I have to confess that although my travel from New Zealand to Europe every year takes me by necessity through Asia, I always find that part boring. As I already explained in The Garden of CHi I was not thrilled about a visit to Tokyo. I really yearned for Europe and the best part of Europe always was and still is for me Italy. I promised my grandson Jacob who shares my interest in Italy that this year I take him to this beautiful country.
Jacob is only eleven years old but I believe that all the early interests of the children have to be encouraged, even nurtured.
We flew from Prague to Rome and then took a bus trip to South. The first sightseeing stop was at the Benedictine Abbey of Monte Cassino. We travel through the valley for some time and saw its beautiful white building gleaming from a far. To the travellers in the middle ages it must have looked like a beacon of Christianity in the troubled times, a searching light of reason and arts in the dark ages.
The guide of our tour asked whether anybody knew what happened there in the Second World War. Nobody knew it except our family. It was Jacob, my eleven-year grandson and a very proud New Zealand patriot, who related the history of the battle.
The Abbey
St. Benedict, the founder of western monasticism in 529 AD, founded the Abbey at Monte Cassino, 80 miles south of Rome. It houses sacred relics of St. Benedict, the patron saint of Europe, and his sister St. Scholastica. The abbey had its share of troubles during a thousand and half years of its existence suffering from repeated attacks and pillage. It was sacked by Muslims in 884. But at the height of its glory 1058-1105 under the most exceptional Abbotts Desiderius and Oderisius I, the abbey was the most prosperous monastery in the world. It contained priceless treasures of art and the famous library. The library contained 800 papal documents, 20,500 volumes in the Old Library, 60,000 in the New Library, 500 early printed books, 200 manuscripts on parchment, 100,000 prints and separate collections. In fact the monks copied and preserved a lot of Latin and Greek masterpieces and translated the main works of important Arabic physicians such as Avicenna. Many important historical medicine books are also kept in the library. Its loss would be for our civilization even greater disaster than the loss by fire of the famous library in Alexandria in ancient times.
The Saint
But I had another and a very special reason to be interested in the monastery and the country around it.
My favourite philosopher, Thomas Aquinas, was born in a hilltop castle at Rocca Secca, not far from the Abbey where his education would first commence. He was sent to the Abbey when he was five years old to benefit from Benedictine’ s education. Later on he was transferred to Frederick II’s University of Naples, where he was introduced to the new Dominican order and where he got properly acquainted with the works of Aristotle. Aquinas tried to reconcile the ancient Greek political philosophy of Aristotle with Christianity. In my opinion he was the first philosopher who proposed the believable doctrine of the city of God, a good state governed by a just ruler and aristocracy to a greater good of its citizens. He thought that a democratic government could never work because the poor citizens, who are unable to generate wealth, should not meddle into the affairs of the state and participate in making laws. A good state must be able to create wealth otherwise its citizens live in poverty and misery.
One episode of his life always intrigued me. Towards the closure of his life Aquinas, already famous returned to Italy from Paris to become Regent Master at the university of Naples. He continued to work on his most famous work the Summa Theologica until a mystical experience occurred; according to him he met Christ. It caused him to abandon his writing. He said, “…all that I have written seems like straw to me.” A few months later he died.
What made him renounce all what he had written? Did he suddenly despise the philosophy to which he devoted his whole life?
I would agree that some philosophers and their philosophy are despicable, especially the ones who wrote thousands of pages on subject of economy coloured by their own prejudices and distorting the truth. Their work, the doctrine of Marxism, is nowadays the true opium of the masses. Its doctrine does not reflect economic reality.
The Catholic Church did not share Aquinas views that his writing is worthless.
On 4 August 1879, Leo XIII promulgated the encyclical Aeterni Patris (“Eternal Father”) which revived Thomism—the medieval theological system based on the thought of Aquinas—as the official philosophical and theological system of the Roman Catholic Church.
The battle
But the majority of New Zealanders remember The Benedictine Abbey for a different reason.
The battle at Monte Cassino in 1944 played an important part in the modern history of New Zealand. It was fought far away from the South Pacific and it did not serve any immediate interest of New Zealand. The small country in the remote corner of the vast Pacific Ocean showed the undying loyalty to the United Kingdom and Commonwealth, a loyalty that was not reciprocated.
When I arrived to New Zealand I did not know much about its military history. However it did not take long for me to learn about the fierce battle, one of the most horrendous battles of the Second World War.
The best friend of my daughter was Tracy, who went to the same primary school. Tracy’s grandmother was one of the kindest persons I knew. New Zealanders are generally very kind, but Tracy’s grandmother went that one most important step above kindness into a true friendship. However I soon discovered that her husband, Tracy’s grandfather, did not reciprocate the friendly feeling. Whenever I met him visiting their house, he was grumpy and always let me know that he bores a grudge against my husband and me. I discovered the cause of that grudge much later on. When she grew up, Tracy revealed to me the truth. The grandfather is sick of the government, she said. He feels that he was neglected; his superannuation is really small, despite the fact that he fought for New Zealand and almost lost his life. He suffered horrific injuries and that made him partly disabled. He feels that the government rewarded unjustly new émigrés like your husband with huge salaries and superannuation. In his opinion, your husband never sacrificed anything for New Zealand, came from a suspect country in Eastern Europe to better his life, and now he is treated here like a hero.
