Chapter 3

I take the Tuscan nature to be so constituted that it will play with any given subject of speculation in much the same way. With one or two mighty exceptions to be sure--Dante, of course, Buonarroti, of course, and, for all his secularities. Boccace--it is not imagination you find in Tuscany. Rather, it is a sweet and delicate, a wholesome, home-grown fancy, wantoning with thought which may be unpleasant, unhealthy, grave, frivolous--what you will; yet playing in such a way, and with such intuitive taste and breeding that no harm ensues nor any nausea. They realise for me a fairy country; I can think no evil of a Tuscan. So I can read Boccace the infidel, Poggio the gross, where Voltaire makes me a bigot and Catulle Mendes ashamed. The fresh breeze blowing through the _Decameron_ keeps the air sweet. Even Lorenzo is a child for me, and Macchiavel, "the man without a soul," I decline to take seriously. Consider, then, all Tuscan art from this point of view, the weaving of innocent fancies round some chance-caught theme, Christianity may have been the _point d'appui_. No doubt it generally was. What then? Have you never heard two children dreaming aloud of the ways of God, or the troubles of Christ? How they humanise, how they realise the Mystery! Just such a pretty babble I find in the Spanish Chapel, which to take in any other spirit would work a madness in the brain. You remember the North wall, apotheosis of Saint Thomas and what-not, for all the world like a paradigm of the irregular verb "Aquinizo." What are we to suppose Lippo Memmi (or whoever else it was) to have been about when he hung in mid-air on his swinging bridge and stained the wet square red and green? To read Ruskin you would think he was fulminating _urbi et orbi_ with the _Summa_ or _Cur Deus homo_ at his fingers' ends. Depend upon it he was doing quite other, or the artistic temper (phrase rendered loathsome by the halfpenny newspapers) suffered a relapse between the days of King David and the days of his brother Lippo Lippi. Are we to suppose that a man who could live in intimate commerce with fourteen such gracious ladies as he has set there, ranged on their carved sedilia--his Britomart trim and debonnair; his willowy Carità; his wimpled matron in clean white who masquerades as I know not what branch of theology; his pretty girlish Geometry of coiled and braided hair and the yet unloosed girdle of demure virginity; his maid Musica crowned with roses, and Logica, the bold-eyed and open-throated wench, hand to hip--is this the man for sententiousness? Out, out! Could any one save a humourist of high order have given Moses such a pair of horns, or set, under Music, such a shagged Tubal to belabour an anvil? The wall sings like an anthology,--a Gothic anthology where "Bele Aliz matin leva" is versicle, and "In un boschetto trovai pastorella" antiphon. You might as well talk of Christian Mathematics as of Christian Art, or bind the sweet influences of Pleiades as the volant sallies of a poet's wit.

Once we get it into our heads that the Tuscans were fanciful children, always, and the discrepancy of critics, of Ruskin and Mr. George Moore, of Rio and Mr. Addington Symonds, may vanish. For another thing, we shall understand and allow for the standard of Santa Croce and the _Fioretti_. From the latter nosegay! take this:

"It happened one day as Brother Peter was standing to his prayer, thinking earnestly about the Passion of Christ, how the blessed Mother of him, and John Evangelist his best-beloved, and Saint Francis too, were painted at the foot of the Cross, crucified indeed with him through anguish of the mind, that there came upon him the longing to know which of these three had endured the bitterest pains of that anguish, the Mother who bore our Lord, or the Disciple familiar to his bosom, or Saint Francis crucified also even as he was. And as he stood thinking on these things, lo! there appeared before him the Virgin Mary with Saint John Evangelist and Saint Francis, robed in splendid apparel and of glory wonderful; but Saint Francis' robe was more cunningly wrought than Saint John's. Now Peter stood quite scared at the sight; but Saint John bade him take comfort, saying, 'Be not afraid, dearest brother, for we are come hither to dispel thy doubt. You are to knows then, that above all creatures the Mother of Christ and I grieved over the Passion of our Lord. But since that day Saint Francis has felt more anguish than any other. Therefore, as you see, he is in glory now.' Then Brother Peter asked him, and said, 'Most holy Apostle of Christ, wherefore cometh it that the vesture of Saint Francis is more glorious than thine?' Answered him Saint John, 'The reason is this, for that when he was in the world he wore a viler than ever I did.' So then Saint John gave him a vestment which he carried on his arm, and the holy company vanished."

