A Golden Book of Venice

by Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull

"I believe thee," said Beppo, earnestly; "and that was he going in behind the banner, with the Servi."

The little fellows made an instant rush for the door, and squeezed themselves in behind the poor old women of the neighborhood for whom festivals were perquisites, and who, maimed or deformed, knelt on the stone floor close to the entrance, while with keenly observant, ubiquitous eyes they proffered their aves and their petitions for alms with the same exemplary patience and fervor—"Per l'amor di Dio, Signori!"

The body of the church, from the door to the great white marble screen of the choir and from column to column, was filled with an assembly in which the brilliant and scholarly elements predominated; and seen through the marvelous fretwork of this screen of leafage and scroll and statue and arch, intricately wrought and enhanced with gilding, the choir presented an almost bewildering pageant. The dark wood background of the stalls and canopies, elaborately carved and polished and enriched with mosaics, each surmounted with its benediction of a gilded winged cherub's head, framed a splendid figure in sacerdotal robes. Through the small, octagonal panes of the little windows encircling the choir—row upon row, like an antique necklace of opals set in frosted stonework—the sunlight slanted in a rainbow mist, broken by splashes of yellow flame from great wax candles in immense golden candlesticks, rising from the floor and steps of the altar, as from the altar itself. From great brass censers, swinging low by exquisite Venetian chainwork, fragrant smoke curled upward, crossing with slender rays of blue the gold webwork of the sunlight; and on either side golden lanterns rose high on scarlet poles, above the heads of the friars who crowded the church.

On the bishop's throne, surrounded by the bishops of the dioceses of Venice, sat the Patriarch, who had been graciously permitted to honor this occasion, as it had no political significance; and opposite him Fra Marco Germano, the head of the order of the Frari, presided in a state scarcely less regal.

His splendid gift, the masterpiece of Titian, had been fitted into the polished marble framework over the great altar, and never had the master so excelled himself as in this glorious "Assumption." The beauty, the power, the persuasive sense of motion in the figure of the Madonna, which seemed divinely upborne,—the loveliness of the infant cherubs, the group of the Apostles solemnly attesting the mysterious event,—were singularly and inimitably impressive, full of aspiration and faith, compelling the serious recognition of the sacredness and greatness of the Christian mystery.

The choir-screen terminated in pulpits at either side, and here again the Apostles stood in solemn guardianship on its broad parapet—but emblems, rather; of the stony rigidity of doctrines which have been shaped by the minds of men from some little phase of truth, than of that glowing, spiritualized, human sympathy which, as the soul of man grows upward into comprehension, is the apostle of an ever widening truth. And over the richly sculptured central arch which forms the entrance to the choir, against the incongruous glitter of gold and jewels and magnificent garments and lights and sumptuous, overwrought details—the very extravagance of the Renaissance—a great black marble crucifix bore aloft the most solemn Symbol of the Christian Faith.

The religious ceremonial with which the festival had opened was over, and down the aisles on either side, past the family altars, with their innumerable candles and lanterns and censers,—ceaselessly smoking in memorial of the honored dead,—the brothers of the Frari and the Servi marched in solemn procession to the chant of the acolytes, returning to mass themselves in the transepts, in fuller view of the pulpits, before the contest began. The Frari had taken their position on the right, under the elaborate hanging tomb of Fra Pacifico—a mass of sculpture, rococo, and gilding; the incense rising from the censer swinging below the coffin of the saint carried the eye insensibly upward to the grotesque canopy, where cumbrous marble clouds were compacted of dense masses of saints' and cherubs' heads with uncompromising golden halos.

Some of the younger brothers scattered leaflets containing heads of the theses.

There was a stir among the crowd; a few went out, having witnessed the pageant; but there was a flutter of increased interest among those who remained, as a venerable man, in the garb of the Frari, mounted the pulpit on the right.

The Abbé Morelli sat in an attitude of breathless interest, and now a look of intense anxiety crossed his face. "It is Fra Teodoro, the ablest disputant of the Frari!" he exclaimed. "The trial is too great."