Chapter 19
"It was one of those tender and touching friendships which are to 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."
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 Provençal 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 façade 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 Dupré'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."
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 façade, 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