Frontlines: A Saint we can believe in

I was sitting on the slopes of Vesuvius in the gentle warmth of bright spring, eating a cornetto, when I thought to transmit a gloat back home, where, reports told, friends were shivering in sodden raincoats and wondering whether they’d ever feel sun on their faces again.

Not only was the chill rain spitting disdain at Derry, but this was a drear and dreadful day in its own right, March 17, when patriots prance for freedom, grown men in ginger wigs caper like loons and decent people lock their doors against the madness or flee for their lives and self-respect to far-off places such as, for example, Naples.

So I texted Paddy Logue, classical scholar and one-time athlete, to alert him to my location.

“Feel any tremors?” he responded. Sadly, the visit didn’t coincide with any of the three designated days for the liquefaction of the blood of Saint Januarius, patron saint of the city, a miracle attested to by, among millions of others then and now, John Henry Cardinal Newman, founder of UCD and a man of great and genuine wisdom. Plus, he wrote “Lead Kindly Light”.

Mind you, Newman also believed that the eyes of the Madonna in a dozen paintings in the Papal States moved around the room to follow believers, but didn’t twitch a muscle to acknowledge any smart-asses who refused to accept that the Mother of God could perform miraculous acts. (I’d have thought it would be the other way round, that her eyes would focus a glare on the sceptics, conveying, “What the fuck are you doing here, then?” But sure what would I know?)

According to the Italian Committee for the Investigation of the Paranormal, the liquefying “blood” is, in fact, a thixotropic substance based on iron chloride which turns runny when shaken or stirred – as when the phial which contains it is held high and paraded around the square outside the Church of St. Janaurius, then re-solidifies when replaced in repose in its gilded niche.

(Two American scientists produced the same effect a few years back with a mixture of wax and water. Perhaps this was the work of St. Februarius?)

St. Janaurius has this in common with Patrick – that thousands march in New York on his feast-day every year – September 19th. Virtually the entire Italian population of Manhattan – tens of thousands in their Sunday suits and frocks – turns out. And St. Janaurius’s march isn’t led by a gang of ruddy-faced galoots of indeterminate but inevitably offensive politics, but by a richly-coloured, sapphire-studded statue of Janaurius himself.

New York politicians nod to Janaurius's parade in hopes of endearing themselves to Italian voters. But party leaders don’t travel from Italy for a shite function in the White House and are never heard pleading with their countrymen and women to calm down and stop demanding things for fear of being thought disruptive and the invites being withdrawn.

Janaurius is a dignified class of saint. I have decided to like him. (Not that he ever existed, of course, but with saints that’s immaterial.) There’s a plentitude of pictures of Janaurius around Naples but not as many as posters of Maradona, who led Napoli to their only Serie A championships, in 1986/87 and 1989/90, and runners-up spots in 1987/88 and 1988/89. I watched the second-leg Uefa Cup home tie against Porto in a restaurant, Napoli 0-1 down at the outset. As the game came towards a close with Porto 3-1 up and holding on easily, all assembled, most passionately the waiters, screamed and shook fists at the screen while pointing to the poster-boy of their brief period of greatness, obviously shouting the equivalent of “Yeez are not fit to wear that man’s boots!” or, alternatively, “Ye are not fit to sniff from his cokespoon”. Whichever, it’s true.

Everybody should spend a day wandering the streets of Pompeii, marvelling at the intricate beauty of the mosaics that have been unearthed from the ash that down-poured from the eruption that ripped the lid off Vesuvius in AD79. A vast depiction of the decisive battle between Alexander the Great and Xerxes of Persia at Gaugemala in 331BC is composed of more than a million tiny coloured stones – “tesserae”, I learnt from the guidebook. I stood in awe and wondered whether any of the Pompeii citizens frozen forever in the shapes that they covered in when Vesuvius vomited fire from the bowels of the earth and entombed them had ever stood in awe and wonder before the same terrible, entrancing work of art.

‘Pompeii’ was a hit for last year’s breakthrough British band Bastille, who are quite the clever-clogs and artful with it, if not as innovative as some critics insist. But Dan Smith writes good songs. It was while listening to them do ‘Pompeii’ a capella in the British Museum last summer which made me think, I have to go there. (There’s an a cappella version on YouTube, well worth checking out.)

I know I have cited it before, but even so: “We were caught up and lost in all of our vices/ In your pose as the dust settles around us/ And the walls kept tumbling down/ In the city that we love/ Great clouds roll over the hills/ Bringing darkness from above/ But if you close your eyes/ Does it almost feel like/ Nothing changed at all?”

Like the place itself, it has the ache of genius about it.