CHAPTER V. POPULAR RELIGIOUS POETRY.

The Thirteenth Century—Outburst of Flagellant Fanaticism—The Battuti, Bianchi, Disciplinati—Acquire the name of Laudesi—Jacopone da Todi—His Life—His Hymns—The Corrotto—Franciscan Poetry—Tresatti's Collection—Grades of Spiritual Ecstasy—Lauds of the Confraternities—Benivieni—Feo Belcari and the Florentine Hymn-writers—Relation to Secular Dance-songs—Origins of the Theater—Italy had hardly any true Miracle Plays—Umbrian Divozioni—The Laud becomes Dramatic—Passion Plays—Medieval Properties—The Stage in Church or in the Oratory—The Sacra Rappresentazione—A Florentine Species—Fraternities for Boys—Names of the Festa—Theory of its Origin—Shows in Medieval Italy—Pageants of S. John's Day at Florence—Their Machinery—Florentine Ingegnieri—Forty-three Plays in D'Ancona's Collection—Their Authors—The Prodigal Son—Elements of Farce—Interludes and Music—Three Classes of Sacre Rappresentazioni—Biblical Subjects—Legends of Saints—Popular Novelle—Conversion of the Magdalen—Analysis of Plays.

The history of popular religious poetry takes us back to the first age of Italian literature and to the discords of the thirteenth century. All Italy had been torn asunder by the internecine struggle of Frederick II. with Innocent III. and Gregory IX. The people saw the two chiefs of Christendom at open warfare, exchanging anathemas, and doing each what in him lay to render peace and amity impossible. Milan resounded to the shrieks of paterini, burned upon the public square by order of an intolerant pontiff. Padua echoed with the groans of Ezzelino's victims, doomed to death by hundreds and by thousands in his dungeons, or cast forth maimed and mutilated to perish in the fields. The southern provinces swarmed with Saracens, whom an infidel Emperor had summoned to his aid against a fanatical Pope. It seemed as though the age, which had witnessed the assertion of Italian independence and the growth of the free cities, was about to end in a chaos of bloodshed, fire and frantic cruelty. The climax of misery and fury was reached in the Crusade launched by Alexander IV. against the tyrants of the Trevisan Marches. When Ezzelino died like a dog in 1259, the maddened populace believed that his demon had now been loosed from chains of flesh, and sent forth to the elements to work its will in freedom. The prince of darkness was abroad and menacing. Though the monster had perished, the myth of evil that survived him had power to fascinate, and was intolerable.

The conscience of the people, crazed by the sight of such iniquity and suffering, bereft of spiritual guidance, abandoned to bad government, made itself suddenly felt in an indescribable movement of religious terror. "In the year 1260," wrote the Chronicler of Padua,[358] "when Italy was defiled by many horrible crimes, a sudden and new perturbation seized at first upon the folk of Perugia, next upon the Romans, and lastly on the population of all Italy, who, stung by the fear of God, went forth processionally, gentle and base-born, old and young, together, through the city streets and squares, naked save for a waist-band round their loins, holding a whip of leather in their hands, with tears and groans, scourging their shoulders till the blood flowed down. Not by day alone, but through the night in the intense cold of winter, with lighted torches they roamed by hundreds, by thousands, by tens of thousands, through the churches, and flung themselves down before the altars, led by priests with crosses and banners. The same happened in all villages and hamlets, so that the fields and mountains resounded with the cries of sinners calling upon God. All instruments of music and songs of love were hushed; only the dismal wail of penitents was heard in town and country."

It will be noticed that this fanaticism of the Flagellants began among the Umbrian highlands, the home of S. Francis and the center of pietistic art, where the passions of the people have ever been more quickly stirred by pathos than elsewhere in Italy. The Battuti, as they were called, formed no mere sect. Populations of whole cities, goaded by an irresistible impulse, which had something of the Dionysiac madness in it, went forth as though a migration of the race had been initiated. Blind instinct, the intoxication of religious frenzy, urged them restlessly and aimlessly from place to place. They had no Holy Land, no martyr's shrine, in view. Only the ineffable horror of a coming judgment, only the stings of spiritual apprehension, the fierce craving after sympathy in common acts of delirium, the allurements of an exaltation shared by thousands, drove them on, lugubrious herds, like Mænads of the wrath of God. This insurgence of all classes, swelling upward from the lowest, gaining the middle regions, and confounding the highest in the flood of one promiscuous multitude, threatened the very fabric of society.[359] Repentance and compunction, exhibited upon a scale of such colossal magnitude, attended by incidents of such impassioned frenzy, assumed the aspect of vice and of insanity. Florence shut her gates to the half-naked Battuti. At Milan the tyrants of the Della Torre blood raised 600 gibbets as a warning. Manfred drew a military cordon round his southern States to save them from contagion. The revival was diagnosed by cold observers as an epidemic, or as a craving akin to that which sets in motion droves of bisons on a trackless plain. It needed drastic measures of Draconian justice to curb a disease which threatened the whole nation. Gradually, the first fury of this fanatical enthusiasm subsided. It was but the symptom of moral and intellectual bewilderment, of what the French would call ahurissement, in a race of naturally firm and patient fiber. Yet, when it passed, durable traces of the agitation remained. Lay fraternities were formed, not only in Umbria and Tuscany, but in almost all provinces of the peninsula, who called themselves Disciplinati di Gesù Cristo. These societies aimed at continuing the ascetic practices of the Flagellants, and at prolonging their passion of penitence in a more sober spirit. Scourging formed an essential part of their observances, but it was used with decency and moderation. Their constitution was strictly democratic, within limits sanctioned by the clergy. They existed for the people, supplementing and not superseding the offices of the Church. From the date of their foundation they seem to have paid much attention to the recitation of hymns in the vernacular. These hymns were called Laude. Written for and by the people, they were distinguished from the Latin hymns of the Church by greater spontaneity and rudeness. No limit of taste or literary art was set to the expression of a fervent piety. The Lauds dwelt chiefly on the Passion of our Lord, and were used as a stimulus to compunction. In course of time this part of their system became so prominent that the Battuti or Disciplinati acquired the milder title of Laudesi.[360]

From the Laudesi of the fourteenth century rose one great lyric poet, Jacopone da Todi, whose hymns embrace the whole gamut of religious passion, from tender emotions of love to somber anticipations of death and thrilling visions of judgment. Reading him, we listen to the true lyrical cry of the people's heart in its intolerance of self-restraint, blending the language of erotic ecstasy with sobs and sighs of soul-consuming devotion, aspiring to heaven on wings sped by the energy of human desire. The flight of his inebriated piety transcends and out-soars the strongest pinion of ecclesiastical hymnology. Such lines as—

Fac me plagis vulnerari, Cruce hâc inebriari Ob amorem filii—

do but supply the theme for Jacopone's descant. Violently discordant notes clash and mingle in his chords, and are resolved in bursts of ardor bordering on delirium. He leaps from the grotesque of plebeian imagery to pictures of sublime pathos, from incoherent gaspings to sentences pregnant with shrewd knowledge of the heart, by sudden and spontaneous transitions, which reveal the religious sentiment in its simplest form, unspoiled by dogma, unstiffened by scholasticism. None, for example, but a true child of the people could have found the following expression of a desire to suffer with Christ[361]:

O Signor per cortesia Mandame la malsania A me la freve quartana la contina e la terzana, la doppia cottidiana Colla grande ydropesia. A me venga mal de dente Mal de capo e mal de ventre, a lo stomaco dolor pungente en canna l'asquinantia. Mal de occhi e doglia de fianco e la postema al lato manco tyseco me ionga enalco e omne tempo la frenesia. Agia el fegato rescaldato la milza grossa el ventre enfiato, lo polmone sia piagato Con gran tossa e parlasia.

In order to understand Jacopone da Todi and to form any true conception of the medium from which his poems sprang, it is necessary to study the legend of his life, which, though a legend, bears upon its face the stamp of truth. It is an offshoot from the Saga of S. Francis, a vivid utterance of the times which gave it birth.[362] Jacopone was born at Todi, one of those isolated ancient cities which rear themselves upon their hill-tops between the valleys of the Nera and the Tiber, on the old post-road from Narni to Perugia. He belonged to the family of the Benedetti, who were reckoned among the noblest of the district. In his youth he followed secular studies, took the degree of Doctor of Laws, and practiced with a keen eye for gain and with not less, his biographer hints, than the customary legal indifference for justice. He married a beautiful young wife, whom he dressed splendidly and sent among his equals to all places of medieval amusement. She was, however, inwardly religious. The spirit of S. Francis had passed over her; and unknown to all the crowd around her, unknown to her husband, she practiced the extremities of ascetic piety. One day she went, at her husband's bidding, to a merry-making of the nobles of Todi; and it so happened that "while she was dancing and taking pleasure with the rest, an accident occurred, fit to move the greatest pity. For the platform whereupon the party were assembled, fell in and was broken to pieces, causing grievous injury to those who stood upon it. She was so hurt in the fall that she lost the power of speech, and in a few hours after died. Jacopo, who by God's mercy was not there, no sooner heard the sad news of his wife than he ran to the place. He found her on the point of death, and sought, as is usual in those cases, to unlace her; but she, though she could not speak, offered resistance to her husband's unlacing her. However, he used force and overcame her, and unlaced and carried her to his house. There, when she had died, he unclothed her with his own hands, and found that underneath those costly robes and next to her naked flesh she wore a hair-shirt of the roughest texture. Jacopone, who up to now had believed his wife, since she was young and beautiful, to be like other women, worldly and luxurious, stood as it were astonished and struck dumb when he beheld a thing so contrary to his opinion. Wherefore from that time forward he went among men like to one who is stunned, and appeared no longer to be a reasonable man as theretofore. The cause of this his change to outward view was not a sudden infirmity of health, or extraordinary sorrow for the cruel death of his wife, or any such-like occurrence, but an overwhelming compunction of the heart begotten in him by this ensample, and a new recognition of what he was and of his own wretchedness. Wherefore turning back to his own heart, and reckoning with bitterness the many years that had been spent so badly, and seeing the peril in which he had continued up to that time, he set himself to change the manner of his life, and even as he had lived heretofore wholly for the world, so now he resolved to live wholly for Christ."

