CHAPTER II
SIENNA, PERUGIA, AND VESUVIUS
A TWO days’ excursion to Sienna at the close of our second vintage at Caravaggio was a fit finale to the last visit you and I ever paid to Italy en garçon.
From Tuscany to Etruria—deeper still into the luxury of associating with the past. Honey-coloured Sienna! It dwells in my memory bathed in sunshine; the little city like a golden cup overflowing with the riches it can scarcely hold; the home of St. Catherine and the scene of her ecstasies and superhuman endeavours: the battlefield of St. Bernardine’s manful struggle against vice and luxury and gambling, so rampant and unabashed in his time. Everywhere in this city you see, sculptured on circular plaques of old white marble, let into the walls in street and square, that monogram which all denominations of Christians know so well, the I.H.S. with the Cross—Jesus Hominum Salvator. Whether the engraved characters seen on the tombs in the Roman Catacombs were or were not identical with those three initials and their significance, they were so regarded by all the Churches for centuries, and the monogram which St. Bernardine caused to be set up in this way throughout Sienna was moulded on them in that belief. It was he who caused this emblem to be so placed that the reluctant public eye could not wholly avoid it, and who had it illuminated on tablets which he held up to his congregations at the end of his rousing sermons, thus making that appeal to the mind through the eye which he relied upon as one of his most effectual levers. One may say he morally forced the people to recognise and venerate that Name once more.
Upon the carved coats-of-arms of Guelph and Ghibelline, which seemed to gird at each other from the walls, he imposed this sign of peace, and hence the multiplicity of these lovely symbols I am trying to recall. They are seals which his strong hand stamped upon his native place.
Like all the great saints, Bernardine was practical. The manufacturers of playing-cards and dice, finding their customers leaving them in ever-increasing numbers to follow the Franciscan with a fervour which reached to extraordinary heights, brought their complaints to him. Bankruptcy was upon them. “Turn your talent to painting this Name on cards and sell them to the people.” This was done, and these little tablets with the “I.H.S.” became endowed with a peculiar sanctity to the purchasers and sold well, so that little fortunes flowed in to fill the void left by the fall in playing-cards. All these we spoke of on the spot, I remember, and I write these words to you who know it all better than I do, to show you I have not forgotten.
Sometimes the monogram is inserted in the marble discs in gold on a blue ground. Do you see again those circles of warm white marble, those shining letters surrounded with golden rays on the blue centre, the reflected light in the hollows of the carving, the Italian sky above? These Siennese blank walls are better employed than those of modern Rome, where we may see somebody’s soap or blacking belauded in our mother tongue ad nauseam.