pomps of the funeral show, deaf to the grief and affection lavished on the frail body she has left, received, sheltered, safe with God!
Fina de’ Ciardi belonged to a noble but impoverished family. She lost her father while she was an infant, and lived in the most abject and laborious indigence with her mother, and on the death of her mother, which took place while she was yet a child, she was left entirely destitute. From the age of ten until she died, a period of five or six years, she was deprived of the use of her limbs, partly from disease, partly from the ascetic privations to which the poor little girl in her blind gropings after the only perfection she had ever heard of, condemned herself. On the charity of a lady named Bonaventura, and on the tender care of her nurse Beldia, she depended for bare existence, yet she was always patient, resigned, and grateful. Here there is nothing of outward splendour or romantic interest to attract the imagination. Disease, dependence, poverty, would seem unpromising conditions to win the world’s favour, yet from these was woven the palm which the fair young saint upholds before our eyes. Disease taught patience; dependence, humility; poverty, self-denial.
Without a word as to the supernatural adjuncts of the legend, it must be allowed that there is something touching in the consecration of this youthful goodness: a young girl’s memory floating down the tide of time, till we in the nineteenth century, strangers and wayfarers, come to render our heartfelt homage to the art which has immortalised her, and to be affected by the history of her innocent, suffering, and pious life. That brief epitaph on a slab in the cloisters of Westminster Abbey, “Deare childe,” is more powerfully suggestive in some ways,—for who can pass it without a tightening of the heart, as one thinks of the treasure of love which must be there enclosed? but it is more limited. The “deare childe” was beloved, but we know no more. Here the memory is of one loving and suffering, as well as loved. The beatification of Santa Fina was a protest, even in that dark age, in favour of those heroic victories (though rarely thus acknowledged) of the invisible over the visible, and of the divineness of that power often manifested by the feeblest and gentlest of the earth, “to suffer and be strong!”
The exquisite simplicity with which it is painted is worthy of the subject and of our reverence.
Afterwards we went to the adjoining Sala Pubblica, where there are the remains of a most majestic fresco, by some supposed to be by Simone Memmi, by others (and this is borne out by the inscription beneath) by Lippo; by others, an earlier Byzantine origin is attributed to it. A pulpit, from which Dante spoke on an occasion when he was sent on an embassy from Florence to San Gimignano, was the most interesting relic to us, with this inscription on a tablet above. What solemn and triumphal music there is in it!
Dante Alighieri, Ambasciatore per la Repubblica Fiorentina, Il giorno VIII. di Maggio MCCXCIX. In questa sala Al comizio Sangimignanese Parlò, Per la Lega Guelfa, E Trionfò. All’ solenne avvenimento Mancava la memore scritta Cui posero Nel MDCCCXLVII. Festeggiando i nipoti.
From thence we strolled to the church of Sant’ Agostino, adorned with the frescoes of Benozzo Gozzoli, delineating the life of the saint. The same bright colours and thoughtful heads which give so much beauty to the chapel in the Riccardi palace, are here. We then visited several other churches, but without much to reward us. After stepping in for a moment into a little chapel supposed to have belonged to the Knights Templars, at present whitewashed and bare, we walked on to one standing on a small platform just beyond one of the gates. It is supposed to be built on the site of the first Christian church in San Gimignano, but our guide became so confused in his dates that it was difficult to ascertain who worshipped or was worshipped here. He said it had been built and dedicated to Gesu a thousand years before the year one! I think the unknown God to whom it was dedicated was Nature, for the view is a panorama of wonderful beauty, and is in itself a worship and a prayer. It is a strange pleasant feeling to halt for a moment in such a spot, and take in the wide range of loveliness spread as a banquet before us,—prepared as it would seem during centuries to fill our eyes and hearts, gazed on for a moment and then left for ever, but adding one to the imperishable pictures in our gallery of memory.
We then went over the schools and other public buildings, and we noticed one fact, that the man to whom San Gimignano was most indebted for its civic decorations and prosperity was one of her own people, Onofrio, the “operaio.” Traces of his good works are to be found everywhere, and the whole town may be said to be a monument to his memory. We then fulfilled in the most exemplary way the rest of our sight-seeing duties, but without much to reward us, except that we also obtained a few glimpses of national character and customs in the course of our explorings.
I had noticed once or twice, as we passed and re-passed the same streets, a strange figure in a costume something between a priest’s and a groom’s, and had noticed that in spite of the extreme coarseness of his dress, and the weather-tanned colour of his face, there was an indescribable look of good birth about him, a certain confidence and ease in his air and decision in his bearing which did not suit his dress: and when we were taken to see a fresco in a house belonging to the Pratellesi family, I met with him again.
The house was in a wretched street, and in no ways distinguished from the other poor dwellings near it, except from its large and heavy door. We knocked and were admitted. A narrow passage widened into a large kitchen, where a very dirty woman was cooking, and a middle-aged man was talking to her. By his side was the jockey priest, and from the likeness I saw they must be brothers. The kitchen led into a yard where stood some barrels of fresh-made wine, and little dark red streams oozing from them in every direction. We were conducted across this yard through a mess of cats, fowls, dogs, and vegetable refuse, up some broad steps to a little square plot of ground, half-kitchen, half-court, into a veritable abomination of desolation, half-stable and half-granary. Some sacks were removed, a broken shutter was