In the first chapel on the right in the church is Guido Reni's
beautiful picture of S. Michael, and in the third chapel two pictures
by Domenichino. But the most interesting part, the cemetery, is
beneath the church, though entirely above ground, and lighted by a row
of iron-grated windows without glass. "A corridor runs along beside
these windows, and gives access to three or four vaulted recesses, or
chapels, of considerable breadth and height, the floor of which
consists of consecrated earth from Jerusalem. It is smoothed
decorously over the deceased brethren of the convent, and is kept
quite free from grass or weeds, such as would grow even in these
gloomy recesses if pains were not bestowed to root them up. But as the
cemetery is small, and it is a precious privilege to sleep in holy
ground, the brotherhood are immemorially accustomed, when one of their
number dies, to take the longest-buried skeleton out of the oldest
grave, and lay the new slumberer there instead. Thus each of the good
friars, in his turn, enjoys the luxury of a consecrated bed, attended
with the slight drawback of being forced to get up long before
daybreak, as it were, and make room for another lodger. The
arrangement of the unearthed skeletons is what makes the special
interest of the cemetery. The arched and vaulted walls of the burial
recesses are supported by massive pillars and pilasters made of
thigh-bones and skulls; the whole material of the structure appears to
be of a similar kind, and the knobs and embossed ornaments of this
strange architecture are represented by the joints of the spine, and
the more delicate tracery of the smaller bones of the human frame. The
summits of the arches are adorned with entire skeletons, looking as if
they were wrought most skilfully in bas-relief. There is no
possibility of describing how ugly and grotesque is the effect,
combined with a certain artistic merit, nor how much perverted
ingenuity has been shown in this queer way; nor what a multitude of
dead monks, through how many hundred years, must have contributed
their bony framework to build up these great arches of mortality. On
some of the skulls there are inscriptions, purporting that such a
monk, who formerly made use of that particular head-piece, died on
such a day and year; but vastly the greater number are piled up
undistinguishably into the architectural design like the many deaths
that make up the one glory of a victory. In the side walls of the
vaults are niches where skeleton monks sit or stand, clad in the brown
habits that they wore in life, and labelled with their names and the
dates of their decease. Their skulls (some quite bare, and others
still covered with yellow skin and the hair that has known the
earth-damps) look out from beneath their hoods, grinning hideously
repulsive. One reverend father has his mouth wide open, as if he had
died in the midst of a howl of terror and remorse, which perhaps is
even now screeching through eternity. As a general thing, however,
these frocked and hooded skeletons seem to take a more cheerful view
of their position, and try with ghastly smiles to turn it into a jest.
There is no disagreeable scent, such as might be expected from the
decay of so many holy persons, in whatever odour of sanctity they may
have taken their departure. The same number of living monks would not
smell half so unexceptionably." Hawthorne gives this graphic
description.