the student of history like green spots in the desert; and which
gave to the man and the woman thus voluntarily separated from all
the joys of life a certain human consolation in the midst of their
hardships. They can have seen each other but seldom, for it was one
of the express stipulations of the Franciscan Rule that the friars
should refrain from all society with women, and have only the most
sparing and reserved intercourse even with their sisters in
religion. And Francis was no priest, nor had he the privilege of
hearing confession and directing the spiritual life of his daughter
in the faith. But he sent to her to ask enlightenment from her
prayers, when any difficulty was in his way. He went to see her
when he was in trouble; especially once on his way to Rieti to have
an operation performed on his eyes. Once the two friends ate
together at a sacramental meal, the pledge and almost the
conclusion on earth of that tenderest, most disinterested, and
unworldly love which existed between them. That he was sure of her
sympathy in all things, of her prayers and spiritual aid,
whatsoever he might be doing, wheresoever he might be, no doubt was
sweet to Francis in all his labors and trials. As he walked many a
weary day past that church of St. Damian, every stone of which was
familiar to him, and many laid with his own hands, must not his
heart have warmed at thought of the sister within, safe from all
conflict with the world, upon whose fellow-feeling he could rely
absolutely as man can rely only on woman? The world has jeered at
the possibility of such friendships from its earliest age; and yet
they have always existed,--one of the most exquisite and delicate
of earthly ties. Gazing back into that far distance over the
graves, not only of those two friends, but of a hundred succeeding
generations, a tear of grateful sympathy comes into the student's
eye. He is glad to believe that, all those years, Francis could see
in his comings and goings the cloister of Clara; and that this
sacred gleam of human fellowship,--love purified of all
self-seeking,--tender, visionary, celestial affection, sweetened
their solitary lives."
Legends innumerable, attesting supernormal manifestations regarding
Francis, sprang up and have been perpetuated through the ages. One is as
follows:--
"Hardly more than three years from the moment when the pale
penitent was hooted through Assisi amid the derisive shouts of the
people, and driven with blows and curses into confinement in his
own father's house, we find that it has already become his custom
on Sunday to preach in the cathedral; and that, from his little
convent at the Portiuncula, Francis has risen into influence in the
whole country, which no doubt by this time was full of stories of
his visit to Rome and intercourse with the Pope, and all the
miraculous dreams and parables with which that intercourse was
attended. Already the mind of the people, so slow to adopt, but so
ready to become habituated to, anything novel, had used itself to
the sight of the brethren in their brown gowns, and, leaping from
one extreme to the other, instead of madmen, learned to consider
them saints. The air about the little cloister began to breathe of
miracles,--miracles which must have been a matter of common report
among the contemporaries of the saint, for Celano wrote within
three years of Francis's death. Once, when their leader was absent,
a sudden wonder startled the brethren. It was midnight between
Saturday and Sunday, and Francis, who had gone to preach at Assisi,
was at the moment praying in the canon's garden. A chariot of fire,
all radiant and shining, suddenly entered the house, awaking those
who lay asleep, and moving to wonder and awe those who watched, or
labored, or prayed. It was the heart and thoughts of their leader
returning to them in the midst of his prayer, which were figured by
this appearance."
When Francis died a pathetic scene is thus described:--
"All the clergy of Assisi, chanting solemn hymns, came out to meet
the bier, and thus they climbed the hill to the birthplace of the
saint, the city of his toils and tears and blessing. When they came
to St. Damian an affecting pause was made. Clara within, with all
her maidens, waited the last visit of their father and friend.
