(PDF) FOUR YEARS FROM 'THE CHTHONIAN LEGEND': SIGNIFICANCE, IMPACT, ADDITIONS AND MISCELLANEOUS (PERSONAL) CONSIDERATIONS

MICHELE SANVICO

THE APENNINE SIBYL

A MYSTERY AND A LEGEND

FOUR YEARS FROM THE CHTHONIAN LEGEND:

SIGNIFICANCE, IMPACT, ADDITIONS AND MISCELLANEOUS

(PERSONAL) CONSIDERATIONS1

1. Eight centuries of mystery and then a breakthrough

Eight hundred years. To say the least. Most probably, much more than that.

Throughout this abyssal span of time the enigma of the Sibillini Mountain

Range has been living its secretive life beneath an elusive, unintelligible

veil of covertness, inexplicability and disguise.

Then, almost unexpectedly, four years ago the veil suddenly fell.

1 Released on August 9th 2024 on https://www.researchgate.net/ and https://www.academia.edu/

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On March, 25th 2020, Michele Sanvico's research paper Sibillini Mountain

Range, the Chthonian legend was released after a long string of related,

interconnected articles, and a bright light was finally shed upon a riddle

that had been puzzling the minds of prominent men in Europe and the

world for centuries and centuries.

An Apennine Sibyl's Cave and a Lake of Pontius Pilate, set amid the

Apennines at the center of Italy. Two fascinating legends, two main

characters - a legendary sibilline prophetess and a Roman prefect who

existed in real life - two geographical landmarks that point to the spots

from where the two legends elicited their remarkable, centuries-long

power: a Cave and a Lake, lying just 5.2 miles from one another, within the

same mountainous range, named “Sibillini” after one of the two legends.

In the past, a fatal attraction arising from the two legendary tales has drawn

to this secluded portion of Italy European travellers of all sorts, including

aristocratic knights, sorcerers, scholars, treasure hunters, poets and

scientists, in search of a magical kingdom hidden beneath the cave's

entryway situated on the top of Mount Sibyl, or looking for an appropriate

site where to consecrate spellbooks to demons. Literary references about

those visits span from the fourteenth century - with a mention of the lake

reported by Petrus Berchorius - to the fifteenth century - with the

fundamental works written by Andrea da Barberino and Antoine de la Sale

- up to our contemporary world, across the sixteenth and seventeenth

centuries during which a bounty of references is found.

But why those legends rooted their peculiar fascination exactly here?

Since the very first mention we can retrieve, provided by Berchorius,

nobody has been able to solve this perplexing riddle by proposing a viable

reason for the birth (or the establishment) of such legends in this specific

geographical spot.

The historical authors, from the Middle Ages to the Age of Enlightenment,

were only able to note that both legends are to be considered as

inexplicable, and even totally unrelated: the impossible task of retrieving an

origin or source whatsoever for the two legendary tales, which additionally

seemed to have no common relation, led many scholars to simply deny the

chance that any credible grounds for the tales could ever be found, thus

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degrading the whole matter to the babble of local populace and a discussion

subject for simpletons lured to this place from every corner of Europe.

Modern scholarly studies, which started in the second half of the nineteenth

century with Alfred von Reumont, Arturo Graf, Gaston Paris, Pio Rajna

and others, were fated by the same doom of inexplicability: the undeniable

appeal arising from the Sibyl's Cave and the Lake of Pilate collided

invariably with a sort of concrete wall which prevented any further

investigation on the origin of the two mysterious stories. No mention of

that specific Sibyl or the presence in the Apennines of that illustrious

Roman prefect was to be found in classical and medieval literature before

the fourteenth century. Total darkness accompanied all attempts to

illuminate the past, and scholars could only conclude that the whole subject

was most probably destined to remain in utter doubt.

Then, the paper Sibillini Mountain Range, the Chthonian legend came in,

as the final element in a row of a number of preceding papers already

published on the same topic. And eight hundred years of perplexity and a

hundred fifty years of modern scholarly doubts were dispelled.

Because the key to the question was hidden in one word. And the word was

'earthquakes'.

For the first time ever, a correlation was established between the origin of

the legendary complex which lives amid the Sibillini Mountain Range and

the peculiar seismic character of that same mountainous region.

Because the tales about a Sibyl and a Roman prefect are not original. They

come from elsewhere (the Matter of Britain for the Sibyl, the early-

Christian apocryphal writings for Pilate), and set there on previously-

existent geographical hotspots: a Cave and a Lake.

These hotspots originally hosted, possibly and conjecturally, an Iron-Age

cult devoted to the worship of earthquakes and their chthonian demons.

But how this conjecture could be established? And why all this happened

only in year 2020, following centuries of perplexed, ineffective handling of

the whole matter?

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Fig. 1 - The original research paper The Apennine Sibyl, A Mystery and a Legend - The chthonian legend

was released on March, 25th 2020

The present article intends to be a follow-up of that breakthrough paper,

proposing answers to the questions laid out above, highlighting some

further, significant aspects of the 2020 research and describing a number of

outcomes and implications arising from the publication of the research

itself.

Miscellaneous considerations are also included, many of them marked by a

more personal character, so as to save the memory of a years-long, exciting

elaboration process.

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2. Methodology and the scientific framework

2.1 Hundreds of years without an answer, here's why

2.1.1 The methodology issue

How did it come that a formal, explicit connection between earthquakes

and the Sibillini Mountain Range's local legendary heritage was never

stated before year 2020, although so many scholars have been deeply

pondering, across numerous centuries, over the odd stories about a Sibyl's

cave and a Pontius Pilate's lake set in central Italy?

All in all, the specific seismic behaviour of the Sibillini Mountain Range is

not an unknown feature (with major earthquakes occurred in antiquity and

then in 1328, 1703, 1730, 1859, 1979 and 2016), so that throughout the

centuries one or more scholars might possibly have had the chance to

establish a tentative connection between the two apparently dissimilar

ideas: recursive, devastating quakes and the presence within the same

territory of odd legendary tales.

Paradoxically enough, a large international scientific conference was even

held in two sessions (Cascia 2019 and Le Mans 2021) in the very territory

of the Apennine Sibyl: Living with seismic phenomena in the

Mediterranean and beyond between Antiquity and the Middle Ages

addressed those same topics, including the relationship between myths and

earthquakes. The venue in Cascia, set a few miles from Norcia, in the

central Apennines, was explicitly selected because that land - the land of

the Apennine Sibyl, her myth and her link to tremblors - had been hit by

the devastating earthquakes in 2016 and 2017. Yet, nobody amid the

researchers thought, before during and after the conference, that the Sibyl

could have been the queen of all guests there. Nobody, just like in previous

decades and centuries, established any connection between the legendary

traditions which lived amid the Sibillini Mountain Range and quakes.

Let's repeat it again: no single author or scholar ever raised the question or

established such a connection. No one ever thought about it. No one was

aware of the possibility. They just rested for centuries in their puzzlement.

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Not even a prestigious scientific conference dedicated to those same topics

in the very places of the myth proved of any help to figure out the riddle.

Why did this idea never come up to the mind of anyone?

The reasons are manifold. And they are all linked to crucial methodology

issues.

Both ancient authors and modern researchers have failed in applying a

correct methodological approach to the complex, multilayered, problematic

question that the Sibillini Mountain Range's legendary tradition represents.

The right methodology was finally applied by the Author of the present

article from year 2018 onwards, leading to the unprecedented results which

were published under The Apennine Sibyl - A Mystery and a Legend paper

series.

Let's see how wrong methods have misled researcher for centuries. And

how correct methods proved bountiful in 2020.

2.1.2 'Treat them as one': the approach nobody pursued

The first basical error in the management of the legendary heritage which

lives in the Sibillini Mountain Range is duplication: the legendary tales told

about the Sibyl's Cave and the Lake of Pilate have always been treated as

two separate, independent narratives.

But they are not.

From Petrus Berchorius to Antoine de la Sale, from Flavio Biondo to

Leandro Alberti, from the sixteenth to the seventeenth century, and then

from the philologists of the nineteenth century to the researchers of the

twentieth, all scholars have confronted with the mysterious Cave and Lake

with a same incorrect approach: according to them, the two legends had

nothing to do with each other, and reports about them were written in the

form of a mere juxtaposition of the two tales, mentioned side by side with

no internal connection.

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For instance, among many others, in 1550 Leandro Alberti writes that «on

the portion of this towering mountain facing eastward, it can be seen that

most famous Lake of which tales are told about the conjuring of devils

summoned by sorcerers», with a subsequent remark which says «nearby,

namely in the said Apennine, lies the huge, frightful, ghastly hollow which

was named after the Sibyl...». Two tales, no mutual relation.

This sort of interpretative error persists in much later times, if as far as

1903 the great French philologist Gaston Paris writes that «not far from

there [from Mount Sibyl] there is also the 'lake of Pilate'. I am not going to

discuss the tradition, established since longtime, which says that sorcerers

came to consecrate their spellbooks in a small island set in the middle of

the lake. Neither Pilate nor the necromancers have nothing to do with their

neighbour the Sibyl. I will address only the latter...».

But unity is one of the key elements to solve the riddle. The Cave and the

Lake must be treated as one single legendary heritage. Separating the Sibyl

and Pilate just means that the common features marking the two legends

get lost in the analysis, and the investigator is left alone with a perplexing

unattested oracle and an out-of-context Roman prefect to concentrate on.

Fig. 2 - The Lake of Pilate and the Sibyl's Cave in the Sibillini Mountain Range, Italy: a single legendary

system which needs an integrated research approach

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Now we know that the two figures are just mere semblances, they set their

roots there from elsewhere coming from specific, extraneous legendary

traditions: there is no point in focussing on them, if not to identify and

remove their spurious legendary layers, which shield the underlying myth.

So mutual relation and final unity is the correct path to follow, while

duplication is an error. A persisting error, up to year 2020.

2.1.3 The previously-missing 'philological' approach

Another methodological error is linked to a sort of 'blind', 'fideistic'

approach, lacking any real insight. An insight which is to be rooted in

sound philological grounds.

For hundreds of years literary authors and scholars - from Antoine de la

Sale onwards - have been confronting with the elusive semblance of a Sibyl

of the Apennines, wondering at the odd consideration that no ancient

source ever mentioned such an oracle, neither in classical nor in medieval

catalogues; and the same happened with reference to Pontius Pilate and the

demons which allegedly lived under the lake's waters, a puzzling

occurrence as no relationship could ever be retrieved between this portion

of Italy and the renowned first-century prefect of Judaea, so that the

demonic presence was seen by all researchers as a mere silly tale to be

appreciated only by the most gullible travellers.

Nobody ever tried to dig under that utterly singular sibilline semblance,

never attested before, and that extraneous Roman officer, the man who

sentenced Jesus Christ to death in a far-away province of the empire.

Nobody made any attempts at investigating the true provenance of those

perplexing tales, instead taking blindly for granted that both narratives were

born, somehow and at some time in history, exactly there, amid those same

Sibillini mountains: a mere leap of faith, totally unproven and, in the end,

easily rebutted.

In fact this was not true, and a simple analysis carried out on strict

philological criteria could easily have revealed a fact that is manifestly

blatant: when we stop thinking of the Apennine Sibyl and Pontius Pilate as

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native tales, we begin to appreciate their evident extraneous, foreign origin.

The two tales were born elsewhere and were subsequently transplanted

right into the middle of the Sibillini Mountain Range.

From a philological point of view, retrieving the actual origin for the two

tales was no hard task (and - among a plethora of scholars - only a young

Luigi Paolucci, in 1947, had pointed out exactly the right direction that

researchers should follow): the medieval lineage of the Sibyl's tale easily

could be traced back across the many texts which are part of the Matter of

Britain ('Sebile' is a companion and alter-ego of Morgan the Fay);

furthermore, a similar lineage was to be plainly revealed for Pontius Pilate,

with an extensive collection of early-Christian and High-Middle-Ages

works illustrating the legends centered on the cursed destiny of the prefect's

dead body.

So philology should have been a mandatory pillar supporting the road to

truth; a pillar, instead, which was incredibly eluded by illustrious

philologists (Gaston Paris, Pio Rajna, Fernand Desonay and others). For

instance, Gaston Paris seems to have never highlighted the existing,

conspicuous philological link wich can be obviously established between

the metal doors «slamming day and night without rest» described by

Antoine de la Sale as an access point to the subterranean realm of the

Apennine Sibyl and the similar access point that is present in the thirteenth-

century epic poem Huon of Bordeaux, with its statues «made of bronze,

each man holding a double scourge, all made of metal and terror-inspiring.

They never stop striking and lashing to and from, throughout summer and

winter»: an amazing miss, if we consider that those same bronze men with

their scourges were portrayed in an illustrated page of Gaston Paris' edition

of Huon of Bordeaux published in 1898.

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Fig. 3 - A drawing from Huon de Bourdeaux, edited by Gaston Paris in 1898, which shows Huon running

his way through the bronze statues wielding their whipping scourges

So philology was a first pillar. However there was another mandatory pillar

too, of a kind that no philologist would have ever been able to address.

This further pillar was 'outside-the-box' thinking.

2.1.4 The 'think outside the box' approach that career scholars cannot

follow

Philology is not enough, even though this illustrious discipline certainly

leads the investigator towards the right course.

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For once you have dismissed the foreign tales about a Sibyl and a Roman

prefect, you are apparently left with nothing in your hands. What was there

before the two extraneous narratives came? Philology provides no answer:

no earlier works ever mention Mount Sibyl or the Lake of Pilate, so why

did those geographical locations attract so powerful, famous narrative

tales? And what was there before the settlement of the stories concerning

the Apennine Sibyl and Pontius Pilate?

There the search grinds to a halt. Any investigation gets stuck. Hands are

empty, and the mission seems to become quite impossible.

The only chance is to think 'outside the box'.

Creative thinking is needed to establish new unprecedented connections: a

merger of ideas coming from different sources and domains into one single,

revolutionary vision, providing a new framework in which the whole

problematic, multilayered issue gets finally in gear and begins to assume a

totally new, utterly fresh significance.

In the Sibillini Mountain Range, if you want to think outside the box you

sure must consider earthquakes.

But thinking outside the box, and thinking about earthquakes, is no matter

for philologists, who have developed their professional careers working for

decades on the same objects (texts, manuscripts, etc.) and with the same

methodologies (text analysis, text comparison, etc.), often concentrating

their efforts on tiny textual details, a 'vertical' insight which almost hampers

lateral, 'outside the box' vision.

In addition to that, those people never lived in the Sibillini Mountain Range

and so never experienced the meaning and mythical mightness, at night, of

the terrific shake - both physical and spiritual - induced by the sudden,

godlike coming of seismic waves.

That's why no scholar - from Arturo Graf in the late nineteenth century

onward - has never thought about earthquakes and their connection to the

legendary tradition of the Sibillini Mountain Range.

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An interconnection figure was needed, one who came from different

domains, with the ability to bridge the gap amid separated,

incommunicating knowledge fields.

Fig. 4 - Creative thinking was needed to cope effectively with the legendary tradition of the Sibillini

Mountain Range

The Author of the present article was the right figure, at the right time: a

physicist; a scientific researcher in his early years; a long experience in

multinational corporates; a penchant for journalist-like investigations on

public interest issues often uniformly treated by the media system; a

fascination for the Earth and its geological might. And, last but not least, an

actual foot in Norcia, the Italian town which is historically linked to the tale

of the Apennine Sibyl, and which experienced a devastating earthquake in

2016.

All the wires were there. They just needed to be interconnected. And this is

what actually happened between 2018 and 2020.

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2.1.5 The 'Good Sibyl' false trail

In this paper I want to dedicate an additional space, though short, to the

'Good Sibyl' false trail, which I already mentioned in the Sibillini Mountain

Range, the Chthonian legend paper.

Much time was wasted and the solution to the Sibillini Range's riddle

delayed owing to the diffusion, at least among the general public, of the

unfounded model of a 'Good Apennine Sibyl': a sort of positive, feminist,

protective oracle depicted as a benign character in strong relation with the

local communities of women, teaching arts and crafts to the villagers and

promoting peace as a memory of ancestral gynocentric societies, ruled by

women and opposed to war. A vision mainly promoted by the Italian writer,

poet and activist Joyce Lussu.

This unfounded, baseless model tainted the overall scenario by leading the

public sentiment to consider a 'good', positive sibilline legend as opposed to

a 'bad', dark Pilate legend. Again, a rift between the two legends was

delved, which enhanced duplicity and its accompanying load of errors.

Because there is no such thing as a 'good' Sibyl: the two legends are both

dark and fearful and 'bad', as philology clearly shows. The reason for that is

that both legends are probably rooted in a same appalling background,

leaving no space for kindness, gentle women and nice artistic crafts:

earthquakes are a ghastly phenomenon and as such they have nothing to do

with all that.

2.2 Living with earthquakes in the Sibillini Mountain Range (once and

today)

As we will see in a subsequent paragraph, the occurrence of a series of

powerful earthquakes in the area of the Sibillini Mountain Range between

2016 and 2017 was a triggering event and an effective propeller for the

design and development of the conjectural model on the origin of the

sibilline legends.

