Three More Hours Or Thereabouts Will Take You To Serra San Bruno Along
The Backbone Of Southern Italy, Through Cultivated Lands And Pasture And
Lonely Stretches Of Bracken, Once Covered By Woodlands.
It may well be that the townlet has grown up around, or rather near, the
far-famed Carthusian monastery.
I know nothing of its history save that
it has the reputation of being one of the most bigoted places in
Calabria - a fact of which the sagacious General Manhes availed himself
when he devised his original and effective plan of chastising the
inhabitants for a piece of atrocious conduct on their part. He caused
all the local priests to be arrested and imprisoned; the churches were
closed, and the town placed under what might be called an interdict. The
natives took it quietly at first, but soon the terror of the situation
dawned upon them. No religious marriages, no baptisms, no funerals - the
comforts of heaven refused to living and dead alike. . . . The strain
grew intolerable and, in a panic of remorse, the populace hunted down
their own brigand-relations and handed them over to Manhes, who duly
executed them, one and all. Then the interdict was taken off and the
priests set at liberty; and a certain writer tells us that the people
were so charmed with the General's humane and businesslike methods that
they forthwith christened him "Saint Manhes," a name which, he avers,
has clung to him ever since.
The monastery lies about a mile distant; near at hand is a little
artificial lake and the renowned chapel of Santa Maria.
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