Slowly the triumphant crowd defiled into the church of the nuns,
hushing, let us hope, their songs of joy, their transports of
gratulations, out of respect to the grief which dwelt there, and
could scarcely, by all the arguments of family pride, or the
excitement of this universal triumph, be brought to rejoice. The
bier was set down within the chancel, the coffin opened, and opened
also was the little window through which the nuns received the
sacrament on ordinary occasions. To this little opening the pale
group of nuns, ten of them, with Clara at their head, came marching
silently, with tears and suppressed cries. Clara herself, even in
face of that multitude, could not restrain her grief. 'Father,
father, what will become of us?' she cried out; 'who will care for
us now, or console us in our troubles?' 'Virgin modesty,' says
Celano, stopped her lamentations, and with a miserable attempt at
thanksgiving, reminding herself that the angels were rejoicing at
his coming, and all was gladness on his arrival in the city of God,
the woman who had been his closest friend in this world, whose
sympathy he had sought so often, kissed the pale hands--'splendid
hands,' says Celano, in his enthusiasm, 'adorned with precious gems
and shining pearls'--and disappeared from the little window with
her tears into the dim convent behind, where nobody could reprove
her sorrow."
The personality of Chiara comes down to us through the ages invested
with untold charm. It is said that when she was dying there came "a long
procession of white-robed virgins, led by the Queen of Heaven, whose
head was crowned with a diadem of shining gold, each of the celestial
visitors stooped to kiss Chiara as her soul passed to its home."
During all the life of Francis, whenever any new movement or work was to
be undertaken, he invariably sent to ask the counsel and the prayers of
Chiara.
The miraculous preservation of the body of Santa Chiara is one of the
articles of faith in Assisi. In 1850--six hundred years after her
death--a tomb believed to be hers was found and opened in the presence
of a distinguished group of ecclesiastics, among whom was Cardinal
Pecci, later Pope Leo XIII. In this tomb a form is said to have been
found, and it has been placed in a reliquary of alabaster and Carrara
marble especially constructed for it. This sanctuary is placed in the
church of Santa Chiara, in the crypt, behind a glass screen, where
candles are kept perpetually burning. Lina Gordon Duff, writing the
history of Assisi, says of this curious spectacle:--
"As pilgrims stand before a grating in the dimly lighted crypt, the
gentle rustle of a nun's dress is heard; slowly invisible hands
draw the curtain aside, and the body of Santa Chiara is seen
lying in a glass case upon a satin bed, her face clearly outlined
against her black and white veils, whilst her brown habit is drawn
in straight folds about her body. She clasps the book of her Rule
in one hand, and in the other holds a lily with small diamonds
shining on the streamers."
[Illustration: SANTA CHIARA, THE DUOMO, ASSISI
Amalia Dupre
_Page 375_]
In all these churches--the great convent church, upper and lower, of the
Franciscans elaborately adorned with frescoes by Cimabue and by Giotto;
in the ancient Duomo; in Santa Chiara and in Santa Maria degli
Angeli--statues of the two saints, Francis and Chiara, are placed side
by side. She shares all the exaltation of his memory and the fulness of
his fame.
The strange problem of the stigmata has, perhaps, never been absolutely
solved. Canon Knox Little says that as to the miracles of St. Francis
generally speaking, there is no intrinsic improbability; that "his holy
life, his constant communion with God, the abundant blessings with which
it pleased God to mark his ministry, all point in the same direction."
Latter-day revelations of psychic science disclose contemporary facts
of the power of mental influence on the physical form that are, in many
instances, hardly less wonderful than this alleged miracle of St.
