a Doric gateway of granite, with a portico, or line of arches, now filled up, on each side, and in the same style, was erected on the northwest side; between each arch is a medallion containing the bas-relief portrait of some illustrious Italian military commander.
The Napoleonic arch, the Arco della Pace, is a remarkably interesting civic monument, a reproduction of a temporary affair first built of wood and canvas in 1806. Now it stands, a comparatively modern work to be sure, but of splendid design and proportions, built of white marble, and elaborately decorated with sculptures all at the expense of Napoleon, who, on his march of migratory conquest, deigned to devote 200,000 francs to the purpose.
Milan’s hotels are of all sorts and conditions, but with a decided tendency towards the good, as is fitting in so opulent a country. Bertolini’s Hotel Europe takes a high rank, at corresponding charges, as for instance four francs for a “box” for your automobile. The Touring Club Italiano endorses the Albergo del Cervo, where you pay nothing for garage and may eat as bountifully as you will of things Italian, real Italian, at from two to three francs a meal. One of the most amusing things to do in Milan is to lunch or dine in one of the great glass covered galleries near the cathedral, and one feasts well indeed for the matter of four francs, with another couple of francs for a bottle of Asti. These great restaurants of the galleries may lack a certain aspect of the next-to-the-soil Italian restaurants, but they do show a phase of another class of Italian life and here “Young Italy” may be seen taking his midday meal and ordering English or German beer or Scotch or American whiskey. He shuns the Italian items on the bill of fare and orders only exotics. You on the contrary will do the reverse.
Pavia, thirty odd kilometres south of Milan, was ever a rival of the greater city of to-day. Pavia is a tourist point, but only because it is on the direct road from Milan.
Pavia was the Lombard capital from 572 to 774. Its old walls and ramparts remain, in part, to-day and the whole aspect of the town is one of a certain mediævalism which comports little with the modernity of its neighbour, Milan, which has so far outgrown its little brother.
Pavia’s Certosa, on the road from Milan to Pavia, is its chief architectural splendour. Of that there is no doubt. It is the most gorgeously endowed and most splendid monastery in all the world, founded in 1396 by one of the Visconti as an atonement to his conscience for having murdered his uncle and father-in-law.
A Venetian, Bernardo da Venezia, was probably the architect of the Certosa, and brick work and superimposed marble slabs and tablets all combine in an elegance which marks the Certosa of Pavia as characteristic of the most distinctive Lombard manner of building of its epoch.
Within the city itself still stands the grim Castello, built on the site of the palace of the Lombard kings. The present building, however, was begun in 1460 and completed in 1469. It formed an ample quadrangle, flanked by four towers, two of which alone remain. The inner court was surrounded by a double cloister, or loggia; in the upper one the arches were filled in by the most delicate tracery in brickwork. The whole was crowned by beautiful forked battlements. In the towers were deposited the treasures of literature and art which Gian Galeazzo had collected: – ancient armour; upwards of 1,000 MSS., which Petrarch had assisted in selecting; and many natural curiosities. All these Visconti collections were carried to France in 1499 by Louis XII and nothing was left but the bare walls. One side of the palace or castle was demolished during the siege by Lautrec in 1527; but in other respects it continued perfect, though deserted, till 1796, when it was again put into a state of defence by the French. They took off the roof and covered the vaultings with earth; and when the rains came on in autumn, the weight broke down the vaultings, and ruined a great part of the edifice. It has since been fitted up as a military barracks. The great ruined gateway, once entered by a drawbridge crossing the fosse, is still the most imposing single detail, and the great quadrangle, with its fourteenth century arcades and windows, “a medley of Gothic and Bramantesque,” is striking, although the marble and terra-cotta ornaments are much dilapidated.
François I’s famous mot: “all is lost save honour,” uttered after the eventful battle of Pavia, will go down with that other remark of his: “Oh, God, but thou hast made me pay dear for my crown,” as the two most apropos sayings of Renaissance times.