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Earthquakes amid those mountains in central Italy are a permanent,

terrifying companion, not only in ancient ages (as we have already shown

in Sibillini Mountain Range, the Chthonian legend paper) but also in

present times.

The revised edition (2023) of the Seismic Classification Chart elaborated

by the Department of Civil Protection of Italy effectively shows what we

already set out in The Chthonian legend paper: the area in which the

Sibillini Mountain Range lies is at the top of the seismic risk in Italy,

standing out in the chart as a sort of red-alert island in the middle of

territories that are less prone to earthquakes. A veritable hot-spot, in which

large-magnitude seismic waves might suddenly and lethally propagate.

In recent years, contemporary men and women have experienced the most

appalling aspects of a large quake unleashing its godly might on the land.

In addition to the testimonies already reported in the The Chthonian legend

paper, we quote here further narratives recounted by people who were on

the Umbria or Marche side of the mountains on that doomed day, October

30th 2016, when a 6.5-magnitudo earthquake hit the country at 07:40 AM.

A resident of Norcia remembers that «the preceding night the ground had

been rumbling and grumbling for hours from beneath, as if in the abyssal

depths a giant pot was boiling and boiling, preparing itself to explode; we

were all in a sort of anguished expectation, we were sure that something

terrible was about to happen, it was now our turn after the preceding

quakes of August, 24th and October, 26th». Another resident, living in

Montegallo, a small hamlet on the eastern side of the mountain range, said

that «the town hall was swaying back and forth dangerously, that was a

vision that remains totally unforgettable. Everybody thought it wouldn't

hold and was about to collpse before our very eyes. [...] All of us knew

what all that meant. The shake was so absolutely strong. [...] The noise

from beneath was frightful. The ground lifted and sagged as if we were

onboard a raft surfing across the ocean's waves. We held on to our car not

to be thrown to the ground and with terrified screams our friends outcried

their utter terror. [...] As the quake stopped the bellow from beneath ceased

too».

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Fig. 5 - Seismic Classification Chart elaborated by the Department of Civil Protection of Italy (March

2023)

The listed words were pronounced by contemporary resident living in the

area of the Sibillini Mountain Range: people who know perfectly what an

earthquake is and what originates this natural event.

Nonetheless, a common sentiment of fear and irrational thinking connects

modern men to the ancient inhabitant of central Italy, if we consider that

people, in 2016, expressed all their emotional feeling towards the indelibly

eerie character of earthquakes, no matter how 'civilised' they are: «such

fears are so deeply rooted in people's heart», explained the same resident of

Norcia, «despite modern scientific awareness; a fear which is ancestral,

primordial and uncontrollable, today just as in the prehistoric age [...] It is

the reason for the development, among modern people, of naive

explanatory theories, which overwhelm any rational thinking or scientific

knowledge, with the desperate urge to 'appease' the earthquake. The same

impulses come to the surface, which once hit the ancient inhabitant of the

land. [...] Furthermore, a 'personification' process emerges even in our

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present time: 'today HE is enraged', ' here HE comes again', 'today HE's

taking HIS revenge upon us': with these words people unconsciously

express ideas of guilt and discipline, favour winning and dire request of

mercy».

This fear turns into something of almost tangible if you just pay a visit to

the western side of Mount Vettore, the highest peak of the whole Sibillini

Mountain Range.

There, the might of the earthquakes becomes visible and real, like a blow in

your stomach.

Up there, at an altitude of more than 6500 feet, just beneath a huge rocky

formation named 'Cliff of the Eagle', the 2016 earthquake sequence

fractured the mountain for its whole length, creating a many-mile-long fault

line: a white, polished, marble-like vertical surface, 6 feet high, grinded by

the rocks themselves in a few seconds as they slid over the neighbouring

stones, as we already described in The Chthonian legend paper in 2020,

prior to actually visiting the spot.

Fig. 6 - The westen side of Mount Vettore, with the Cliff of the Eagle on the right and the white stripe of

the earthquake fault running across the versant

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But - when we visited the place in person, one year later - the emotional

effect on the mind and soul was utterly overwhelming: before your very

eyes, the supernatural power of earthquakes was shining in the sun, cold

and smooth under your hands, as if it had been carved by the titanic sword

of a god.

Fig. 7 - The godlike effect of the 2016 earthquakes on the side of Mount Vettore

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It is within this sort of psychological framework that we can set our new

conjecture linking earthquakes to the generation and development of myths

concerning the origin of earthquakes in antiquity: a sense of dread that

inundate heart, soul and mind, both now and in ancient times. A sense of

dread which necessitates the introduction of suitable narratives, with a view

to confront with the chthonian monster and find ways to assuage its wrath.

2.3. The winds that point to earthquakes

One of the most interesting elements we found when designing our

conjectural model is the presence, amid the legends which live in the

Sibillini Mountain Range, of the supernatural winds that accompany the

narratives concerning the Lake of Pilate and the Sibyl's Cave, especially

when necromantic rituals are performed near the two geographical spots.

As we depicted in the The Chthonian legend paper, such winds are a

significant mark which hints to the relevance of the seismic element: in the

classical (Greek and Roman) culture, earthquakes were supposed to be

generated by chthonian winds circulating in extended cavities which are

concealed beneath the surface of the earth, as expressed in the works

written by Aristotle, Titus Lucretius Carus, Lucius Annaeus Seneca and

Pliny the Elder.

In this paragraph we want to highlight the fact that chthonian winds are

present not only in Antoine de la Sale's The Paradise of Queen Sibyl and

other works, but also in the other major literary narrative relating to the

legendary heritage of the Sibillini Mountain Range, i.e. Andrea da

Barberino's Guerrino the Wretch: an occurrence we failed to present in The

Chthonian legend paper, so time has come now to fill the gap.

In the 1480 edition of the romance, Guerrino is told the following about the

Sibyl's subterranean abode and the visit once paid to the place by a knight

whose name was Lionel:

«[...] but he had not got in because from the entrance's mouth he said that a

great wind was blowing, so fierce that the very stones of the mountain

could not resist to it».

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[In the original Italian text: «[...] ma non era intrato dentro perché de la

boca de la intrata disse che usciva si grande el vento che le pietre de la

propria montagna non li poteva stare»].

So this underground wind, as strange and perplexing as ever (but not in the

light of our conjecture), is also present in Guerrino the Wretch: a clear sign

that earthquakes are to be taken in consideration, because there is no sense

in mentioning a subterranean air current, apparently totally out of context,

if not in connection with the well-known classical, prescientific theory

about winds and quakes.

Fig. 8 - The chthonian winds as they appear in Andrea da Barberino's Guerrino the Wretch (Chapter

CXXXIX in the edition printed in Venice in 1480)

Again, a question arises: why did nobody ever take into consideration the

presence, in the literary heritage, of such winds, odd and bizarre as they

are? Why were those wind completely overlooked, while scholars liked

better to center their interest in the ghostly figures of a Sibyl or a Roman

prefect? For what reasons this sort of 'smoking gun' did remain totally

unaddressed until the publication of the Sibillini Mountain Range, the

Chthonian legend paper?

The answers to this questions are already set in the previous paragraphs of

the present article: a basical methodology issue has flawed for centuries the

research approach to the two legends, treated separatedly and in the

absence of an 'outside-the-box' thinking.

Yet those significant winds were blowing strong in the Sibillini Mountain

Range's area not only from Antoine de la Sale's and Andrea da Barberino's

works, but also from further literary sources well known to scholars.

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Francesco Stabili, the Italian poet, philosopher and astrologist known as

Cecco d'Ascoli, who was born in the second half of the thirteenth century

not far from Mount Sibyl, openly embraces the classical vision about

subterranean winds and earthquakes in his poem L'Acerba, written in 1327:

«Quivers the earths out of the constrained blows,

Air and water perform their malign motion [...]

The constrained winds, which cannot escape

from the ground, stirred by Saturn,

they make us feel the earthquakes [...]

But in the good season the shaking comes

and doesn't subside, until the hard ground

doesn't breaks open because of that might.

This not always occurs, for the wind,

agitated with anger down below,

his might may lose after blowing.

So the mountains and hills and chasms

are generated by the constrained winds

which blow under the ground powerful and mighty».

[In the original Italian text:

«Trema la terra per l'inclusi fiati,

L'aire e l'acqua lor moti perversi [...]

L'inclusi venti che non pon uscire

For de la terra, moti da Saturno,

Fano li terimoti a noi sentire [...]

Ma vien nel dolce tempo el gran tremore

Et non se cessa fin che le coretta

La dura terra per cotal valore.

Questo non sempre adviene ché dico vento,

Movendose cum ira lì desotto,

La soa potentia perde poi che iuncto.

Sì che li monti li colli et li abissi

Sono formati da l'inclusi venti,

Che spiran soto terra duri e spissi.»]

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Fig. 9 - Subterranean winds and earthquakes in Cecco d'Ascoli's L'Acerba (from the edition printed in

Venezia, 1476), folia b6r-b6v

Thus, in the area of the Sibillini Mountain Range scholars and poets were

fully aware of the pre-scientific conjecture which linked winds in the

abysess to earthquakes, the latter often experienced by the local inhabitants,

if we only remember that a very large quake hit this very same territory on

December, 1st 1328, with the loss of thousands of lives, as we reported in

The Chthonian legend paper.

Weird winds and storms also appear in the famous excerpt drawn from

Felix Hemmerlin's De Nobilitate et Rusticitate Dialogus, written in 1444.

In this passage, in which the Swiss cleric established his fundamental

connection between Mount Sibyl in Italy and the German Venusberg,

Hemmerlin reports that «about Mount Sibyl set near the town of Norcia

and the castle of Montefortino [...] they say that a great outrage of hails,

winds and storms plagues the area» [in the original Latin text: «Et dicit

communiter mons Sibille coniunctus civitati Nursie et castello montifortino

[...] grandinum ventorum et tempestatutm insultus nimium vicinis locis

importunus»].

Again, winds are staged in connection with Mount Sibyl, another

significant sign that earthquakes may actually play a role in the sibilline

legends which inhabit this land, marked by a peculiar seismic behaviour.

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Fig. 10 - Winds and tempest at Mount Sibyl as mentioned in Felix Hemmerlin's De nobilitate et

rusticitate dialogus et alia opuscula (from the edition printed in Strasbourg, 1500), chapter XCIV

And, as a matter of fact, the classical wind-earthquakes model reaches out

across history up to very recent times, which immediately precede the

introduction of Alfred Wegener's theory on continental drift in the 1920s.

For instance, we find the prescientific model still creeping in a work whose

meaningful title is Endogenic meteorology (La meteorologia endogena),

written in 1879 by Michele Stefano de Rossi, an Italian geophysicist who

greatly contributed to the study of earthquakes in the second half of the

nineteenth century:

«A glance at those tables [earthquakes and barometric curves] is sufficient

to see how each single atmospheric low pressure area is accompanied by an

increase in earthquake's occurence, and how the highs in the seismic

activity exactly match the lowering of the pressure. [...] Another blatant

observation, in the same sense, is that faint earthquakes often occur during

the fast changing of atmospheric pressure, both when rising and when

going down. And it is in this same order of ideas and utterly significant

what more than once happened in Italy, i.e. of earthquakes which run after

the central focus of low pressure during atmospheric storms. Many times I

observed seismic sequences active for a certain time span in a certain spot,

which with their peak leave that spot to unleash their endogenic pulse

might in a neighbouring place where, on that day, a lower barometric

pressure allowed an easier and readier expression, because less hindered by

the weight of the air».

[In the original Italian text: «Basta uno sguardo sopra queste tavole

[terremoti e curve barometriche ndr] per vedere come ciascuna depressione

22

atmosferica sia accompagnata da un aumento nei terremoti, e come i

massimi sismici coincidano esattamente colle diminuzioni della pressione.

[...] Un altro fatto parlante nel medesimo senso è il frequente avvenire i

terremoti più sensibili all'occasione dei rapidi salti della pressione

atmosferica sia nell'ascendere, sia nel discendere. Ed è in questo stesso

ordine di fatti e vieppiù eloquente poi ciò che già più volte si è avverato in

Italia, del correre cioè che fa il terremoto dietro il centro della depressione

nelle burrasche atmosferiche. Più volte io ho constatato il fatto di periodi

sismici localizzati da più o meno tempo, che col loro massimo sfuggono

dalla sede prescelta per isfogarsi dove in quel dì di massima forza

impulsiva endogena la minima pressione barometrica permetteva lo sfogo

più facile e pronto, perché meno impedito dal peso dell'aria».]

Fig. 11 - Relationship between eartquakes and meteorological pressure in Michele Stefano de Rossi's La

meteorologia endogena (Milano, 1879), p. 160 and 161

Even though de Rossi doesn't identify the origin of earthquakes in the

action of improbable subterranean winds anymore, he still retains some

aspects of this ancient belief by maintaining a faint but clear connection

between events which happen in the rocks beneath the ground and up

above in the air, with a persisting role still assigned to winds and storms.

So earthquakes and winds are linked by a close, though mythical,

connection since antiquity, and up to nearly our present age. And it is no

surprise to find a feeble echo of all that in the very words pronounced by

23

our contemporary fellow men and women who had the appalling chance to

personally experience the October, 30 2016 earthquake in the area of the

Sibillini Mountain Range. Incredible as it may seem, winds still appear in

their descriptions, as if Aristotle's model was still in place and widely

accepted to explain the weird, frightful, destructive occurrence concerning

the propagation of seismic waves:

«We saw the neighbouring houses move and sway, and we thought they

wouldn't hold to this further quake; however, luckily enough they resisted. I

sensed a light wind made of warm air. I don't know whether it was due to

the unrest, the tumult or a direct effect arising from the earthquake... This I

have never been able to ascertain».

«When in Norcia sudden gusts of wind occur, people gets worried and fears

they might bring about an earthquake, as if they were a grievous omen».

[In the original Italian text:

«Vedemmo le case vicine muoversi e ondeggiare e pensammo che non ce

l’avrebbero fatta a reggere a questa ulteriore scossa ma, per fortuna, non fu

così. Io percepii un leggero vento di aria calda. Non so se fosse dovuto

all’agitazione, all’adrenalina o se fosse una diretta conseguenza del

terremoto… Non sono mai riuscito a comprenderlo».

«Quando a Norcia ci sono raffiche improvvise di vento, la gente si

preoccupa e pensa che possano portare il terremoto, che siano un annuncio

infausto»].

Such winds come from far-away ages, when people harrowed by

earthquakes made frantic attempts at finding explanations for the appalling

motions of the ground, in a hope to track a hint that may help them

anticipate and escape the might of the blows: a need they still have today,

just as in a long-gone past.

24

2.4. More on the ultimate sacrifice

In The chthonian legend paper, we dedicated a paragraph to a portion of

our conjecture marked by a most heinous character: the possibility, though

remote, that in the Iron Age human sacrifices might have been carried out

at the Sibyl's Cave and/or Pilate's Lake to appease the chthonian demons of

earthquakes, as part of the ritual cults performed there during the worst

paroxismal manifestations of tremblors.

Of course this is but a speculation; yet we mentioned a few literary hints

that seemed to point to this particular direction.

The first hint, specifically self-evident, is the famous excerpt which is

retrieved in the Reductorium Morale by Petrus Berchorius (Pierre

Bersuire), written in the fourteenth century:

«And about that lake the most horrifying thing is what follows: each year

that town [Norcia] sends a single man, a living man, beyond the walls that

encircle the lake, as an offering to the demons, who immediately and in full

view tear apart and slaughter that man; and people say that if the town does

not comply, the country would be razed by the storms».

A second hint can be retrieved in a work written by Pierre Crespet, also

known as 'Crespetus', a French Celestinian monk (1543 - 1594). In his

treatise De la hayne de Satan et malins esprist contro l'homme, published in

Paris in 1590, he tells of the two necromancers who had visited Mount

Sibyl and were subsequently put under arrest:

«For all the services they required, they obliged themselves to honour the

Sibyls with the titles of Dames and Princesses, and to offer a soul to them

every year, on the very same day of the consecration of their spellbooks, for

all the time of their lives».

In the present paper, we want to add a further hint we culpably overlooked

in The chthonian legend. It is another well-known passage drawn from

Antoine de la Sale's The paradise of queen Sibyl and concerning the Lake

of Pilate:

25

«Not much time has elapsed since two men were caught, one of them being

a priest. The priest was brought to the said town of Norcia and there was

martyred and burnt. The other was slaughtered into pieces and then thrown

into the lake from the very people who had caught them both».

[In the original French text: «Navoit pas long temps quel y fut prins deux

hommes dont lun estoit prestre ce preste fut admene a la dicte cite de norce

et la fut martire et ars. Lautre fut taille a pieces et puis boute dedens le lac

par ceulz qui les avoient prins»].