This, be sure, is true; and I have its English parallel ready to hand. For I once heard a father and his child talking of the goodness of God. "God," says the father, "gives thee the milk to thy porridge"; and the child thought it a good saying, yet puzzled over it, doubting, as it afterwards appeared, the part to be assigned to a friend of his, the daily milkman. And so he solved it. "God makes the milk and the milkman brings it," he said. The _Fioretti_, if you must needs break a butterfly on your dissecting-board, was written, as I judge, by a bare-foot Minorite of forty; compiled, that is, from the wonderings, the pretty adjustments and naive disquisitions of any such weatherworn brown men as you may see to- day toiling up the Calvary to their Convent. And in this same story- telling Giotto is an adept. He loves to gather his fellows round him and speak of Saints and Archangels, where our youngsters talk of fairy godmothers and white rabbits. To say this is not Art, as the critics profanely teach, is monstrous. Is not the _Fioretti_ literature, or the Gospel according to Saint Luke literature? And is not Religion the highest art of all, the large elementary poetry in the core of the heart of man? Just so was the craft which disposed the rings of that wonderful ornament round about the Bardi chapel, rings of clean arabesque wrought in line upon pale blue and pink and brown, and which in so doing fitted the Franciscan thaumaturgy with an exact garment tenderly adjusted to every wave of its abandonment--even so was this a great art indeed. For you ask of an art no more than this, that it shall be adequately representative: there are no comparative degrees.

So when I learn from the works of Ruskin that he can "read a picture to you as, if Mr. Spurgeon knew anything about art, Mr. Spurgeon would read it,--that is to say, from the plain, common-sense Protestant side"; or when I learn from the works of Mr. George Moore that Sir Frederick Burton made of the National Gallery a Museum; or when one complains of a picture that it is not didactic, and another that it holds a thought, I make haste to laugh lest I should do wrong to Tuscany, that looked upon the world to love it: for she saw that it was very good.

III

A SACRIFICE AT PRATO

_(An Old-fashioned Narrative)_

[Footnote: Perhaps I may be allowed to explain that this article was written from the standpoint of a cultivated Pagan of the Empire, who should have journeyed in Time as well as Space.]

The rim of the sun was burning the hill tops, and already the vanguard of his strength stemming the morning mists, when I and my companion first trod the dust of a small town which stood in our path. It still lay very hard and white, however, and sharply edged to its girdle of olives and mulberry trees drenched in dews, a compactly folded town, well fortified by strong walls and many towers, with the mist upon it and softly over it like a veil. For it lay well under the shade of the hills awaiting the sun's coming. In the streets, though they were by no means asleep, but, contrariwise, busy with the traffic of men and pack-mules, there was a shrewd bite as of night air; looking up we could perceive how faint the blue of the sky was, and the cloud-flaw how rosy yet with the flush of Aurora's beauty-sleep. Therefore we were glad to get into the market- place, filled with people and set round with goodly brick buildings, and to feel the light and warmth steal about our limbs.