Jacopone's biographer goes on to tell us how, after this shock, he became an altered man. He sold all his goods and gave away his substance to the poor, retaining nothing for himself, but seeking by every device within his power to render himself vile and ridiculous in the eyes of men. At one time he stripped himself naked, and put upon his back the trappings of an ass, and so appeared among the gentles of his earlier acquaintance. On another occasion he entered a company of merry-making folk in his brother's house without clothes, smeared with turpentine and rolled in feathers like a bird.[363] By these mad pranks he acquired the reputation of one half-witted, and the people called him Jacopone instead of Messer Jacopo de' Benedetti. Yet there was a keen spirit living in the man, who had determined literally to become a fool for Christ's sake. A citizen once bought a fowl and bade Jacopone carry it to his house. Jacopone took the bird and placed it in the man's family vault, where it was found. To all remonstrances he answered with a solemnity which inspired terror, that there was the citizen's real home. At the end of ten years spent in self-abasement of this sort, Jacopone entered the lowest rank of the Franciscan brotherhood. The composition of a Laud so full of spiritual fire that its inspiration seemed indubitable, won for the apparent madman this grace. There was something noble in his bearing, even though his actions and his utterance proved his brain distempered. No fear of hell nor hope of heaven, says his biographer, but God's infinite goodness and beauty impelled him to embrace the monastic life and to subject himself to the severest discipline. Meditating on the Divine perfection, he came to regard himself as "entirely hideous, vile and stinking, beyond the most abominable carrion." It was part of his religious exaltation to prove this to himself by ghastly penances, instead of seeking to render his body a fit temple for God's spirit by healthy and clean living. He had a carnal partiality for liver; and in order to mortify this vile affection he procured the liver of a beast and hung it in his cell. It became putrid, swarmed with vermin, and infected the convent with its stench. The friars discovered Jacopone rejoicing in the sight and odor of this corruption. With sound good sense they then condemned him to imprisonment in the common privies; but he rejoiced in this punishment, and composed one of his most impassioned odes in that foul place. Still, though he was clearly mad, he had the soul of a Christian and a poet. His ecstasies were not always repugnant to our sense of delicacy. Contemplating the wounds of Christ, it entered into his heart to desire all suffering which it could be possible for man to undergo—the pangs of all the souls condemned to purgatory, the torments of all the damned in hell, the infinite anguish of all the devils—if only by this bearing of the pains of others he might be made like Christ, and go at length, the last of all the world, to Paradise. Not only the passion but the love of Jesus inflamed him with indescribable raptures. He spent whole days in singing, weeping, groaning, and ejaculation. "He ran," says the biographer, "in a fury of love, and under the impression that he was embracing and clasping Jesus Christ, would fling his arms about a tree." It is not possible to imagine more potent workings of religious insanity in a distempered and at the same time nobly-gifted character. That obscene antipathy to nature which characterized medieval asceticism, becomes poetic in a lunatic of genius like Jacopone. Nor was his natural acumen blunted. He discerned how far the Papacy diverged from Christianity in practice, and assailed Boniface VIII. with bitterest invectives. Among other prophetic sayings ascribed to him, we find this, which corresponds most nearly to the truth of history: "Pope Boniface, like a fox thou didst enter on the Papacy, like a wolf thou reignest, and like a dog shalt thou depart from it." For his free speech Boniface had him sent to prison; and in his dungeon, rejoicing, Jacopone composed the finest of his Canticles.

Such was the man who struck the key-note of religious popular poetry in Italy, and whose Lauds may be regarded as the germ of a voluminous literature. Passing from his life to his writings, it will suffice to give a few specimens of those hymns which are most characteristic of his temper. We have already seen how he brought together the most repulsive details of disease, in order to express his desire to suffer with Christ.[364] Here is the beginning of a canticle in praise of the madness he embraced with a similar object[365]:

Senno me pare e cortesia empazir per lo bel messia. Ello me fa sì gran sapere a chi per dio vol empazire en parige non se vidde ancor si gran phylosofia.

These words found an echo after many years in Benivieni's even more hysterical hymn upon divine madness, which was substituted in Savonarola's Carnivals for the Trionfi of Lorenzo de' Medici.

A trace of the Franciscan worship of poverty gives some interest to a hymn on the advantages of pauperism. The theme, however, is supported with solid arguments after the fashion of Juvenal's vacuus viator [366]:

Povertate muore en pace, nullo testamento face, lassa el mondo como jace e la gente concordate. Non a judice ne notaro a corte non porta salaro, ridese del omo avaro che sta en tanta anxietate.

Truer to the inebriation of Jacopone's piety are the following stanzas, incoherent from excess of passion, which seem to be the ebullition of one of his most frenzied moments[367]:

Amore amore che si mai ferito altro che amore non posso gridare, amore amore teco so unito altro non posso che te abbracciare, amore amore forte mai rapito lo cor sempre si spande per amore per te voglio pasmare: Amor ch'io teco sia amor per cortesia: Fammi morir d'amore. Amor amor Jesu so gionto aporto amor amor Jesu tu m'ai menato, amor amor Jesu damme conforto amor amor Jesu si m'ai enflammato, amor amor Jesu pensa lo porto fammete star amor sempre abracciato, con teco trasformato: En vera caritate en somma veritate: De trasformato amore. Amor amore grida tuttol mondo amor amore omne cosa clama, amore amore tanto se profondo chi piu t'abraccia sempre piu t'abrama, amor amor tu se' cerchio rotondo con tuttol cor chi c'entra sempre t'ama, che tu se' stame e trama: chi t'ama per vestire cusi dolce sentire: Che sempre grida amore. Amor amor Jesu desideroso amor voglio morire a te abracciando, amor amor Jesu dolce mio sposo amor amor la morte l'ademando, amor amor Jesu si delectoso tu me t'arendi en te transformando, pensa ch'io vo pasmando: Amor non so o me sia Jesu speranza mia: Abyssame en amore.

A still more mysterious depth is sounded in another hymn in praise of self-annihilation—the Nirvana of asceticism[368]:

Non posso esser renato s'io en me non so morto, anichilato en tucto el esser conservare, del nihil glorioso nelom ne gusta fructo, se Dio non fal conducto che om non cia que fare, o glorioso stare en nihil quietato, lontellecto posato e laffecto dormire. Ciocho veduto e pensato tutto e feccia e bruttura pensando de laltura del virtuoso stato, nel pelago chio veggio non ce so notatura faro somergitura del om che anegato sommece inarenato nonor de smesuranza vincto de labundanza del dolce mio sire.

One of Jacopone's authentic poems so far detaches itself in character and composition from the rest, and is so important, as will shortly be seen, for the history of Italian dramatic art, that it demands separate consideration.[369] It assumes the form of dialogue between Mary and Christ upon the cross, followed by the lamentation of the Virgin over her dead Son. A messenger informs the Mother that Christ has been taken prisoner:

Donna del Paradiso, Lo tuo figliolo è priso, Jesu Cristo beato. Accurre, donna, e vide Che la gente l'allide; Credo che llo s'occide, Tanto l'on flagellato.

Attended by the Magdalen, whom she summons to her aid, Mary hurries to the judgment-seat of Pilate, and begs for mercy:

O Pilato, non fare 'L figlio mio tormentare, Ch'io te posso mostrare Como a torto è accusato.

But here the voices of the Chorus, representing the Jewish multitude, are heard:

Crucifige, crucifige! Omo che se fa rege, Secondo nostra lege, Contradice al Senato.

Christ is removed to the place of suffering, and Mary cries:

O figlio, figlio, figlio, Figlio, amoroso figlio, Figlio, chi dà consiglio Al cor mio angustiato! Figlio, occhi giocondi, Figlio, co' non rispondi? Figlio, perchè t'ascondi Dal petto o' se' lattato?

They show her the cross:

Madonna, ecco la cruce Che la gente l'adduce, Ove la vera luce De' essere levato.

They tell her how Jesus is being nailed to it, sparing none of the agonizing details. Then she exclaims:

E io comencio el corrotto; Figliolo, mio deporto, Figlio, chi mi t'à morto, Figlio mio delicato! Meglio averien fatto Che 'l cor m'avesser tratto, Che nella croce tratto Starci desciliato.

Jesus now breaks silence, and comforts her, pointing out that she must live for His disciples, and naming John. He dies, and she continues the Corrotto [370]:

Figlio, l'alma t'è uscita, Figlio de la smarrita, Figlio de la sparita, Figlio [mio] attossicato! Figlio bianco e vermiglio, Figlio senza simiglio, Figlio, a chi m'apiglio, Figlio, pur m'hai lassato! Figlio bianco e biondo, Figlio, volto jocondo, Figlio, perchè t'à el mondo, Figlio, cusì sprezato! Figlio dolce e piacente, Figlio de la dolente, Figlio, à te la gente Malamente trattato! Joanne, figlio novello, Morto è lo tuo fratello; Sentito aggio 'l coltello Che fo profetizzato, Che morto à figlio e mate, De dura morte afferrate; Trovârsi abbracciate Mate e figlio a un cruciato.

Upon this note of anguish the poem closes. It is conducted throughout in dialogue, and is penetrated with dramatic energy. For Passion Music of a noble and yet flowing type, such as Pergolese might have composed, it is still admirably adapted.

Each strophe of Fra Jacopone's Canticles might be likened to a seed cast into the then fertile soil of the Franciscan Order, which bore fruit a thousand-fold in its own kind of spiritual poetry. The vast collection of hymns, published by Tresatti in the seventeenth century, bears the name of Jacopone, and incorporates his genuine compositions.[371] But we must regard the main body of the work as rather belonging to Jacopone's school than to the master. Taken collectively, these poems bear upon their face the stamp of considerable age, and there is no reason to suppose that their editor doubted of their authenticity. A critical reader of the present time, however, discerns innumerable evidences of collaboration, and detects expansion and dilution of more pregnant themes in the copious outpourings of this cloistral inspiration. What the Giotteschi are to Giotto, Tresatti's collection is to Salviano's imprint of Jacopone. It forms a complete manual of devotion, framed according to the spirit of S. Francis. In its pages we read the progress of the soul from a state of worldliness and vice, through moral virtue, into the outer court of religious conviction. Thence we pass to penitence and the profound terror of sin. Having traversed the region of purgatory upon earth, we are introduced to the theory of Divine Love, which is reasoned out and developed upon themes borrowed from each previous step gained by the spirit in its heavenward journey. Here ends the soul's novitiate; and we enter on a realm of ecstasy. The poet bathes in an illimitable ocean of intoxicating love, summons the images of sense and makes them adumbrate his rapture of devotion, reproducing in a myriad modes the Oriental metaphors of the soul's marriage to Christ suggested by the Canticle of Canticles. A final grade in this ascent to spiritual perfection is attained in the closing odes, which celebrate annihilation—the fusion of the mortal in immortal personality, the bliss of beatific vision, Nirvana realized on earth in ecstasy by man. At this final point sense swoons, the tongue stammers, language refuses to perform her office, the reason finds no place, the universe is whirled in spires of flame, we float in waves of metaphor, we drown in floods of contemplation, the whole is closed with an O Altitudo!

It is not possible to render scantiest justice to this extraordinary monument of the Franciscan fervor by any extracts or descriptions. Its full force can only be felt by prolonged and, if possible, continuous perusal. S. Catherine and S. Teresa attend us while we read; and when the book is finished, we feel, perhaps for the first time, the might, the majesty, the overmastering attraction of that sea of faith which swept all Europe in the thirteenth century. We understand how naufragar in questo mar fù dolce.

Though the task is ungrateful, it behooves the historian of popular Italian poetry to extract some specimens from this immense repertory of anonymous lyrics. Omitting the satires, which are composed upon the familiar monastic rubrics of vanity, human misery, the loathsomeness of the flesh, and contempt of the world, I will select one stanza upon Chastity from among the moral songs[372]:

O Castità bel fiore, Che ti sostiene amore. O fior di Castitate, Odorifero giglio, Con gran soavitate, Sei di color vermiglio, Et a la Trinitate Tu ripresenti odore.

Chastity in another place is thus described[373]:—

La Castitate pura, Più bella che viola, Cotanto ha chiaro viso Che par un paradiso.

