We are in the lower church of S. Francesco. High mass is being sung,
with orchestra and organ and a choir of many voices. Candles are lighted
on the altar, over-canopied with Giotto's allegories. From the low
southern windows slants the sun, in narrow bands, upon the many-coloured
gloom and embrowned glory of these painted aisles. Women in bright
kerchiefs kneel upon the stones, and shaggy men from the mountains stand
or lean against the wooden benches. There is no moving from point to
point. Where we have taken our station, at the north-western angle of
the transept, there we stay till mass be over. The whole low-vaulted
building glows duskily; the frescoed roof, the stained windows, the
figure-crowded pavements blending their rich but subdued colours, like
hues upon some marvellous moth's wings, or like a deep-toned rainbow
mist discerned in twilight dreams, or like such tapestry as Eastern
queens, in ancient days, wrought for the pavilion of an empress. Forth
from this maze of mingling tints, indefinite in shade and sunbeams, lean
earnest, saintly faces--ineffably pure--adoring, pitying, pleading;
raising their eyes in ecstasy to heaven, or turning them in ruth toward
earth. Men and women of whom the world was not worthy--at the hands of
those old painters they have received the divine grace, the dove-like
simplicity, whereof Italians in the fourteenth century possessed the
irrecoverable secret. Each face is a poem; the counterpart in painting
to a chapter from the Fioretti di San Francesco. Over the whole
scene--in the architecture, in the frescoes, in the coloured windows, in
the gloom, on the people, in the incense, from the chiming bells,
through the music--broods one spirit: the spirit of him who was "the
co-espoused, co-transforate with Christ;" the ardent, the radiant, the
beautiful in soul; the suffering, the strong, the simple, the victorious
over self and sin; the celestial who trampled upon earth and rose on
wings of ecstasy to heaven; the Christ-inebriated saint of visions
supersensual and life beyond the grave. Far down below the feet of those
who worship God through him, S. Francis sleeps; but his soul, the
incorruptible part of him, the message he gave the world, is in the
spaces round us. This is his temple. He fills it like an unseen god. Not
as Phoebus or Athene, from their marble pedestals; but as an abiding
spirit, felt everywhere, nowhere seized, absorbing in itself all
mysteries, all myths, all burning exaltations, all abasements, all love,
self-sacrifice, pain, yearning, which the thought of Christ, sweeping
the centuries, hath wrought for men. Let, therefore, choir and
congregation raise their voices on the tide of prayers and praises; for
this is Easter morning--Christ is risen! Our sister, Death of the Body,
for whom S. Francis thanked God in his hymn, is reconciled to us this
day, and takes us by the hand, and leads us to the gate whence floods of
heavenly glory issue from the faces of a multitude of saints. Pray, ye
poor people; chant and pray. If all be but a dream, to wake from this
were loss for you indeed!