"It would seem fitting," said I, "seeing that day is at hand and already we enjoy the first-fruits of his largess, that we should seek some neighbouring shrine where we might praise the gods. For never yet was land that had not, as its fairest work, gods: and in a land so fair as this there must needs be gods yet fairer, and shrines to case them in." This I said, having observed pious offerings laid upon the shrines of divers gods by the road. At the which, looking curiously, it seemed to me that the inhabitants of this country were favoured above the common with devout thoughts and the objects of them--gods and goddesses. You might not pass a farm without its tutelary altar to the genius of the place, some holy shade, or--as she was figured as a matron--some great land-goddess, perhaps Cybele, or the Bona Dea; and pleasant it was to me to see that the tufts of common flowers set before her were for the most part smiling and fresh with the dew that assured an early gathering. In the streets of the city, moreover, I had seen many more such, slight affairs (it is true) of painted earthenware, some gaudily adorned with green and yellow colour and of workmanship as raw, some painted flat on the wall of a recess (in which was more skill, though the device was often gross enough--to dwell upon death and despair), and some again of choice beauty, both of form and colour, and a most rare blitheness, as it might be the spirit of the contrivers breaking through the hard stone. And all of these I knew to be gods, but the devices upon them were hard to be read, or approved. There was a naked youth pierced with arrows, wherein the texture of smooth flesh accorded not well with the bitterness of his hurt; a young man also, bearded, of spare and mournful habit and girt with a rope round his middle; in his hands were wounds, as again of arrows, and there was a rent in his garment where a javelin had torn a way into his side. Such suffering of wounds and broken flesh stared sharply up against the young flowers and grasses which spoke of healthy wind and rain and a sun-kissed earth. Goddesses also I saw--a virgin of comely red and white visage; yellow-haired she was, crowned like a king's daughter; at her side a wheel, cruelly spiked on the outer edge and not easily to be related to so heart-some a maid. But before them all (with one grim exception, to be sure) I saw the Earth-Mother who had been upon the farm and homestead- walls, of the same high perfection of form, and in raiment stately and adorned, yet (it would seem) something sorrowful as she might mourn the loss of lover or young child. Now the darkest sight I saw was that exception before rehearsed; and it was this. A black cross stood In the most joyful places of the city, and one suffered upon it to very death. Whereat I marvelled greatly, saying, "Who Is the man thus tormented whom the people worship as a god?" And my companion answered,

"A great god he is, if the country report lie not, and has many names, which amount to this, that he has freed this nation from bondage and died that he may live again, and they too. And of the truth of what they say I cannot speak; but I think he is Bacchus the Redeemer, who, as you, Balbus, know, was no wanton reveller in lasciviousness, but a very god of great benevolence and of wisdom truly dark and awful. Who also took our mortal nature upon him and suffered in the shades: rising whence (for he was god and man) like the dawn from the night's bosom, or the flooding of spring weather from the iron gates of winter, he sped over land and sea, touching earth and the dwellers upon it. And to those he touched tongues were given and soothsaying, and to many the transports of inspiration and divine madness, as of poets and rhapsodists. And tragedy and choral odes are his, and the furious splendour of dances. But of the worship of Dionysus you know something, having been at Eleusis and beheld the holy mysteries.

"Now the god of this people has the same gift of tongues and madness of possession. To him are also sacred priests of the oracle, and high tragedies, and the wailing of music, and streaming processions of virgins and young boys. He too agonised and arose stronger and more shining than before, dying, indeed, and rising at the very vernal equinox we have mentioned. He too is worshipped in certain Mysteries whereat the confession of iniquity and the cleansing of hearts come first: and the sacrifice is just that wheaten cake and fruit of the vine whereof, at Eleusis, you have praised to me the simplicity and ethic beauty. And he can inspire his devotees with frenzy. For I have heard that certain men of the country, on a day, and urged by his dæmon, run naked from place to place in honour of him, lashing their bare backs with ox-goads; and will fast by the week together, they and the women alike; and that pious virgins, under stress of these things, swoon and are floated betwixt earth and heaven, and afterwards relate their blissful encounters and prophesy strange matters; receiving also dolorous wounds (which nevertheless are very sweet to them) like to the wounds which he himself received unto death; and all these things they endure because they are mystically fraught with the wisdom and efficacy of the god. Nay, I have been told that in the parts over sea, towards the North and West, he is worshipped, just as at Eleusis, with pipes and timbrels and brazen cymbals and all excess of music; and there they dance in his service and suffer the ecstasies of the Mænads and Corybants in the Dionysiac revel. But this I find quaint to be believed."