Poverty, the Cardinal Virtues, and the Theological Virtues receive their full meed of praise in a succession of hymns. Then comes a long string of proverbs, which contain much sober wisdom, with passages of poetic feeling like the following[374]:

Li pesciarelli piccoli Scampan la rete in mare; Grand'ucel prende l'aquila, Non può 'l moscon pigliare; Enchinasi la vergola, L'acqua lassa passare; Ma fa giù cader l'arbore, Che non si può inchinare.

Among the odes we may first choose this portion of a carol written to be sung before the manger, or presepe, which it was usual to set up in churches at Christmas[375]:

Veggiamo il suo Bambino Gammettare nel fieno, E le braccia scoperte Porgere ad ella in seno, Ed essa lo ricopre El meglio che può almeno, Mettendoli la poppa Entro la sua bocchina. Cioppava lo Bambino Con le sue labbruccia; Sol la dolciata cioppa Volea, non minestruccia; Stringeala con la bocca Che non avea dentuccia, Il figliuolino bello, Ne la dolce bocchina. A la sua man manca, Cullava lo Bambino, E con sante carole Nenciava il suo amor fino.... Gli Angioletti d'intorno Se ne gian danzando, Facendo dolci versi E d'amor favellando.

There is a fresco by Giotto behind the altar in the Arena Chapel at Padua, which illustrates part of this hymn. A picture attributed to Botticelli in our National Gallery illustrates the rest. The spirit of the carol has been reproduced with less sincerity in a Jesuit's Latin hymn, Dormi, fili, dormi, mater.

Close upon the joys of Mary follow her sorrows. The following is a popular echo of the Stabat Mater [376]:

Or si incomincia lo duro pianto Che fa la Madre di Christo tanto; Or intendete l'amaro canto, Fu crocifisso quel capo santo. Ma quando che s'inchiodava, Presso al figliuolo la Madre stava; Quando a la croce gli occhi levava, Per troppa doglia ci trangosciava. La Madre viddelo incoronato, Et ne la croce tutto piagato, Per le pene e pel sangue versato Sitibondo gridar Consummato.

Many of the odes are devoted to S. Francis. One passage recording the miracle of the Stigmata deserves to be extracted[377]:

La settima a Laverna, Stando in orazione, Ne la parte superna, Con gran divozione, Mirabil visione Seraphin apparuto Crucifisso è veduto, Con sei ale mostrato: Incorporotti stimmate A lato piedi e mano; Duro già fora a credere Se nol contiam di piano, Staendo vivo et sano Molti l'han mirate, L'ha morte dichiarate, Da molti fu palpato. La sua carne bianchissima Pareva puerile; Avanti era brunissima Per gli freddi nevili; La fe amor si gentile, Parea glorificata, Da ogni gente ammirata Del mirabil ornato.

The Penitential Hymns resound with trumpets of Judgment and groans of lost souls. There is one terrible lament of a man who repented after death; another of one arising from the grave, damned.[378] The Day of Judgment inspires stanzas heavy with lugubrious chords and a leaden fall[379]:

Tutta la terra tornerà a niente, Le pietre piangeranno duramente, Conturbaronsi tutti i monumente, Per la sententia di Dio onnipotente Che tutti sentiranno.

. . . . . . . . .

Allora udrai dal ciel trombe sonare, Et tutti morti vedrai suscitare, Avanti al tribunal di Christo andare, E 'l fuoco ardente per l'aria volare Con gran velocitate.

. . . . . . . . .

Porgine aiuto, alto Signor verace, E campane da quel foco penace, E danne penitentia si verace Che 'n ciel possiam venir a quella pace Dove in eterno regni.

This is the Dies Iræ adapted for the people, and expanded in its motives.

The exposition and the expression of Divine Love occupy a larger space than any other section of the series. Mystical psychology, elaborated with scholastic subtlety of argument and fine analysis of all the grades of feeling, culminates in lyric raptures, only less chaotic than the stanzas already quoted from Jacopone. The poet breaks out into short ejaculations[380]:

O alta Nichilitate, Dhe mi di dove tu stai!

He faints and swoons before the altar in the languors of emotion[381]:

Languisco per amore Di Gesù mio Amatore.

We see before our eyes the trances of S. Catherine, so well portrayed with sensuous force by Sodoma. Then he resumes the Song of Solomon in stanzas to be counted by the hundred, celebrates the marriage of Christ and the soul, or seeks crude carnal metaphors to convey his meaning[382]:

Del tuo bacio, amore, Degnami di baciare. Dhe baciami, dolcezza Di contrizione, Et dolce soavezza Di compunzione, O santa allegrezza Di devozione, Per nulla stagione Non m'abandonare. Poì che 'l bacio sento, Bevo a le mammelle C'hanno odore d'unguento; Pur le tue scintille A bever non so lento Con le mie maxille, Più che volte mille Vò me inebriare.

Let this suffice. With the language of sweetness and monastic love we are soon surfeited. Were it not that the crescendo of erotic exaltation ends at last in a jubilee of incomprehensible passion, blending the incoherence of delirium with fragments of theosophy which might have been imported from old Alexandrian sources or from dim regions of the East, a student of our century would shrink aghast from some of these hermaphroditic hymns, as though he had been witness of wild acts of nympholepsy in a girl he reckoned sane.

Through the two centuries which followed Jacopone's death (1306?) the Lauds of the Confraternities continued to form a special branch of popular poetry; and in the fifteenth century they were written in considerable quantities by men of polite education. Like all hymns, these spiritual songs are less remarkable for literary quality than devoutness. It is difficult to find one rising to the height of Jacopone's inspiration. Many of the later compositions even lack religious feeling, and seem to have been written as taskwork. Those, for example, by Lorenzo de' Medici bear the same relation to his Canti Carnascialeschi as Pontano's odes to the Saints bear to his elegies and Baian lyrics. This was inevitable in an age saturated with the adverse ideals of the classical Revival, when Platonic theism threatened to supplant Christianity, and society was clogged with frigid cynicism. Yet even in the sixteenth century, those hymns which came directly from the people's heart, thrilling with the strong vibrations of Savonarola's preaching, are still remarkable for almost frantic piety. Among the many Florentine hymn-writers who felt that influence, Girolamo Benivieni holds the most distinguished place, both for the purity of his style and for the sincerity of his religious feeling. I will set side by side two versions from his book of Lauds, illustrating the extreme limits of devout emotion—the calmness of a meditative piety and the spasms of passionate enthusiasm. The first is a little hymn to Jesus, profoundly felt and expressed with exquisite simplicity[383]:

Jesus, whoso with Thee Hangs not in pain and loss Pierced on the cruel cross, At peace shall never be. Lord, unto me be kind: Give me that peace of mind, Which in this world so blind And false dwells but with Thee. Give me that strife and pain, Apart from which 'twere vain Thy love on earth to gain Or seek a share in Thee. If, Lord, with Thee alone Heart's peace and love be known, My heart shall be Thine own, Ever to rest with Thee. Here in my heart be lit Thy fire, to feed on it, Till burning bit by bit It dies to live with Thee. Jesus, whoso with Thee Hangs not in pain or loss, Pierced on the cruel cross, At peace shall never be.

The second is an echo of Jacopone's eulogy of madness, prolonged and developed with amorous extravagance[384]:

Never was there so sweet a gladness, Joy of so pure and strong a fashion, As with zeal and love and passion Thus to embrace Christ's holy madness. They who are mad in Jesus, slight All that the wise man seeks and prizes; Wealth and place, pomp, pride, delight, Pleasure and fame, their soul despises: Sorrow and tears and sacrifices, Poverty, pain, and low estate, All that the wise men loathe and hate, Are sought by the Christian in his madness. They who are fools for Christ in heaven, Should they be praised peradventure, mourn, Seeing the praise that to them is given Was taken from God; but hate and scorn With joy and gladness of soul are borne: The Christian listens and smiles for glee When he hears the taunt of his foe, for he Glories and triumphs in holy madness.

Many collections of Lauds were early committed to the press; and of these we have an excellent modern reprint in the Laude spirituali di Feo Belcari e di altri, which includes hymns by Castellano Castellani, Bernardo Giambullari, Francesco Albizzi, Lorenzo de' Medici, Lucrezia Tornabuoni, and the Pulci brothers.[385] Studying this miscellany, we perceive that between the Laude and Ballate of the people there is often little but a formal difference. Large numbers are parodies of amatory or obscene songs, beginning with nearly the same words and intended to be sung to the same tunes. Thus the famous ballad, O vaghe montanine e pastorelle becomes O vaghe di Gesù, o verginelle.[386] The direction for singing Crucifisso a capo chino is Cantasi come—Una donna di fino amore, which was a coarse street song in vogue among the common folk.[387] Vergine, alta regina, is modeled upon Galantina, morosina; I' son quella pecorella upon I' son quella villanella; Giù per la mala via l'anima mia ne va on Giù per la villa lunga la bella se ne va.[388] Others are imitations of carnival choruses noted for their grossness and lewd innuendoes.[389] It is clear that the Laudesi, long before the days of Rowland Hill, discerned the advantage of not letting the devil have all the good tunes. Other parallels between the Florentine Lauds and the revival hymns of the present century might be pointed out. Yet in proportion as the Italian religious sentiment is more sensuous and erotic than that of the Teutonic nations, so are the Lauds more unreservedly emotional than the most audacious utterances of American or English Evangelicalism. As an excellent Italian critic has recently observed, the amorous and religious poems of the people were only distinguished by the difference of their object. Expression, versification, melody, pitch of sentiment, remained unaltered. "Men sang the same strambotti to the Virgin and the lady of their love, to the rose of Jericho and the red rose of the balcony."[390] No notion of impropriety seems to have been suggested by this confusion of divergent feelings. Otherwise, Savonarola would hardly have suffered his proselytes to roam the streets chanting stanzas which are little better than echoes from the brothel or travesties of Poliziano's chorus of the Mænads. The Italians have never been pious in the same sense as the Northern nations. Their popular religious poetry is the lyric of emotion, the lyric of the senses losing self-restraint in an outpouring of voluptuous ecstasy. With them "music is a love-lament or a prayer addressed to God;" and both constituents of music blend and mingle indistinguishably in their hymns. As they lack the sublime Chorales of the Reformation period in Germany, so they lack the grave and meditative psalms for which Bach made his melodies.

The origins of the Italian theater were closely connected with the services of the Laudesi. And here it has to be distinctly pointed out that the evolution of the Sacred Drama in Italy followed a different course from that with which we are familiar in France and England. Miracle-plays and Mysteries, properly so called, do not appear to have been common among the Italians in the early middle ages. There is, indeed, one exception to this general statement which warns us to be cautious, and which proves that the cyclical sacred play had been exhibited at least in one place at a very early date. At Cividale, in the district of Friuli, a Ludus Christi, embracing the principal events of Christian history from the Passion to the Second Advent, was twice acted, in 1298 and 1303. From the scanty notices concerning it, we are able to form an opinion that it lasted over three days, that it was recited by the clergy, almost certainly in Latin, and that the representation did not take place in church.[391] The Friulian Ludi Christi were, in fact, a Mystery of the more primitive type, corresponding to Greban's Mystère de la Passion and to our Coventry or Widkirk Miracles. But, so far as present knowledge goes, this sacred play was an isolated phenomenon, and proved unfruitful of results. We are only able to infer from it, what the close intercourse of the Italians with the French would otherwise make evident, that Mysteries were not entirely unknown in the Peninsula. Yet it seems clear, upon the other hand, that the two forms of the sacred drama specific to Italy, the Umbrian Divozione and the Florentine Sacra Rappresentazione, were not a direct outgrowth from the Mystery. We have to trace their origin in the religious practices of the Laudesi, from which a species of dramatic performance was developed, and which placed the sacred drama in the hands of these lay confraternities.