One has to look carefully “under the walls of Pavia,” to-day for any historical evidence of the fatal day of François I when he lost his “all, save honour.” Du Bellay has painted the picture so well that in spite of the fact that four hundred years have rolled by, it seems unlikely that even the most superficial traveller should not find some historic stones upon which to build his suppositions.
Pavia’s great University flowered in 1362, and owes much to the generous impulses of Galeas II, who founded its chairs of civic and canonical law, medicine, physics and logic. Galeas II was a great educator, but he was versatile, for he invented a system of torture which would keep a political prisoner alive for forty days and yet kill him at the end of forty-one.
If one returns to Milan via the Bridge of Lodi he will have made a hundred kilometre round of classic Lombard scenery. It possesses no elements of topographic grandeur but is rich and prosperous looking, and replete with historic memory, every kilometre of it.
Lodi has evolved its name from the ancient Laus of the Romans, another evidence of the oblique transformation of Latin into the modern dialect. The men of Lodi were ever rivals of the Milanese, but it is to Napoleon’s celebrated engagement at the Bridge of Lodi that it owes its fame in the popular mind.
Above Lodi, the River Adda circles and boils away in a sort of whirlpool rapid, which Leonardo da Vinci, setting his palette and brushes aside, set about to control by a dam and a series of sluices. How well he succeeded may be imagined by recalling the fact that the Italian Edison Company in recent years availed themselves of the foundation of his plan in their successful attempt to turn running water into electricity.
The panorama to the north of Milan is grandiose in every particular. On the horizon the Alpine chain lies clear-cut against the sky, the Viso, Grand Paradise, Mont Blanc, Splugen and other peaks descending in one slope after another, one foothill after another, until all opens out into the great plain of Lombardy.
North of Milan, towards Como and the Alpine background, is Monza. Lady Morgan called Monza dreary and silent, but her judgments were not always sound; she depended too much upon moods and hers were many.
Monza’s Broletto was built by Frederick Barbarossa, or it was a part of a palace built by that monarch. Italian Gothic of an unmistakable local cast is its style and the effect is heightened by the ringhiera between the windows of the south side.
In Monza’s Cathedral – an antique interior with a Gothic exterior, by the way – is the celebrated Iron Crown of Lombardy with which the German Emperors of Lombardy were crowned. Charles V, Napoleon and Ferdinand I also made use of the same historic bauble which is not of much splendour. It costs a five franc fee to see it, and the sight is not worth the price of admission.
From Milan to Domodossola, leaving Italy via the Simplon Pass, is 177 kilometres, or, via Bellinzona and the Splugen, 207 kilometres with mediocre roads until the lake region is reached, when they improve decidedly, being of the very best as they ascend the mountain valleys.
CHAPTER XIX
TURIN AND THE ALPINE GATEWAYS
THE mountains of Piedmont are of the same variety as those of Switzerland and Savoy. They form the highland background to Turin which gives it its magnificent and incomparable framing.
Turin, or Torino, was the old capital of the Duchy of Savoy, then of the Kingdom of Sardinia, up to 1864, and to-day is the chief city of Piedmont.
Turin is laid out in great rectangular blocks, with long straight streets, and it is brilliant and beautiful as modern cities go, but there is not much that is romantic about it, save an occasional historical memory perpetuated by some public monument.
Turin at the time of the founding of the kingdom of Sardinia, which included also the domain of the house of Savoy, contained but 75,000 inhabitants. Said Montesquieu, who visited it in 1728: “It is the most beautiful city in the world.” De Brosseo, a few years later, declared it to be “the finest city in Italy, by the proper alignment of its streets, the regularity of its buildings, and the beauty of its squares.” From this point of view the same holds true to-day, but it is not sympathetic and winsome in the least, and it is not for the contemplation of straight streets, square, box-like buildings or formal public garden plots that one comes to Italy.
Turin’s monumental memories are by no means non-existent or unclassed, but they are almost overpowered by the modern note which rings so loudly in one’s ears and flashes so vividly in one’s eyes.