Now when I had heard so much, I was the more desirous to find some temple where I could observe the cult of this wounded gods and so sought counsel of my friend versed in the people's learning. To my questioning he replied that it would be easy. We were (said he) in the market-place among the buyers and chafferers of fruit, vegetables, earthenware, milk, eggs, and such country produce; which honest folk, it being the hour of the morning sacrifice and the temple facing us, would soon abandon their brisk toil for religion's sake; whereupon we too would go. So I looked across the square and saw a very fair building, lofty and many windowed, all of clean white marble, banded over with bars of a smooth black stone, curiously carved, moreover, in sculptured work of gods and men and of flowers and fruits--all cut in the pure marble. At one side was a noble rostrum, of the like fine stone, whereon young boys and girls, as it were fauns and dryads and other woodland creatures, capered as they list: and above the midmost door a semicircle of pale blue enamel, whereon was the image of the Great Goddess in gleaming white. She was of smiling debonnair countenance and in the full pride of her blossom-time--being as a young woman whose girdle is new loosed to the will of her lord--and in her arms was a naked child, finely wrought to the size of life. On either side of her a beautiful youth (in whom I must needs admire the smoothness of their chins and the bravery of their vesture shining in the clear light) did reverence to the Goddess and the child: and there were beings, winged like birds, with the faces of strong boys, but no bodies at all that I could see, who flew above them all. This was brave work, very wonderful to me in a people who, thus excellently inspired and having such comely smiling divinities and so clear a vision of them before their eyes, could yet be curious after suffering heroes and stabbed virgins and gods with mangled limbs. But we went into the temple with the good people of the country- side to the sound of bells from a high tower hard by. And I was something surprised that they brought no beasts with them for the sacrifice, nor any of the fruits which were so abundant in the land; but my companion reminded me again that the sacrifice was ready prepared within, and was, as it were, emblematical of all fruits and every sort of meat, being that wine and bread into which you may comprehend all bodily and (by a figure) ghostly sustenance. By this we were within the temple, which I now perceived was a pantheon, having altars to all the gods, some only of whose shrines I had remarked on the way thither. Dark and lofty it was, with piered arches that soared into the mist, and jewelled windows painfully worked in histories and fables of old time:--all as far apart as conceivably might be from the holy places of my own country; for whereas, with us, the level gaze of the sun is never absent, and through the colonnades you would see stretches of the far blue country, or, perchance, the shimmer of the restless sea, here no light of day could penetrate, and all the senses might apprehend must be of solemn darkness, longing thoughts to cleave it, and, afar off and dim, some flutter of even light as of blest abodes. A strange people! to despise the sure and fair, for the taunting shadows of desire. But, growing more familiar in the middle of newness and the awe that comes of it, I was again amazed at the number of the gods, their nature and sort. I saw again the arrow-stricken youth, whom we call Asclepius (but never knew thus tormented--as with his father's arrows!) and again the Maid of the Wheel, Fortune as I suppose: but with us the wheel is not so manifestly bitter. Then also the wounded hero, cowled and corded, ragged exceedingly, the like of whom we have not, unless it be some stripling loved by an immortal and wounded to death by grudging Fate, as Atys or Adonis. And if, indeed, this were one of them, the image-maker did surely err in making him of so vile a presence--a thing against all likelihood that the gods, being themselves of super- excellent shapeliness, should stoop to anything of less favour. Yet he was of singular sweetness in his pains, and high fortitude: and he was much loved of the people, as I afterwards learned. And one was a young knight, winged and with a sword in his hand; at his feet a grievous worm of many folds. This I must take for Perseus but that his radiancy did rather point him for Phoebus, the lord of days and the red sun. But in the centre of the whole temple was an altar, high and broad, fenced about with steps and a rail, which I took to be made unto the god of gods or perhaps the king of that country, until I saw the black cross and the Agonist hanging from it as one dead. Then I knew that the chief god of this people was Dionysus the Redeemer, if it were really he. But I had reason to alter my opinion on that matter as you shall hear.