Fig. 12 - The killing of supposed necromancers at the Lake of Pilate in Antoine de la Sale's The Paradise

of Queen Sibyl (manuscript no. 0653 (0924), Bibliothèque du Château (Musée Condé), Chantilly, France,

folium 5r)

All the listed examples seem to suggest that human lives might have been

taken and offered to the demonic inhabitants of the two hot-spots (the Sibyl

for the Cave, the demons for the Lake). And the most ancient mention, the

one by Berchorius - which perhaps retains a closer connection with the

true, most antique myth hidden beneath the subsequent legendary layers

concerning a Sibyl and Pontius Pilate - explicitly refers to the character of

the sacrifices as attempts by the local population to shun the destruction of

the neighbouring land, a potential reference to earthquakes.

Might it all represent a viable, consistent assumption? Or, is it just a mere,

fanciful theory, with no grounds at all?

Certainly, in The chthonian legend paper we tried to reconstruct the

probable psychological approach, the likely state of mind with which the

26

ancient inhabitants of the Sibillini Mountain Range may have faced the

largest eathquakes occurring in their territory: utter terror, need for

reassurance, hectic search for a contact with the subterranean monsters or

demons, readiness to resort to any ritual practice in the desperate hope to

stop the ground's frenzied motion.

Fig. 13 - Eleanor Betts' The sacred landscape of Picenum 900-100 B.C., in Inhabiting Symbols - Symbol

and image in the ancient Mediterranean (London, 2003), p. 106-107

The suggestions presented here are similar to other indications elaborated

by archeologist Rust Whitehouse in her book Underground Religion: Cult

and Culture in Prehistoric Italy (1992), and subsequently mentioned by

Eleanor Betts (The sacred landscape of Picenum 900-100 B.C., 2003) with

reference to Grotta Sant'Angelo, a cave set near Civitella del Tronto, a

hamlet set not far from the Sibillini Mountain Range: in it, «the excavation

27

of the Bronze Age levels uncovered twelve small holes within an elliptical

hollow in the rock of the cave, each roughly circular, some containing

human bones», in a possible scenario in which «heavily carbonised human

remains from pits in the Neolithic level» may represent «human sacrifices

or remains of cannibalistic feasts».

However this interpretation has been subsequently dismissed by later

scholars, so we still do no have today any archeological evidence of ancient

rituals carried out by the Picenes or the Sabines in the Iron Age involving

the ritual sacrifice of human beings. This remains only a conjecture, as

fascinating as it may be when fancied within the framework of the

legendary tradition living amid the Sibillini Mountain Range, with their

powerful earthquakes and the terror they certainly unleashed among the

local populations.

2.5. Earthquakes, myths and the current scientific framework

In recent years the international research has become increasingly aware of

the existing relationship between natural events, especially those of a

catastrophic character, and the generation of myths in ancient cultures: an

evolving approach that signals a fundamental evolution from both the

'psychological school' (which linked myth and human subconscious

psychology, following the interpretative paths opened by Freud and Jung)

and 'structuralism' (Lévi-Strauss' interpretation based on the unchanging

structural patterns of human mind), which both fundamentally disregarded

the specific events narrated in each myth. As opposed to this, now the

actual contents of myths, possibly connected to real-world events, are put at

the very center of the scientific investigation.

In 1973 it was geologist Dorothy B. Vitaliano, in her fundamental work

Legends of the Earth: Their Geologic Origins, who coined the term

'Geomythology': «the study of the actual geologic origins of natural

phenomena which were long explained in terms of myth or folklore», often

«associated with earthquakes, great floods, natural fires, and volcanic

eruptions, plagues, and other natural catastrophes». She positively opened

the way for an exciting race across ancient history and traditional myths; a

28

race which is still ongoing, and that now counts, as a brand-new step, the

legendary tradition of the Sibillini Mountain Range.

Fig. 14 - Dorothy B. Vitaliano's Legends of the Earth - Their geologic origin, Bloomington, 1973

Starting from the second half of the twentieth century, this race has been

involving an increasing number of researchers active in various disciplines.

As an interesting instance we mention the paper Exploring the nature of

myth and its role in science (Masse, Barber, Piccardi and Barber, 2007), in

which further steps were taken in the direction of geomythology. In this

article the authors intended to «provide a somewhat different conception of

those myths whose roots appear to lie in the observation of natural

phenomena and events, in particular geological events». In fact they note

that «seemingly, rituals and cults were not directed so much upwards, to the

celestial heavens, but rather downwards, to ‘Mother Earth’. [...] much

attention would have been paid to geological phenomena, and in particular

those more connected with the underworld, such as volcanoes and

earthquakes».

So here comes geology, and geological catastrophic events, as the most

effective triggers for myth generation. No more - or not only - human

29

psychology, no mere mind structures, and even less sun and moon and stars

and heavenly phenomena. Instead, geomythology introduces a primary role

for factual events unleashed from down below, like volcanic eruptions and

mighty earthquakes. In this new research context, geomythology was

definitely here to stay: «our focus here», they write in 2007, «is on myth in

geology, or geomythology [...], which we deﬁne as ‘the study of the

geological origin of myths and legends’». And «it will require the

application of a number of geological, astronomical, and archaeological

tools, as well as those from the cognitive sciences, history, and the

humanities»: this is precisely the 'think outside the box' approach we have

mentioned in a previous paragraph within the present paper.

Following this long race, geomythology has now rightfully entered the

scientific arena. Today many published papers present studies, debates,

analysis and conjectures; international research meetings are being held on

this highly-promising area of investigation.

As we already described, in 2019 and 2021 two sessions of a same major

conference were held in Cascia (in the central Italian region of Umbria) and

Le Mans (France), with the title Living with seismic phenomena in the

Mediterranean and beyond between Antiquity and the Middle Ages

(proceedings edited by Compatangelo-Soussignan, Diosono, Le Blay -

Oxford, 2022).

One of the two venues - Cascia, at the foot of the Sibillini Mountain Range,

a few miles from Norcia and not far from Mount Sibyl - was not chosen at

random: as we know, a large earthquake had struck that same region in

2016, and the promoters intended «to contribute to the protection of the

architectural and cultural heritage in regions characterised by a high

seismic risk and to promote a culture of risk management among

populations taking into account the impact of destructive natural

phenomena», in an area which had just been hit by poweful seismic waves.

Geomythology was one of the many topics addressed by the speakers,

whose works were subsequently collected in Part I of the proceedings

(Interpreting and living with seismic phenomena in antiquity: myth,

religion and science).

30

A most interesting article was presented by Kevin Bouillot (Earthquakes,

divination and rationalities in ancient Greece: the Greek oracle as a way

of understanding the seismic phenomenon), who effectively expressed the

connection between earthquakes, oracular sites and cults, according to a

view we also independently applied in our The chthonian legend paper

concerning the Apennine Sibyl:

«The oracular shrines were especially subject to enquiries following a

quake, or in fear for the aftermath. This approach implies the credence,

shared by the enquirers, that the gods were the originators of the seismic

events; as such, they were considered capable of preventing, dismissing,

assuaging the next earthquake, or at least of sparing the lives of those who

adequately offered to them adequate prayers, sacrifices and rituals»

[translated from the original text in French].

Fig. 15 - Proceedings of Living with seismic phenomena in the Mediterranean and beyond between

Antiquity and the Middle Ages, Oxford, 2022

Fear for one's own life. Fear for the fate of one's family. Fear for the ruin of

one's land. And the rise of a chthonian cult to appease the earthquake's

demons. This is what we wrote in The chthonian legend paper. And here

31

Bouillot powefully explains how rituals and cults contributed to the

management and dispelling of fears in antiquity:

«Before the oracle is queried, for the ancient Greeks earthquakes are

violent, deadly, sudden, unpredictable, inscrutable events and utterly out of

reach for men as they belong to the realm of nature, as they are the result of

the actions of the gods. But, after the oracular advice is rendered, that same

quakes become understandable, as they get linked to a sentiment of wrath

and/or to an act relating to a being who is certainly of divine nature, yet

known and familiar. Now the seismic waves have entered the realm of

something achievable by men: i.e. religion and cults tributed to the gods by

those same men» [translated from the original text in French].

In this sense the oracle acts as a «cure for anguish», reports Bouillot: and

we think that this remark can be fully applied to our conjecture on the

Sibyl's Cave and Pilate's Lake as well.

As we also affirmed in our own articles on the Apennine Sibyl, Bouillot

stresses the fact that «this psychological function attributed to the oracle

may seem unimportant to the eyes of a contemporary historian, who are

well aware of the tectonic plate theory [...] But it would mean we are

forgetting that ancient Greeks had nothing like that. Apart from the higher

layers of society who might have been acquainted with the 'seismic'

theories proposed by Aristotle, Lucretius, Seneca and Pliny the Elder, the

striken population had only the gods to bestow a meaning on the

catastrophe, and only the oracle to trace the appeasement of god's wrath,

and check the divine will and future mercy» [translated from the original

text in French].

Earthquakes, myth generation, psichological and social function of myths

in ancient cultures. We see that current research is now focussing on such

aspects of myths, and the results we specifically achieved on the legends of

the Sibillini Mountain Range perfectly fit this general framework, presently

being constructed by many scholars all around the world.

In the same Cascia / Le Mans conference, Loredana Lancini, with her

article Shaped by Fire: Memories of Volcanic Activity in Mythological

Accounts, explained the role of myths in traditional societies, by expressing

concepts that easily apply to the Sibyl's Cave and Pilate's Lake as well:

32

«Myths have been among the tools used throughout history to preserve and

transmit knowledge about dangerous geological phenomena, allowing

ancient populations to conceptualize and somehow analyse catastrophic

events».

Lancini reports a number of ancient Greek myths, each connected to a

geologically-relevant place. Among them, the legend of the shrine at Paliké

(in southern Sicily, where a mephitic lake once stood) seems to provide

instances of mythopoetic processes which might also have been in place at

Mount Vettore and Mount Sibyl:

«Palikè, situated by an area featuring a peculiar geological profile, seems to

us that it might be considered as an excellent case of study to address the

geomythology approach applied to a cult. [...] The place shows a dangerous

nature. [...] The cult here is strongly dependent on the physical environment

in which it is hosted [...] a divinatory practice that summons the divine and

asks for its intervention, and that cannot develop itself but in a very special

spot, an extraordinary one, where divinity manifests itself and its own

might. Thus the lake of Palikè represents a 'locus inferus', a chthonian

place: craters and deep hollows bring along the idea of a communication

and a passageway to the subterranean world. It is a borderline area, a land

of instability, a place which shuns normalisation, a bewitching, attractive

spot: for there can be established a contact and mediation with the gods,

and there the Otherworld turns into a real possibility» [translated from the

original text in French].

A geomythologic place, a particular cult: «we repute that it's exactly the

choice of the place», notes Lancini, «which determined, as a result, the

ritual practices that were chosen so as to establish a communication with

the deities. [...] A specific ritual in defined at that specific place which is

not to be re-staged anywhere else and sets the fascination of the lake and

cult in the long run»: because the distinctive mark of geo-cults is «a

relation of close association of the cult with the specialness of the local

geology».

As we can see, we are exactly in the same framework model for myth

generation we have been addressing when publishing our conjecture on the

Sibillini Mountain Range's legendary tradition: we stand by places which

33

are to be considered as 'hot spots (as we described them in our paper

Sibillini Mountain Range, a cave and lake to the Otherworld), where the

Otherworld opens its blood-curdling jaws to mortal beings, and through

which living men are potentially able to communicate with legendary,

supernatural entities; terrific cracks, which break up the continuity in our

physical world and allow mortal men to enter forbidden, terrific realms.

Nonetheless, a manifest paradox is plain for all to see.

How did it come that nobody at that specialised conference - held at the

foot of central Apennines specifically in the wake of a large earthquake -

never considered the Sibyl of Norcia as a primary geomythological subject

for research?

This observation is so apparently absurd, and so closely connected the

same disregard we already spotted during the last 150 years, that we will

dedicate to the matter a few remarks in the next paragraph.

2.6. The Apennine Sibyl forgotten by geomythologists (but fully recovered

by 'The chthonian legend')

The years are 2019 and 2021. The topic is earthquakes in the ancient

Mediterranean region. The attendees are the most illustrious academics

whose studies are centered on history, myths and geology. Geomythology,

with its myths arising from destructive geological events, is part of the

conference's scope. The venue is Cascia, in the central Italian Apennines,

expressly selected after a large earthquake had hit the region a few years

earlier.

A perfectly-fit setting for the legendary tradition of the Sibillini Mountain

Range and the Apennine Sibyl. She should have been the queen of the

conference - «top of the list, king of the hill, a number one», as sung by

Frank Sinatra in New York, New York.

But she wasn't there.

34

The odd paradox is that the Sibyl of the Apennines - a primary character in

geomythology, with her thrilling link to those very same earthquakes that

recursively use to hit the central Apennines - was actually there, just 17

miles away: but at that time nobody at the conference 'saw' her. Nobody

'sensed' her mythopoetic potency. She was never mentioned by the

attendees and never entered any of the conference sessions (The chthonian

legend paper had just been released in 2020, but still with no significant

reception at that time). Her time - together with her geomythological fellow

Pontius Pilate - was still to come.

How did it happen that a major conference on geomythology held in Cascia

just missed the chance to recognise the legendary tradition living in the

Sibillini Mountain Range as a major - though possible, conjectural -

example of a myth arising from the same eartquakes the conference itself

was fully aware of?

The answer to this question is the same we already provided in previous

paragraphs.

For centuries, and specially during the last one hundred fifty years, men of

letters and scholars totally failed to identify any rationale for the birth, or

establishment, of such legends in the Sibillini Mountains area. No one ever

found out, if not cursorily, the Sibyl's lineage from the Matter of Britain,

nor the relationship between the High Middle Age's narratives on Pontius

Pilate and the demons at the Lake of Pilate. In addition to all that, nobody

ever conjectured any connection between the Sibillini's legendary tradition

and earthquakes.

This course of events just progressed, as plain as ever, into the Living with

seismic phenomena in the Mediterranean and beyond between Antiquity

and the Middle Ages conference.

Truth was before their very eyes; but they just didn't see it.

As a matter of fact, the Appenine Sibyl's and Pilate's legends, at a first

glance, seem to be mere tales of medieval origin. Not Roman, nor Greek.

As such, they have not been much considered by academics, as those

narratives appear to be not so illustrious, nor antique.

35

But reality seems to be different, as the legendary tradition of the Sibillini

Mountain Range appears to be potentially rooted in very old Iron-Age

myths on earthquakes: that is, we are in front of geomythology to its utmost

expression, and even before the Greek and Roman civilizations.

Yet the conference failed on this specific point. And a non-professional

researcher, the Author of the present article and The chthonian legend

paper, succeeded in an area in which academy's results proved to be quite

disappointing.

3. Sibilline legends, further mentions

Within The Apennine Sibyl - A Mystery and a Legend paper series, we

presented a number of literary quotes from different works and centuries

which provided a comprehensive view of the fame and diffusion gained by

the legends of the Sibyl's Cave and the Lake of Pilate around Europe.

In the present paragraph we now want to introduce further references, not

originally included in The Apennine Sibyl series' papers.

3.1 Pietro Ranzano and a late-fifteenth-century mention of the Apennine

Sibyl and the Lake of Pilate

«On one of the peaks of the Apennine is set the hamlet of Mount St. Mary

in Gaul, in which territory that huge and horrible hollow and cavern of the

Sibyl is found, that is what the people know as the Sibyl's Cave».

[In the original Latin text: «In unius eorum iugis positum est oppidum

nomine Mons Sanctae Mariae in Gallo, in cuius agro est ingens et

horrendum illud antrum et caverna Sibyllae, id est quam vulgus vocat

Cryptam Sibyllae»].

This is the opening of a long passage written in the final quarter of the

fifteenth century by Pietro Ranzano, Bishop of Lucera, a Sicilian scholar

and dominican friar, who wrote a large, extensive chronicle of historical

36

and geographical character, the Annales omnium temporum (History of all

times): eight huge manuscripted volumes, of which seven are preserved

today at the Municipal Library of Palermo.

In his work, a full book is dedicated to Italy (Descriptio totius Italiae), and

it contains a thorough illustration of the legendary traditions which lived

amid the Sibillini Mountain Range.

«... Sibyl's Cave, that is reputed to be the access through which simpletons

and wicked men creep into secret places, inhabited by some unknown

Sibyl. They say recesses exist in which she rules over large crowds of

people. There preciously decorated houses are found, and spacious halls,

ever-green grasslands, gardens of all kinds...».

[In the original Latin text: «...Cryptam Sibylla, quod sit via per quam

stultos et impios multos perhibent petere secreta loca, quae inhabitat nescio

quae Sibylla. Dominam eam aiunt loci esse quae numeroso imperitet

populo. Esse illic domos exornatissimas, amplissima atria, prata semper

virentia, hortos omnis generis...»].

So, between 1475 and 1493 (when the author passed away), Pietro Ranzano

reports the rumours and popular credences which concerned the notorious

Sibyl of the Apennines, by quoting a number of legendary, fairy-like

features already mentioned by Andrea da Barberino in Guerrino the Wretch

at the beginning of that same century, and also retracing the words written

by Flavio Biondo, one of Ranzano's sources and inspiring literary models,

in his De Italia illustrata, published in 1474.