Francis. Whether the story is accepted literally or only in a figurative
sense does not affect the transcendent power of his influence. His
entire life and work illustrate the beauty of holiness. "Art in its
widest sense gained a marvellous impulse from his work and effort," says
Canon Knox Little. The French and Provencal literature and the schools
of Byzantine art preceded the life of Francis; but his influence
imparted a powerful wave of sympathetic and vital insight and awakened a
world of new sensibilities of feeling. Indeed, it is a proverb of Italy,
"Without Francis, no Dante." Certainly the life of Francis was the
inspiration of the early Italian art. Cimabue and Giotto drew from the
inspiration of that unique and lovely life the pictorial conceptions
that have made Assisi the cradle of Italian painting. The great works of
Giotto are in the lower church of the Franciscan monastery. One of these
frescoes represents chastity as a maiden kneeling in a shrine, while
angels bring to her branches of palm. Obedience is depicted as placing
a yoke upon the bowed figure of a priest, while St. Francis, attended by
two angels, looks on; Poverty, whom Francis declared to be his bride, is
pictured as accompanied by Hope and Charity, who give her in marriage to
St. Francis, the union being blessed by Christ, while the heavenly
Father and throngs of angels gaze through the clouds on this nuptial
scene. The fresco called Gloriosus Franciscus is perhaps the crowning
work of Giotto. Francis is seen in a beatitude of glory, with a richly
decorated banner bearing the cross and seven stars floating above his
head and bands of angels in the air surrounding him. Canon Knox Little,
alluding to these interesting works of Giotto, says that "even in their
faded glories they give an immense interest to the lower church of
Assisi. No one can look at them now unmoved, or wander on the hillside
to the west of the little city, with the rugged rocks above one's head,
and beneath one's feet the rich carpets of cyclamen, and before one's
eyes long dreamy stretches of the landscape of Umbria, without being
touched by the feeling of that beautiful and loving life devoted to God
and man and nature, in utter truth, which therefore left such an
impress on Christian art."
The Madonna and saints painted by Cimabue are faded almost to the point
of obliteration, yet there still lingers about them a certain grace and
charm. The visitor to this Franciscan monastery church realizes that he
is beholding the art which was the very pledge and prophecy of the
Renaissance, and he realizes, too, that the Renaissance itself was the
outgrowth of the new vitality communicated to the world by the life and
character of St. Francis. He gave to the world the realization of the
living Christ; he taught that religion was in action, not in theology.
He liberated the spirit; and when this colossal church was being built
(1228-53) the artists who had felt the new thrill of life opened by his
teaching hastened to Assisi to express their appreciation by their
pictorial work on its walls. The qualities of spiritual life--faith,
sacrifice, sympathy, and love--began, for the first time, to be
interpreted into artistic expression.
The tomb of St. Francis is in the crypt of the church. The stone
sarcophagus containing his body was discovered in 1818, and then placed
here in a little chamber especially prepared, surrounded by an iron
latticework with candles perpetually burning.
From the sacristy of the lower church, stairs ascend to the upper, with
its beautiful nave and transept with a high altar, and the choir stalls.
While the lower church with its great arches is always dark, the upper
is flooded with light from vast windows. There is a series of frescoed
panels on either side, accredited to pupils of Giotto, full of forcible
action and a glow of color. But the upper church, while it is
magnificent, lacks somewhat of that mystic atmosphere one is so swiftly
conscious of in the gloom and mystery of the lower church.
Stretching behind the churches, along the crest of the high hill, is the
colossal monastery itself, with that double row of arches and colonnades
that makes it so conspicuous a feature of all the Umbrian valley.
Formerly hundreds of monks dwelt here; but the Italian government
suppressed this monastery in 1866, and since that time it has been used
as a school for boys.
The ancient Duomo, whose facade is of the twelfth century, has three
exquisite rose windows, and on either side, as one approaches the high
altar, stand the statues of St. Francis and of Santa Chiara. In the
little piazza in front of the church is a bronze copy of Dupre's famous
statue of St. Francis.
The colossal church of Santa Maria degli Angeli, with its magnificent
dome, is a contrast, indeed, to the primitive little Portiuncula where
Francis knelt in prayer, and which is now preserved in the centre of
this vast cathedral,--the rude structure encased in marble, and
decorated, above the entrance, with a picture by Overbeck, whose motive
is St. Francis as he stands, hushed and reverent, listening to the voice
that tells him to embrace poverty. There is a fine Perugino in the
church, representing the Saviour. The cell in which St. Francis died,
enclosed in the little chapel which St. Bonaventura built over it, is
preserved in this great cathedral.
"And who was he that opened that door in heaven?" questions Canon Knox
Little in reference to St. Francis. "Who was he that gave that fresh
life and thought? Who but the man who had brought down in his own person
the living Christ into his century, who had taught men again the love of
God, and then the love of man and the love of nature; who had lifted
the people out of their misery and degradation, and awakened the church
out of its stiffness and worldliness; it was he, too, who inspired, who
may at most be said to have created, Italian art,--the great St.