At first the Disciplinati di Gesù intoned their Lauds in the hall of the Company, standing before the crucifix or tabernacle of a saint, as they are represented in old wood-cuts.[392] From simple singing they passed to antiphonal chanting, and thence made a natural transition to dialogue, and lastly to dramatic action. To trace the steps of this progress is by no means easy; nor must we imagine that it was effected wholly within the meeting-places of the confraternities without external influence. Though the Italians may not have brought the Miracle-play to the perfection it attained among the Northern nations, they were, as we have seen, undoubtedly aware of its existence. Furthermore, they were familiar with ecclesiastical shows but little removed in character from that form of medieval art. Representations of the manger at Bethlehem made part of Christmas ceremonies in Umbria, as we learn from a passage in the works of S. Bonaventura referring to the year 1223.[393] Nor were occasions wanting when pageants enlivened the ritual of the Church. Among liturgical dramas, enacted by priests and choristers at service time, may be mentioned the descent of the Angel Gabriel at the feast of the Annunciation, the procession of the Magi at Epiphany, the descent of the dove at Pentecost, and the Easter representation of a sepulcher from which the body of Christ had been removed. Thus the Laudesi found precedents in the Liturgy itself for introducing a dramatic element into their offices.

Having assumed a more or less dramatic form, the Laud acquired the name of Divozione as early as the middle of the fourteenth century. It was written in various lyric meters, beginning with six-lined stanzas in ottonari, passing through hendecasyllabic sesta rima, and finally settling down into ottava rima, which became the common stanza for all forms of popular poetry in the fifteenth century.[394] The passion of our Lord formed the principal theme of the Divozioni; for the Laudesi were bound by their original constitution to a special contemplation of His suffering upon the cross for sinners. The Perugian Chronicles refer to compositions of this type under the name of Corrotto, or song of mourning. In its highest form it was the passionate outpouring of Mary's anguish over her crucified Son—the counterpart in poetry to the Pietà of painting, for which the Giottesque masters, the Umbrian school, Crivelli, and afterwards Mantegna, reserved the strongest exhibition of their powers as dramatists. We have already seen with what a noble and dramatic dialogue Jacopone da Todi initiated this species of composition.[395] At the same time, the Divozioni and the Lauds from which they sprang, embraced a wide variety of subjects, following the passages of Scripture appointed to be read in church on festivals and Sundays. Thus the Laud for Advent dramatized the Apocalypse and introduced the episode of Antichrist. The story of the Prodigal furnished a theme for the vigil when that parable was used. It was customary to sing these compositions in the oratories after the discipline of the confraternity had been duly performed; and that they were sung, is a fact of importance which must never be forgotten. Every Company had its own collection of dramatic Lauds, forming a cycle of sacred melodramas, composed with no literary end and no theatrical effect in view, but with the simple purpose of expressing by dialogue the substance of a Scripture narrative.

An inventory of the Perugian Confraternity of S. Domenico, dated in the year 1339, includes wings and crowns for sixty-eight angels, masks for devils, a star for the Magi, a crimson robe for Christ, black veils for the Maries, two lay figures of thieves, a dove to symbolize the Holy Ghost, a coat of mail for Longinus, and other properties which prove that not Passion-plays alone but dramas suited to Epiphany, Pentecost and the Annunciation must have been enacted at that period. Yet we have no exact means of ascertaining when the Laudesi left their oratories and began to recite Divozioni with action in church or on the open square. The Compagnia del Gonfalone are said to have presented a play to the Roman people in the Coliseum in 1260; but though the brotherhood was founded in that year, it is more than doubtful whether their famous Passion dates from so early an epoch.[396] By the year 1375 it had become customary for Laudesi to give representations in church, accompanied by a sermon from the pulpit. The audience assembled in the nave, and a scaffold was erected along the screen which divided the nave and transepts from the choir. Here the brethren played their pieces, while the preacher at appropriate intervals addressed the people, explaining what they were about to see upon the stage or commenting on what had been performed.[397] The actors were the Chorus, the preacher the Choregus. The stage was technically called talamo.[398] It had a large central compartment, corresponding to the "Logeion" of the Attic theater, with several smaller rooms termed luoghi deputati, and galleries above reserved for the celestial personages. The actors entered from a central and two side doors called reggi.

These Umbrian Divozioni form a link between the Laud of the thirteenth and the Sacra Rappresentazione of the fifteenth century. They still—in form at least, if not in sacred character—survive in the Maggi of the Tuscan peasantry, which are yearly acted among the villages of the Lucchese and Pistojese highlands.[399] It is difficult to say how far we are justified in regarding them as wholly different in type from the Northern Miracle-plays. That they originated in the oratories of lay brotherhoods, and that they retained the character of Lauds to be sung after they had assumed dramatic shape, may be reckoned as established points. Moreover, they lack the cyclical extension and the copious admixture of grotesquely comic elements which mark the French and English Mysteries. Yet we have already seen that such Mysteries were not entirely unknown in Italy, and that the liturgical drama, performed by ecclesiastics, had been from early times a part of Church ceremonial on holy days. We are, therefore, justified in accepting the Divozioni as the Italian species of a genus which was common to the medieval nations. The development of Gothic architecture in Central Italy might furnish an illustration. Its differentiation from the grander and more perfect type of French and English Gothic does not constitute a separate style.

To bridge the interval between the Divozione, used in Umbria, and the Sacra Rappresentazione, as it appeared at Florence, is rendered impossible by the present lack of documents. Still there seems sufficient reason to believe that the latter was evolved from the former within the precincts of the confraternities. In the Sacra Rappresentazione the religious drama of Italy reached its highest point of development, and produced a form of art peculiar to Florence and the Tuscan cities. Though it betrays certain affinities to the Northern Miracle-play, which prove familiarity with the French Mystères on the part at least of some among the playwrights, it is clearly a distinct kind. As in the case of the Umbrian Divozioni, so here the absence of grotesque episodes is striking; nor do we find connected series of Sacre Rappresentazioni, embracing the Christian history in a cyclical dramatic work. This species flourished for about fifty years, from 1470 to 1520. These dates are given approximately; for though we know that the Sacred Drama of Florence did not long survive the second decade of the sixteenth century, we cannot ascertain the period of its origin. The Sacre Rappresentazioni we possess in print, almost all written within the last thirty years of the fifteenth century, present so marked a similarity of style and structure that they must have been preceded by a series of experiments which fixed and conventionalized their form. Like the Divozioni, they were in the hands of confraternities, who caused them to be acted at their own expense. Since these Companies were wealthy, and included members of the best Florentine families, their plays were put upon the stage with pomp. The actors were boys belonging to the brotherhoods, directed by a Chorodidascalus called Festajuolo. S. Antonino, the good archbishop, promoted the custom of enrolling youths of all classes in religious Companies, seeking by such influences to encourage sound morality and sober living. The most fashionable brotherhoods were those of San Bastiano or Del Freccione, Del Vangelista or Dell'Aquila, Dell'Arcangelo Raffaello or Della Scala—the name of the saint or his ensign being indifferently used. Representations took place either in the oratory of the Company, or in the refectory of a convent. Meadows at Fiesole and public squares were also chosen for open-air performances.[400] The libretti were composed in octave stanzas, with passages of terza rima, and were sung to a recitative air. Interludes of part-songs, with accompaniment of lute and viol, enlivened the simple cantilena; and there is no doubt, from contemporary notices, that this music was of the best. The time selected was usually after vespers. The audience were admitted free of cost, but probably by invitation only to the friends and relatives of the young actors. Sacra Rappresentazione was the generic name of the show; but we meet with these subordinate titles, Festa, Mistero, Storia, Vangelo, Figura, Esemplo, Passione, Martirio, Miracolo, according to the special subject-matter of the play in question.

D'Ancona, in his book on the Origins of the Italian Drama, suggests that the Sacre Rappresentazioni were developed by a blending of the Umbrian Divozioni with the civic pageants of S. John's day at Florence. This theory is plausible enough to deserve investigation; especially as many points relating to the nature of the performances will be elucidated in the course of the inquiry. We must, however, be cautious not to take for granted that D'Ancona's conclusions have been proved. The researches of that eminent literary antiquarian, in combination with those made by Professor Monaci, are but just beginning to throw light on this hitherto neglected topic.

From the Chroniclers of the fifteenth century we have abundant testimony that in all parts of Italy sacred and profane shows formed a prominent feature of municipal festivals, and were exhibited by the burghers of the cities when they wished to welcome a distinguished foreigner, or to celebrate the election of their chief magistrates.[401] Thus Sigismund, King of the Romans, was greeted at Lucca in 1432 by a solemn triumph. Perugia gratified Eugenius IV. in 1444 with the story of the Minotaur, the tragedy of Iphigenia, the Nativity and the Ascension.[402] The popular respect for S. Bernardino found expression at Siena in a pageant, when the Papal Curia, in 1450, issued letters for his canonization.[403] Frederick III. was received in 1452 at Naples with the spectacle of the Passion. Leonora of Aragon, on her way through Rome in 1473 to Ferrara, witnessed a series of pantomimes, profane and sacred, splendidly provided by Pietro Riario, the Cardinal of San Sisto.[404] The triumphs of the Popes on entering office filled the streets of Rome with dramatic exhibitions, indifferently borrowed from Biblical and classic history. At Parma in 1414 the students celebrated the election of Andrea di Sicilia to a chair in their university by a procession of the Magi.[405] When the head of S. Andrew entered Rome in 1462, the citizens and prelates testified their joy with figurative pomps.[406] Viterbo in the same year enjoyed a variety of splendid exhibitions, Cardinal vying with Cardinal in magnificence, upon the festival of Corpus Domini.[407]

The pageants above-mentioned formed but prolusions to the yearly feast of S. John at Florence.[408] Florence had, as it were, the monopoly of such shows; and we know from many sources that Florentine artists were employed in distant cities for the preparation of spectacles which they had brought to perfection in their own town. An extract from Matteo Palmieri's Chronicle, referring to the year 1454, brings this Midsummer rejoicing vividly before the reader's mind.[409] It is an accurate description of the order followed at that period in the exhibition of pantomimic pageants by the guilds and merchants of the town. "On the 22d day of June the Cross of S. Maria del Fiore moved first, with all the clergy and children, and behind them seven singing men. Then the Companies of James the wool-shearer and Nofri the shoe-maker, with some thirty boys in white and angels. Thirdly, the Tower (edifizio) of S. Michael, whereupon stood God the Father in a cloud (nuvola); and on the Piazza, before the Signoria, they gave the show (rappresentazione) of the Battle of the Angels, when Lucifer was cast out of heaven. Fourthly, the Company of Ser Antonio and Piero di Mariano, with some thirty boys clothed in white and angels. Fifthly, the Tower of Adam, the which on the Piazza gave the show of how God created Adam and Eve, with the Temptation by the serpent and all thereto pertaining. Sixthly, a Moses upon horseback, attended by many mounted men of the chiefs in Israel and others. Seventhly, the Tower of Moses, which upon the Piazza gave the show of the Delivery of the Law. Eighthly, many Prophets and Sibyls, including Hermes Trismegistus and others who foretold the Incarnation of our Lord." With this list Palmieri proceeds at great length, reckoning in all twenty-two Towers. The procession, it seems, stopped upon its passage to exhibit tableaux; and these were so arranged that the whole Scripture history was set forth in dumb show, down to the Last Day. The representation of each tableau and the moving of the pageant through the streets and squares of Florence lasted sixteen hours. It will be observed that, here at least, a cyclical exposition of Christian doctrine, corresponding to the comprehensive Mysteries of the North, was attempted in pantomime. The Towers, we may remark in passing, were wooden cars, surmounted with appropriate machinery, on which the actors sat and grouped themselves according to their subject. They differed in no essentials from the Triumphal Chariots of carnival time, as described by Vasari in his Lives of Piero di Cosimo and Pontormo. From an anonymous Greek writer who visited Florence in the train of John Palæologus, we gather some notion of the effect produced upon a stranger by these pageants.[410] He describes the concourse of the Florentines, and gives the measure of his own astonishment by saying: "They work prodigies in this feast, and miracles, or at least the representation of miracles."