37

Fig. 16 - The original edition of Pietro Ranzano's Epitome rerum Hungarorum (1489/90), preserved at the

National Széchényi Library in Budapest (Hungary); a revised version of the same text was subsequently

included by Ranzano in his Annales omnium temporum

But Ranzano, who was in Perugia as a student around 1445 and possibly

had the chance there to hear about the Sibyl's and Pilate's legends firsthand,

adds more information and annotations, considerably extending the

significantly shorter excerpts written on the subject by Flavio Biondo. Yet

his opinion on the sibilline legendary tradition is harsh and clear:

«This and many other fairy tales, very far from actual truth, are told by

foolish and impious people as to the Sibyl's cave. I have stumbled upon

many idle men, unaware of the path to real truth, who maintained they had

reached the Sibyl through that hollow and seen all the things that I

described above. To them I have never believed, nor I ever will, for all

those I saw and heard lived a miserable life afterwards, and met an

unhappiest death. How could I, a Christian theologist and phlosopher, ever

credit such lies?».

Pietro Ranzano also mentions the legend of the Lake of Pilate, but, again,

he places no reliance in it:

«At a higher altitude, but in the territory of Norcia, there is a lake [...] It is

known among the populace as the Lake of Norcia. As its waters often raise

from the depths and are thrown in the air, water motions in various parts of

38

the lake ensue. But those who behold this, unaware of the reasons, say that

the waters are stirred by the demons who inhabit the lake. [...] So this

renown has attracted many people, devoted to magical arts, as far as to visit

the mountain and lake and the agitated demons who stir the waters; and,

utterly forgetting any godly fears, they try to deliver to the demons books,

written with various symbols, to obtain their consecration. [...] After they

had marked a circle on the ground and drawn the letters, after performing

the sacred rituals and all the acts that were to be done, they saw nothing

and heard nothing from the so eagerly summoned demons; nor the book to

be consecrated, thrown into the lake, ever came back in the hands of the

owner, despite they lingered there for three full days waiting for an

outcome of any sort».

Ranzano concludes by assuming that «possiby the fame of those places is

not so antique», noting that «otherwise the ancient authors would have

mentioned them, especially those who told the tales concerning the cult of

false gods. Just like the Oracle of Delphi, that in Cumae and many others

have been cause for wonder - caves and rivers and springs and woods -

those same places in Norcia would never have been overlooked».

We are at the end of the fifteenth century, and the might of the legendary

tradition of the Sibillini Mountain Range is still strong. Pietro Ranzano, a

theologist and scholar from Southern Italy, cannot skip and overlook the

two powerful legends. They both enjoy a widespread renown, even though

the classical authors he knew so well had never provided any description of

these magical Sibyl's Cave and Pilate's Cave.

3.2 Niccolò Peranzoni and his extensive description of the sibilline legends

Amid the mentions which we did not present in our previous papers, the

following quote drawn from a work by Niccolò Peranzoni is certainly a

most interesting reference.

At the beginning of the sixteenth century, Peranzoni - a learned scholar

from Montecassiano, in the province of Marche - wrote his De laudibus

Piceni - Sive Marchiae Anconitanae Libellus, a celebration of his native

land, with a description of notable places and facts. The work has been

39

handed over to us thanks to a 1792 edition revised by another later scholar,

Giuseppe Colucci, and included in his Antiquities of Picene region

(Antichità Picene).

Sometime between 1510 and 1520, Niccolò Peranzoni was well aware of

the legendary traditions which lived amid the Sibillini Mountain Range,

and when confronting with the list of towns and villages that interspersed

his homeland, on reaching Montemonaco («Mons Monacus», but also

«Montem demoniacum» in his words) he could not skip neither the Sibyl

nor Pilate, so devoting many pages to the two fascinating tales:

«The reason for this name lies with two different reasons. First, because of

the notorius, amid the populace, Sibyl's Cave, which they say it is to be

found not far from that hamlet on the crests of the Apennine. Second,

because of the Lake of Pilate, whose renown has run across all the

nations».

Fig. 17 - Niccolò Peranzoni's De laudibus Piceni sive Marchiae Anconitanae Libellus, as edited by

Giuseppe Colucci in his Antichità picene (Fermo, 1792), Tomo XXV

40

[In the original Latin text: «Idque praesertim duabus de causis. Primum

propter Cavernam Sibyllae vulgo famigeratam, quae non longe ab ipso

oppido in Appennini jugo esse fertur. Deinde propter Pilati lacum jam

omnibus fere nationibus divulgatum»].

First, Peranzoni addresses the mysterious cave set on the top of Mount

Sibyl:

«So it is believed by the old, foolish and gullible faith of the populace that

the Cumaean Sibyl [...] once left her subterranean hollows and the secret

places of Hades, so they narrate [...] and in our present days that same Sibyl

is still concealing herself in those same mountains [...] and there she shall

stay until she undergoes a future trial. This is the reason why many people,

drawn here by a pointless mistake, are in search of that Sibyl's cave, and so

they waste their time in disillusion, their crave frustrated: in addition to

that, they are often stripped off of their valuables and even killed by the

local inhabitants, be they shepherds or herdsmen - who are in charge of

keeping the mountains under surveillance - sometimes they are punished

and beaten, and dismissed after receiving a crude treatment».

[In the original Latin text: «Putat enim insanae credulaeque plebis

inveterata fides Sibyllam Cumanam [...] per tartaros meatus perque loca

silentia Ditis deduxisse fabulantus [...] in hodiernamque usque diem

Sibyllam ipsam in montibus ipsis latitare [...] et inibi ad diem usque futuri

judicii mansuram esse. Hinc est ut multi vano errore allecti cavernam

ipsam Sibyllae petant, ibiquo tempus omne delusi conterant, nec optatis

unquam potiantur votis: Immo ab accolis multotiens ac opilionibus sive

pecuariis, quibus custodiendi montis onus demandatum est, aut expoliantur,

aut necantur, sive fustibus multati non absque gravi poena dimittantur»].

41

Fig. 18 - The Sibyl near Montemonaco as it appears in Niccolò Peranzoni's De laudibus Piceni sive

Marchiae Anconitanae Libellus, as edited by Giuseppe Colucci in his Antichità picene (Fermo, 1792),

Tomo XXV, p. 118

Definitely Peranzoni does not subscribe to the possibility that a Sibyl might

have established her abode for real beneath the montains which raise their

peaks near Montemonaco, adding that «if something actually appears amid

those mountains, we must reckon that this is nothing but fanciful and

fiendish illusions» (in the original Latin text: «unde siquid in montibus

ipsis apparet, nil aliud esse credere debemus quam fantasticas

diabolicasque illusiones»), with a further interesting remark:

«Such caves, which here are not unfrequently found, are nothing else but

retreats for alchemists, in which they, out of people's sight, melt metallic

ore or forge coins, as they use to do today in many places; so strong is

man's desire for gold. But they just waste their time and coal».

[In the original Latin text: «cavernas, quae ibi passim reperiuntur nil aliud

fuisse, quam Alchimistarum latibula, in quibus, ne a plebe conspicerentur,

aut ara conflabant, aut numismata adulterabant, ut hodie etiam pluribus fit

in locis; tanta est mortalium auri potiundi cupiditas. Sed operam simul et

carbones perdunt»].

And as to the Lake of Pilate, Peranzoni has no kinder words:

42

«When considering the Lake of Pilate, many people, urged by a useless

miscalculation, from day to day come to this place from the farthest places

of the world to gain spellbooks for themselves by carrying out a demonic

consecration [...] They want to do it here among many other lakes for two

main reasons: first, because this very lake is so secluded from any

attendance of men, and this is a requirement of magical art. Second,

because just on the lake's shore two circles made of stones are found, and

stones are carved with symbols; and they say that the circles are necessary

to perform the magical rituals, one was inscribed by poet Vergilius from

Mantua, and the other by mathematician Cecco d'Ascoli».

[In the original Latin text: «Sed ad Pilati lacum repedandum est, ad quem

multi vano etiam errore compulsi, ex remotis mundi partibus in dies

accedunt, ut libros magicos consecrationibus daemoniacis sibi ipsi

vendicent [...] Quod autem Lacum ipsum Pilati ad id efficiendum prae

caeteris requirant, duo sunt in causa: Primum est quod lacus ipse

remotissimus est ab hominum frequentia, quod ars ipsa superstitiosa

requirit. Deinde quod duo ibi circuli super lapides incisi juxta lacus

marginem quibusdam caracteribus monstrantur, quos ad artem magicam

consequendam necessarios ajunt, eorumque alterum Virgilium Mantuanum

poetam, alterum vero Cicchum Asculanum mathematicum effinxisse

praedicant»].

Fig. 19 - The Lake of Pilate in Niccolò Peranzoni's De laudibus Piceni sive Marchiae Anconitanae

Libellus, as edited by Giuseppe Colucci in his Antichità picene (Fermo, 1792), Tomo XXV, p. 120

43

Niccolò Peranzoni then mentions the legendary narrative concerning the

praefect of Judaea, Pontius Pilate, whose final grave would be set in that

Lake, as his corpse was thrown in the icy waters after transportation to the

mountain-top on a chariot drawn by two bulls (a tale already narrated by

Antoine de la Sale a century earlier in his The Paradise of Queen Sibyl).

The whole excerpt is marked by a sense of thorough disbelief: these are just

silly stories, narrated by the naive populace («indoctum vulgus»).

3.3 Abraham Ortelius, the first modern atlas and the Apennine Sibyl

When Abraham Ortelius had his Theatrum Orbis Terrarum printed in 1570,

he marked a milestone in the field of geographical sciences, as it was the

first veritable modern atlas in history.

Fig. 20 - Abraham Ortelius' Theatrum Orbis Terrarum (Antwerp, 1603)

44

In this illustrious framework, the Apennine Sibyl could not be missing: in

the gorgeous edition dating to 1603, Mount Sibyl was there, its position

located with accuracy within the map of the "Marcha Anconae", known as

"Picenum" in antiquity. And that was not all: in a view to highlight the

utmost importance of that mysterious Italian mountain, Ortelius also

included a detailed caption, which provides an evidence of the fact that his

imagination had been hit and seized by this most charming legend:

«In this place, looming over the mentioned territory, where the Apennine

Mountain Range exceeds itself with the most elevated peaks, that ghastly

Cavern is found whose name is Sibyl's (people calls it the “Sibyl's Cave”)

and the Elysium is supposed to be there. The populace also likes to believe

that in this Cave of the Sibyl a large kingdom exists, full of magnificent,

kingly palaces and enchanting gardens, and sensual maidens and every kind

of delightful pleasures in great abundance. And all these things would be

available to those who dare to get into that cavern (whose entranceway is

visible to all). According to what is reported, after a full year of stay the

visitors are free to leave the cave (if they wish so) and are so blessed by the

Sibyl that when they come back to the outside world they live the

remaining time of their life in utter blissfulness».

[In the original Latin text: «Apenninus mons hoc loco, ubi huic regioni

imminent, editissimis iugis se ipsam superat, in quibus Antrum illud

horribile est quod Sibyllae cognominant (Grotta de la Sibylla vulgo) atque

Campos Elysios fingunt. Vulgus enim in hoc Antro Sibyllam quandam

somniat, quae hic regnum amplum magnificis Regiisque palatiis plenum,

hortis amoenissimis confitum, lascivientibusque puellis, et omnis generis

deliciarum copia abundantem possideat. Atque haec omnia communicari

cum iis qui eam per hoc antru (quod omnibus pateat) adeunt. Postquam

vero per annum in eo permanserint, liberam egrediendi facultatem (si

velint) eis a Sibylla largiri praedicat, atque ex eo ad nos reversis,

felicissimo deinceps toto vitae tempore uti asserit»].

45

Fig. 21 - Mount Sibyl in Abraham Ortelius' Theatrum Orbis Terrarum (Antwerp, 1603), table following p.

86

46

A remarkable annotation is that Ortelius also includes a section which

thoroughly addresses the German version of the legend, which is related to

Mount Venus (Frau Venus Berg) and knight Tannhäuser (Danhauser or

Daniel, as it is mentioned in Ortelius' caption):

«In our northern countries this Cave is known under the name of 'Vrow

Venus bergh', as if it were a mountain inhabited by Goddess Venus. To this

place are referred the rhymed lines that once the populace used to sing

about a certain Daniel (so he was called in the song), who, after having

dwelled for one year within the cave, later deplored the life he had been

living there; so he left his Venus and departed to Rome, seeking the Pope

and willing to confess his sins».

[In the original Latin text: «Hoc Antrum nostratibus quoque innotuit, sub

nomine 'Vrow Venus bergh', quasi dicas, Dominae Veneris montem. Inde

versus quidam rhythmici Teutonici vulgo cantitantur de quodam parvo

Daniele (sic enim cantio eum vocat) qui postquam toto in hoc antro anno

mansisset, eius vitae tandem poenituit, eoque, hanc suam Venerem

deferens, Romam proficiscitur, Pontificemque adit, et peccatum

confitetur»].

Fig. 22 - The caption on Mount Sibyl in Abraham Ortelius' Theatrum Orbis Terrarum (Antwerp, 1603), p.

86

47

Ortelius' caption continues with the narrative of the famous Tannhäuser's

episode concerning the blossoming of the papal's staff:

«The Pope, reputing that his sin was utterly unforgivable, took the

withered, dry staff that by chance he had in his hand and, after having

driven it into the ground, said that Daniel's sins would not be forgiven

before his staff blossomed with roses. Daniel, when he heard this reply, in

despair for the salvation of his own soul, left Rome in sadness, and for a

second time (accompanied by two sons of his sister), returned to his Venus.

But three days later the papal staff was actually seen in full blossom; and so

they searched for Daniel everywhere across the whole land, but he never

reappeared. People believe he ended his life within that cave. This is the

tale told by this chant, which trustfully narrates of the imaginated Sibyl, or

Venus».

[In the original Latin text: «Pontifex hoc peccatum minime veniale credens,

baculum quem forte effetum et aridum ad manus habebat, in terram

defigens, sua illi peccata remissum iri dicit, quam primum hic baculus rosas

ferret. Daniel ex hoc responso de sua salute desperans, maestus abivit,

denuoque (duobus ex sorore nepotibus secum ductis) ad suam Venerem

revertitur. Triduum vero post visus est baculus efflorescere: quaesitus

ubique terrarum Daniel, sed nusquam apparuit. Creditur enim, eum

reliquum suae vitae terminum in antro hoc finivisse. Hac huius cantilenee

historia, digna cuius fides huic sue Sibyllae, aut Veneri imaginatae,

deferatur»].

But how could the Flemish geographer Ortelius know about the Sibyl?

Who told him of Mount Sibyl and its incredibly fascinating legend, so that

he could include such a detailed description in his Theatrum Orbis

Terrarum?

We are proud to provide another significant contribution to the research on

the Sibyl's legend by publishing - for the first time ever - the potential

names of the persons who knew both the Sibyl's legend and Ortelius: the

men who explained to a northern-European cartographer the secrets of the

Apennine Sibyl.

48

Acting as contemporary detectives, let's try to probe into facts so as to

provide an answer to this thrilling question.

First, let's consider Ortelius' map, which shows the exact position of Mount

Sibyl.

Ortelius did not create his maps all by himself, he had local contributors

established in all European countries. In particular, according to

researchers, the “Marcha Anconae olim Picenum” map designed by

Ortelius was taken by an earlier map made by Vincenzo Luchino, a map

publisher based in Rome (a letter dated 1572 esists in which a Roman

librarian, Giovanni Orlandi, recommended Luchino's map to the attention

of Ortelius).

Fig. 23 - Vincenzo Luchino, La Marca d'Ancona (Roma, 1564)

Furthermore, as reported by Giorgio Mangani (a well-informed

contemporary researcher), the info included by Ortelius in his maps was

«mostly provided by extemporary local correspondents, enlisted from a

milieu of men of letters, aristocrats and sometimes even people from

military ranks, not always able to collect the geographical elements they

were asked for with a reliable methodology; they were rarely men of

science, more frequently they used to be engaged in different areas of

studies».

49

A list of Ortelius' correspondents is presented in the initial sections of the

Theatrum, including a biography of Ortelius written by Francis Sweert, an

intimate of the illustrious scientist. Sweert says that Ortelius had many

friends of great promincence and learning, «amicos coluit magni et nominis

et eruditionis viros». The biographer continues by mentioning the names of

the fellow-scholars residing in various European countries of that time. As

for Italy, the list includes «Fulvium Ursinum, Franciscum Superantium &

Ioannes Sambucum».

Fig. 24 - Correspondents from Italy according to Abraham Ortelius' Theatrum Orbis Terrarum (Antwerp,

1603), biographical notes by Francis Sweert

Domenico Francesco Superantio was a geographer who lived and worked

in Italy's Veneto province. Ioannes Sambucus - whose real name was János

Zsámboky - was a Slovak historian who lived and studied in Italy. Actually

it seems they have nothing to do with the Apennine Sibyl and her legend.

So the possible source for Ortelius' information on the Apennine Sibyl was

possibly Flavio Orsini. But which one exactly? Actually there are two of

them, bearing the same name and active in the second half of the sixteenth

century: the first was a most illustrious historian, archeologist, and one of

the greatest collectors of antiquities of his time; the second was the bishop

of Spoletium (and also of Norcia) from 1563 to 1581.

