S. Bernardino.
The Oratory was built in 1450 by the magistrates of Perugia, who were anxious to leave to their city some enduring mark of the man whose influence in times of extreme moral depravity and perpetual party strife had been so purely one of good to the citizens of Perugia. The life of S. Bernardino of Siena is familiar to most people. He, like S. Francis, exercised an extraordinary power over the minds of men in the middle ages by the mere example of pure living and sweetness of character, but perhaps his power lay a little more in preaching and in stirring men to action than that of the saint of Assisi, whose influence was more absolutely that of peace.
S. Bernardino of Siena was born at Massa, near Siena, in 1380. His mother died early, leaving the child to the care of an aunt. By this lady, Diana degli Albizeschi, he was educated with extreme care and tenderness, and he grew up beautiful, gracious, and very pure of heart. At seventeen he joined a confraternity at Siena, and by the early age of twenty-four he had already shaken an always weak constitution by his great labours for the sick in the time of plague. He died at Aquila in the Abruzzi, and was canonized in 1450 by Pope Nicholas V. S. Bernardino’s life was one perpetual strain towards the light in an age which was dark, and one of its greatest objects had been to reconcile the mutual hatred of the Guelphs and Ghibellines. He was full of child-like faith and wise philanthropy; and tradition says that it was he who started the first Monte di Pietà or pawnshop, and Perugia claims the privilege of having seen the first of these institutions.[77]
The figure of S. Bernardino is always unmistakable in art, and it becomes familiar to us in Perugia, where he exercised an extraordinary power, and where he would preach from his pulpit in the public square to an almost maddened crowd of penitents. The saint is always represented holding a square tablet with the initials of Christ set round with rays upon it, because he was accustomed to hold one of these whilst preaching. His face is emaciated, but beautiful both in line and in expression; it is a face which the spirit illumines with an unmistakable glory. Mrs Jameson, in her life of the saint, says that the finest sculptured portrait of him is that on the façade of his Oratory at Perugia; and certainly, if taken merely as a graceful bit of art, few things could do more honour to the man whose best tribute, however, will always be his extraordinary hold on the hearts of men throughout the whole of Italy.
In 1461 the people of Perugia called in a Florentine sculptor, Agostino Ducci or Gucci, to ornament the façade of their new oratory. This sculptor is described by both Vasari and Mariotti as Agostino della Robbia, and connected, either as a son or a brother, with that well-known family. The connection is, however, not proved, neither does his work seem to corroborate it in any way.[78]
The façade of S. Bernardino is a marvellous and perhaps a unique thing in art. The work on it is light and airy like the winds of spring. The figures of the angels, the garlands, and the saint himself, are full of that elegant and subtle charm which now and then surprises one in sculpture. Ducci made wonderful use of the pale pink marble of the country, mixing it with terra-cotta figures, bits of blue sky, and marble, creamy white, for all his garlands. Perhaps the loveliest figures, where all are lovely, are those of the six virtues, Mercy,[79] Holiness, and Purity, Religion, Mortification, and Patience, on either side of the entrance doors. But the different angels playing on different instruments, and the flying angels round the figure of the saint, are each delightful in their separate ways. Even the inevitable griffin seems softened by the hand of the Florentine sculptor, and he has admirably caught the purely spiritual nature of the saint, both in the large central portrait, and in the smaller plaques where some of his miracles are represented. Siepi gives a full description of the different scenes:
“Under the two higher niches,” he says, “are two squares, and on the right one of these we see the Saint, who, whilst preaching on the Isola Maggiore of our Lake of Trasimene received into his order the blessed Giacomo of the Marches.... To the left,” he continues, “the Saint is discovered preaching, and illuminated by a star, which in the full light of day shines over his head, a miracle which happened in the city of Aquila five years before his death, while preaching the praises of Mary.... Three other miracles of the Saint are given on the frieze below. In the middle one of these we see the Saint preaching to the people of Perugia, and the bonfire which he made them light on the piazza of our Duomo, where books of superstition, of necromancy and the law of astrology were burned in public, together with fashionable follies of the period: packs of cards, obscene pictures, forbidden weapons and ornaments of female luxury—instruments all of iniquity and of delight. Therefore it is that from the flames demons are seen to rise. In the miracle to the right we see two children saved by the intercession of the Saint from the furious waters of a mill-stream in which, having been caught, they were miraculously saved by the Saint from death....”