Of them all the Palazzo Madonna has the greatest appeal. It was originally a thirteenth century construction of the Montferrats, but was added to at various times until well along in the eighteenth century, when it became the palace of Madonna Reale, the widow of Charles Emmanuel II. All its value from an architectural point of view is in its exterior aspect, but its trim twelve-sided towers have a real distinction that a heavier, more clumsy donjon often lacks.
The Palazzo Carignano is a fanciful invention of an architect, Guarni by name, who in 1680 had no very clear idea as to what a consistent and pleasing architectural conception should be. This palace’s sole reason to be remembered is that it was the residence of King Carlo-Alberto. To-day Guarni’s original façade has been covered by a non-contemporary colonnade, with columns and statues of a certain impressive presence, which would be considered handsome if it were some degrees finer in workmanship, for the conception was certainly on becoming general lines.
The Palazzo Valentino, built in 1633 by Christine of France, the daughter of Henri IV and Marie de Medici, and wife of Vittorio Amedeo II, is now devoted to the usages of an educational institution. It is on the classic French chateau order and is as out of place in Italy as the Italian Renaissance architecture is in England.
On the Piazza Castello rises Turin’s old castle of the fourteenth century, built of brick, and, though moss-grown, it is hardly a ruin.
The Palazzo Reale, built in 1678 on the north side of the Piazza, is severe and simple as to exterior, but luxurious enough within by reason of the collections which it houses.
In the armory of Turin’s royal palace is the full suit of armour worn by Duke Emanuele-Filiberto on the occasion of the battle of St. Quentin, and made by his own hand. He was an armourer, a silversmith and a worker in fine metals beyond compare. In peace he was a craftsman without an equal; in war he was the same kind of a fighter.
Another armour suit is of gigantic proportions. Who its owner was history and the catalogue fail to state. The breast-plate bears a ducal coronet and the letter F. The suit contains enough metal to armour plate a small battle ship. For the more sentimentally inclined there is a cabinet of delicately fashioned stilettos, which we have always fondly believed were the national arms of Italy. These particular stilettos were taken from fair ladies after they had made away with their lovers when they came to be a nuisance. Fickle women!
Turin is one of the many places on the map of Europe famous for a specialty in the eating line. This time it is chocolate. Let not any one think that all chocolate comes from Aiguebelle or Royat. The bread of Turin, “grissini,” is also in a class by itself. It is made in long sticks about the diameter of a pipe stem, and you eat yards of it with your minestra and between courses.
The puppet show or marionette theatres of Turin have ever been famous, indeed the fantoccini theatre had its origin in Piedmont. The buffon Gianduja was of Piedmontese birth, as was Arlequino of Bergamo.
Around Turin are various suburban neighbourhoods with historic memories and some palace and villa remains which might well be noted.
The Vigna della Regina, or the Queen’s Vineyard, is the name given to a once royal residence, now a girls’ school. The house was built in 1650 by Cardinal Maurice of Savoy. Another one of the nearby sights, not usually “taken in,” is the natural garden (an undefiled landscape garden) arranged in the sixteenth century by the Duke of Savoy, Emanuele Filiberto.
King Carlo Felice had a country house called the Castello d’Aglie to the north of the city. It is remarkable for nothing but the pure air of the neighbourhood, and that abounds everywhere in these parts.
At Rivoli, a few kilometres out on the Mont Cenis road, is a clumsily built, half finished mass of buildings, planned by Vittorio Amedeo II. in the eighteenth century as a royal residence to which he some day might return if he ever got tired of playing abdicator. He occupied it surely enough, in due course, but as a prisoner, not as a ruler. He was a well-meaning monarch, and through him the house of Savoy obtained Sardinia, but he made awful blunders at times, or at least one, for ultimately he landed in prison where he died in 1732.
Six leagues from Turin is the little garrison town of Pinerolo. A heap of stones on the mountain marks the site of a chateau where were once imprisoned the man of the Iron Mask, Lauzun, the political prisoner of history, and Fouquet, the money-grabbing minister of Louis XIV.
