[1091] We must make a further distinction between the Italian cultus of the bodies of historical saints of recent date, and the northern practice of collecting bones and relics of a sacred antiquity. Such remains were preserved in great abundance in the Lateran, which, for that reason, was of special importance for pilgrims. But on the tombs of St. Dominic and St. Anthony of Padua rested, not only the halo of sanctity, but the splendour of historical fame.
[1092] The remarkable judgment in his De Sacris Diebus, the work of his later years, refers both to sacred and profane art (l. i.). Among the Jews, he says, there was a good reason for prohibiting all graven images, else they would have relapsed into the idolatry or devil-worship of the nations around them:
Nunc autem, postquam penitus natura Satanum
Cognita, et antiqua sine majestate relicta est,
Nulla ferunt nobis statuae discrimina, nullos
Fert pictura dolos; jam sunt innoxia signa;
Sunt modo virtutum testes monimentaque laudum
Marmora, et aeternae decora immortalia famae.
[1093] Battista Mantovano complains of certain ‘nebulones’ (De Sacris Diebus, l. v.) who would not believe in the genuineness of the Sacred Blood at Mantua. The same criticism which called in question the Donation of Constantine was also, though indirectly, hostile to the belief in relics.
[1094] Especially the famous prayer of St. Bernard, Paradiso, xxxiii. 1, ‘Vergine madre, figlia del tuo figlio.’
[1095] Perhaps we may add Pius II., whose elegy on the Virgin is printed in the Opera, p. 964, and who from his youth believed himself to be under her special protection. Jac. Card. Papiens. ‘De Morte Pii,’ Opp. p. 656.
[1096] That is, at the time when Sixtus IV. was so zealous for the Immaculate Conception. Extravag. Commun. l. iii. tit. xii. He founded, too, the Feast of the Presentation of the Virgin in the Temple, and the Feasts of St. Anne and St. Joseph. See Trithem. Ann. Hirsaug. ii. p. 518.
[1097] The few frigid sonnets of Vittoria on the Madonna are most instructive in this respect (n. 85 sqq. ed. P. Visconti, Rome, 1840).
[1098] Bapt. Mantuan. De Sacris Diebus, l. v., and especially the speech of the younger Pico, which was intended for the Lateran Council, in Roscoe, Leone X. ed. Bossi, viii. p. 115. Comp. p. 121, note 3.
[1099] Monach. Paduani Chron. l. iii. at the beginning. We there read of this revival: ‘Invasit primitus Perusinos, Romanes postmodum, deinde fere Italiæ populos universos.’ Guil. Ventura (Fragmenta de Gestis Astensium in Mon. Hist. Patr. SS. tom. iii. col. 701) calls the Flagellant pilgrimage ‘admirabilis Lombardorum commotio;’ hermits came forth from their cells and summoned the cities to repent.