is of brick. The stalls are plain wooden seats, now worm-eaten, which turn back on wooden pivots. There is only one narrow window with little panes set in lead. The decayed door turns on a wooden bar inserted in grooves. Old lecterns stand in the centre, and the list of St. Clare’s first companions, who sang here the divine praises, hangs on the wall. In one corner is the recess where the wall gave way to hide St. Francis from the fury of his father. The saint is here painted in the red Tuscan vest of the time, such as we see in pictures of Dante.
By this time the guardian of the church had arrived, and he took us into the refectory, which is gloomy and time-stained, with low Gothic arches, once frescoed. There are two windows with leaded panes, and worm-eaten tables around the blackened walls, with the place in one corner occupied by St. Clare. At one end is painted the miracle of the loaves, now half effaced; for it was here Pope Innocent IV., who had come to visit the saint, commanded her to bless the frugal repast. Confused, she knelt down and made the sign of the cross over the table, which was miraculously imprinted on each of the loaves.
Then we went up the brick stairs, through narrow passages, past the small cell of Sister Agnes, with its one little window looking down into an old cloister with a well in the centre, and came to St. Clare’s oratory, where she performed her devotions when too infirm to descend to the choir. Close by is the room where she died, poor and simple, unpainted beams overhead, and the pavement of brick. The lover of art finds nothing here to please the eye, but to the religious soul there is a world of moral
beauty. Here Pope Innocent IV. came to see her on her death-bed. “Know, O my soul!” she exclaimed as she was dying, “thou hast a good viaticum to go with thee, an excellent guide to show thee the way. Fear not. Be tranquil, for He who created thee, and has always watched over thee with the tender love of a mother for her child, now comes with his sanctifying grace. Blessed be thou, O Lord! because thou hast created me.”
One of the nuns asked to whom she was speaking so lovingly. “Dear daughter,” replied she, “I am talking to my blessed soul.” Then turning to another sister, she said: “Seest thou not, my daughter, the King of Glory whom I behold?” And their eyes being opened, they saw a great company of celestial virgins clothed in white coming down out of heaven with the Queen of all saints at their head. And her soul at once departed to join them.
The death of St. Clare is the subject of one of Murillo’s masterpieces, a picture that resumes, as M. Nettement says, all the hopes and fears of Italy. The earth is wrapped in darkness. The sick-chamber, with its inmates, is veiled in obscurity. But the heavenly Jerusalem opens, dispersing the gloom and lighting up with its splendor the face of the dying nun, which beams like a star on everything around her. Such is the church, threatened on the one hand by the thick darkness of the world, but cheered on the other by a never-failing light from heaven like a great hope.
Ave, Mater humilis,
Ancilla Crucifixi,
Clara, virgo nobilis,
Discipula Francisci,