Vasari in his life of Il Cecca contributes much valuable information concerning the machinery used in the shows of S. John's Day.[411] The Piazza of the Duomo was covered in with a broad blue awning—similar, we may suppose, to that veil of deeper and lighter azure bands which forms the background to Fra Lippi's "Crowning of the Virgin." This was sown with golden lilies, and was called a Heaven. Beneath it were the clouds, or Nuvole, exhibited by various civic guilds. They were constructed of substantial wooden frames, supporting an almond-shaped aureole, which was thickly covered with wool, and surrounded with lights and cherub faces. Inside it sat the person who represented the saint, just as Christ and Madonna are represented in the pictures of the Umbrian school. Lower down, projected branches made of iron, bearing children dressed like angels, and secured by waist-bands in the same way as the fairies of our transformation scenes. The wood-work and the wires were hidden from sight by wool and cloth, plentifully sprinkled with tinsel stars. The whole moved slowly on the backs of bearers concealed beneath the frame. Vasari attributes the first invention of these and similar ingegni to Filippo Brunelleschi. Their similarity to what we know about the pegmata of Roman triumphs, renders this assertion probable. Brunelleschi's study of ancient art may have induced him to adapt a classical device to the requirements of Christian pageantry. When designed on a colossal scale and stationary, these Nuvole were known by the name of Paradiso. Another prominent feature in the Midsummer Show was the procession of giants and giantesses mounted upon stilts, and hooded with fantastic masks. Men marched in front, holding a pike to balance these unwieldy creatures; but Vasari states that some specialists in this craft were able to walk the streets on stilts six cubits high, without assistance. Then there were spiritelli—lighter and winged beings, raised aloft to the same height, and shining down like genii from their giddy altitude in sunlight on the crowd.

Whether we are right or not in assuming with D'Ancona that the Sacra Rappresentazione was a hybrid between the Umbrian Divozione and these pageants, there is no doubt that the Florentine artists, and Ingegnieri, were equal to furnishing the stage with richness. The fraternities spared no expense, but secured the services of the best designers. They also employed versifiers of repute to compose their libretti. It must be remembered that these texts were written for boys, and were meant to be acted by boys. Thus there came into existence a peculiar type of sacred drama, displaying something childish in its style, but taxing the ingenuity of scene-painters, mechanicians, architects, musicians, and poets, to produce a certain calculated theatrical effect. When we remember how these kindred arts flourished in the last decades of the fifteenth century, we are justified in believing that the Sacre Rappresentazioni offered a spectacle no less beautiful than curious and rare.

An examination of a few of these plays in detail will help us to understand one of the most original products of the popular Italian literature. With this object, I propose to consider the three volumes of reprints, edited with copious illustrations by Professor Alessandro d'Ancona.[412] But before proceeding to render an account of the forty-three plays included in this collection, it will be well to give some notice of the men who wrote them, to describe their general character, and to explain the manner of their presentation on the stage.

The authors of Sacre Rappresentazioni are frequently anonymous; but Lorenzo de' Medici, Antonio Alamanni, Bernardo Pulci and his wife Monna Antonia contribute each a sacred drama. The best were written by Feo Belcari and Castellano Castellani. Of the latter very little is known, except that in the year 1517 he exercised the priestly functions at Florence and was a prolific writer of Lauds. Feo Belcari, a Florentine citizen, born in 1410, held civic offices of distinction during the ascendency of Casa Medici. He was a man of birth and some learning, who devoted himself to the production of literature in prose and verse intended for popular edification. His Lauds are among the best which have descended from the fifteenth century, and his translation of the Lives of the Fathers into Tuscan is praised for purity of style. When he died, in 1484, "poor, weak, and white-haired," Girolamo Benivieni, the disciple of Savonarola and the greatest sacred singer of that age, composed his elegy in verses of mingled sweetness and fervor[413]:

Tace il celeste suon, già spenta e morta È l'armonia di quella dolce lira, Che 'l mondo afflitto or lascia, e 'l ciel conforta. E come parimenti si sospira Qui la sua morte, così in ciel s'allegra Chi alla nuova armonia si volge e gira. Felice lui che dalla infetta e negra Valle di pianti al ciel n'è gito, e 'n terra Lasciata ha sol la veste inferma ed egra, Ed or dal mondo e dall'orribil guerra De' vizi sciolto, il suo splendor vagheggia Nel volto di Colui che mai non erra.

As regards their form, the Sacre Rappresentazioni are never divided into acts; but the copious stage-directions prove that the scenes were shifted, and in one or two instances secular interludes are introduced in the pauses of the action.[414] The drama follows the tale or legend without artistic structure of plot; nor do the authors appear to have aimed, except in subordinate episodes, at much development of character. What they found ready to their hand in prose, they versified. The same fixed personages, and the same traditional phrases recur with singular monotony, proving that a conventional framework and style had become stereotyped. The end in view was religious edification. Therefore mere types of virtue in saints and martyrs, types of wickedness in tyrants and persecutors, sufficed alike for authors, actors, and audience. True dramatic genius emerges only in the minor parts, where a certain freedom of handling and effort after character-drawing are discernible. The success of the play depended on the movement of the story, and the attractions of the scenery, costumes and music. It was customary for an angel to prologize and to dismiss the audience[415]; but his place is once at least taken by a young man with a lute.[416] A more dramatic opening was occasionally attempted in a conversation between two boys of Florence, the one good and the other bad; and instead of the licenza the scene sometimes closed with a Te Deum, or a Laud sung by the actors and probably taken up by the spectators. Castellani in his Figliuol Prodigo made good use of the dramatic opening, gradually working the matter of his play out of a dialogue which begins with a smart interchange of Florentine chaff.[417] It would be useless even to attempt a translation of this scene. The raciness of its obsolete street-slang would evaporate, and the fiber of the piece is not strong enough to bear rude handling. It must suffice to indicate its rare dramatic quality. Students of our own Elizabethan literature may profitably compare this picture of manners with similar passages in Hycke Scorner or Lusty Juventus. But the Florentine interlude is more fairly representative of actual life than any part of our Moralities. Castellani's Prodigal Son, however, rises altogether to a higher artistic level than the ordinary; and the same may be said about the Miracolo di S. Maria Maddalena, where a simple dramatic motive is interwoven with the action of the whole piece and made to supply a proper ending.[418]

As a rule, the Sacre Rappresentazioni partook of the character of a religious service. Their tone is uniformly pious. Yet the spirit of the age and the nature of the Italians were alike unfavorable to piety of a true temper. Here it is unctuous, caressing, sentimental—anything but vigorous or virile. The monastic virtues are highly extolled; and an unwholesome view of life seen from the cloister by some would-be saint, who "winks and shuts his apprehension up" to common facts of experience, is too often presented. Vice is sincerely condemned; yet the morality of these exhibitions cannot be applauded. Instead of the stern lessons of humanity conveyed in a drama like that of Athens or of England, the precepts of the pulpit and confessional are enforced with a childish simplicity that savors more of cloistral pietism than of true knowledge of the world. Mere belief in the intercession of saints and the efficacy of relics is made to cover all crimes; while the anti-social enthusiasms of dreamy boys and girls are held up for imitation. We feel that we are reading what a set of feeble spiritual directors wrote with a touch of conscious but well-meaning insincerity for children. The glaring contrast between the professed asceticism of the fraternities and the future conduct of their youthful members in the world of the Renaissance leaves a suspicion of hypocrisy.[419] This impression is powerfully excited by Lorenzo de' Medici's Rappresentazione di S. Giovanni e Paolo, which was acted by his children. The tone is not, indeed, so unctuous as that of Castellani. Yet when we remember what manner of man was Lorenzo; when we reflect what parts were played by his sons, Piero and Leo X., upon the stage of Italy; the sanctimonious tone of its frigid octave stanzas fails to impose on our credulity.

An adequate notion of the scenic apparatus of the Rappresentazioni may be gathered from the stage-directions to S. Uliva and from the interludes described in Giovanmaria Cecchi's Esaltazione della Croce.[420] The latter piece was acted in Florence on the occasion of Ferrando de' Medici's marriage to Cristina of Lorraine, in 1589. It belongs, therefore, to the very last of these productions. Yet, judging by Vasari's account of the Ingegni, we may assume that the style of presentation was traditional, and that a Florentine Company of the fifteenth century might have put a play upon the stage with at least equal pomp. The prose description of the apparatus and the interludes reads exactly like the narrative portion of Ben Jonson's Masks at Court, in which the poet awards due praise to the "design and invention" of Master Inigo Jones and to the millinery of Signor Forobosco.[421] It was indeed, a custom derived by England from Italy for the poet to set forth a minute record of his own designs together with their execution by the co-operating architects, scene-painters, musicians, dress-makers, and morris-dancers. The architect, says Cecchi, was one Taddeo di Leonardo Landini, a member of the Compagnia, skilled in sculpture as well as an excellent machinist. He arranged the field, or prato, of the Compagnia di S. Giovanni in the form of a theater, covered with a red tent, and painted with pictures of the Cross considered as an instrument of shameful death, as a precious relic, and as the reward of virtue in this life. Emblems, scrolls and heraldic achievements completed the adornment of the theater. When the curtain rose for the first time, Jacob was seen in a meadow, "asleep with his head on certain stones, dressed in costly furs slung across his shoulder, with a thin shirt of fine linen beneath, cloth-of-silver stockings and fair buskins on his feet, and in his hand a gilt wand." While he slept, heaven opened, and seven angels appeared seated upon clouds, and making "a most pleasant noise with horns, greater and less viols, lutes and organ ... the music of this and all the other interludes was the composition of Luca Bati, a man in this art most excellent." When they had played and sung, the cloud disclosed, and showed a second heaven, where sat God the Father.[422] All the angels worshiped Him, and heaven increased in splendor. Then a ladder was let down, and God, leaning upon it, turned to Jacob and "sang majestically to the sound of many instruments, in a sonorous bass voice." Thereupon angels descended and ascended by the ladder, singing a hymn in honor of the Cross; and at last the clouds closed round, heaven disappeared and Jacob woke from sleep. Such was the introduction to the drama. Between the first and second acts was shown, with no less exuberance of scenical resources, the exodus of Israel from Egypt; between the second and third, the miracle of Aaron's rod that blossomed; between the third and fourth, the elevation of the Brazen Serpent; between the fourth and fifth, the ecstasy of David dancing before the ark "to the sound of a large lute, a violin, a trombone, but more especially to his own harp." After the fifth act the play was concluded with a pageant of religious chivalry—the Knights of Malta, S. James, S. Maurice, and the Teutonic Order—who had fought for the Cross, and to whom, amid thunderings and lightnings, as they stood upon the stage, was granted the vision of "Religion, habited in purest white, full of majesty, with the triple tiara and the crossed keys of S. Peter, holding in her hand a large and most resplendent cross, adorned with diamonds, rubies and emeralds." The resources of a theater which could place so many actors on the stage at once, and attempt the illusion of clouds and angels, bringing into play the machinery of transformation scenes, and enriching the whole with a varied accompaniment of music, must have been considerable. Those who have spent an hour in the Teatro Farnese at Parma, erected of wood for a similar occasion, may be able to summon by the aid of the imagination a shadow of this spectacle before their eyes. That the effect was not wholly grotesque, though the motives were so hazardous, can be understood from Milton's description of the descent of Mercy in his Christmas Ode.[423]

