“There are two Friulis,” my host Paola explained to me in San Tomaso. “Before the earthquake and after.”
My mind immediately drew a series of inferences from that statement. Life must have been good before the 1976 earthquake that devastated the region. Registering 6.5 was bad enough; hitting a maximum intensity on the EMS scale was utterly catastrophic. Nearly a thousand people were killed in the region, and Gemona del Friuli bore the brunt of it. Afterwards, then, an entire generation of Friulians must have seen their lives thrown off track, being forced into emergency housing and seeing their own homes flattened.
But no, Paola meant something very different. “The earthquake opened up Friuli,” she argued. Before, Friuli had been isolated, parochial, even a little distrustful. The wholehearted response, though, which combined a dedicated and effective national effort with ample international aid, changed how people in the region viewed the outside world. “Friuli is more… international today,” Paola added. “At least a little.”
In his guide-cum-historical book, The Cammino of Tagliamento on the Ancient Via d’Allemagna, Marino del Piccolo also has the region of Friuli in mind, suggesting that the recovery of the Hospitale di San Giovanni, the 800-year-old pilgrim hostel where I spent the night in San Tomaso, was a key step forward for regional pride.
The hospital was built in 1199 by Artuico di Varmo, a nobleman in nearby San Daniele del Friuli. He later passed on control of the structure to the Knights of the Hospital of Saint John of Jerusalem, today known as the Knights of Malta. Operating on the Benedictine model, the hospital–situated on the Via di Allemagna, linking the Baltic States to the Adriatic and then onward to Roma–guaranteed hospitality, medical care, and support to pilgrims, free of charge. Once, this would have been just one of many, many such facilities, but the vast majority have been lost over the years. It’s San Tomaso’s great fortune, along with so many contemporary pilgrims, that this one survived, and that the region, since 2006, has devoted significant funding to bringing it back to life. The local “Amici dell’Hospitale” have dedicated themselves since 2008 to caring for the structure, opening it to the public for visits on the weekend, and hosting pilgrims.
Del Piccolo writes that, “The Adriatic was the umbilical cord which connected the heart of fledgling Europe to Jerusalem and Alexandria which were the center of the world and this is where everything came from; man, Christianity, and civilization had arrived. With this knowledge, Friuli also freed itself from being the buffer region on the border and regained its central position in Europe, and not just geographically. It regained its history, which was surprising and very much alive, waiting to be revived. And now the Hospitale in San Tomaso points in that direction once again: to the East where there is a link to be recreated.” The shift that he underscores is crucial for Friuli–from a region on the far margins of Italy, pushed against the Alps, to a centerpiece, a nexus, the very core of things.
One of the first signs that I had arrived in Friuli was the signs–that is, the road signs that suddenly included two different versions of place names. While common across Spain, this has been a much rarer sight in Italy, despite the persistence of diverse strands of dialect that result in genuine communication barriers. (The priest I stayed with in Rovigo noted that when he served at a church in England, and Italians from the south sought out confession, they often conversed in English because they could understand each other better.) The Friulian language, Paola explained to me, is linked to Ladino, but the surrounding influences of Italian, German, Venetian, and Slovene all shifted it into something distinct over the years. Perhaps half of the region’s population speaks it, somewhere around 600,000 people.
Another sign of my presence in Friuli has appeared just below the signs, in the form of stickers affixed to the poles, calling for a Movimento Friuli. Wikipedia informs me that this is a regional political party, calling for Friulian autonomy within Italy, but also that “As of today, the party has little organisation and usually does not participate in elections.” The organization’s website is badly outdated and its artwork appears to have been done by the same people who brought you Schoolhouse Rock. But perhaps this is where Paola’s point about the earthquake comes back in–the region in which autonomy and independence found fertile ground in the 1950s is not the Friuli of today.
