On that Friday in April, nothing seemed to be working as planned. On the day of departure, our group had unfortunately shrunk more than we expected due to illness, and later in the afternoon, the train from Brno to Vienna was so late that it was impossible to catch the connecting night train to Rome. However, as unpleasant as the initial conditions seemed, it wasn't so bad after all. We waited a little longer in the dining car on the train from Brno to catch the night train and to be able to change trains smoothly. Little did we know that this train, too, would be problematic, that it would eventually stop in Florence, that we would have to look for an alternative connection to Rome, and that we would finally be able to transfer to the freccia in Florence, and with it, to get closer to Salerno, our final destination. Little could we have known that even this high-speed train would have problems on the way, and that we would eventually arrive in Salerno only two hours late, despite all the previous incredibly bad luck).
When I write “we”, I mean a small group of mostly pilgrimage “greenhorns” who went to southern Italy for ten days in spring to experience the magic of the pilgrimage and how a pilgrim can perceive the sights s/he can reach on foot. This year we also planned to measure the pilgrimage, and for that reason, we were accompanied by a colleague from Recetox who was in charge of data collection. This included heart rate data from watches, emotional activity data from special rings, and eye tracking, i.e. mapping eye movement, at selected monuments,.
From an artistic point of view, our journey started very promisingly. In Salerno, we were welcomed by Francesca dell’Aqua, who gave us an excellent presentation on the local St. Matthew’s Cathedral. From Salerno, we made one more train stop to our starting point - the town of Pontecagnano Faiano the starting point of our pilgrimage. We had eight days ahead of us, trying to get from the Tyrrhenian Sea at Salerno to the Adriatic Sea at Gargano. There were hills, mountains, and dirt roads between the fields. Kilometers and kilometers of walking, with our skin turning brown under the southern sun, our shoes becoming dustier and dustier, and our minds slowly getting used to the pilgrim’s rhythm. The earlier rising, the long siestas. We also had many encounters with artistic monuments. Although, at first, it seemed that these might be disappointing – we could only see the church of Sant’Ambrogio in Montecorvino Rovella from the outside, so the 9th-century frescoes remained hidden from us, and the next day the cave in Olevano sul Tusciano also remained impenetrably closed. But later the curse was broken and we could admire remarkable Santa Sofia in Benevento, the Romanesque cathedral in Troia and the Norman-style church in Lucera. But we also had some unforgettable human encounters; for example, in San Severo we were not only accommodated in a parish but also invited by a local family for dinner and a family reunion. A day later, in San Giovanni Rotondo, we were hosted by local volunteers and again treated to a truly royal welcome. On our penultimate day at Gargano, we were also surprised to hear that a pack of wolves was roaming the local woods – fortunately, we did not have the privilege of verifying this report with our own eyes.
Our arrival to the final destination, the Cave of St. Michael the Archangel in the village of Monte Sant’Angelo on the last morning was unfortunately hampered by a badly marked path, so instead of smoothly completing the last ten kilometers, we wandered around the whole mountain. But it was all the more joyful when we actually reached our destination. Stefano D’Ovidio, who introduced us to the place, and other guests were already waiting for us. Although the moments at the finish were shorter than we had imagined due to the morning wandering, we still managed to visit the main church in the cave, as well as the Baptistery of San Giovanni in Tumba and the adjacent church of Santa Maria Maggiore.
Zuzana Urbanová