Francis! Such are the deep, such are the penetrating, such are the
far-reaching effects of sanctity. If a soul is, by divine grace, given
wholly to God, it is impossible for us to say to what heights it may
attain, or what good, in every region of human effort, it may do."
[Illustration: BAIAE AND ISCHIA, FROM CAMALDOLI
_Page 382_]
Perugia, the neighboring city only fifteen miles from Assisi, is the
metropolis of all this Umbrian region. Like Assisi, it is a "hill town,"
built on an acropolis of rock, its foundations laid by the Etruscans
more than three thousand years before the Christian era, and its
atmosphere is freighted with the records of artists and scholars. The
Perugians were the forerunners. They held the secret of artifice in
metals and gems; they were architects and sculptors. The only traces of
their painting that have come down to us are their works on sarcophagi,
on vases or funeral urns,--traces that indicate their gifts for line and
form. It was about 310 B.C. that all Umbria became a Roman province.
The colossal porta of Augustus--a gateway apparently designed for the
Cyclops--still retains its inscription, "Augustus Perusia." The
imperishable impress of the great Roman conqueror is still seen in many
places. Perugia was a firm citadel, as is attested by the fact that
Totila and his army of Goths spent seven years in besieging it. The
centuries from the thirteenth to the fifteenth inclusive, when it was
under the sway of the Guelphs and the Ghibellines, were years of tragic
violence. Even the cathedral became the scene of riot, and its interior
was entirely washed with wine, and it was reconsecrated before it could
be again used for holy offices. The little piazza in front of the
cathedral, now dreaming in the sun, has been the scene of strange and
contrasting crises of life. Strife and warfare have desolated it; the
footsteps of Bernardino of Siena have consecrated it, as he passed
within the great portals to preach the gospel of peace. He was one of
the most potent of the Francescan disciples, and Bernardino (born of the
noble family of the Albizzeschi, in 1380, in Siena, the year after St.
Catherine's death) for forty years wandered over Italy, preaching
peace and repentance. Vespasiano da Bisticci, a contemporary historian,
records that Bernardino "converted and changed the minds and spirits of
men marvellously and had a wondrous power in persuading men to lay aside
their mortal hatreds." Bernardino died at the age of sixty-four in
Aquila, and the towns in which he had faithfully carried on his
apostolic work placed the sacred sign of the divine name (I.H.S.) upon
their gates and palaces, in his memory. In the Sienese gallery is a
portrait of San Bernardino by Sano, painted in 1460, representing the
saint as the champion of the Holy Name, with the inscription, "I have
manifested Thy name to men." In one of his impressive and wonderful
sermons San Bernardino said:--
"There still remain many places for us to make. Ah! for the love of
God, love one another. Alas! see you not that, if you love the
destruction one of the other you are ruining your very selves? Ah!
put this thing right for the love of God. Love one another! What I
have done to make peace among you and to make you like brothers, I
have done with that zeal I should wish my own soul to receive. I
have done it all to the glory of God. And let no one think that I
have set myself to do anything at any person's request. I am only
moved by the bidding of God for His honor and glory."
Opposite the Duomo of Perugia, on the other side of the piazza, is the
Palazzo Municipio, with a Gothic facade, a beautiful example of
thirteenth-century architecture. Here also is the colossal fountain with
three basins, decorated with pictorial designs from the Bible by Niccolo
Pisano and Arnolfo of Florence, and in the shadow of this fountain St.
Dominic, St. Francis, and St. Bernardino often met and held converse.
Perugia easily reads her title clear to artistic immortality in having
been the home of Perugino, the master of Raphael. Here he lived for
several years working with Pinturicchio in the frescoes that adorn the
Collegio del Cambio, now held as a priceless treasure hall of art. They
still glow with rich coloring,--the Christ seen on the Mount of
Transfiguration; the Mother and Child with the adoring magi; and the
chariot of the dawn driven by Apollo a century before Guido painted his
"Aurora" in the Palazzo Rospigliosi in Rome.
