There is an old church in Rome named in honor of St. Praxed or Praxedes. The Bishop's Tomb, however, "is entirely fictitious, although something which is made to stand for it is now shown to credulous sightseers." (Mrs. Orr, Handbook to Robert Browning's Works, p. 247.)
Ruskin says of this poem: "Robert Browning is unerring in every sentence he writes of the Middle Ages—always vital, right, and profound, so that in the matter of art, with which we are specially concerned, there is hardly a principle connected with the medieval temper that he has not struck upon in these seemingly careless and too rugged lines of his.... I know no other piece of modern English prose or poetry in which there is so much told, as in these lines, of the Renaissance spirit—its worldliness, inconsistency, pride, hypocrisy, ignorance of itself, love of art, of luxury, and of good Latin. It is nearly all that I have said of the central Renaissance, in thirty pages of 'The Stones of Venice,' put into as many lines, Browning's also being the antecedent work." (Modern Painters, Vol. iv, pp. 337-9.) "It was inevitable that the great period of the Renaissance should produce men of the type of the Bishop of St. Praxed; it would be grossly unfair to set him down as the type of the churchmen of his time." Berdoe, Browning Cyclopædia, p. 81.
1. Vanity, saith the preacher, vanity. Cf. ll. 8-9, 51-52, as illustrative of the religious professionalism of the Bishop's talk. He drops into the ecclesiastical conception of life and death, and into the phraseology of his order.
21. Epistle-side. The right-hand side facing the altar, where the epistle is read by the priest acting as celebrant, the gospel being read from the other side by the priest acting as assistant.
29. Peach-blossom marble. This rosy marble delights the Bishop as much as the pale cheap onion-stone offends him. The lapis-lazuli, a rich blue stone (l. 42), the antique-black (Nero-antico), a rare black marble (l. 34), the beautiful green jasper (l. 68), the elaborate carving planned for the bronze frieze (l. 56-62, 106-111), show not only that the Bishop covets what is costly, but that his highly cultivated taste knows real beauty.
34. That conflagration. The eagerness of the Bishop for the lump of the lapis-lazuli has made him steal even from his own church.
41. Olive-frail. A basket made of rushes, used for packing olives.
57. Those Pans and Nymphs. The underlying paganism of the Bishop produces a strangely incongruous mixture on his tomb—the Savior, St. Praxed, Moses, Pan, and the Nymphs.
58. Thyrsus. The ivy-coiled staff or spear stuck in a pine-cone, symbol of the Bacchic orgy.
68. Travertine. A white limestone, the name being a corruption of Tiburninus, from Tibur, now Tivoli, near Rome, whence this stone comes.