Channelling T.H. White

With Lucille, in a typically foul mood and leading the way, the four of us headed off to the hill town of San Gimignano. This is the place where the leading families of the day competed with each other to build the tallest towers. We did some shopping and sightseeing, and when a sudden rain shower hit, we took some lunch on the piazza under the (partial) protection of an umbrella. After lunch, we split up with Carol and I going to the ruined abbey at San Galgano. Bruce and Carla headed north to spend the afternoon in Cortona. Bruce has been making fun of me because I have been having great difficulty pronouncing “San Gimignano”. Interestingly, Bruce seems to have equal trouble remembering “Cortona”. I think I now have Bruce convinced that it is actually “Cordoba”. Carla is not amused.

The San Galgano Abbey was a fascinating place. In addition to the ruins themselves, there is a small chapel nearby that held an interesting surprise for us. Back in the twelfth century a knight and warlord named Sir Galgano had a visitation from the Archangel Gabriel who told him to make peace with the neighboring warlords. Taking the visitation seriously, Galgano climbed to the top of the nearest hill, took out his sword, and stuck it up to the hilt into a rock outcropping. Needless to say, this got the locals very excited and they immediately began construction of a chapel over the site. Less than a year later Galgano died, so the locals cut off his head and added his skull to the chapel. By this time, the story of the sword had made its way to the Vatican, and since the visitation counted as a miracle, Galgano was fast-tracked to sainthood. This, in turn, led to the construction of the abbey in his name. More than 800 years later, the sword is still there though it is hard to see clearly because they have it covered with a ridiculous plexiglas bubble. In any case, this is probably where the legend of King Arthur and the sword and the stone came from.

Meanwhile, the abbey thrived for a couple of centuries until the Plague wiped out most of the population in the area, including many of the monks. With too few monks to perform the necessary maintenance on the abbey (like cleaning the gutters), the roof finally caved in and the remaining monks gave up and left. The ruins of the abbey have remained pretty much unchanged since that time.

On the drive back to Siena we gagged and tied Lucille and placed her in the trunk. It was a very pleasant drive.