Instantly he felt himself seized from behind, and the dark shapes materialized into Sbirri—soldier police—as he struck out right and left, bellowing and roaring in his fury. But he was only one, and there were twenty or thirty of them, and he was chained hand and foot before he had recovered from his first amazement.
The place was deserted now, save for them, and in the gloom he was hurried along, pushed and hustled down, down, until a door creaked open and he was flung into a cell, pitch-black and damp. The door slammed to behind him, and his little part in the world was played.
The next day he was “put to the question,” but no records remain—none being kept—of what passed in the little cell during the dread ordeal; and twenty days later, gagged and chained, he was led out to the piazza, and there, between the pillars, beheaded.
His grave is in the great Church of St. Francis, in Milan, beside his wife.
While we are still in the North, the story of the Patron of Pisa, St. Raniero, may interest my readers.
He was a Scacciari, born in Pisa about the year 1100, and grew up with the other noble children of the place, cheerful and pleasure-loving as were they—and as, it may be noticed in passing, were several of the greatest Saints in the Calendar.
His conversion came about through a holy man, whose name has not survived. Raniero, one day, was playing and dancing with some damsels in the shade of a great tree, outside the city, when he noticed a man standing near who seemed to be studying him intently; after a while, he laid his lyre down on the grass and returned the gaze, with the intention of bringing home to the stranger the annoyance which the look was causing him. But the stranger continued to stare, and presently the boy arose to approach him.
But, although he had risen to his feet, he made no attempt to advance, for something in the stern, yet gently pitying eyes of the other arrested his movement, and, before he could recover from the half-hypnotized condition, the stranger himself was moving off.
Then the boy came to life, and ran after the man of God, flinging himself upon his knees, and catching at the hem of his garment, and crying out his sorrow for his sins; the other lifted him up, and bade him be of good cheer, but Raniero by now was half blind with weeping, and it was some time before he could see or hear clearly.
He did not turn back again towards Pisa, but made his way, by slow stages, to the Holy Land—no very safe harbourage in the middle of the twelfth century. On arriving, he took off his own clothes, and received from a priest the shirt of a slave, which, for the proper humiliation of the flesh, he continued to wear until he died.