It is not very clear why this particular spot was chosen from all others on which to build the Oratory of S. Bernardino, but it was probably because it stood so close to the convent of S. Francesco al Prato, where the Saint, who himself was a Franciscan, would naturally stay when he paid his visits to Perugia. We hear that he was deeply attached to a certain bell which hung in the campanile of the convent, and which bore the name of Viola and was noted for the peculiar sweetness of its voice. It happened once, when all the bells of the town were ringing, that Viola fell. S. Bernardino was preaching at the minute up in the square of the cathedral, but by a miracle he heard her fall and stopped his sermon for an instant, saying to the people: “My children, Viola has fallen, but she is not harmed!” and he was right. Viola was set up in her place again and rings with a clear strong voice, dear to the heart of the Perugians, even in the present century.[80]
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Long even before the birth of S. Bernardino a much older order or Confraternità held its meetings in the small church at the back of the present oratory. This was the Confraternità di S. Andrea della Giustizia, and it was one of the earliest of those remarkable societies—one may almost describe them as religious guilds—which rose up out of that great devotional movement at the end of the middle ages which resulted in the extraordinary processions and displays of the “Flagellants.” “The movement,” says Doctor Creighton, “passed away; but it has left its dress as a distinctive badge to the confraternities of mercy which are familiar to the traveller in the streets of many cities of Italy.”
Morals, as we have seen, were very low in the thirteenth and the fourteenth century; blood flowed freely in party feuds and towns were devastated and corrupted by the strife of church and people. All these things, and the great pestilence which ravaged the country and the cities, were taken, and probably with perfect justice, to be the signs of an offended deity. “It was then,” says Bonazzi, “when men had grown familiar with death, that those strange songs arose which the people sang in the moonlight, wrapped in white sheets, whilst they danced the dances of the dead about the streets, clanging the bones together in weird accompaniment to their songs.” Doctor Creighton[81] dates this movement to the end of the fourteenth century. He says also that it originated in Provence. Perugia, however, lays strong claim to having herself sown the first seed, and this as early as the middle of the thirteenth century, of the displays of the Flagellants.
In 1265 we read the strange tale of a monk who describes himself as “Fra Raniero Fasano de Peroscia Comenzatore della Regola dei Battuti di Bologna.” Raniero tells us that he was accustomed, as a young monk at Perugia, to lead a life of excessive privation and abnegation, and one day, when scourging himself as was his custom, he was joined in a vision by certain saints who accompanied him to the church of S. Fiorenzo, and there they all beat themselves together in front of the high altar. This vision occurred day after day to Raniero, but at last one of the saints spoke to him and told him that it was the will of heaven that men should purge their sins in this same fashion. Raniero carried his tale to the Bishop, who expounded it in a sermon to the inhabitants of Perugia, and this, according to some historians, was the origin of all the fantastic demonstrations of public repentance which soon spread over Italy, and from which, as years went by, there arose the calmer and more practical institutions of Confraternities in the several cities. One of the earliest of these at Perugia itself was the company of S. Andrea, and it is interesting to read its laws and statutes. Through its own annals we find that it was started in 1374, during the reign of Pope Gregory XI. “for the furtherance of the worship of God and of His Mother the blessed Virgin Mary, and of the glorious martyrs and protectors of the city—Messers Sancto Ercolano, Sancto Laurenzo, Sancto Costanzo, and Sancto Andrea the apostle; and for the honour and estate of the Holy Mother Church and her protectors; and further for the maintenance, the governing, the magnificence, and the peaceful state of the people and the city of Peroscia.”
Infinite and careful laws of civil and religious duties follow—laws for the maintenance of peace and the Christian comfort of souls: the day of the saint was to be most strictly kept, fasting if possible, or by him who could not fast, a feast was to be given to a beggar or twenty-five paternosters told, “and all must be at mass that day or pay a fine of twenty soldi.” But the great work of the society of S. Andrea was the help and protection of criminals. Its members got permission from the city government to meet those who were going to execution, and to accompany them to the scene of death, comforting them by the way, and sustaining them with prayers and even sweetmeats to the very last. In early times criminals were beheaded far from the city walls; and in Perugia the place of doom was down in the open country on the site of an old Etruscan tomb, the Torre di S. Manno. “Wherefore,” writes one historian, “in the fatal passing of these miserable people, the pious disciplinati met them on the threshold, comforted them, assisted them, and went with them even unto the gallows.” Hence probably the name of “Giustizia” given to this particular square, and not, as is usually said, because justice was carried out on the spot itself.
The Confraternità of S. Andrea continued to increase both in power and in size. Other societies of the same charitable sort sprang up all through the city, and after the death of S. Bernardino of Siena a new one was started in his name at Porta Eburnea. But in one of the great fights between the nobles, their buildings were so knocked about and mutilated that the members of the society had to seek out different quarters, and they then joined themselves to the older confraternity of S. Andrea down at S. Francesco and thenceforth “worked together, extending their labour of charity to the inspection of prisons, and to the Christian comfort of prisoners.”[82]