For the play of S. Uliva, though first known to us in a Florentine reprint of 1568, we may assume a more popular origin than that of Cecchi's Mystery of the Cross. It abounds in rare Renaissance combinations of pagan with Christian mythology. The action extended over two days and was interrupted at intervals by dumb shows and lyrical interludes connected only by a slight thread with the story. At one time a chase was brought upon the stage. On other occasions pictures, described with minute attention to details, were presented to the audience in Tableaux Vivants. These pictures vividly recall the style of Florentine masters, Piero di Cosimo or Sandro Botticelli. "In the interval," say the stage-directions to the players, "you will cause three women, well-beseen, to issue, one of them attired in white, one in red, the other in green, with golden balls in their hands, and with them a young man robed in white; and let him, after looking many times first on one and then on another of these damsels, at last stay still and say the following verses, gazing at her who is clad in green." This is the Mask of Hope. In another part the fable of Narcissus has to be presented, and directions are given for the disappearance of Echo, who is to repeat the final syllables of the boy's lament. "After he has uttered all these complaints, let him thrice with a loud voice cry slowly Ahimè, Ahimè, Ahimè! and let the nymph reply, and having thus spoken let him stretch himself upon the ground and lie like one dead; and within a little space let there issue forth four or more nymphs clad in white, without bows and with dishevelled hair, who, when they have come where the youth lies dead, shall surround him in a circle and at last having wrapped him in a white cloth, carry him within, singing this song[424]:

"Fly forth in bliss to heaven, Thou happy soul and fair, To find thy planet there, and haunt the skies; Leaving the tears and sighs Of this low-lying earth, Where man hath sorry mirth, as thou dost know! Bask in the fervent glow Of that pure light divine, Which on thy path shall shine, and be thy guide. Nay, soul, thou hast not died, But still more life hast thou, Albeit unbodied now thou art at rest. O soul, divinely blest, Enjoy the eternal mind, There dwelling unconfined through nights and days! Heaven's angels stand and gaze Upon thy glorious eyes, Up there in Paradise! In crowds they come! Now hast thou found thy home; Now art thou blithe and blest; Dwell now for aye at rest, pure placid soul!"

For another interlude a May-day band of girls attired in flower-embroidered dresses and youths with crowns of ivy on their heads are marshaled by Dan Cupid. They sing a song of which the following is a free translation:

Let earth herself adorn With grasses and fresh flowers, And let cold hearts, these hours, in love's fire burn. Let field, let forest turn To bloom this morn of May, That the whole world to-day may leap and sing. Let love within us spring, Banishing winter's smart, Waking within our heart sweet thoughts and fair. Let little birds in air Sing yonder boughs above; Each young man tell his love to his own maid; And girls through mead and glade, With honest eyes and meek Fixed on their lovers, seek true troth to plight. From field and mountain height To-day cold snows are fled; No clouds sail overhead; up springs clear morn. Let violets be born, Let leaves and grasses sprout, And children wander out, garlands to twine. In every dingle shine Flowers white and blue and red, Roses and lilies shed perfume around. Maidens with May-blooms crowned Through copse and meadow stray, Singing their thoughts to-day, their sweet thoughts pure. Let none be too demure; Innocence marries mirth, And from the jocund earth green laurels spring. Come, Love, and blessings bring; Chase sorrow, scatter care; Make all men happy there, soul-full of ease. Soothe pain, soothe jealousies, That with their restless flame Feed on man's heart: no shame, no grief be near.

Night and the God of Sleep again amuse the audience with an allegorical mask; and the seven deadly sins, figured as men, women and beasts, march across the stage. At no great distance from a vision of Judgment, the Sirens are introduced after this fashion: "Now goes the King to Rome; and you, meanwhile, make four women, naked, or else clothed in flesh-colored cloth, rise waist-high from the sea, with tresses to the wind, and let them sing as sweetly as may be the ensuing stanzas twice; in the which while shall two or three of you come forth, and seem to fall asleep on earth at the hearing of the song, except one only, who shall be armed, and with closed ears shall pass the sea unstayed, and let the said women take those who sleep and cast them in the waves." When we reach Uliva's wedding, we meet with the following quaint rubric: "If you wish to beguile the weariness caused by the length of the show, and to make the spectators take more delight in this than in any other interlude, then you must give them some taste of these bridals by providing a general banquet; but if you mislike the expense, then entertain the players only." It would seem that S. Uliva was acted on the prato of the confraternity, where a booth had been erected.

The forty-three plays comprised in D'Ancona's volumes may be arranged in three classes—those which deal with Bible stories or Church doctrine based on Scripture; dramatized Legends of the saints; and Novelle transformed into religious fables. Among the first sort may be mentioned plays of Abraham and Isaac, Joseph, Tobias and Raphael, and Esther; the Annunciation, the Nativity, S. John in the Desert, Christ preaching in the Temple, the Conversion of the Magdalen, the Prodigal Son, the Passion and Resurrection of our Lord, and the Last Judgment. The Natività di Cristo opens with a pastoral reminding us of French Mystères and English Miracle-plays.[425] The shepherds are bivouacking on the hills of Bethlehem when the angel appears to them. For Tudde, Harvye, Houcken, and Trowle of our Chester play, we find these southern names, Bobi di Farucchio, Nencio di Pucchio, Randello, Nencietto, and so forth. But the conduct of the piece is the same. The Italian hinds discuss their cheese and wine and bread just as the clowns of Cheshire talk about "ale of Hatton," "sheep's head sowsed in ale," and "sour milk." Such points of similarity are rare, however; for the Rappresentazioni were the growth of more refined conditions, and showed their origin in sentiment and pathos. The anonymous play of Mary Magdalen rises to a higher level of dramatic art than any sacred play in English.[426] Her story, as told in these scenes, is the versified novella of a Vittoria Accoramboni or a Bella Imperia converted by the preaching of S. Bernardino or Savonarola. It might have happened in Rome or Florence or Perugia. Magdalen, the lady of noble blood but famous with ill-fame, fair of person and of heaven-bright countenance, who dresses splendidly and lives with many lovers, spending her days in the pleasure of rich banquets and perfumed baths, delighting her heart with the music of lyres and flutes and the voices of young men, appears before us with a reality that proves how deep a hold upon the poet's fancy her picturesque tale had taken. Martha, her good but commonplace sister, forms a foil to the more impassioned and radiant figure of Magdalen. She has been cured by Christ, and has heard Him preach. Now she entreats her sister but to go and listen, for never man spake words like His. Magdalen scoffs: "Why should I be damned because I do not follow your strange life? There is time for me to enjoy my youth, and then to make my peace with God, and Paradise will open wide for me at last." Her friend Marcella enters with another argument: "O Magdalen, if you did but know how fair and gracious are his eyes! Surely he has come forth straight from heaven; could you but see him once, your heart would never be divided from him." This touches the right spring in Magdalen's mind. She will not go to hear the words of Christ, but the face and form that came from Paradise allure her. Besides, in the church where Christ will preach, there will be found new lovers and men in multitudes to gaze at her. Her maidens array her in gold and crimson, and bind up her yellow hair; and forth she rides in all her bravery surrounded by her suitors. What follows may best be told by a translation of the stage-directions and a passage of the play itself.

And at these last verses Jesus enters the temple; and having gone up into the pulpit, he begins to preach and to say with a loud voice, "Homo quidam peregre proficiscens vocavit servos suos et tradidit illis bona sua." Now comes Magdalen with her company, and her young men prepare for her a seat before the pulpit, and she in all her pomp takes her place upon it, regarding her own pleasure, nor paying heed as yet to Jesus. Afterward, Jesus looks at her and goes on preaching, always keeping his most holy gaze bent upon her; and she, after the first stanza of the sermon, looks at him, and her eyes meet those of Jesus. Then he goes on preaching, and says as follows:

A certain lord who on a journey went, Called unto him each of his serving men, And of his goods gave them arbitrament: To one he dealt five talents, to one ten, To another two, to try their heart's intent, And see how far they should be careless; then Unto the last he left but one alone: According to their powers, he charged each one. And when he had departed, instantly That servant unto whom he gave the five, Went forth, and laboring with much industry, Increased them, and therewith so well did thrive That other five he gained immediately, To render when his master should arrive; He who received but twain, did even so, And added to his sum another two. But he on whom one talent was bestowed, Went forthwith and concealed it in the soil: Careless, unthankful for the debt he owed, While he hath peace, he seeks but strife and toil: Called like his fellows in that lord's abode, He answers not, but doth himself despoil; And, as a worthless steward, hides away The money of his master day by day. Woe to thee, slothful servant and remiss, That hast thy talent buried in the ground! When reckoning comes, thou'lt yield account for this Nay, think how stern and rigorous he'll be found! Weep, then, in time for what thou'st done amiss, Before the trumpets of the judgment sound: O soul, I tell thee thou hast gone astray, Hiding thy talent in the earth away! He who on earth sets his affections still, Forgetful of the promised heavenly treasure; He who loves self more than his Maker's will, And in ill-doing finds continual pleasure; He who remembers not that sin must kill, Nor thinks how Hell will plague him above measure; He who against himself makes fast heaven's gate; Hideth in earth his talent till too late. He who loves father, mother, more than God, Not reckoning His great gifts bestowed on man; He who the path of worldly gain hath trod, Publishes for himself damnation's ban: Woe, woe to that bad servant sunk in fraud, Who leaves the good and doth what ill he can! He who on this world seeks his joy to find, His talent hides in earth, perversely blind. He who is grasping, proud, discourteous, base, Who dreameth not that he may come to want, Who seeks for flattery, praise, and pride of place, Lording it with high airs and arrogant; Who to the world gives all, and still doth chase Delight in songs and pomps exorbitant; Who in this life is fain to rest and sleep— His talent in the earth lies hidden deep. Woe for that servant who through negligence Hath hearkened not to the command divine! Yea, he shall hear the dreadful doom: Go hence! Go forth, accursed, in endless fire to pine! There shall be then no time for penitence: Bound hand and foot with punishment condign, He shall abide among lost souls beneath, Where is great weeping and great gnashing of teeth. O soul, so full of sins, what shalt thou do? Of all thy countless crimes abominable, Look to the end! Look to it! Hell for you Lies open, with damned folk innumerable! Whence thou shalt never issue, ever rue In vain remorse and pangs intolerable! Weep, soul, ah weep for thy most vile estate, Now that repentance need not come too late! Seek in this life to feel sincere contrition, Before the judge so just and so severe Summons thee to his throne, for inquisition Into each sin, each thought that wandered here; There shalt thou find no merciful remission, But justice shall be dealt with truth austere; And he who fails shall go to burn with shame For ever, ever, in eternal flame. Quis ex vobis centum oves habens, Si forte unam ex illis perdiderit, Nonne nonagintas novem dimittens Et illam querit, donec ipsam invenerit? Et cum invenerit, in humeros ponens, Gaudens, in domum suam cito venerit, And calls his kinsfolk and his friends to make Festival for the new-found wanderer's sake? The soul, she is that lost and wandering sheep; Eternal God is the true shepherd: He Seeks her, lest on his lamb the wolf should leap, The fiend, who slays with guile and treachery. He spends his life, her safe to seek and keep, And leaves those ninety-nine in bliss to be; And when he finds her, makes great joy in heaven, With all the angelic host, o'er one forgiven. There was a father who had children twain; The younger son began to speak and pray That he might take his share, for he was fain, Furnished therewith, from home to wend his way: The father gently urged him to remain, But at the last was bounden to obey: Far, far away he roamed, and spent his all, Sad wretch, on carnal joys and prodigal. But when he came to want, repenting sore, Unto his father, all ashamed, he knelt; His father clothed him with new robes, and bore Even more tender love than first he felt: So doth high God, who lives for evermore, Unto the souls that with repentance melt; Let them but seek his love with contrite will, He is most merciful, and pardons still. Soul, thou hast wounded many hearts, I wis, Dwelling in delicate and vain delight; With many a lover thou wouldst toy and kiss And art o'erfull of evil appetite; Thy heart is big with strifes and jealousies: Turn unto me; I wait to wash thee white; That with the rest thy talent thou mayst double, And dwell with them in heaven secure from trouble.