Certainly both of them could have written the famous caption on the

Apennine Sibyl published by Ortelius: for sure they both knew everything

about the legend. So further research will be needed to ascertain who

actually told Ortelius of Mount Sibyl, irrevocably consigning this thrilling

fairy tale to the wider European lore. Yet, this is a most promising track.

50

3.4 The Sibyl in the Cosmographie Universelle by André Thevet

The legends living in the Sibillini Mountain Range could not be missing in

the Cosmographie Universelle edited in 1575 by André Thevet, a

franciscan friar and traveller whose works, often controversial, were stuffed

with the bizarre and the picturesque.

«Near the hamlet of Arquata the Apennines are so elevated that they

surmount in height all the rest, in all directions; because of this this

elevated mountain-top is called Mount Vettore: and not far from there lies

the town of Norcia [...] Near Mount Vettore, on the eastern side, there is a

Lake, where some say that enchantments are performed so easily that the

less skillful will be able to see the demons, who will reply to any question

the enquirer may pose to them. However, as for myself I cannot believe that

at all, and I've always taken fun out of this sort of accounts. [...] It's there

that the most elevated Apennine peaks appear, on one of them is a Castle

known 'Of the Holy Mary in Gallo': And nearby you can find that frighful

cave and hollow that is known as the Sibyl's Cave: in it people believe is

the kingdom of that said Sibyl, similar to a kingdom of Fairies, and marked

by the silly tales which are told about a Fairy of King Oberon. Despite all

that, the entrance to the sibilline caver has been filled up, and guards stand

by the Lake lest nobody misuses the place in search of the favours

bestowed by Satan».

[In the original French text: «Pres d'Arquate l'Apennin est si hault, qu'il

surmonte tout le reste de sa haulteur, en quelque lieu que ce soit; qui est

cause que ceste sommité ainsi haulsee, est nommee Mont Veltore: Et pre de

là est bastie la ville de Nursie [...] Pres Mont Veltore, du costé de l'Orient,

est un Lac, où aucuns dient que se font les enchantemens si faciles, que le

moins sçavant y verra les esprits, qui luy respondront de tout ce qu'il

demandera. Mais quant à moy je n'en peux rien croire, aisn me suis

toujours mocqué de tels comptes. [...] Et c'est là qu'apparoissent les haults

monts Apennins, sur l'un desquels est le Chasteau du mont nommé 'Di

Sancto Maria in Gallo': Et pres de là est celle espouvantable Grotte et

spelunque, que l'on nomme la Caverne de la Sibylle: où l'on faist le regne

de ceste Sibylle, tout tel que celuy de Faerie, et approchant des folies qu'on

a compté d'une Fee de ce Roy Oberon. Neanmoins a l'on estoupé le trou de

51

ladicte caverne Sibylline, et tient on gardes au Lac, à fin qu'aucun ne s'y

aille abuser, et n'use du ministere de Satan»].

Fig. 25 - Sibilline legends in André Thevet's Cosmographie Universelle (Paris, 1575), p. 759

It is a description which reflects information drawn from Antoine de la Sale

and other geographical works; however it provides a further confirmation

of the interest and curiosity that this geographical area, set in the Italian

Apennines between the provinces of Umbria and Marche, was still arousing

amid a vast audience in the late sixteenth century.

3.5 The Apennine Sibyl and the British Isles

Not many scholars are aware of the fact that the renown of the Apennine

Sibyl, in past centuries, has reached out as far as the British Isles. We are

52

proud to present this mark, previously unnoticed, left from this peculiar

Italian legend on a northern-European land: Great Britain.

In 1586, the illustrious British historian William Camden published his

fundamental work Britannia, an outstanding description of the

geographical features of the British Isles. On presenting one of the few

caves which exist in his own homecountry, a hollow set near the town of

Wells ("Ochie-Hole, known today as the "Wookey Hole Caves"), he wrote

the following words:

«From there eastward the Mendip Hills stretch across an extensive area,

and were called Mine District from John Leland [...] as there was plenty of

lead ore, and sheep had their grasslands. In these caves a vast hollow is

found, in which once were wells and rivulets; they call it 'Ochye-hole' of

which the inhabitants hereabouts have related as many idle stories, as the

Italians have of their Sibyl's Cave in the Apennine Mountains».

[In the original Latin text: «Hinc ad Ortum Mendippi colles se longem

lateque explicant, Minerarios vocat Lelandus [...] plumbi enim fodinis

opulenti, et pascendis pecoribus apti. In his antrum est longo recessu, in

quo putei quidam, et rivuli cernuntur, Ochye-Hole dicunt, de quo non

minora somnia fingunt accolae, quam de suo Sybillae antro in Appennino,

comminiscuntur Itali»].

Fig. 26 - The Apennine Sibyl in William Camden's Britannia (London, 1587), p. 125

53

As a matter of fact this mention represents a most significant sign of the

mighty diffusion potential featured by the Italian legend about a Sibyl

living amid the mountains in central Italy.

But how it was that Camden could get aware of the existence of an

Apennine Sibyl in far-away Italy? The answer is clear to our eyes: the

Italian sibilline legend had probably travelled through Flanders. It is known

to scholars that William Camden wrote his work Britannia under the

significant influence of Abraham Ortelius from Antwerp, the renowned

Flemish cartographer and the author of the greatest geographical work of

his century, the Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, which we already described in a

previous paragraph.

Ortelius made use of various correspondents based in various countries,

who co-operated with him in the drawing of the many national

geographical maps: as to the British Isles, he had established a close

relationship with the same William Camden. An assiduous exchange of

letters was in place between the two scholars, in which they discussed

learned topics like the antique names of the places of Roman Britain and

other erudite issues.

Possibly it was Ortelius who told Camden the tale of the Apennine Sibyl.

Ortelius, the man who had definitely marked the position of Mount Sibyl in

his illustrious Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, within the map of the "Marcha

Anconae olim Picenum", and was so utterly fascinated by the narrative

about the Sibyl that he accompanied his map with a long descriptive text,

half of which was fully dedicated to the fantastic legend of the Apennine

Sibyl.

From Italy to Flanders, and from Flanders to the British Isles: a wondrous

travel for a Sibyl who lived amid the Apennines in the central portion of the

Italian peninsula.

54

3.6 The Apennine Sibyl in a 1643 guidebook for travellers: David Froelich

When David Froelich, a Slovak geographer, mathematician and traveller,

published his Bibliothecae Sive Cynosurae Peregrinantium, hoc est,

Viatorii Liber in 1643, he intended to help the traveller («peregrinantem»,

as he writes) in his journey, by providing clear directions about the land the

wayfarer was headed to («versus quam Mundi plagam illi proficiscendum

sit»).

Among the descriptions of Gallia, Hispania, Helvetia, Hungaria and many

other European and even remote, far-away lands, Italy has a primary

position, ancient and illustrious as it was («inter Europae regiones

celeberrima»). And, at the very heart of Italy, the following lines are

devoted to Norcia and its renowned Apennine Sibyl:

«NORCIA, which lies by the lake. Here many tales are told about the

Sibyl, concealed in her cave. Publius Vergilius Maro calls the town

“wintry”, owing to the elevation of the surrounding mountains (which are

always capped with snow and engulf the neighbouring land with extreme

cold)».

[In the original Latin text: «NURSIA, sita ad lacum. Hic multae sunt

fabulae de Sibylla, in antro recondita. Virgilius eam frigidam civitatem

vocat, propter montium circumjectorum (qui nivibus perpetuo occupantur

frigusque ingens propinquis locis conciliant) altitudinem.»]

55

Fig. 27 - The Apennine Sibyl in David Froelich's Viatorii liber (Ulm, 1643)

Norcia by a lake, a clear reference to the Lake of Pilatus, once known as

the Lake of Norcia. Norcia as the land of the Sibyl. A match that will last

for hundreds of years, up to the twentieth century.

3.7 The Apennine Sibyl at the end of the eighteenth century: Giuseppe

Colucci

A most interesting mention is provided by Giuseppe Colucci, a scholar and

historian from the province of Marche, at the end of the eighteenth century:

an age in which the ancient charming attractiveness of the Apennine Sibyl's

legend was experiencing a significant fading, as Illuminism continued to

assert the primacy of Reason with respect to old tales that were now

56

considered as empty babbles, only credited by gullible shepherds and

peasants.

Within his extensive work presenting the illustrious antiquities of his native

land, Colucci edited and published the manuscript containing Nicola

Peranzoni's De Laudibus Piceni, written more than two hundred fifty years

earlier, as we already saw in a previous paragraph.

Colucci's edition contains a number of annotated remarks, which

accompany the main text written by Peranzoni: so, as we read Peranzoni's

word about the Apennine Sibyl and the Lake of Pilate, we have also the

chance to peruse the notes included by Colucci, which represent the vision

that a man of letters living in the final portion of the eighteenth century

had, at that late time, with relation to the Sibyl of the Apennines and the

Roman prefect buried in an Apennine lake.

Giuseppe Colucci cannot but express his utter scorn for the popular legends

which inhabited Mount Vettore and Mount Sibyl:

«[...] this sort of puppet of a Sibyl made the credulous populace to believe

that there the Sibyl inhabited, and dwelled in that cavern, in that hollow,

and as such she was unattainable; and anybody in search of a forbidden

contact would be heavily beaten; and scores and scores of further fairy

tales, which the old women sitting before the fireplace, spinning and

weaving, used to tell to guileless children; and naive people used to

imagine as real, actual facts, handing those tales over from father to son,

especially during the centuries in which ignorance ruled, and mist. But

today all this does not happen anymore: even though some fake opinion

still persists, that a Sibyl had ever lived under that mountain, nobody now

believes anymore (at least if he's not a simpleton) that the dreamed-of Sibyl

might really go about that countryside».

[In the original Italian text: «[...] questo fantoccio della Sibilla, ha dato

motivo a gente credula di sospettare che là abitasse la Sibilla, che vivesse

in quell'antro, in quella caverna, che fosse perciò inaccessibile, che a chi si

fosse accostato più oltre di quello si poteva, toccavano delle fiere percosse,

e cemto e mille altre favolette, che le vecchie al fuoco filando raccontavano

a' creduli bambocci; e che gente ignorante ha creduto per cose vere e reali,

e di padre in figlio si sono tramandate, specialmente nei secoli

57

dell'ignoranza, e della caligine. Ma ai tempi presenti non accade più questo:

se pure rimane qualche falsa opinione, che in quella montagna abbia

vissuto la Sibilla, niuno più crede (almeno se non è sciocco) che

presentemente passeggi per quelle contrade la sognata Sibilla»].

Fig. 28 - Notes written by Giuseppe Colucci on the Apennine Sibyl from Colucci's edition of Niccolò

Peranzoni's De laudibus Piceni sive Marchiae Anconitanae Libellus (Fermo, 1792), Tomo XXV, p. 118-

119

No gentler words are written by Colucci with reference to the legend

concerning the Lake of Pilate:

«Among those silly peasants who inhabit that land a foolish superstition

spread itself, that no stone is to be thrown at the center of the lake for they

say it would immediately raise a storm out of the offense which the corpse

of Pilate would receive from that act; that same body which the people,

with equal dullness, they think was submerged and dumped there».

[In the original Italian text: «È prevalsa presso quelli idioti contadini di

quelle parti la sciocca credenza di non potersi gettare alcun sasso nel centro

di quel lago, perché dicono che sarebbe causa di far nascer subito una

tempesta per l'insulto che ne riceverebbe il corpo di Pilato, che con equale

sciocchezza credono colà immerso ed affondato»].

58

In our paper Pontius Pilate and the shape of the waters (2020), we

presented a thorough recap of all available information about the Lake of

Pilate, nested within the glacial cirque of Mount Vettore, and its peculiar

shape, changing with seasons, rainwater levels and snowfalls. In that paper

we did not include Colucci's contribution to the topic, featuring a beautiful,

detailed description of the valley which runs from Mount Vettore to Mount

Sibyl, the result of the grinding action performed by a vanished glacier:

«So in the Apennine mountains, and namely between the elevated mount of

Vettore and that of the Sibyl, nature created a huge valley, on the top of

which, at the point where the two mounts join and get connected, a sort of

shell is present, in which all the waters of the rains and melting snows fall

and gather together, also flowing from the cliffs and ravines. All those

waters, coming together in the said shell [...] make up a wide lake in the

middle of the valley; on its eastern side the lake has the high peak of Mount

Vettore, on the western side that of the Sibyl; this latter mount presents

frightful, gigantic, vertical cliffs, that when see from below raise terror in

one's heart, as they seem to be on the verge of tumbling suddenly down to

plunge into the lake».

[In the original Italian text: «Adunque nei monti Apennini, e positivamente

fra l'alta montagna di Vittore, e quella della Sibilla si forma dalla natura

una gran valle, a capo della quale, dove le dette due montagne si uniscono,

e si legano insieme, formasi una conchiglia, dove vanno a cadere, e si

uniscono tutte le acque piovane, e delle nevi, che si struggono in esse

montagne, come pure quelle delli scogli, e dei fossi delle medesime. Tutte

queste grandi acque raccolte in detta conchiglia [...] formano nel mezzo

della valle formano uno spazioso lago; il quale da oriente ha l'alta cima

della montagna di Vittore, e all'occidente quella della Sibilla; la quale

forma da questa parte orride insieme e smisurate rupi perpendicolari, che

riguardandosi di sotto fanno orrore, parendo, che a tutti i momenti si

vogliano slacciare per sprofondarsi in esso lago»].

59

Fig. 29 - Notes written by Giuseppe Colucci on the geography of the Sibillini Mountain Range from

Colucci's edition of Niccolò Peranzoni's De laudibus Piceni sive Marchiae Anconitanae Libellus (Fermo,

1792), Tomo XXV, p. 121

After providing valuable information on the size and potential depth of the

Lake of Pilate as it could be seen at the end of the eighteenth century (500

palms width and 3,500 palms circumference, corresponding to 100 meters

and 770 meters, with a palm equalling nearly 22 centimeters), Giuseppe

Colucci illustrates the peculiar spectacles-like shape of the waters:

«On the contrary, in summers, when waters are scant, the lake shrinks and

in the middle a sort of chokepoint appears, which separates the two smaller,

60

round lakes forming the spectacles-like shape; there an islet is then formed,

and it is like if they were two distinct lakes, even though for a small section

to the west they never part completely and they share their waters, In this

islet, when people can safely reach in summers, a few stones are found, in

which intrigued wayfarers left their names in carvings».

[In the original Italian text: «All'incontro la state, mancando la copia di esse

acque si ristringe, e nel mezzo dove resta come una strozzatura, che divide i

due tondi dei descritti occhiali formasi come un'isoletta, e pare che sieno

due laghi, che per picciolo tratto verso occidente, dove non avviene che

mai si distacchi del tutto si comunicano insieme le acque. In quest'isoletta,

dove l'estate si può andare con sicurezza, Vi sono alcuni sassi, nei quali

alcuni curiosi viaggiatori hanno lasciato scolpito il nome loro»].

Fig. 30 - Notes written by Giuseppe Colucci on the Apennine Sibyl from Colucci's edition of Niccolò

Peranzoni's De laudibus Piceni sive Marchiae Anconitanae Libellus (Fermo, 1792), Tomo XXV, p. 122

This is a further attestation to the attractive might of this fascinating place,

confirming Antoine de la Sale's fifteenth-century's account about the

presence of an islet at the center of the Lake of Pilate and the visits being

carried out, across many centuries, to the icy waters set amid the

vertiginous cliffs of Mount Vettore, in central Italy.

61

4. Other miscellaneous references

In this chapter we present a few other references, which do not provide

further direct mentions of the Sibillini Mountain Range's legendary

tradition; nonetheless they feature a close connection with some of the

themes that are present in the legends of the Sibyl's Cave and Pilate's Lake.

4.1 The Matter of Britain and Antoine de la Sale's 'The Paradise of Queen

Sibyl'

In our paper Antoine de la Sale and the magical bridge concealed beneath

Mount Sibyl (2018) we presented for the first time ever a full recap of the

illustrious literary lineage of the magically narrow bridge which, according

to Antoine de la Sale and his fifteenth-century The Paradise of Queen

Sibyl, is staged in the deepest bowels of the Sibyl's Cave:

«Then you find a bridge, made of some unknown material, but it is said to

be less than a single foot wide and it seems to be extending far ahead. [...]

Yet as soon as you put both feet on the bridge, it becomes large enough;

and the more you step ahead, the more it widens and the abyss becomes

shallower» [in the original French text: «Lors trouve-l'on ung pont, que on

ne scet de quoy il est, mais est advis qu'il n'est mie ung pied de large et

semble estre moult long. [...] Mais aussitost que on a les deux pieds sur le

pont, il est assez large; et tant va on plus avant et plus est large et moins

creux»].

