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Leaving Foggia for the second time he proceeds twenty miles to Manfredonia, and inspects not only this town, but the site of old Sipontum. Then he sails to the village of Mattinata, and later to Vieste, the furthermost point of the promontory.
He subdued the Daunians around Sipontum, and the Messapians in the south-eastern peninsula; he already commanded from sea to sea, and was on the point of arranging with the Romans a joint attack on the Samnites in their native abodes. But successes so unexpected went beyond the desires of the Tarentine merchants, and filled them with alarm.
The second king of Sipontum was Appulus, who ruled in the year 2213. . . . Later on, Saint Peter sojourned here, and baptized a few people.
"In fact it was not only advertised from the Palace in due course, but circumstantially reported to us privately, that the secret service had learned that you had arranged for a fishing-vessel to take you to sea from Sipontum. They had then set three detachments of Praetorians to intercept you, one on each road, with watchers to warn them if you were recognized.
Devotion to the Archangel was of very early date in Rome and in the Western Church generally. The May feast was instituted in the sixth century, to commemorate a second apparition near Sipontum on Monte Gargano, which took place on the 8th May, 520. June 29. Feast of St. Peter and St. Paul.
The lands allotted to them had formerly belonged to the Campanians. Tiberius Sempronius Longus, who was then consul, Marcus Servilius, and Quintus Minucius Thermus, were the triumviri who settled the colony. Other commissioners also, Decius Junius Brutus, Marcus Baebius Tamphilus, and Marcus Helvius, led a colony of Roman citizens to Sipontum, into a district which had belonged to the Arpinians.
It was on this mountain that the archangel Michael, during his first flight to Western Europe, deigned to appear to a Greek bishop of Sipontum, Laurentius by name; and ever since that time a certain cavern, sanctified by the presence of this winged messenger of God, has been the goal of millions of pilgrims.
But I approached the subject cautiously, fearing that the coachman might demur at this extra work. Far from it. I had gained his affection, and he would conduct me whithersoever I liked. Only to Sipontum? Why not to Foggia, to Naples, to the ends of the earth?
Then, at last, the sun came out in a sudden burst of light, opening a rift in the vapours and revealing the whole chain of the Apennines, together with the peaked crater of Mount Vulture. The spectacle cheered me, and led me to think that such a day might worthily be rounded off by a visit to Sipontum, which lies a few miles beyond Manfredonia on the Foggia road.
Of Sipontum nothing is left; nothing save a church, and even that built only yesterday in the eleventh century; a far-famed church, in the Pisan style, with wrought marble columns reposing on lions, sculptured diamond ornaments, and other crafty stonework that gladdens the eye.
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