By this the temple was filled with the country folk who flocked In with the very reek of their toil upon them and hardly so much as their implements and marketable wares left behind. They were of all ages and conditions, both youths and maids, arrowy, tall and open-eyed; and aged ones there were, bowed by labour and seamed with the stress of weather or the assaults of unstaying Fate: whereof, for the most part, the women sat down against the wall and plied dextrously their fans; but the men stood leaning against the pillars which held the timbers of the roof. And they conversed easily together, and some were merry, and others, as I could perceive, beset with affairs of government or business--for they talked more vehemently of these matters than of others, as men will, even beneath the very eyelids of the god. And so I could understand that this sacrifice was not the yearly celebrating of high mysteries, but the common piety of every day with which it is rather seemly than essential we should begin our labouring. There were, indeed, signs in the apparelling of the temple that more solemn festivals were sometimes held, as the delivery of oracles, the calculation of auspices and such like: that, at least, I took to be the intention of small recesses along the walls, that, through a grating of fine brass, a priest of the sanctuary uttered the wisdom of the god in sentences which the meaner sort should fit with what ease they might to their circumstances. For, I suppose, it is still found good that the dark saying of the Oracle shall be illumined by the subtlety of the initiate and not by the necessities of the simple. And while I was thus musing I found the ministrants in shining white about the great altar, busied with the preparation for the rite, lighting the torches (very inconsiderable for so large a building, but, mayhap, proportionate to the condition of the people): and they placed a great book upon the altar, and bowed themselves ere they left. And soon afterwards, to the ringing of a bell, came the priest's boy carrying the offering of the altar, and the priest himself in stiff garments of white and yellow.

Now, for the sacrifice, I could not well understand it, save that it was very shortly done and with a light heart accepted by the people, who (I thought) held it as of the number of those services whose bare performance is efficacious and wholesome--on account, partly of reverent antiquity and long usage, and partly as having some hidden virtue best known to the god in whose honour it is done. For in my own country, I know well there were many such rites, whose commission edified the people more than their omission would have dishonoured the god: wise men, therefore (as priests and philosophers), who would live in peace, bow their bodies by rule, knowing surely that their souls may be bolt upright notwithstanding. So here were many solemn acts which, doubtless, once had some now unfathomable design and purport, diligently rehearsed, while the worshippers gazed about with dull unconcern, or being young, cast eyes of longing upon the country wenches set laughing and rosy by the wall, or, old, nursed their infirmities. And, on a sudden, a bell rang; and again rang; and the packed body of men and women fell upon their faces, and so remained in a horrific silence for a space where a man might count a score. Thereafter another bell, as of release. So the assembly rose to their feet and, as I saw, swept from their foreheads and breasts the dust of the temple floor. But as soon as it was over, a very old priest came through the press and offered the same sacrifice in a little guarded shrine at the lower end, amid many lamps and wax torches and glittering ornaments. Here was more devotion among the people, indeed a great struggling and elbowing just so as to touch the altar, or the steps of it, or the priest's hem, or even the rails which fenced the shrine. And with some show of good reason was this hubbub, as I learned. For here was indeed treasured the Girdle of Venus (this being her very sanctuary) and as much desired as ever it was by women great with child or wanting to conceive. And I looked very curiously upon it, but the Girdle I could never see; only there was a painted image over the altar of the great queen-mother, Venus Genetrix herself, depicted as a broad-browed, placid matron giving of the fruits of her bounteous breasts to a male child. Then I knew that this was that same Goddess who stood over the outer door of the place, and was well pleased to find that the people, howsoever ignorantly, adored the power that enwombs the world--Venus, the life- bringer and quickener of things that breathe,--and could, in this matter, touch hearts with the wise. So with this thought, that truly God was one and men divers, I came out of the temple well pleased, into the level light of the day's beam.