From the parapets of Perugia are views of supreme poetic beauty. The
play of light and color on the picturesque hills and mountains of the
Umbrian country; the gray-green gleam of olive orchards and the silver
threads of winding streams; the towers and ruins and castles of a dozen
towns and villages that crown the slopes, and the violet shadows of
deepening twilight, with Assisi bathed in a splendor of rose and
gold,--all combine to make this an ever-changing panorama for the poet
and painter.
No journey in Italy is quite like that to the lovely Umbrian valley and
its Jerusalem, Assisi, the shrine which, with the single exception of
Rome, is the special place of pilgrimage for the entire religious world.
Perugia offers the charm of art, and attracts the visitor, also, by an
exceptional degree of modern comfort and convenience; but Assisi is the
shrine before which he kneels, where the footsteps of saints who have
knelt in prayer make holy ground, and where he realizes anew the
consecration of faith and sacrifice. The very air is filled with divine
messages, and in lowly listening he will hear, again, those wonderful
and thrilling words of St. Francis:--
"By the holy love which is in God I pray all to put aside every
obstacle, every care, every anxiety, that they may be able to
consecrate themselves entirely to serve, love, and honor the Lord
God, with a pure heart and a sincere purpose, which is what He asks
above all things."
_White phantom city, whose untrodden streets
Are rivers, and whose pavements are the shifting
Shadows of palaces and strips of sky;
I wait to see thee vanish like the fleets
Seen in mirage, or towers of clouds uplifting
In air their unsubstantial masonry._
LONGFELLOW.
_Fair as the palace builded for Aladdin,
Yonder St. Mark uplifts its sculptured splendor--
Intricate fretwork, Byzantine mosaic,
Color on color, column upon column,
Barbaric, wonderful, a thing to kneel to!
Over the portal stand the four gilt horses,
Gilt hoof in air, and wide distended nostril,
Fiery, untamed, as in the days of Nero.
Skyward, a cloud of domes and spires and crosses;
Earthward, black shadows flung from jutting stonework.
High over all the slender Campanile
Quivers, and seems a falling shaft of silver._
THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH.
_As one who parts from Life's familiar shore,
Looks his last look in long-beloved eyes,
And sees in their dear depths new meanings rise
And strange light shine he never knew before;
As then he fain would snatch from Death his hand
And linger still, if haply he may see
A little more of this Soul's mystery
Which year by year he seemed to understand;
So, Venice, when thy wondrous beauty grew
Dim in the clouds which clothed the wintry sea
I saw thou wert more beauteous than I knew,
And long to turn and be again with thee.
But what I could not then I trust to see
In that next life which we call memory._
PHILLIPS BROOKS.[2]
FOOTNOTES:
[2] From "Life of Phillips Brooks," by kind permission of Messrs. E. P.
Dutton & Co.
VI
THE GLORY OF A VENETIAN JUNE
I have been between Heaven and Earth since our arrival at Venice.
The Heaven of it is ineffable--never had I touched the skirts of so
celestial a place. The beauty of the architecture, the silver
trails of water up between all that gorgeous color and carving, the
enchanting silence, the music, the gondolas,--I mix it all up
together, and maintain that nothing is like it, nothing equal to
it, no second Venice in the world.
MRS. BROWNING, in the June of 1850.
The first glimpse of enchanted Venice, as her towers and marble palaces
rise wraith-like from the sea, is an experience that can never fade from
memory. Like a mirage, like a vision invoked by some incantation or
magician's spell, the scene prefigures itself, bringing a thrill of some
vague and undefined memory, as if a breath floated by,--
"An odor from Dreamland sent,
That makes the ghost seem nigh me,
Of a splendor that came and went;
Of a life lived somewhere,--I know not
In what diviner sphere,--
Of memories that stay not and go not,"
which eludes all translation into words. Nor does the spell dissolve and
vanish when put to the test of one's actual sojourn in the Dream City.
It is an experience outside the boundaries of the ordinary day and
daylight world, as if one were caught up into the ethereal realm to find
a city
"... of gliding and wide-wayed silence
With room in the streets for the soul."