Coleridge's Sicilian Inscription

The above is from Coleridge's Notebooks [2:2176, as you can see], dated by Kathleen Coburn to August 1804. It appears to be an inscription or perhaps a poem from a ‘hospes’—a hostel or monastery—near Mount Etna in Sicily. In a brief note that (evidently) records a laborious, lengthy and ultimately futile process of enquiry, Coburn reluctantly concedes defeat:

All that can be deduced from context is that Coleridge visited the Benedictine Monastery at Nicolosi, near Mount Etna, and there jotted these lines down. They might have been an inscription or (something Coburn considers more likely) ‘Coleridge might have found the lines in an album’. In either case the original has since been lost, which, since Etna experienced major eruptions in 1928, 1949, 1971, 1979, 1981, 1983 and 1991–1993 (and that's only limiting ourselves to the twentieth-century), is not surprising.

I can shed a little more light on this. It turns out the entry is Coleridge's record of an inscription written on the wall of the ‘first room’ (perhaps the antechamber, or hallway, or else perhaps the largest of the interior rooms) of the monastery. I know this because a visitor called Niccolò lo Bosco also made note of the inscription; his account afterwards being published in the 1846 Giornale del Gabinetto Letterario dell Accademia Gioenia di Catania [pp 61-62].

Bosco records that the inscription dates to 1735, and notes that (‘a mettere il lettore al fatto della storia, e de' fasti di questo antico cenobio casinese mi basta per tatto documento riportare le quattro belle iscrizioni latine che si leggono nella prima sala del presente ospizio’; ‘to inform the reader of the facts of history, and of the glories of this ancient Casinese monastery, it suffices for me to report the four beautiful Latin inscriptions that can be read in the first room of this hospice’) it is one of four. He also transcribes the other three, but I'm going to limit myself to the one that caught Coleridge's eye. Bosco's Latin differs in small ways from STC's:

Quisquis hoc templum hospes ingrederis,
paulisper in limine consiste,
locique sanctitatem venerare
temporis vicissitudine non extinctam;
nigris hic sub arenis
piorum ascetarum conduntur cineres;
      ne mireris
sterile sabulum sacrorum ossiuni attactu
gratos ubique antumnavit in fructus,
pomis onustos palmites dedit:
et qui viventes in carne
virtutum fuderunt odores
in pulveres resoluti
adhuc vernant in floribus
adhuc oleut in rosis.
Aedem hanc ipsorum vita
ipsorum miraculis
multiples inspice redivivam,
Aetnaei montis impeta jacuit,
pulchrior e ruina surrexit;
iterum terretmotu collisa
nobìliorem induit venustatem,
eo adversae fortunae emolumento
ut varios tot inter casus
pugnasse diceres ac triumphasse pietatem.
Felix ergo progredere,
divique tutelaris effigiem
religioso cultu devoto prosequens,
prospera omnia ab ejus patrocinio
        tibi polliceas.

This means: ‘whosoever wishes to enter into this sacred hostel stop, if only for a moment, on the threshold, and pay homage to the holiness of this place which the vissicitudes of time have not erased; beneath this black sand are the ashes of holy monks cached as treasure; do not marvel; the sterile sand has been brought into contact with these saints' bones and the admixture has, in the course of time, resulted in lovely fruits endowing the orchard trees with heavy-laden branches: those who lived in the flesh have gifted to the flowers their fragrant virtue by the intermixture of their dust, and they still bloom with the flowers, still cast their scent with the roses. Consider that this holy place is restored to life by their life and miracles. What Mount Etna, in the force of its eruption, has laid low has risen from its ruins more lovely than before. On this hill did nobility graciously don the mantle of adversity, and it can be said that holiness has fought through many disasters and been rewarded with victory. May you go on your way in peace, and, by honouring the spirit that guards this place, be sure that its grace will keep you well in your travels.’

This translation (it's mine) differs in a couple of particulars from the one Coburn prints, though it's not clear to me if her ‘inquirat’ [line 1] for Bosco's ‘ingrederis’ is her error of transcription from STC's notebooks, or STC's error copying the actual inscription (or perhaps STC has it correct, and Bosco has erred: the difference is between ‘whoever wishes to know about’ and ‘whoever wishes to enter into’). Similarly Coburn has ‘condumento’ [line 23], which is just odd, where Bosco has the more logical ‘emolumento’.

The monastery had been completely destroyed when Etna erupted in 1693, and was subsequently rebuilt from scratch. This 1735 inscription is, amongst other things, a record of that fact. Clearly, the text has since been destroyed itself, probably by a subsequent eruption (or perhaps when the monastery was desacralised in 1866; it has since been restored as a religious site). So without these two men jotting it down, Coleridge in 1804 and Bosco four decades later, we would have no idea about it whatsoever.