Lauzun and his personal history make interesting reading for one versed in things Italian and French. He made a famous mot when being transported to his mountain prison. He was requested from time to time to descend from his carriage, whenever by chance it had got stuck in the mud or wedged between offending rocks. With much apology he was begged to descend. “Oh! this is nothing; these little misfortunes of travel are nothing of moment compared to the object of my journey.” Other prisoners may have put things similarly, but hardly with the same grace of diction.
Let no automobilist, on leaving Turin, come out by way of Pinerolo unless he is prepared for a detour of a hundred kilometres, a rise of 2,000 metres and a drop down again to 1,300 metres at Cesana Tarinese, where he strikes the main road over the Col de Mont Cenis to Modane in France, or via the Col de Mont Genevre to Briançon. The direct road from Turin is via Rivoli and Suse.
Not every traveller in Italy knows the half-hidden out-of-the-way Val d’Aoste, the obvious gateway from Turin to the north via the Col du Saint Bernard. Travellers by rail rush through via the Simplon or Mont Cenis and know not the delights and joys which possess the traveller by road as he plunges into the heart of the Alps through the gateway of the Val d’Aoste.
The Val d’Aoste, less than a hundred kilometres, all counted, has more scenic and architectural surprises than any similar strip in Europe, but it is not a piste to be raced over by the scorching automobilist at sixty miles an hour. On the contrary it can not be done with satisfaction in less than a day, even by the most blasé of tourists. The railway also ascends the valley as far as Aoste, and one may cross over by coach into France or Switzerland by either the Col du Petit Saint Bernard or the Col du Grand Saint Bernard. It is worth doing!
The whole Val d’Aoste is one great reminder of feudal days and feudal ways. Curiously enough, too, in this part of Piedmont the aspect is as much French as Italian, and so too is the speech of the people. At Courmayer, for instance, the street and shop signs are all in French, and ’om the diminutive of homme replaces the Italian uomo; cheur stands for cœur and sita for cité and citta. This patois is universal through the upper valleys, and if one has any familiarity with the patois of Provence it will not be found so very strange. French, however, is very commonly understood throughout Piedmont, more so than elsewhere in north Italy, where, for a fact, a German will find his way about much more readily than a Frenchman.
One blemish lies all over the Val d’Aoste. It was greatly to be remarked by travellers of two or three generations ago and is still in evidence if one looks for it, though actually it is decreasing. Large numbers of the population are of the afflicted class known as Cretins, and many more suffer from goitre. It is claimed that these diseases come from a squalid filthiness, but the lie is given to this theory by the fact that there is no apparent filthiness. The diseases are evidently hereditary, and at some time anterior to their appearance here they were already known elsewhere. They are then results of an extraneous condition of affairs imported and developed here in this smiling valley through the heedlessness of some one. There are certain neighbourhoods, as at Courmayer and Ivrea, where they do not exist at all, but in other localities, and for a radius of ten kilometres roundabout, they are most prevalent.
The southern gateway to the Val d’Aoste is the snug little mountain of Ivrea, 50 kilometres from Turin. The cheese and butter of the Italian Alps, known throughout the European market as Beurre de Milan, is mostly produced in this neighbourhood, and the ten thousand souls who live here draw almost their entire livelihood from these products. Ivrea has an old Castle of imposing, though somewhat degenerate, presence. It has been badly disfigured in the restorations of later years, but two of its numerous brick towers of old still retain their crenelated battlements. The place itself is of great antiquity, and Strabon has put it on record that 3,600 of the inhabitants of the Val d’Aoste were once sold en bloc in the streets of Ivrea by Terentius Varro, their captor.