I did not say anything but I felt bitterness against Tracy’s grandfather. Surely my husband, I thought, so talented and still quite young can bring about a benefit to this country, benefit to the university and students. Surely he deserves his salary and superannuation. Besides Tracy grandfather was not a volunteer, he had to fight in the war. There was a general conscription in New Zealand then.
At the end of our conversation I asked Tracy where was her grandfather fighting. Monte Cassino, she said.
Soon I forgot our conversation and after not very long time Tracy’s grandfather passed away.
But now when the Tsunami of emigrants is washing over Europe I ask myself a question. Was Tracy’s grandfather right when he resented the new emigrants, when he felt that his country sacrificed his well-being for theirs? I no longer feel any bitterness against him; I can see his point of view. I ask myself now an important question. How would my grandchildren feel when they grow up about the number of Syrian migrants, which is New Zealand about to resettle? Would they resent the opportunity of employment for the immigrants when they themselves might become unemployed? Would they resent the money spent on education of the immigrants, on their well-being? Would they feel like Tracy’s grandfather that a sacrifice was asked from them on account of the new refugees, sacrifice they were not willing to make?
The Battle
The Battle of Monte Cassino (also known as the Battle for Rome and the Battle for Cassino) was a series of attacks by the Allies against the Winter Line in Italy held by Axis forces during the Italian Campaign. The Allies wanted to capture Rome, to achieve that it was necessary to breakthrough the German Gustav line of defense. The Allies thought, perhaps mistakenly that the easiest course of action is to advance through Liri Valley.
The entrance to the valley was through a narrow corridor by the 500-metre-high Monte Cassino. On the top of the mountain sat the Benedictine monastery.
The battle took place early in 1944 and it was one of the bloodiest battles involving the New Zealand forces in the Second World War.
During the battle buildings of the abbey were completely destroyed due to American bombing. They used 442 tons of bombs.
This bombing of Monte Cassino is one of the most problematic bombings in the Second World War, together with the destruction of Dresden in 1945. However the Americans were not the only ones to be blamed for the bombing. General Freyberg, the supreme commander of the New Zealand forces demanded it also. Not only it destroyed one of the most memorable buildings of the world, in one of the supreme ironies of the conflict, the ruins provided the Germans with the ideal battleground for defense.
However the library was saved. We can call it miracle, but the miracle was not delivered by angels but by two German officers.
During the Italian autumn of 1943, two officers in the Hermann Göring Panzer Division, who was defending the Abbey, Captain Maximilian Becker. a protestant, and Lieutenant Colonel Julius Schlegel, a roman catholic, proposed the removal of Monte Cassino’s treasures to the Vatican and Vatican-owned Castel Sant’Angelo in Rome. The officers persuaded the Catholic Church authorities and their own senior commanders to use the division’s trucks and fuel for the undertaking. The removal was not any easy task in the middle of fighting in Italy, more over the benefit of saving the treasures of the library for the German army was nil.
The two officers had to find the materials necessary for making crates and boxes, find carpenters among their troops, recruit local labourers (which were paid with rations of food plus twenty cigarettes a day). Just a little reminder that the cigarettes were almost as important as food in the Second World War Two, they were used as an universal currency.
The present day hysteria about smoking was not shared by the soldiers in any army then.
The evacuation of the Abbey, carried out by 100 trucks, each one accompanied by the monks, was completed three months before the fatal bombing.
The romantic in me believes that the saving of the famous library provides one of the most heart-warming stories of the Second World War. I would like to believe that it was a triumph of humanity over the barbarity of war. But I am aware that the story is more complicated, the two guardian angels were not so pure, and Hermann Goring received some not so small portion of treasures as his birthday gift. The Germany returned it after the war.
But the library was saved. That is not a romantic fiction, it is a wonderful fact.
However the destruction of the Abbey did not finish the battle. Most of the German defenders survived and found out that the ruins provided a defenders dream. Unlike the buildings of the abbey, the ruins provided much more formidable defense line. The New Zealand units attacking the German defenders fought bravely. In particular the Maori battalion was fierce proving that like their ancestors in the time of the European conquest of New Zealand during the 19th century, the Maoris were still the best and the bravest of warriors. The Germans were truly fearful of them. If the Maori battalion had a proper support by a tank division they might have been victorious.
Without support, the isolated Māori soldiers were forced to withdraw after a withering counter-attack by German infantry backed by tanks.
After eight days of fighting from one shattered building to the next, general Freyberg decided the cost was proving too high and he ordered his troops to stop their attack. Shortly afterwards in early April, the New Zealand Division withdrew from the Cassino area, having suffered 343 deaths and over 600 wounded. Cassino finally fell in May 1944 to the British and Polish troops, with support from New Zealand artillery. The Gustav Line was at last breached. Allied forces entered Rome on 4 June, two days before the D-Day landings in Normandy.
After the war the Abbey was rebuild using the most magnificent white marble. Some parts of the old library were returned to its shiny new walls.
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