S. Maria della Salute contains many memorials of plague. Over the high altar is a heavy group of marble statuary by Giusto il Corto. In the centre sits the Madonna holding her Child, with cherubs at her feet. On one side kneels a woman entreating her aid: on the other a cherub with flaming torch expels a plague demon of human form.
In the vault of the choir is a ceiling painting by Fiammingo showing Venice imploring liberation from plague.
In the sacristy is Titian’s picture of St. Mark with St. Sebastian, St. Roch, Cosmas, and St. Damian, commemorating the plague of 1512, in which Giorgione perished ([see Plate IX]). Here, too, is Marco Basaiti’s (second half of fifteenth century) votive picture of St. Sebastian, a fine figure in a beautiful Umbrian landscape, but not the peer of Sodoma’s saint: and yet another picture of St. Roch, St. Sebastian, and St. Jerome by Girolamo da Treviso (1497-1544).
CHAPTER XI
Milan had suffered from the Black Death far less than other cities of Italy: maybe she had acquired a transient immunity. For the three succeeding centuries her history is one long catalogue of plagues, of which two claim special notice.
In 1576 plague broke out in late July. [Carlo Borromeo] was archbishop at the time. The son of Ghiberto Borromeo, Count of Arona, and Mary de Medici, Carlo was of noble parentage. His influence gained for him in early life the archbishopric of Milan. Amid all his wealth his own personal life was ordered with temperance and humility. Stern, or as some say cruel, to track out and repress all the abuses that had invaded the Church in his diocese, he earned the jealous dislike of his clergy and of the religious orders. The Brothers of Humility made open attempt on his life, but by a miracle he escaped them. Carlo was away at Lodi when news reached him that plague had broken out in Milan. Hastening back to the city he found that the governor, many officials, and all the rich had fled. All was in chaos. The people turned in despair to their spiritual father, and entrusted the care of the town to him. He set them to work at once to adapt the great hospital of St. Gregory for the reception of the sick, and later to build six lazarettos of wood outside the walls. All these he equipped and furnished with linen from his own palace. For its better administration he divided the city into four quarters, and put over each an overseer with a staff of helpers. His example of courage and personal devotion served to attract many of the secular clergy, monks, and nuns to the service of the sick. Even lay men and women organized a nursing guild among themselves. Carlo himself went everywhere, giving directions for housing the sick and burying the dead. He visited even those parishes beyond the walls, where the disease was raging, providing for the sick, feeding the needy, and rousing the clergy to the loyal discharge of their duty. Famine soon came to add another horror to pestilence. Borromeo collected all the destitute into an encampment and arranged the supply of food. First he had all his own silver plate melted down to provide the necessary money. When this ran out, he begged it from door to door, and finally incurred huge debts on his own personal security. Beyond such material aids as these, Carlo Borromeo brought to the stricken Milanese the spiritual comforts of religion. From the pulpit of his cathedral he expounded to them the Lamentations of Jeremiah, showing them how they applied to Milan. From the altar steps he chanted with quivering voice the penitential psalms, and kneeling before the altar offered himself to God as a sacrifice for his people. Through the streets of the city he marched at the head of penitential processions with bare feet and the rope of the criminal around his neck. But through it all he passed unscathed, himself and his eight-and-twenty attendant priests. Only 17,000 died in Milan, and 8,000 in the districts round about: that so few died out of so vast a multitude of sick was attributed to the ministrations of their archbishop.
As the traveller comes down from the Alps, skirting the shores of Lago Maggiore, where gardens are radiant in spring with camellias, magnolias, mimosa, and myrtle, one feature only blurs the faultless landscape. On a ridge, high over the lake at Arona, towers on its pedestal the statue of Carlo Borromeo, a senseless, soulless colossus, in copper and bronze, mocking the skies. Your guide-book tells you you may go up inside its body. If you do so on a hot day you may learn something of the sufferings of Phalaris, roasted in the belly of his own brazen bull. But perhaps you will do as well to stay beneath and pray that something rather of the spirit oi Borromeo may enter into your soul.