The Val d’Aoste, from Ivrea to Courmayer, about one hundred kilometres, will some day come to its own as a popular touring ground, but that time is not yet. When the time comes any who will may know all the delights of Switzerland’s high valleys without suffering from the manifest drawback of overexploitation. One doesn’t necessarily want to drink beer before every waterfall or listen to a yoedel in every cavern. What is more to the point is that one may here find simple, unobtrusive attention on the part of hotel keepers and that at a price in keeping with the surroundings. This you get in the Val d’Aoste and throughout the Alps of Piedmont, Dauphiny and Savoy.
Up high in the Val d’Aoste lies a battery of little Alpine townlets scarce known even by name, though possessed of a momentous history and often of architectural monuments marvellously imposing in their grandeur and beauty.
Near Pont Saint Martin, high above the torrent of the Doire, is the picturesque feudal castle of Montalto, a name famous in Italian annals of the middle ages.
Over the river Lys, at Pont Saint Martin, there is a Roman bridge; a modern iron one crosses it side by side, but the advantages, from an æsthetic and utilitarian view-point, as well, are all in favour of the former. A ruined castle crowns the height above Pont Saint Martin and a few kilometres below, at Donnas, is an ancient Roman mile stone still bearing the uneffaced inscription XXXII M. P.
This whole region abounds in Napoleonic souvenirs. Fort Bard, the key to the valley, garrisoned by only eight hundred Austrians, gave Bonaparte a check which he almost despaired of overcoming. The Little Corporal’s ingenuity pulled him through, however. He sent out a patrol which laid the streets of the little village below the fort with straw and his army passed unobserved in the night as if slippered with felt. But for this, the Battle of Marengo, one of the most brilliant of French feats of arms, might never have been fought.
Bard, the fort and the village, is now ignored by the high road which, by a cut-off, avoids the steep climb in and out of the place.
Unheard of by most travellers in Italy, and entirely unknown to others, Verrex in the Val d’Aoste possesses a ravishing architectural surprise in the shape of a feudal castle on a hillside overlooking the town. It is of the square keep, or donjon, variety, and played an important part in the warlike times of the past.
The chateau of Issogne near by, built by the Prior Geor. Challant, less of a castle and more of a country house, is an admirable fifteenth century domestic establishment still habitable, and inhabited, to-day.
All up and down the valley are relics of the engineering skill of the great Roman road and bridge builders. The road over Mont Jovet, a sheer cut down into the roof of a mountain, was theirs; so were the bridges at Chatillon and Pont Saint Martin, and another at Salassiens. At the Pont d’Ael is a Roman aqueduct.
Chatillon, like Verrex, is not marked in big letters on many maps, but it belongs in every architect lover’s Italian itinerary. Its two bridges of olden time are veritable wonder works. Its chateau Ussel, a ruin of the fourteenth century, is still glorious under its coat of mail of moss and ivy, while the Castle of Count Christian d’Entréves is of the kind seen by most people only in picture books.
At Fénis is a magnificent feudal battlemented castle with donjon tower, a chemin ronde and a barbican so awe-inspiring as to seem unreal. With Verrex and Issogne, near by, Fénis completes a trio of chateaux-forts built by the overlords of the name of Challant who possessed feudal rights throughout all the Val d’Aoste.
Aimon de Challant built the castle of Fénis in 1330. Virtually it was, and is, a regular fortress, with as complete a system of defence as ever princely stronghold had. At once a sumptuous seigneurial residence and a seemingly impregnable fortress, it is one of the most remarkable works of its class above ground.
Aoste is a little Italian mountain town far more French than Italian from many points of view. It is of great antiquity and was the Augusta Prætoria of various Roman itineraries.
Like most Roman cities Aoste was laid out on the rectangular parallelogram plan, an aspect which it still retains.
Aoste’s triumphal arch, its city gate and walls, and its ancient towers all lend a quaint aspect of mediævalism which the twentieth century – so far as it has gone – has entirely failed to contaminate.
For lovers of English church history it will be a pleasure to recall that Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury in the eleventh century, was born at Aoste. Another churchly memory at Aoste is a tablet inscribed with the particulars of the flight of Calvin from his refuge here in 1541.
