[537] Especially noteworthy in this respect at the present day is the Church of Santa Maria delle Grazie, near Mantua (in which the famous author of the “Cortegiano,” Baldassare Castiglione, is buried), where life-size, realistic wax figures, wearing real garments or armour, form a continuous series above the arches on both sides of the nave. Each scene commemorates a miraculous intervention of the Virgin: innocents saved at the moment of their execution, the halter breaking, the axe stopped, etc. The “custode” also directs attention to a stuffed animal, dangling from the roof, and which he describes as a “crocodilo” which used to desolate the country.
[538] “The Book of the Knight of La Tour Landry,” translated from the French, ed. Thomas Wright, Early English Text Society, 1868, p. 70. The original French is of the fourteenth century.
[539] “Miracles de Nostre Dame,” collected by Jean Miélot, ed. G. F. Warner, Roxburghe Club, 1885, p. 58. This version of the tale is of the fifteenth century, but the story itself is much older.
[540] i.e. St. Catherine of Mount Sinai.
[541] William Wey, in the fifteenth century, thus mentions the catacombs: “Item ibi est una spelunca nuncupata Sancti Kalixti cimiterium, et qui eam pertransit cum devocione, illi indulgentur omnia sua peccata. Et ibi multa corpora sanctorum sunt, que nullus hominum numerare nequit nisi solus Deus,” “The Itineraries of William Wey,” Roxburghe Club, 1857, p. 146. Wey, like the author of the poem, sometimes mentions prodigious numbers of bodies of martyrs; at the church called Scala Celi, “sunt ossa sanctorum decem millia militum;” in one single part of St. Peter’s at Rome, are “Petronella et xiii millia sanctorum martyrum.”
[542] William Wey said of the church of the Holy Cross: “Item, ibi sunt duo ciphi, unus plenus sanguine Ihesu Cristi, and alter plenus lacte beate Marie Virginis,” “Itineraries,” p. 146. Those who drink at the three fountains which gushed out at the death of St. Paul are cured of all maladies; those who visit the church of St. Mary of the Annunciation will never be struck by lightning; at the church of St. Vivian there is “herba crescens quam ipsa plantavit et valet contra caducum morbum.” At the church of St. Sebastian is shown a foot-print of Jesus; and it is, in fact, still to be seen there at the present day. Ibid. pp. 143–148.
[543] In the Borghese chapel.
[544] “The Stacions of Rome,” fourteenth century, ed. F. J. Furnivall, Early English Text Society, 1867. Another version of the “Stacions,” with variants, was printed by the same in “Political, Religious, and Love Poems,” Early English Text Society, 1866, p. 113. See in this last volume notes by W. M. Rossetti on the “Stacions,” pp. xxi–xlviii, paralleling the information furnished by the English author with that given by the Italian Francino, who wrote on the same subject in 1600, and whose numbers are much less exaggerated. Mr. Rossetti states also what is still shown at Rome of the relics named in the “Stacions.”
The Saint Luke legend appears in a somewhat different form in William Wey, according to whom the saint was about to paint when he fell asleep, and the angels made the picture for him, “Itineraries,” p. 143. A similar legend is attached to the great wooden crucifix of Byzantine workmanship, called in the middle ages the “Saint Vou” (the Holy Face, vultus), at Lucca, begun by Nicodemus after the Ascension, and miraculously finished during his sleep. Bédier, “Légendes épiques,” 1908, II. 210.
[545] “Ye Solace of Pilgrimes, a description of Rome circa A.D. 1450, by John Capgrave,” ed. Mills and Bannister, Oxford, 1911, 4º.