After the blessing of Jesus, Magdalen, weeping, and with her head covered, can have no rest for the great confusion that she felt; and all the people wept, and in great astonishment were waiting agaze to see what should ensue.

O alma peccatrice, che farai?—Christ's voice with its recurrences of gravely sweet persuasion melts Magdalen's heart. She may not speak one word, until her sister has led her home and comforted her a space. Then she answers:

Deh, priega Iddio che m'allumini il core!

After this, left alone with her own soul, awakened to the purer consciousness that Christ has stirred, she takes the box of ointment, and, despoiled of all her goodly raiment, with her hair disheveled, goes to the house of the Pharisee. There at last, with the breaking of the alabaster, she dissolves in tears, and her heart finds peace. In these scenes, if anywhere, we have the stuff from which the drama might have been evolved. Magdalen is a living woman, such as Palma might have painted; and Christ is a real man gifted with power to penetrate the soul.

The Figliuol Prodigo illustrates the same effort on the poet's part to steep an old-world story in the vivid colors of to-day.[427] In the Prodigal himself we find a coarse-hearted villain, like Hogarth's Idle Apprentice—vain, silly, lustful, gluttonous, careless of the honor and love that belong to him in his father's home. The scenes with the innkeeper, the gamblers, and the ruffians, among whom he runs to ruin, portray the vulgar dissipations of Florence, and justify the common identification of taverns with places of ill-fame.[428] There is a touch of true pathos at the end of the play in the grief of the father who has lost his son. The conflict of feelings in the heart of the elder brother, vexed at first with the prodigal's reception, but melting into love and pity at the fervor of his penitence, is also not without dramatic spirit. At the very end "a boy with the lyre" enters and "speaks the moral of the parable."[429]

The movement of these two plays is not impeded by the sanctity of the subject. When, however, the legend belongs more immediately to the narrative of Christ's life, the form of the Representation is more severe. This is especially true of Castellani's Cena e Passione, where the incidents of the Last Supper, the Agony in the Garden, the trials before Pilate and Caiaphas, the Flagellation, and the Crucifixion are narrated with reverential brevity.[430] In reading these scenes, we must summon to our memory Luca della Robbia's bass-reliefs or the realistic groups of the Lombard Sacri Monti. The colored terra-cotta figures in those chapels among the chestnut trees above the Sesia are but Castellani's poetry conveyed in tableaux, while the Florentine actors undoubtedly aimed at presenting by their grouping, dresses and attitudes a living image of such plastic work. But the peculiar pathos of the Italians found finer expression in picture or fresco—in Luini's "Flagellation" at S. Maurizio or the pallid anguish of Tintoretto's women sunk beneath the Cross in the Scuola di San Rocco—than in the fluent stanzas of the sacred playwrights. On the walls of church or oratory the sweetness and languor of emotion became as dignified in beauty as the melodies of Pergolese, and its fervor touched at times the sublimity of tragic passion. Not words but plastic forms were ever the noblest vehicle of Italian feeling. Yet each kind of art may be profitably used to illustrate the other, and the simple phrases of the Rappresentazioni are often the best comments on finished works of painting. Here, for example, is Raphael's Lo Spasimo in words[431]:

Oimè, figliuol, è questo il viso Ch'era tanto formoso e tanto bello? Omè, dove si specchia el paradiso Oggi è percosso in tanto gran flagello! Io vengo a morte, figliuol mio diletto, Se non ti tengo nelle braccia stretto.

Mary faints, and the Magdalen supports her, weeping[432]:

Omè, che per dolor Maria vien meno: Noi perderem la madre col figliuolo. Pallido è il volto già tanto sereno, Quale è tutto mutato pel gran duolo. El polso manca, e nel sacrato seno El cuor suo resta respirante solo. Soccorso, aiuto; ognun gli dia conforto, Sendo aghiacciato il corpo e quasi morto.

The hearts of these rude poets were very tender for Mary, Mother of our Lord. There is a touching passage in the Disputa al Tempio, when Joseph and the Virgin are walking toward the temple with the boy who is to them a sacred charge[433]:

Iosef.	I' guido e son guidato, e reggo quello Che regge me, e muovo chi mi muove: Pastor mi fo di quel ch'io son agnello; O quanta grazia in questo servo piove!
Maria.	S'i' alzo gli occhi alquanto per vederlo, Contemplo nel mirar cose alte e nuove. Per la virtù di sua divina forma L'amante ne l'amato si trasforma.

Something artless and caressing in these words brings before us Luini's Joseph with his golden-brown robes and white hair, Mary in her blue and crimson with the beautiful braided curls of gold. The Magdalen, again, moves through all these solemn scenes with a grace peculiar to her story. The poet, like the painter, never forgets that her sins were forgiven quia multum amavit. She who in Luini's fresco at Lugano kneels with outstretched arms and long fair rippling loosened hair, beneath the Cross, is shown in the Resurrezione di Gesù Cristo upon her knees before the gardener whose one word tells her that she sees her risen Lord.[434] It is a scene from Fra Angelico, a touch of tenderness falling like a faint soft light athwart the mass of orthodox tradition.

The sympathy between these shows and the plastic arts may be still further traced in Belcari's Dì del Giudizio.[435] After the usual prologue an angel thrice blows the trumpet blast that wakes the dead, crying aloud Surgite! Minos assembles his fiends, and Christ bids the archangel separate the good from the bad.[436] Michael, obedient to this order, seeks a hypocrite hidden among the just and sets him on the left hand, while Trajan is taken from the damned and placed among the saved. Solomon rises alone,[437] and remains undecided in the middle space, till Michael, charging him with carnal sin, forces him to take his station with the goats. S. Peter now disputes with wicked friars who think to save themselves by pointing to their cowls and girdles. The poor appeal to S. Francis, but he answers that poverty is no atonement for a sinful life. Magdalen refuses help to women who have lived impenitent. Christ and Mary reply that the hour of grace is past. Then the representatives of the seven deadly sins step forth and reason with the virtuous—the proud man with the humble, the glutton with the temperate. Sons upbraid their fathers for neglect or evil education. Others thank God for the discipline that saved them in their youth. At the last Christ awards judgment, crying to the just: "Ye saw me hungry and ye fed me, naked and ye clothed me!" and to the unjust: "I was hungry and ye fed me not, naked and ye clothed me not." Just and unjust answer, as in Scripture, with those words whereof the double irony is so dramatic. The damned are driven off to Hell, and angels open for the blessed the doors of Paradise.

The Rappresentazioni of the second class offer fewer points of interest; almost the sole lesson they inculcate being the superiority of the monastic over the secular life. S. Anthony leaves the world in which he has lived prosperous and wealthy, incarcerates his sister in a convent, and becomes a hermit.[438] Satan assembles the hosts of hell and makes fierce war upon his resolution; but the temptation is a poor affair, and Anthony gets through it by the help of an angel. The play ends with an assault of the foiled fiend of Avarice upon three rogues—Tagliagambe, Scaramuccia, and Carabello—who cut each other's throats over their ill-gotten booty. S. Guglielmo Gualtero, like S. Francis, sells all that he possesses, embraces poverty, and becomes a saint.[439]. S. Margaret subdues the dragon, and is beheaded by a Roman prefect for refusing homage to the pagan deities.[440] SS. Giovanni e Paolo are Latin confessors of the conventional type.[441] The legends of the Seven Sleepers, S. Ursula, and S. Onofrio are treated after a like fashion. S. Eufrasia still further illustrates the medieval ideal of monastic chastity.[442] She leaves her betrothed husband and her mother to enter a convent. Nothing befalls her, and her life is good for nothing, except that she exhales the odor of conventual sanctity and dies. S. Teodora is a variation on the same theme.[443] She refuses Quintiliano, the governor of Asia, in marriage; and is sent to a bad house, whence Eurialo, a Christian, delivers her. Both are immediately dispatched to execution. It is probable that the two last-mentioned plays were intended for representation within the walls of a nunnery. S. Barbara presents the same motive, with a more marked theological bias.[444] Dioscoro, the father of the saint, hears from his astrologers that she is fated to set herself against the old gods of his worship. To avert this calamity, he builds a tower with two windows, where he shuts her up in the company of orthodox pagan teachers. Barbara becomes learned in her retirement, and refuses, upon the authority of Plato, to pay homage to idols. Faith, instead of Love, finds this new Danaë, in the person, not of Zeus, but of a priest dispatched by Origen from Alexandria to convert her to Christianity. The princess learns her catechism, is baptized, and adds a third window to her tower, in recognition of the Trinity. It only remains for her father to torture her cruelly to death.