In that paper we showed that the bridge is presented in the Tractatus de

Purgatorio Sancti Patricii, in a number of medieval Visions of Irish origin,

and also in the Dialogues written by Pope St. Gregory I the Great in the

sixth century A.D. Furthermore, various forms of 'test bridges' and other

similar devices providing access to supernatural regions can be retrieved in

many chivalric poems and romances.

A further example, which we did not mention in our article, is present in

one of the most famous literary works belonging to the Matter of Britain:

Thomas Malory's Le Mort d'Arthur, published in London in 1485, the

62

fundamental romance, written in English, that fostered the diffusion and

fortune of the Arthurian cycle for the subsequent centuries.

Fig. 31 - A page from the original printed edition of Thomas Malory's Le Mort d'Arthur published by

William Caxton (London, 1485), from one of the only two surviving copies (Morgan Library & Museum,

New York)

We find our magical bridge at the very beginning of William Caxton's

printed edition (Book 1 The tale of King Arthur, Chapter II Balin or the

Knight with the Two Swords). We will follow here the text drawn from the

original manuscript found in Winchester in 1934 and preserved at the

British Library (Add. MS 59678), as transcripted by Eugène Vinaver:

«Than Merlion lette make a brygge of iron and of steele into that ilonde,

and hit was but halff a foote brode, and there shall never man passe that

brygge nother have hardynesse to go over hit but yf he were a passynge

good man withoute trechery or vylany».

So we have an island and a metal bridge made up by the wizardly arts of

Merlin, and the bridge is half-a-foot wide, and it can be passed only by a

man who is true and guileless.

63

Fig. 32 - The magical bridge as it appears in Le Mort d'Arthur, from the transcript edited by Eugène

Vinaver (London, 1954), p. 70

The bridge is intended to magically protect the scabbard of Balin's sword,

which is left by Merlin on the island for Galahad to find («that Galaad

sholde fynde hit»). It is a further example of a 'testing device' providing an

access to an enchanted/supernatural place only if the wayfarer is a pure,

unblemished soul.

So, once again, we see that the contrivance of a magically narrow bridge is

not an original creation developed within the legendary tradition of the

Sibillini Mountain Range, as it may appear when reading The Paradise of

Queen Sibyl by Antoine de la Sale; instead, as a matter of fact this

fascinating device is marked by a much longer story and is also fully

present amid the many themes which are staged in the context of the Matter

of Britain.

64

4.2 Mount Vettore's 'Road of Fairies': another superimposed legendary

layer (from the Italian Alps)

Readers of The chthonian legend paper may remember that the article also

contains a description of the 'Road of Fairies', the popular name assigned to

the huge, terrific fault line which splits horizontally the western side of

Mount Vettore for its entire length.

Fig. 33 - Mount Vettore with the 'Road of Fairies”

The titanic fracture is the results of thousands of years of earthquakes and

illustrates with the utmost might the visible potency of seismic waves in the

region.

Despite all that, as we already said, no one has never been able to link the

legends about a Sibyl and a Roman prefect, present in the area, to the

peculiar seismic behaviour of this land.

The same local population who lives in the area used to associate the streak

on Mount Vettore with a different narrative, thus moving further away from

the possible chance of stumbling into a potential, even though conjectural,

truth.

In fact, according to the silly populace the streak on the mountain is a trail

left by the Sibyl's cortege of fairies, as reported by Paolo Toschi in 1967:

«One certain evening the fairies, whose queen was the Sibyl, asked for

65

permission to attend the night dances [...] Suddenly, the horizon began to

gleam with the first glow of dawn. Startled, dismayed and overwhelmed by

apprehension and fear, they rushed into a frantic run towards the cave. [...]

A whole streak on the mountain, along the side of Mount Vettore, was so

trampled with the frenzied hurry of the fairies, that the trail they followed is

still visible today».

Is this an original legend, born right here where the central Apennines raise

their most elevated peak?

Let's remember that the Sibyl was not original (she's a character coming

from the Matter of Britain), and neither was Pontius Pilate (a narrative

arising from the first centuries of Christianity).

The 'Road of Fairies' makes no exception.

If we take the Bulletin edited by the Italian Alpine Club in 1886 (Vol. XX,

no. 53), we find an interesting article, whose title is The Legends of the

Alps:

«From one of those shepherd, an elderly man who had always been living

amid the mountains, I heard about Mount Civrari the tale, told with an

unsurpassable efficacy, on one of the legends which once were so popular,

and now are fading away in that portion of the Alps; and this is the tale

which recalls the 'Race of Fairies'»]

[In the original Italian text: «Da uno di questi pastori, invecchiato fra le

montagne, udii sul Civrari narrare, con un'efficacia insuperabile, una delle

leggende che furono popolari ed ora vanno perdendosi in quella parte delle

Alpi, ed è quella che ricorda la Corsa delle fate»].

Mount Civrari is not set amid the Sibillini Mountain Range, in central Italy:

it's a peak of the Italian Alps, in the province of Piedmont, northern Italy.

But the folk tale has many points of contact with that living between

Umbria and Marche:

66

Fig. 34 - Maria Savi Lopez, Legends of the Alps, in Bollettino del Club Alpino Italiano per l'anno 1886

(Vol. XX, n. 53), p. 191

«One night, amid that barrenness, while perhaps the fog ran rapidly through

the gorges, in the moonlight, the wind lashing against the rocks [...], the old

shepherd, dismayed by a noise of wheels and rattles, went out from his

bleak shelter and saw the gorgeous, wondrous Race of fairies».

[In the original Italian text: «Di notte, in mezzo a quella desolazione,

mentre forse la nebbia passava rapidamente nelle gole, fra il chiarore della

luna ed il vento che flagellava le rocce [...], il vecchio pastore, sgomentato

da un rumore di ruote e di sonagli, era uscito dalla povera casa ed aveva

visto passare la splendida e meravigliosa Corsa delle fate»].

67

Fig. 35 - The race of fairies from Legends of the Alps, in Bollettino del Club Alpino Italiano per l'anno

1886 (Vol. XX, n. 53), p. 196

The article's author, Maria Savi Lopez, an Italian writer and poet, provides

a description of this magical, illusory race:

«[...] the old man described the vision he beheld that night [...] he saw a

cortege of fairies adorned with crowns of alpine flowers, standing on

chariots of fire, in a radiance of light, followed by sprites in their

vertiginous race across the crests, the hills and the lofty peaks».

[In the original Italian text: «[...] il vecchio descriveva la visione apparsagli

in quella notte [... in cui poté] veder passare le fate colle corone di

edelweiss, ritte sui carri di fuoco, in uno splendore di luce, seguite dai

folletti nella corsa vertiginosa su le creste, i colli e le altissime cime»].

According to Savi Lopez, this sort of narrative is present in other areas of

the Italian Alps as well, and even on the Austrian side:

«In this credence concerning the night walks of the fairies amid our

Western Alps [...] we find a significant relation with other beliefs which

still last across the whole alpine chain, and especially in the area of Tyrol

and the Austrian regions, where a vivid memory of Goddess Bercht is

retained. [...] They say that, from Christmas to Epiphany, the goddess

enshrouded in radiant light flies over the mountains, with her court of faires

and witches, and collects the offerings that the local inhabitants leave on

the roofs of their houses. Many of those fairies are ugly in their

68

countenance and use long sticks and bags, in which they stow the received

gifts. In their race they make lots of leaps».

[In the original Italian text: «In questa credenza nella passeggiata notturna

delle fate sulle nostre Alpi Graie [...] trovasi molta relazione con altre

credenze che durano ancora in tutta la catena delle Alpi, e specialmente

verso il Tirolo e le regioni austrache, ove si ha viva memoria della dea

Bercht. [...] Esse narrano che, specialmente da Natale all'Epifania, la dea

splendente di viva luce passa sulle montagne, e col suo seguito di fate e di

streghe va raccogliendo le offerte che gli alpigiani depongono sui tetti delle

case. Molte di queste fate sono orribili nell'aspetto, ed hanno lunghi bastoni

e sacchi ove mettono i doni. Nel loro viaggio fanno un'infinità di salti»].

And the peasant's dance's theme is also present:

«Maybe as a last recollection of the holidays that they used to celebrate in

lost ages as a tribute to the mighty goddess, it is still in use amid certain

inhabitants of the Alps a dance bearing the goddess' name. Yet the dance

itself has nothing peculiar in the steps of the four performing dancers, who

wear rich red-and-yellow garments, adorned with ribbons, and also a

feathered crown».

[In the original Italian text: «Forse come ultimo ricordo delle feste che si

dovettero celebrare nei tempi lontani, in onore della potente dea, si usa

ancora fra certi alpigiani una danza che prende il suo nome. Questa però

non ha nulla di speciale nei movimenti dei quattro ballerini che

l'eseguiscono, i quali sono vestiti con abiti ricchissimi di color giallo e

rosso, adorni con nastri, e portano una corona di penne»].

To make the affinity even more straight, here is the alpine goddess in her

subterranean abode:

«On the Swiss Alps people believe that the parade of fairies takes place on

the second day of the new year, or the third if the year begings with a

Saturday; but in winters the handsome goddess has her queenly chair under

the earth, where her cortege is also to be found; yet she comes from time to

time back on earth, attired in rich clothes, throwing rye on the mountain's

small fields; or, on Christmas, dressed like a hunter, she goes running

69

followed by a party of rejoicing sprites, and she protects and preserves the

good maidens».

Fig. 36 - The race of a subterranean goddess and her fairies from Legends of the Alps, in Bollettino del

Club Alpino Italiano per l'anno 1886 (Vol. XX, n. 53), p. 197-198

[In the original Italian text: «Sulle Alpi della Svizzera, credesi che la

processione delle fate avvenga nel secondo giorno dell'anno, o nel terzo, se

l'anno comincia di sabato; però nell'inverno la bella dea ha il suo trono

sottoterra, ove trovasi pure il suo gregge; ma essa ritorna anche qualche

volta sulla terra, vestita con indicibile ricchezza, e gitta della segala sui

campicelli delle montagne, o a Natale vestita da cacciatrice corre seguita da

una folla di spiriti allegri, ed è speciale protettrice delle buone fanciulle»].

So it is clear that the fairies merrily racing across Mount Vettore are just

one of the many superpositions of legends we have been able to identify

amid the Sibillini Mountain Range: just like the Sibyl and Pontius Pilate,

the 'Road of Fairies' is but a reminiscence of an extraneous folklore coming

from different, far-away mountains, typical of the inhabitants of the Italian

and Austrian Alps. The fault line has just represented a suitable - and most

impressive - scenario on which to stage a tale of racing sprites, which has

nothing to do not only with the earthquakes (the originators of the fracture

on the mountain) but also with the Apennine Sibyl, whose lineage can be

traced back to the Matter of Britain.

This is further example of the stunning superposition of legendary material

that lives on the elevated, appalling peaks of the Sibillini Mountain Range:

a perfect setting to attract foreign tales and myths of different sorts and

origin.

70

But the primary myth is hidden down below, under the many layers of

superimposed legends. And the deepest layer is earthquakes.

4.3 The Catholic Church and the Apennine Sibyl

Since Antoine de la Sale's remark on a Pope who «filled up» and

«dismantled» the entryway to the Sibyl's Cave so as to prevent any visit to

the site, the attention of the Catholic Church to the legendary traditions of

the Sibillini Mountain Range has always been keen, owing to the unholy,

fiendish nature of the rituals performed by wicked, not-well-intentioned

visitors at the Cave and at the Lake of Pilate as well.

We must also remember that the first mention known to scholars about the

Lake is the fourteenth-century excerpt retrieved in Petrus Berchorius, who

got to know of the necromantic character of those waters near Norcia «by a

certain prelate, a trustworthy person indeed among all men»: a member of

the Church of that age.

And we must not forget the ecclesiastic «criminal trial» held in Paris in

1587 against two sorcerers who had been so bold as to reach Mount Sibyl

to carry out their evil consecrations, as narrated by Pierre Crespet: «the

Pope», he says, «had the said cave, where the said Sibyl dwells, carefully

guarded to prevent any contact with her».

Apart from the listed historical attestations to the observation and scrutiny

of the sibilline phenomenon maintened by the ecclesiastical institutions

over time, today a sensation persists that the contemporary Church still

'keeps an eye' on the Apennine Sibyl's legendary tradition and related hustle

and bustle. In fact, even though we are now living in an age of

secularization and empty churches, a careful watch is maintained over the

potential morons who could eventully dream of a foolish revival of

demonic cults at the Sibyl's mountain-top or Pilate's Lake.

71

Fig. 37 - The Sibyl's cave guarded, from Pierre Crespet (Crespetus), De la hayne de Satan et malins

esprist contro l'homme (Paris, 1590), p. 93

As an instance of this attention, we quote from a speech delivered by H.E.

Renato Boccardo, Archbishop of the ecclesiastic district of Spoleto -

Norcia, during the XIX Pastoral Workshop Pilgrimage: Faith and Beauty

held in Rome in 2017. Boccardo, in his address describing the wounds

ingenerated by the earthquakes on the cultural and artistic heritage of the

area, presents its administrated territory with the following significant

words:

«Our archdiocese extends in the very heart of Apennines, across a territory

which in antiquity stretched out far beyond the present borders, as it

reached as far as Marche and Abruzzo. A hard, harsh land, commanded by

the mountains of the Sibyl...».

[In the original Italian text: «La nostra Archidiocesi si estende nel cuore

dell’Appennino, in un territorio che anticamente andava ben oltre i confini

attuali, raggiungendo le Marche e l’Abruzzo. Un territorio difficile, aspro,

dominato dai monti della Sibilla...»].

That's only a quote, a mere mention about the Sibyl, included in a sentence

which is apparently marked by a casual taste; and yet the Sibyl is there,

now as it was in antiquity, in the words of Boccardo. And still she seems to

loom over the peaceful inhabitants of the place, with a shadow that has

never faded away. So much so that the Archbishop of our present times still

feels the need to remind his audience, in the year 2017, that this land is not

completely normal, as a weird companion is always lurking there, in the

deep cave hidden beneath a windy, vertiginous crest.

72

Fig. 38 - H.E. Renato Boccardo's remarks on the Sibyl, from La bellezza ferita, in XIX Pastoral Workshop

Pilgrimage: Faith and Beauty (Rome, 2017), p. 3

And a further attestation of interest by the Church I can personally set

forward. On August 17th 2018, in Montegallo, I delivered a presentation

session and speech on the legendary tradition of the Apennine Sibyl, right

beneath the most frightful slopes of Mount Vettore, the highest mountain in

the Sibillini Mountain Range. Sitting amid the audience, which included

lovers of the legendary tale and people who were interested in gaining

more insight on this myth, I was honored to notice the presence of His

Excellency Monsignor Giovanni D'Ercole, at that time the Bishop of Ascoli

Piceno, who was in Montegallo for an official visit lasting from August, 15

to 23, in a land which was so magnificent but also so hardly hit by the

recent earthquakes.

Monsignor D'Ercole silently listened to the whole session. When it was

over, he quietly left. But he had been considering each single word I had

pronounced about that ancient legend, which certainly could not disown is

original demonic character.

So the Catholic Church is always there, on the alert. A centuries-old

confrontation, which still goes on though in a low tone. Even in our present

epoch of Internet, smartphones and artificial intelligence.

73

5. Personal considerations of an imaginative researcher

In this section of the present paper we quit the fields of philological and

geomythological research to enter a more personal realm, with a view to

leaving the readers with a number of notes and considerations, marked by

subjective tones, illustrating the genesis of our research into the legends of

the Sibillini Mountains.

And we start from the final part: reception.

5.1 The chthonian legend: the academic reception

What happened after March, 25th 2020, in the wake of the public release of

the paper Sibillini Mountain Range, the chthonian legend?

What sort of widespread diffusion and acceptance has this research

experienced in the wake of the publications of so momentous a result?

What was the reaction of the research community, in Italy and abroad?

The answer is simple: basically none. Nothing, absolutely nothing

happened.

And - actually - nothing was expected to happen, as the author of the The

Chthonian legend - an independent researcher, an outsider - is not a

member of any academic institution.

So nobody from the international academic milieu ever contacted this

Author (if not privately and in a limited number of cases), and no formal

cooperation proposal in research was ever put forward.

Yet something incredible happened. And it's still happening.

Starting from year 2020, “Michele Sanvico”, with his many papers

concerning the Sibillini Mountain Range's legendary heritage, has turned

into one of the most-read scientific researchers on two main academic

social networks, connecting hundreds of thousands of professional scholars

around the world.

74

For Academia.edu, the international web-based platform for sharing

academic research (265 million registered users, 55 million uploaded

papers as of July 2024), Michele Sanvico is «a highly followed author».

Because, incredibly enough, Michele Sanvico's research places at the «Top

4%» of all Academia.edu researchers!

Fig. 39 - Michele Sanvico as a «highly followed author» in the «Top 4%» according to the Academia.edu

social network

Thousand and thousands of researchers, belonging to major academic

institutions from all around the world, read one or more of Michele

75

Sanvico's several papers on the Sibillini Mountain Range, its legendary

traditions, Mount Sibyl, the lake of Pilate and the innovative conjecture

about a connection between the legends and the peculiar seismic behaviour

of the territory.

