Page:Goldenlegendlive00jaco.djvu/18

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4
Biographical Introduction

cord in such wise that they have sworn to form henceforth but one body and one fraternity; which has caused such joy that the whole city was filled with gaiety. We ourself, in the solemn assembly in which the peace was concluded, clad in our pontifical robes, have preached the word of God; after which, surrounded by our clergy, with four bishops and mitred abbots, we chanted Te Deum laudamus.

Alas, these halcyon days were too blissful to last! External firebrands were not slow in re-kindling domestic strife.

But as in this low world there can be no unmixed good—for unmixed good is found in heaven, unmixed evil in hell, and our world is a mingling of good and evil—behold, alas, our harp has had again to change its joyful strains into new laments, and the harmony of our organs has been interrupted by voices full of tears. For in this same year, in the month of December, five days after Christmas, the enemy of man's peace stirred up our citizens to such miserable discord that in the midst of our streets and places they have fallen upon one another with arms in hand: after which followed a great many murders, woundings, burnings, and plunderings. And the blindness of this mutual hatred has gone so far that, in order to gain possession of the tower of one Church of St Laurence, a troop of our citizens has not shrunk from setting fire to the church and wholly consuming its roof. And this destructive conflict has lasted from the fifth day after Christmas to the seventh day of February.

In 1298, at the age of seventy, the apostle of conciliation passed over to the world of peace unalloyed. In his last dispositions he bequeathed the little he possessed to the poor of Genoa: he provided that his body should be laid without pomp in the Dominican cloister whose humble and studious shades he had quitted with reluctance. He left behind him many writings, including (it is said) a translation, subse-