Cannot snow out the scent from stones and air
Of a sincere man’s virtues.”
Savonarola had had his autos-da-fé in places as public as the Piazza della Signoria—pyres, on which women cast rouge-pots, and false hair, and all manner of meretricious personal adornments; to whose flames bad books and licentious paintings and statues were resigned by converted authors and owners. The thunders of his invectives against spiritual wickedness in high places, reached and jarred the proudest throne in Christian Europe. To the proffered bribe of a cardinal’s hat, he returned word—“I will have no red hat, but one reddened with mine own blood—the crown given to the saints.”
Pope and rabble granted his wish.
From the scene of his death we drove straight to the Convent of San Marco, his home. Upon the walls and roof of the monastery, the friars fought like trapped wolves on the night of the requisition for their brother. It was he, not they, who surrendered the body of Savonarola to save the sacred place from sack and fire. It was, then, outside of the town that is now packed in dense, high blocks and far-reaching streets all around church and cloisters. These last surround a quadrangle of turf and flowers. The street-gate shut behind us with a resonant clang, and conventual loneliness and quietness were about us. Above the sacristy-door is a fresco of Peter the Martyr, his hand laid upon his mouth, signifying that silence was the rule of the Dominican order. The spirit of the brotherhood lingers here yet, impressing itself upon all who pass within the monastic bounds. We spoke and stepped softly, without bidding on the subject, in going from one to another of the frescoes on the inner walls of the porticoes or open cloisters. They are nearly all from the hand—and heart—of John of Fiesole, known best as Fra Angelico, the monk of sweet and holy memory, who prayed while he painted; whose demons were all amiable failures; whose angel-faces came to him in celestial trances. The unoccupied cells of the monks on the second floor—square closets, each containing a single window, are adorned with pictures of the Passion from his brush. Faded, now—never elaborate in color or finish, each tells its story, and with power. How much more eloquent must that story have been when the solitary inmate of the chamber knelt upon the bare floor, the awful silence that could be heard shutting down upon him—the one token of human sympathy left him, the agonizing image above his oratory!
In Savonarola’s room are his chair, haircloth shirt, MSS., crucifix, and, among other relics, a piece of wood from his gibbet. His portrait hangs over his writing-table. It is a harsh, strong, dark visage in striking profile, the monk’s cowl drawn tightly around it. We obtained photographs of it in the convent, and one of Fra Angelico, a mild, beautiful face, with a happy secret in the large, luminous eyes. Mrs. Browning interprets it:
“Angelico,
The artist-saint, kept smiling in his cell.
The smile with which he welcomed the sweet, slow
Inbreak of angels—(whitening through the dim,