Within ResearchGate.net, a more selective network connecting 25 million

researchers around the world (mainly with official affiliations to academic

institutions), this Author totaled more than 34,000 reads, of which nearly

5,000 full text reads, and reached a 'Research Interest Score' of 71.9, higher

than 59% of all ResearchGate members!

Unbelievable as it may appear, in addition to that Sanvico's score is higher

than 92% of all researchers working in the field of Classical Philology, and

more than 85% of scholars involved in Cultural History and Mythology &

Folklore.

This result is even more significant if we consider that, though unaffiliated

to any professional academic institution, your Author was accepted by

ResearchGate.net as a member of this prominent network after an

evaluation of the quality of the proposed articles and original research

topics.

But how can all this be possible?

Sure enough it is not so usual to see an independent, freelance researcher

bounce up to a high-level ranking amid a multitude of professional, world-

class scholars, researchers and scientists.

As a matter of fact the reason for this lies in the original character of the

proposed research, insufficiently covered or even totally uncovered by

other scholars, so that large space proved to be available for the publication

of dedicated papers.

And the papers seem to be of great interest for international researchers: the

first mentions are starting to flow in, with a first quote from scholars at the

Stanford University and a second from an illustrious member of the Royal

Danish Library in Copenaghen. We can suppose that, in the years to come,

more quotes will appear in the scientific literature, if we consider that many

76

readers of the Apennine Sibyl's papers are post-doc and PhD students, who

are about to publish their own papers within the next decade.

Fig. 40 - Michele Sanvico's profile in the ResearchGate.net web portal

77

As a conclusive remark to the present paragraph, I want to stress the fact

that, although the publication process of the whole set of papers belonging

to the series The Apennine Sibyl, a Mystery and a Legend took some five

years, with the most important section being published in March, 25th

2020, care was taken lest the main 'research idea' be 'used' by others while

the publication process was still ongoing.

In fact, the utmost attention was paid to enshroud the core result of the

investigation (i.e. the original and unprecedented conjecture concerning the

link between the Apennine Sibyl and the peculiar seismic behaviour of the

Sibillini Mountain Range) into a veil of mystery and anticipation, as paper

publication progressed from the first ones in 2017 to the main article of

March, 2020. No reference to earthquakes was ever included in the papers

being released one after the other before 2020, leaving the final,

breakthrough step of the research hidden to everybody until the occurrence

of the final public discovery with The chthonian legend article.

This prevented any other researcher to capitalise on the ongoing

investigation, and, in the end, left to the Author of the present article the

full control and autorship of the significant scientific results which were

finally obtained.

A very long process, which ultimately led to a thorough ownership of the

original research idea. And all happened in the complete absence of any

affiliation to any university or research center, in a fully independent

framework.

This is the strength of working alone, to achieve significant results under

no external conditioning, with the total freedom to think 'outside the box'. A

research position which is totally extraneous to the current, mainstream

academic approach, in which the whole system works together, but the

system does not render you free, nor it allows free thinking, because you

must stick to the opinions and credences held by the organisation

(including academic organisations) you are immersed in.

This concept was effectively expressed by Max Horkheimer, the German

philosopher and sociologst, in his work Eclipse of Reason (Chapter IV):

78

«From the day of his birth, the individual is made to feel that there is only

one way of getting along in this world [...] by imitation. He continuously

responds to what he perceives about him, [...] emulating the traits and

attitudes represented by all the collectivities that enmesh him - his play

group, his classmates, his athletic team, and all the other groups that, as has

been pointed out, enforce a more strict conformity, a more radical surrender

through complete assimilation, than any father or teacher in the nineteenth

century could impose. By echoing, repeating, imitating his surroundings,

by adapting himself to all the powerful groups to which he eventually

belongs, by transforming himself from a human being into a member of

organizations, by sacrificing his potentialities for the sake of readiness and

ability to conform to and gain influence in such organizations, he manages

to survive».

His survival, adds Horkheimer, is achieved «by the oldest biological means

of survival, namely, mimicry».

As an utterly independent researches, I had to mimic nobody. So I could

succeed where all others, across the centuries and up to our present time,

had failed.

Fig. 41 - A first academic mention of a research article belonging to the series The Apennine Sibyl, a

Mystery and a Legend

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Fig. 42 - Another academic mention

5.2 The Chthonian Legend: the reception in the territory

So far we have discussed the reception accorded by the academic milieu to

the research which, in March 2020, established a new conjectural

connection between the legendary heritage of the Sibillini Mountain Range

and the earthquakes that recursively use to hit this central-Italian territory.

But what sort of reception has this research experienced amid the very

same territories it was taking into consideration? What happened in Italy, in

the regions of Marche and Umbria, and in the towns and villages encircling

the magical crests of Mount Vettore and Mount Sibyl?

The answer is not dissimilar to the one already rendered as to academic

reception: virtually nothing.

And it's not only a matter of virtuality. As a matter of fact, there was no

response at all.

While the academic world responded somehow by expressing a keen

interest at least in reading the papers I published on the subject, the local

Italian institutions - including two regional administrations (Umbria and

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Marche), a number of municipalities (Norcia, Montemonaco, Ascoli, and

others), and a selected list of public authorities (Parco Nazionale dei Monti

Sibillini) - never showed any sign of life.

Fig. 43 - Sibillini Mountain Range National Park, official logo

A most significant research, which potentially is re-writing the legendary

history, if not history at all, of their own land seems to prove of no interest

to the public sector.

It appears it's none of their business, although they claim to be deeply

involved in promoting local tourism and traditions in the Sibillini Mountain

Range area, by carrying out marketing and information campaigns amid the

larger public, both in Italy and abroad.

However, nobody ever showed up to ask more information on this peculiar

research, which solves an enigmatic riddle that has been in place for more

than eight hundred years, since the first mention of a magical lake found in

Petrus Berchorius' excerpt.

And what about the private sector and local investors? Hotels, resorts,

restaurants, shops all around the Sibillini Mountains are striving to seize

increasing market shares in term of tourist attendance and accommodated

nights. But nobody likes earthquakes, and the talks over earthquakes

neither, because fears arise that tourist might prefer to flee or desert

altogether a country whch is too prone to them. So nobody ever came to

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ask for a further insight or to host a slide presentation on the potential link

between seismic waves and the renowned legendary tales; and the few

sessions held by your Author in the area went almost unattended.

That was really a nice reception for a work that tries to cast light on the

Sibillini Mountains' inhabitants' origin and beliefs, up to their farthest

ancestors.

So we are still waiting for them to wake up. For the time being, more than

four years later, they are all still fast asleep.

5.3 The Chthonian legend: the origin

In this more personal chapter we like to include a brief summary of the

winding road that ultimately led to The Chthonian legend article.

When did it all begin?

On August 16th, 2009 I decided to climb Mount Sibyl, in central Italy, for

the first time in my life. I knew a legend lingered over that remote cliff, yet

I did not know any detail of it. When I finally reached the remnants of the

legendary cave, I made up my mind to get further insight on the old sinister

story connected to the presence of a Sibyl. And - while I was descending

the steep cliff to go back to my car - I began to fancy about a book: a brand

new novel which would narrate about the Sibilline myth and retrieve

unprecedented answers on that eerie mystery.

By a remarkable chance, when standing right on the mountain-top, I was

approached by a TV crew working for the RAI national Italian broadcaster.

That day was a main summer holiday in Italy, and the journalist was asking

the trekkers why they were there and what they expected to see on the

Sibyl's peak. So it was that I - the future author of Abyssus Sibyllae - The

Eleventh Sibyl and future researcher into the sibilline myth - gave my first

interview ever on the Sibyl's legend, having put down not a single line of

my still-to-be-written book or not-yet-born research!

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Fig. 44 - Future author Michele Sanvico interviewed by the national TV broadcaster on Mount Sibyl's

peak in 2009

What the novel on the Sibyl would be about? I was stunned and

disappointed at the vision of the entrance to the Sibyl's Cave, turned into a

heap of broken boulders and rubble by some unknown hand at some

unspecified time: what mystery was hidden there? And what was the story

of those rocky debris silently lying on a remote Italian mountain-top? I

began to see a plot that would have retraced the story of the Apennine

Sibyl's legendary tale, with a touch of fiction that would rely on the

imaginative conjecture that a second concealed entryway to the Cave

existed somewhere on the Sibyl's cliff, still allowing an access to the

ancient enigma only to initiated people.

So in a few months I wrote and released Abyssus Sibyllae, the Abyss of the

Sibyl, in which the main character was plunged in a compelling research

that started with Andrea da Barberino's Guerrino the Wretch and Antoine

de la Sale's The Paradise of Queen Sibyl and probed into the centuries up to

the ruinous excavations carried out by treasure hunters in the twentieth

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century and the scientific inspections effected on Mount Sibyl's top in the

year 2000.

In this book, of which I will talk more later in the following paragraphs, I

unconsciously made the very same error I subsequently attributed to all

scholars in the sibilline legendary matter: I did not considered the Lake of

Pilate at all, as it seemed so me so silly a fairy tale, and so out-of-context

owing to the mention of the famous Roman prefect of the Gospels, that I

did not repute it may be of any interest. But - as I already illustrated - I was

wrong, and actually a lot wrong.

Fig. 45 - The first, self-formatted cover of Michele Sanvico's novel Abyssus Sibyllae (2010)

Nonetheless, Abyssus Sibyllae already contained, in an odd, subterranean

form, the appalling topic of the earthquake, though still not connected

straightly to the Apennine Sibyl, and more in the form of a terrific vibration

which dreadingly pulsed across the entire book and the town of Norcia, and

would eventually blast off ten years later with The Chthonian legend paper.

«That was the force which throbbed in the unfathomed pits of the earth,

under the square itself, so that present-day Norcia was only the most recent,

shallowest layer of a quite older Norcia, rooted firmly to that very land

whereon countless generations of men had been dwelling since timeless

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ages. [...] An inhuman beast lived unseen under the ground, awaiting.

Beneath the square and the streets and the ancient dwellings of men, the

faceless being with gleaming, sightless eyes waited patiently, in a dream.

Its dream, the dream of a dark subterranean potency lasted for whole

lifetimes of men, looming over them as though heavy, rolling vapours

announcing the coming of a storm; until, all of a sudden, the blind, faceless

beast awoke, and manifested its cruel abomination across the surface of the

earth».

This is how I sensed the mighty power of earthquakes always operating

beneath the Sibillini Mountain Range. It was year 2010.

Many more years elapsed. On August 24th, 2016 a large earthquakes hit the

southern borders of the Sibillini Mountain Range, claiming hundreds of

lives. A further huge quake hit the town of Norcia on October 30th, 2016,

of a magnitude ranking amid the most powerful earthquakes ever recorded

in Italy.

Something was quivering in my mind, but still I did not know what it was

exactly.

In 2017, while the ground was still trembling, I decided to launch a new

Facebook page, The Apennine Sibyl, a Mistery and a Legend: it was

initially intended as a mean to provide simple information to tourists on the

legendary heritage of the Sibillini Mountains (and still with a special

neglect for the Lake of Pilate), with no specific plans to develop any

original research on the topic.

Fig. 46 - The Apennine Sibyl - A Mystery and a Legend (Facebook logo)

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And yet some thing was still pulsating within my mind. I felt that

something was completely wrong with all literary and philological research

carried out on the Sibillini Mountain Range by all previous scholars, and

published in the available publications: why had nobody searched for any

mention of the Apennine Sibyl in the previous literature, in particular of the

Middle Ages? Why did they all say that this Sibyl seemed to suddenly

appear in the fifteenth century, as a lone star abruptly shining in the dark?

It seemed to me that it was incongruous: if that Sibyl's legend was so potent

so as to cross many centuries after the fifteenth, certainly she had left traces

also in previous centuries. I just needed to look for them.

My quest was immediately bountiful: at the end of 2017 I had already

found lots of hints to episodes narrated in Andrea da Barberino's romance

Guerrino the Wretch - which contains the earliest mention of the Sibyl of

Norcia - in earlier chivalric poems, namely Huon of Bordeaux and Huon

d'Auvergne. And further narratives later used by Antoine de la Sale in his

The Paradise of Queen Sibyl I could retrieve in preceding literary works:

the magical bridge and the ever-slamming doors were part of ancient

legendary traditions, and were later included in the sibilline lore.

So it was becoming clear that a hundred fifty years of scholarly research

had not been able to trace up the Apennine Sibyl to her manifest literary

roots.

But the most thrilling part was still to come.

During the 2016/2017 Christmas holidays, as the earthquake continued to

shake persistently the area of Norcia, residents there were strained to their

utmost level of anguish, with their homes continually trembling and roaring

noises ascending day and night from the bowels of the earth. Everybody

was living in fear of another large blow, the final one that would destroy

the whole land. My wife's relatives, from Norcia, all uttered on their phone

call a same harrowed plea: «When will it all stop? When will the quake be

appeased? Why it is so mean to us?».

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Fig. 47 - Fractures on the western side of Mount Vettore generated by the 2016 seismic sequence

That was exactly the moment of a sort of enlightenment.

Today's residents were scared. They would do anything to stop the

earthquake. They knew there was no effective way to stop it, because

tectonic plates are gigantic natural structures beyond any human control.

And yet they personified the seismic waves, they thought of them like a

sort of monster and attributed to them evil intentions against their lives and

souls.

If all that occurred to contemporary, twenty-first-century men and women,

what had happened in similar contexts during Roman times, or even before,

across the Iron Age?

In that very moment I fully understood the sheer terror that most probably

used to seize the ancient inhabitants of the Sibillini Mountain Range. I

could imagine them seeing the earthquake as a godly monster, a

subterranean demon, a potency of the netherworld, in the total absence of

any other explanation for what was happening to them. I could almost

sense their craving for it to stop, their madness at the unrelenting shakes

generated by a mighty seismic sequence.

For sure they would have looked for a way to appease the demon, by

talking to it and possibly offering sacrifices to it. But where to find that

subterranean beast?

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The answer was plain. The Sibillini Mountain Range offered two places

where to establish a contact with the demon: a horrible Cave, high above a

mountainous cliff, and an eerie Lake, set between appalling ravines.

So here came the idea: the Cave and Lake had been - since the earliest

antiquity - suitable places for talking to a world of subterranean gods,

which were believed to preside over the earthquakes (which actually most

often seemed to originate from those very spots). And across the

subsequent centuries this sort of places would not lose their blood-curdling

renown, attracting new layers of frightful narratives as the original tale

about earthquakes faded away with time.

Once the main idea was formed, I decided not to disclose it

straightforwardly by publishing it at once in one or more social networks.

It was too tasty an idea, not to be wasted through an immediate discovery.

If I did so, certainly someone else would steal it and publish his/her own

research paper by claming full ownership for a most-interesting

breakthrough conjecture that never before had been set forth. I didn't want

to lose my primacy.

So my long journey across the legendary heritage of the Sibillini Mountain

Range began to unfold across a compelling series of research papers, that

were released one after another in a few years. During the year 2018 I

elaborated a number of preliminary papers which just paved the way to a

main fundamental breakthrough, achieved at the beginning of 2019 with

the paper Birth of a Sibyl: the medieval connection: the first, ever-released

research that fully highlighted the medieval lineage of the Apennine Sibyl,

an offspring of Morgan le Fay and her companion Sebile, two main

characters belonging to the Matter of Britain. Nobody had ever stated that

so clearly, apart from selected scholars which had dealt with the matter

only on an incidental basis.

At that time my 'close relationship' with the Apennine Sibyl was fully

established and already publicly recognised: at the end of 2017 I was

selected by Sydonia Production, a professional motion picture producing

company, as one of the main experts to appear in The Sybil - Between

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Legend and Truth, a docufiction staging the mystery and fascination of the

Apennine Sibyl, released one year later.

Fig. 48 - Michele Sanvico appearing in the Sydonia Production's docufiction The Sybil - Between Legend

and Truth (released on Dec 20th 2018)

That was for the Sibyl; but still no dedicated insight I had carried out with

respect to the Lake of Pilate, which I still considered as a second-rank, less-

interesting tale. And yet a new occasion popped up, providing me with a

reason to run this path as well.

In that same beginning of 2019, I was selected by a national TV show,

Linea bianca, as an expert who would deliver a short interview on the

Sibillini Mountain Range's legends on the top of Mount Vettore, after a

flight with an helicopter right on to the mountain's cliff. So I had to briefly

rehearse all the research I had just released on the Sibyl, but also the basic

information concerning Pilate and his Lake, which I had never confronted

with before.

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Fig. 49 - The production crew of TV show Linea Bianca with a steadycam on the top of Mount Vettore on

Jan, 15th 2019

And it was another illumination. While perusing the available literature on

Pontius Pilate and his legendary tradition, I found out that the Roman

prefect had been a primary figure in a multitude of medieval tales, which

all focussed on his doom and ultimate destiny as the man who unrightfully

sentenced Jesus Christ to death. And the location of the burial place of his

cursed body had been at the center of speculations for centuries, involving

a number of legendary sites and with a deviation amid the Sibillini

Mountain Range as well.