It was difficult to pull myself away from the Hospital, especially given the persistent precipitation, but I donned the rain gear and set out for the epicenter of that quake, Gemona del Friuli. As it happens, today was the 49th anniversary of that pivotal moment, though my mind was focused on other natural disasters like flooding and landslides. Fortunately, the short walk along the base of the Alps proved to be resilient. Some pooling of water, of course, and a pair of soggy feet by the time I reached Gemona, but nothing comparable in any way to past encounters with heavy rain on this walk. It’s funny how things go–after all my complaints about pavement on other stages of the Cammino, I was thrilled for every stretch of asphalt today.
While I set forth in a steady downpour, within a half-hour the rain settled into a less abrasive pattern, and the clouds thinned just enough to provide a silhouette of the looming mountains. The landscape goes from 0-to-Alps in mere minutes, with flat fields filled with waving green wheat suddenly erupting straight up. A universal gray dominated the sky overhead, while far more aggressive, threatening clouds pushed low through the valley, practically within arm’s reach. These aren’t the walking conditions I’d choose, but it’s impossible to deny the beauty of the scene.
Gemona del Friuli sits on a modest rise, pushing directly up against one of those spontaneous mountains. A strategically important place, situated on the Tagliamento River–the major arterial passing hrough this region–and along one of the few viable Alpine-Adriatic routes, it has long been inhabited. This is the end of the Cammino di Sant’Antonio, but also the beginning of the cult, as it’s home to the first church dedicated to Anthony–originating in 1219 and consecrated in 1248. No building suffered more grievously from that earthquake; the vast majority of the historic sanctuary was flattened. While traditional holds that Saint Anthony played a direct hand in part of the original structure, through his call for the construction of a chapel dedicated to Mary when he visited Gemona in 1229, that was utterly destroyed in the earthquake and unrecoverable. More fortunate, though, was the outcome of the “Cell of the Saint,” the room Anthony is said to have stayed in when visiting the town. The framework of the small room survives, with the later embellishment of a painting that narrates a miracle attributed to Anthony’s time here. Anthony’s miraculous works, or at least his positive contributions, are on full display along the sanctuary’s back walls, which are covered in votive offerings, including a series of small paintings that depict the varied scenarios in which the saint was invoked–and came through.
The Franciscan friars hosted me in the Sanctuary’s foresteria and also invited me over for dinner, after which one of the friars and I walked back over to the duomo to attend the anniversary service commemorating the disaster and recovery process. The cathedral was nearly full; a choir sang throughout; most of the town’s religious leaders played a role in the mass. When that concluded, a procession led all the attendees across Gemona to the town cemetery, where a large memorial lists the names of all who died. A different musical ensemble–a large group of men, all wearing Robin Hood-style hats, complete with large feathers (there must be a name for these) performed a few somber and atmospheric pieces, in between statements from civic leaders.
I stood on the margins throughout, wanting to attend, certainly being encouraged to attend, and yet also feeling like an interloper. The crowd skewed older, but I suspect it was a representative sampling of Gemona’s population. (It wasn’t the entire population by any means; when we walked past a bar, five men lifted their heads briefly to see what was happening, before shifting their attention right back down to their glasses.) Surely, a sizable portion of attendees lived through the horrific event, or at least grew up hearing about it as one of the defining–and traumatizing–events of their parents’ lives. Forgetting the event, trying to leave it behind in the past, simply isn’t an option in Gemona, though. A museum, free and open to the public, sits directly in the center, with graphic photos and blunt quotes telling the tale, reminding (or informing) everyone of what was lost and how the town was reborn.
If Paola’s optimistic introduction to the quake shaped my initial thinking on the subject, a quote from Carlo Sgorlon hammered it home: “Human history is a non-stop sequence of building, destroying, re-building; and building and destroying is what our destiny is made of… It is every man’s destiny, but in particular ours, because we have had the most hostile history of all peoples… With the help of our country, and the support that has come from all over the world, Gemona and the rest of Friuli have been rebuilt after the pain and difficulties suffered by its population, who had to live in wooden sheds for years.”