This was no new advancement in the topic as many scholars have been

positively working on Pontius Pilate for as much as two centuries now: but

my paper A legend for a Roman prefect: the Lakes of Pontius Pilate,

released at the mid of 2019, maybe was the first to comprehensively retrace

the whole literary tradition relating to the ancient prefect, with a full

analysis dedicated to the transplant of this lore in Italy, between the

provinces of Umbria and Marche.

This was the second tier of my research on the Sibillini Mountain Range: I

had addressed both the Sibyl and Pilate, the Cave and Lake, with their

foreign origin and derivation from extraneous legendary traditions. I was

now ready to run the further leg of my research journey, that would lead me

to hit the target I had already set more than a year earlier: the establishment

of a connection between the lore living at the Cave and Lake and the

peculiar seismic behavior of the Sibillini Mountains.

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Still I worked in secrecy, unveiling nothing that may suggest that my target

was related to earthquake. I did not want to spoil my research vantage

position with an early discovery, which would possibly allow other scholars

to seize my idea and claim the ownership of the new conjectural model.

So I began to put together the two legendary tales which formed the basis

of the Sibillini Mountain Range's lore, the Sibyl and Pilate, by identifying

their common traits (Sibillini Mountain Range: the legend before the

legends, 2019) and with the specific development of the insight on one of

those traits, namely the otherwordly character of both legends (Sibillini

Mountain Range, a Cave and Lake to the Otherworld, 2020). This latter

paper proved to be a sort of adventurous, daring journey, as nobody had

ever hunted this particular interpretative path with relation to the Sibillini

Mountains and I did not know if I would succeed in the attempt; however

the bounty of Otherworld-related clues I could retrieve in the two legends

was so rewarding, with a plethora of references to ancient, illustrious

otherwordly tales concerning subterranean sites, such as the Lake of

Avernus and the Purgatory of St. Patrick, that I soon realized I was

proceeding along a most promising path: a path that was leading my steps

straight to my originally-selected target, i.e. earthquakes.

It was the beginning of the year 2020: now I was ready, I was fully

equipped to jump the final leap, to run the ultimate leg that would bring my

research on a Sibyl and a Roman prefect, through an otherwordly approach,

down to the inner, most antique core of the legends of the Sibillini

Mountain Range: earthquakes, the fear of earthquakes, and a possible cult

of earthquakes' subterranean demons.

But that was when the coronavirus pandemics broke out. It was March

2020, and I had just started writing what was intended to be as the summa

of my years-long research work, the paper Sibillini Mountain Range, the

chthonian legend. Heavily shelled by the daily TV news - which supported

an appalling narrative of social disruption and impending death - the main

emergency target became to complete the paper before... passing away after

getting the fatal infection!

Of course, the worst case never occurred (and here we might effectively

start to quote from my other fundamental series of articles The Coronavirus

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Papers, but this is not the right place...), so the effect of pandemics was

merely a deliberate speed-up in the paper production process, yet by

maintaining in the course the same level of writing quality.

Fig. 50 - The FB announcement about the release of The chthonian legend

Finally, there it was: on March, 25th 2020 Sibillini Mountains, the

chthonian legend appeared on Zenodo.org, ResearchGate.net and

Academia.edu, and was heralded by an enthusiastic message posted on

Facebook which proudly read «Today, after a work that has lasted for more

than two years, I finally completed and released the research paper

"SIBILLINI MOUNTAIN RANGE, THE CHTHONIAN LEGEND". This

comprehensive article is the conclusive chapter of an investigation that

casts a new, possibly definitive light on the legends of the Apennine Sibyl

and the Lakes of Pilate, set amid the Sibillini Mountain Range, in central

Italy. It provides scientific, motivated answers, never presented before by

any researcher of scholar».

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And here still it is: a breakthrough research which retraces more than a

hundred fifty years of puzzled investigation into the mystery of the Sibillini

Mountain Range. And finds a possible final answer.

5.4 Abyssus Sibyllae: the vibrations beneath 'The chthonian legend'

The Sibillini Mountain Range and the earthquakes. A dark, frightful Cave

and a potency hidden beneath the ground. A Lake encircled by ghastly

peaks and vibrating sounds coming from down below.

The chthonian legend is certainly a most bewitching conjecture, which

confronts with eerie legendary traditions concerning a Sibyl and a Roman

prefect through a fascinating geomythological approach, in which natural

sites acquire a special significance as 'hot-spots', or point of contacts

towards supernatural, otherwordly regions inhabited by gods or demons,

and normally inaccessible to men: «A passageway to some sort of supposed

demonic presence», I wrote, «An access that was to be unlocked by means

of necromantic rituals. A point of contact with a subterranean Otherworld.

A 'hot spot', a crevice drilled into the mountains to establish an appalling

communication with the chthonian powers beneath. A break in the

continuum of our ordinary world».

So Nature 'vibrates', in a peculiar manner, in certain places and often at

specific times, signalling the presence of the divine and the uncanny. And it

is a sort of poetical sensitivity, enhanced by the attendance of specific

literary moods, that can help human beings in the hunt for the otherwordly

while living, at the same time, in a harsh, prosaic, unheeding world.

I want to conclude the present paper by retracing the origin of this peculiar

poetical acuteness, which, ten years before the release of The chthonian

legend, was fully present in my novel The eleventh Sibyl - Abyssus Sibyllae.

The book was centered on Norcia, the Sibillini Mountain Range and the

figure of the Apennine Sibyl; and earthquakes were already there, with all

their potency as heralds of the chthonian powers which lurked under the

mountains since time immemorial: at that time I was not aware of their

potential, prominent role in the sibilline tradition, yet they were actually

93

laying there, as an ominous vibrating background which pulsed across all

the chapters of the novel, a presage of the geomythological model still to

come:

Fig. 51 - The cover of The Elevent Sibyl - Abyssus Sibyllae

«An inhuman beast lived unseen under the ground, awaiting. Beneath the

square and the streets and the ancient dwellings of men, the faceless being

with gleaming, sightless eyes waited patiently, in a dream. Its dream, the

dream of a dark subterranean potency lasted for whole lifetimes of men,

looming over them as though heavy, rolling vapours announcing the

coming of a storm; until, all of a sudden, the blind, faceless beast awoke,

and manifested its cruel abomination across the surface of the earth».

These sentences I wrote in the second chapter of The eleventh Sibyl. And I

concluded that chapter with words that would have fully lived their own

life ten years later, taking their final shape in the research conducted within

The chthonian legend: «I did not know what vibrated under the town, and

underneath the neighbouring mountains. But I knew that something

unspeakable, something unnoticed by others had echoed within my soul;

94

something that was buried in the abysses of time, had called and spoken to

me; and finally, had brushed me with a gelid touch. And Sibyl was its

name».

Thus already in 2010 the Apennine Sibyl and the earthquakes seemed to

show, in my personal vision as a writer and 'poetical' observer, an

inexplicable, unexplained mutual connection. That initial foreshadowing

would evolve, many years later, into the full conjectural model developed

within the framework of The chthonian legend. But everything was already

there, overshadowed as it was, small and immature but ready for its full

development when the right time would come.

The eerie, the uncanny, the appalling. All was already there, in the

description of the high crests of the Sibillini Mountain Range, unearthly

silent under the rage of the midday sun, I included in The eleventh Sibyl:

«And, that very moment, I was stricken with panic. The sun, high up in the

sky, cast all around its ardent beams, as if they were darts being shot by a

magical, gigantic bow, pointing towards the defenceless earth. That was the

time of the midday fiend, when the refulgent star at its culmination

exhausts and blots out the shadows of the living beings, who become the

prey, according to an ancient Jewish lore, of the evil potencies dwelling in

the countryside flooded with sunlight, along the secluded trails running

across the fields, and in far-off, deserted places; they were eerie creatures,

who would fall upon the wayfarer in the bedazzling radiance of the midday

sun, sucking their blood and lives and taking away their very souls,

weakened by the dull stupefaction brought about by the glowing star».

When I wrote The eleventh Sibyl, I was strongly influenced by the literary

visions mastered by a great American author, H. P. Lovecraft. A human

world immersed in a gigantic, uncaring cosmical setting, inhabited by god-

like, malevolent beings, for which men are mere accidental creatures; a

feeling of awe-striken impotence before the grandest manifestations of

natural powers; the fear for the unknown, hiding just beneath the surface of

daily life; the incomprehension and stolidity of fellow-men, living their

lives in the utter awareness of the potencies that rule their existence; a

sense of imminent danger, as one gets nearer to the truth and discovers

those peculiar 'hot spots' which are entryways to the subterranean reality of

life. And vibrations everywhere, marking the presence of the uncanny: «the

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unexplored, the unexpected», writes Lovecraft, «the thing that is hidden

and the changeless thing that lurks behind superficial mutability».

Like HPL's Arkham, the small town of Norcia, in central Italy, the access

point to the Sibyl's legend, is a place that «quivered and trembled

underneath the visible surface of the public square: a town which had been

in existence since remotely distant ages; a town which had lived, rejoiced,

prayed, and endured suffering for innumerable generations of men [...].

Past the ordinary and commonplace life, beyond its visible semblance,

Norcia offered itself to the sight of anyone who intended to investigate

deeper in a view to catching the ripples of everyday life as well as the

bigger, longer waves which utterly encompass us, so that it is hard to

perceive them. They are made manifest only to those who have been taught

how to conceive the vertiginous depths of inaccessible ravines, the

unbroken vertical extension of ages consigned to secluded, forgotten

recesses of time, and the endless sequence of unknown human lives; lives

of men whose names are now lost amidst the mountain sides, the woody

forests and the ploughed fields, in our present times run by nowadays

machinery with bowels of rubber and iron rumbles».

It is like leaning over an abyss: not by mere chance, the original title of my

novel was Abyssus Sibyllae.

Earthquakes, vibrations, otherworld, antique layers of forgotten history. All

were keywords to both the novel and the subsequent research carried out

with The chtonian legend.

In writing the concluding, most compelling chapters of the book, when the

main character of The Eleventh Sibyl climbs Mount Sibyl's top to reach the

entrance of the Cave - set beyond the rocky crown that encircles the

summit of the mount (as it is in actual reality) and marks a sort of

otherwordly region, only inhabited by the powers of deities - I wanted to

render all the supernatural dimension of that eerie place, which a decade

later I would envisage as a potential site for a highland shrine, in which

rituals for the appeasement of earthquakes might have been performed

during the Iron Age.

A first precious inspiration I found in HPL himself, with his tale The

Strange High House in the Mist, in which he masterfully describes the

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weird sense of dizziness arising from the entrance into an elevated,

unearthly realm, ruled by the whiteness of cloudy fogs:

«In the morning mist comes up from the sea by the cliffs beyond Kingsport.

White and feathery it comes from the deep to its brothers the clouds, full of

dreams of dank pastures and caves of leviathan. [...] All around him was

cloud and chaos, and he could see nothing below but the whiteness of

illimitable space...».

Fig. 52 - Howard Phillips Lovecraft's The Strange High House in the Mist, in Weird Tales, Vol. XVIII, no.

3 (Indianapolis, 1931)

And this bewilderment I expressed following the words written by

Lovecraft:

«The trail, hidden from view due to the glowing mist made of frosty

vapours which ascended the mountain-side in drifting swirls, apparently

went up only for an unreasonably short stretch, as it seemed to die away

into the radiant whiteness of the fog [...] Blinded, bewildered, enshrouded

in the gelid, diaphanous luminosity which shone all around, as an ethereal,

97

unearthly glow, which concealed from view the airy trails running along

the ridges and flanking the atrocious ravines [...] Hazy whirling shadows

appeared to flock that deserted and suspended region, swept over by the

weather's tumultuous rage; they rushed from one side of the mountain-top

to the other, with a quick swirling motion, as though all the wicked

creatures of the air, the eerie and unholy inhabitants of the upper sky had

also convened at the sinister cavern of the Sibyl».

The second inspiration came from Edith Wharton's Miss Mary Pask, a

blood-curdling tale on a visit to a dead person in a house enshrouded in

total darkness:

«The darkness grew three times as thick; and the sense I had had for some

time of descending a gradual slope now became that of scrambling down a

precipice. [...] Night and fog were now one, and the darkness as thick as a

blanket. I felt vainly about for a bell. At last my hand came in contact with

a knocker and I lifted it. [...] The light went out, and I stood there - we

stood there - lost to each other in the roaring coiling darkness. My heart

seemed to stop beating; I had to fetch up my breath with great heaves that

covered me with sweat. The door - the door - well, I knew I had been

facing it when the candle went. Something white and wraithlike seemed to

melt and crumple up before me in the night, and avoiding the spot where it

had sunk away I stumbled around it in a wide circle, got the latch in my

hand, caught my foot in a scarf or sleeve, trailing loose and invisible, and

freed myself with a jerk from this last obstacle. I had the door open now...».

This same sense of blinded, darkness-driven terror I transplanted into the

very vestibule of the Sibyl's Cave, as the main character makes his way into

it:

«I entered [...] the sombre hollow, its hideous boundaries of rock

enshrouded in darkness beyond the thin radiant beam that trickled from my

faint, wavering flashlight. [...] Its farthest side was sealed by a wall of

stone, on which a gate of darkness, an entryway gaping onto the eerie,

lifeless bowels of the mount, gave access to the winding tunnels that

descended rapidly into the core of the cliff, penetrating deeply into the

mountain's concealed foundations. [...] I proceeded, the way a madman

does, by crossing the ghastly entrance, between coarse walls of stone,

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dripping with water, and falling seemingly back into the darkness beyond

the scant glow cast by my feeble light. [...] I stepped forward, and then my

flashlight quivered, and went out. The frenzied voices reached a climax, the

piercing wails rose hideously in the darkness that had abruptly curdled

about my frame. And then the voices fell silent at once; only an indistinct

rustle still lingered in the dark, now turning into a solid black shroud;

muttering whispers, murmurs chasing and querying each other in the

stygian emptiness, arising from sheer gloom; a feeling of queer and restless

movements; stealthy, uneasy footfalls sneaking all around, and weak,

insubstantial fingers touching my arms and face».

Fig. 53 - Edith Wharton's Ghosts (New York, 1937), containing the tale Miss Mary Pask

The whiteness of supernatural fogs protecting the entryway to the

Otherworld and the gloominess of the Netherworld itself, an eerie land of

dead. All the sensations, the feelings, the colours, the sounds, the

experience described on a conjectural basis in The chthonian legend paper,

with its seismic demons and terrors and rituals, were already unconsciously

present in The elevent Sibyl - Abyssus Sibyllae. Just as if people from the

Iron Age had made attempts at expressing their own feelings, their own

terrors to a twenty-first-century writer, first on a poetical basis and then

through the suggestion of a model on what had been possibly going on for

99

centuries or even millennia at those secluded highland shrine, a Cave and a

Lake, up there in the Apennines.

Nature as inhabited by divine beings, sometimes benign but often hostile

and malicious; the possibility for men to sense their presence, at certain

points set at specific geographical sites; the unknown, the eerie that are

hidden behind any tree, beneath any rock; the vibration of centuries,

carrying away with them the lives of generations of human beings, of

which traces remain in the artifacts and cultural traditions left behind by

them.

This is the wondrous setting of both The Eleventh Sibyl and The chthonian

legend, assorted as they are in scope and reach, and separate by a full

decade.

From earthquakes to an Otherworld concealed in a Lake and a Cave, and

then to an Apennine Sibyl and Pontius Pilate, and finally to dancing fairies

on the mountain-sides marked by the streaks of seismic faults: a long

journey for which I set off long ago and which drove me across a

marvellous novel and a series of rewarding research papers. I had the rare

chance to explore an antique legendary lore that, quoting from Marcel

Proust's A la recherche du temps perdu and his Du côte de chez Swann, was

still living in the Apenninnes its subterranean life since time immemorial,

like the recollection of Middle Ages amid the villagers of Combray:

«...une tradition à la fois antique et directe, ininterrompue, orale, déformée,

méconnaissable et vivante...».

A legendary lore which is part of the larger, magnificent cultural heritage of

Italy, which goes from the Iron Ages to the Etruscans, the Romans and then

the artistic achievements of Renaissance, all of them immersed in the light

of a natural setting inhabited by the divine and the magical:

«Had I never visited Italy I think I should never have understood the word

picturesque. The very air of Italy is embued with the spirit of ancient

mythology».

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These words, drawn from Anna Brownell Jameson's Diary of an Ennuyée, I

put as an epigraph at the beginning of The Eleventh Sibyl - Abyssus

Sibyllae.

And I am proud of having been part of this illustrious inheritance.

Fig. 54 - Mount Vettore, Sibillini Mountain Range

Michele Sanvico

THE ELEVENTH SIBYL

ABYSSUS SIBYLLAE

Google Books (free download):

https://books.google.it/books?id=B8HbEAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover

PDF (free download):

http://www.italianwriter.it/Documents/MicheleSanvico%20-%20The_Eleventh_Sibyl_IMAGES.pdf

101

FOUR YEARS FROM 'THE CHTHONIAN LEGEND': SIGNIFICANCE, IMPACT, ADDITIONS AND MISCELLANEOUS (PERSONAL) CONSIDERATIONS

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