The outline of these stories is often singularly beautiful, and capable of poetic treatment. Remembering what Massinger and Decker made of the Virgin Martyr, we turn with curiosity to S. Teodora or S. Ursula. Yet we are doomed to disappointment. The ingenuous charm, again, which painters threw over the puerilities of the monastic fancy, is absent from these plays. Sodoma's legend of S. Benedict in fresco on the walls of Monte Oliveto, Carpaccio's romance of S. Ursula painted for her Scuola at Venice, are touched with the grace of a child's fairy-story. The Rappresentazioni eliminate all elements of mystery and magic from the fables, and reduce them to bare prose. The core of the myth or tale is rarely reached; the depths of character are never penetrated; and still the wizardry of wonderland is gone. In the hands of these Italian playwrights the most pregnant story of the Orient or North assumed the thin slight character of ordinary life. Its richness disappeared. Its beauty evanesced. Nothing remained but the dry bones of a novella. Indeed, the prose legends of the fourteenth century are far more fascinating than these dramatized tales of the Renaissance, which might be used to prove, if further proof were needed, that the Italian imagination is not in the highest sense romantic or fantastic, not far-reaching by symbol or by vision into the depths of nature human and impersonal. The sense of infinity which gives value to Northern works of fancy, is unknown in Italy. Sir Thomas Mallory wrote of Arthur's passage into dreamland[445]: "And when they were at the water's side, even fast by the banke hoved a little barge with many faire ladies in it, and among them all was a queene, and all they had blacke hoods, and they wept and shriked when they saw King Arthur." The author of the Tavola Ritonda makes the event quite otherwise precise[446]:

E stando per un poco, ed ecco per lo mare venire una navicella, tutta coperta di bianco ... e la nave s'accostò allo re, e alquante braccia uscirono della nave che presono lo re Artù, e visibilemente il misono nella nave, e portàrollo via per mare ... si crede che la fata Morgana venisse per arte in quella navicella, e portòllo via in una isoletta di mare; e quivi morì di sue ferite, e la fata il sopellì in quella isoletta.

This anxiety after verification and distinctness is almost invariable in Italian literature. The very devil becomes a definite and oftentimes prosaic personage. External Nature is credited with no inner spirit, reaching forth from wood or wave or cloud to touch the soul of man in reverie or trance, or breaking on his charmed senses in the form of gnome or water-sprite or fairy. Men and women move in clear sunlight, disenchanted of the gloom or glory, as of star-irradiate vapor, which a Northern mytho-poet wraps around them, making their humanity thereby more poignant.

Those who care to connect the genius of a people with the country of their birth, may find the source of these mental qualities in the nobly beautiful, serene and gracious, but never mystical Italian land. The Latin Camœnæ have neither in ancient nor in modern years evoked the forms of mythic fable from that landscape. Far less is there the touch of Celtic or Teutonic inspiration—the light that never was on sea or land. The nightingales of Sorrento or Nettuno in no poet's vision have

Charmed magic casements, opening on the foam Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.

Down the hillsides between Lucca and Pistoja, where the cypresses stand in rows and olives cast their shadows on the gray tilled soil, no lover has dreamed he met Queen Guinevere in spring riding through flowers with Lancelot. Instead of Morgan le Fay, turning men to lichened and mist-moistened stones upon the heath, the Italian witch was ever Locusta, the poison-brewer, or Alcina, the temptress.

This peculiarity of the Italian genius made their architects incapable of understanding Gothic. This deprived Italian art of that sublimity which needs a grain of the grotesque for its perfection, a touch of the uncouth for its accomplishment. The instinct of poets and artists alike induced them to bring mystery within the sphere of definition, to limit the marvelous by reducing it to actual conditions, and to impoverish the terrible by measuring its boundaries. But since every defect has its corresponding quality, this same instinct secured for the modern age a world of immaculate loveliness in art and undimmed joyousness in poetry. If the wonderland of fancy is eliminated, the monstrous and unshaped have disappeared. With the grotesque vanishes disproportion. Humanity, conscious of its own emotion, displaces the shadowy people of the legends. We move in a well-ordered world of cheerfulness and beauty, made for man, where symmetry of parts is music. Ariosto's jocund irony is no slight compensation for the imagery of a Northern mythus.

Returning to the Rappresentazioni, we are forced to admit that the defect of the Italian fancy is more apparent than its quality, in a species of dramatic art which, being childish, needed some magic spell to reconcile an adult taste to its puerility.[447] They were written at the most prosaic moment of the national development, by men who could not afford to substitute the true Italian poetry of irony and idyllic sensuousness for the ancient religious spirit. The bondage of the middle ages was upon them. They were forced to take the extravagance of the monastic imagination for fact. But they did not really believe; and so the fact was apprehended frigidly, prosaically. Instead of poetry we get rhetoric; instead of marvels, gross incredibilities are forced upon us in the lives of men and women fashioned like the folk who crowd the streets we know. Another step in the realistic direction would have transformed all these religious myths into novelle; and then a new beauty, the beauty of the Decameron and Novellino, would have been shed upon them. But it was precisely this step that Castellani and Belcari dared not take, since their purpose remained religious edification. Nay, their instinct led them in the opposite direction. Unable to escape the influence of the novella, which was the truest literary form peculiar to Italy in that age, they converted it into a sacred legend and treated it with the same rhetorical and insincere pietism as the stories of the Saints. From S. Barbara to the third-class Rappresentazioni the transition is easy.

The interest of this group of stories, as illustrating the psychological conditions of the Italian imagination, is great. Stripped of medieval mystery, reduced to the proportions of a novella, but not yet invested with its worldly charm, denuded of the pregnant symbolism or tragic intensity of their originals, these plays reveal the poverty of the fifteenth century, the incapacity of the Florentine genius at that moment to create poetry outside the sphere of figurative art, and in a region where irony and sensuality and natural passion were alike excluded. They might be compared to dead bones awaiting the spirit-breath of mirth and sarcasm to rouse them into life. Teofilo is the Italian Faustus.[448] A devil accuses him to the Bishop he is serving. Outcast and dishonored, he seeks Manovello, a Jewish sorcerer, who takes him to a cross-way and raises the fiend, Beelzebub. Teofilo abjures Christ, adores the devil, and signs a promise to be Satan's bondsman. In return, Beelzebub dispatches a goblin, Farfalletto, to the Bishop, who believes that an angel has come to bid him restore Teofilo to honor. Consequently Teofilo regains his post. But in the midst of his prosperity the renegade is wretched. Stung by conscience, he throws himself upon the mercy of our Lady. She pleads for him with Christ, summons the devil, and wrests from his grasp the parchment given by Teofilo. Poetic justice is satisfied by Manovello's descent to hell. Such is the prosaic form which the Faust legend assumed in Italy. Instead of the lust for power and knowledge which consumed the doctor of Wittenberg, making him exclaim:

Had I as many souls as there be stars, I'd give them all for Mephistophilis!

we have this commonplace story of a bishop's almoner, driven by a vulgar trial of his patience to abjure the faith. The intercession of Mary introduces a farcial element into the piece: the audience is amused by seeing the devil's contract snatched from him after a jocular altercation with the Queen of Heaven. Our Mephistophilis is either fantastically grotesque, as in the old prose-legend, or tragically saturnine, as in Marlowe's tragedy. The fiend of this Florentine play is a sort of supernatural usurer, who lends at a short date upon exorbitant interest, and is nonsuited for fraud in the supreme court of appeal. To charge the Italian imagination in general with this dwarfing and defining of a legend that had in it such elements of grandeur, might be scarcely fair. The fault lies more perhaps with Florence of the fifteenth century; yet Florence was the brain of Italy, and if the people there could find no more of salt or savor in a myth like that of Theophilus, this fact gives food for deep reflection to the student of their culture.

In the Rè Superbo we have one of those stories which traveled from the far East in the middle ages over the whole of Europe, acquiring a somewhat different form in every country.[449] The proud king in the midst of his prosperity falls sick. He takes a short day's journey to a watering-place, and bathes. By night an angel assumes his shape, dons his royal robes, summons his folk, and fares homeward to his palace. The king, meanwhile, is treated by the innkeeper as an impudent rascal. He begs some rags to cover his nakedness, and arrives in due time at the city he had left the day before. There his servants think him mad; but he obtains an audience with the angel, who reads him a sermon on humility, and then restores him to his throne. In this tale there lay nothing beyond the scope of the Italian imagination. Consequently the treatment is adequate, and the situations copied from real life are really amusing. The play of Barlaam e Josafat by Bernardo Pulci is more ambitious.[450] Josafat's father hears from his astrologers that the child will turn Christian. Accordingly he builds a tower, and places his son there, surrounded with all things pleasant to the senses and cheering to the heart of man. His servants receive strict orders that the boy should never leave his prison, lest haply, meeting with old age or poverty or sickness, he should think of Christ. On one occasion they neglect this rule. Josafat rides forth and sees a leper and a blind man, and learns that age and death and pain are in store for all. This stirs reflection, and prepares him to receive the message of one Barlaam, who comes disguised as a merchant to the tower. Barlaam offers him a jewel which restores sight to the blind, hearing to the deaf, speech to the dumb, and which turns a fool to wisdom. The jewel is the faith of Christ. Josafat is instantly converted and baptized; nor can the persuasions of wise men or the allurements of women overcome his fixed resolve. So firmly rooted is his new faith, so wonderful his eloquence, that he converts his father and the Court, and receives for his great wisdom the crown of his ancestors. Yet an earthly throne savors too much in his eyes of worldly pride. Therefore he renounces it, and lives thenceforth a holy hermit. This legend, it will be perceived, is a dim echo of the wonderful history of Siddârtha, the founder of Buddhism. Beautiful as are the outlines, too beautiful to be spoiled by any telling, Pulci has done his best to draw it from the dream-world of romance into the sphere of prose. At the same time, while depriving it of romance, he has not succeeded in dramatizing it. We do not feel the psychological necessity for the changes in any of the characters; the charm of each strange revolution is destroyed by the clumsy preparation of the motives. We are forced to feel that the playwright was working on the lines of a legend he did not understand and could not vitalize. The wonder is that he thought of choosing it and found it ready to his hand.

Few of the Rappresentazioni are so interesting as S. Uliva.[451] Uliva is no saint of the Catholic calendar but a daughter of world-old romance. Her legend may be read in the Gesta Romanorum, in Philip de Beaumanoir's Roman de la Mannelline, in Ser Giovanni's Pecorone, in Chaucer's Man of Law's Tale, in Grimm's Handless Maiden, and in Russian and Servian variations on the same theme. It is in truth the relic of some very ancient myth, used by the poets of all ages for the sake of its lesson of patience in affliction, its pathos of persecuted innocence. The form the tale assumed in Italy is this. Uliva, daughter of the Roman Emperor, Giuliano, is begged in marriage by her own father, who says she has more beautiful hands than any other princess. She cuts her hands off, and Giuliano sends her to Britain to be killed. But her murderers take pity on her, and leave her in a wood alone. There the King of Britain finds her and places her under the protection of his queen. After many misfortunes the Virgin Mary restores her hands, and she is married to the King of Castile. She bears him a son; but by this time she has roused the jealousy and hatred of the queen-mother, who takes the opportunity of the king's absence to poison his mind against her by letters, and shortly after drives her forth with her child. Uliva reaches Rome, and lives there twelve years unknown, till her husband, who has discovered and punished his mother's treason, and has sought his wronged wife sorrowing, at last rejoins her and recognizes in her son his heir. The play ends with a reconciliation scene between the Emperor, the King, and Uliva, the Pope pronouncing benedictions on the whole party. It will be seen from this brief abstract of the legend that the Rappresentazione is a chivalrous novella dramatized. Several old pathetic stories have been woven into one, and the heroine has been dignified with the title of saint because of the pity she inspires. Uliva belongs to the sisterhood of Boccaccio's Griselda, Ariosto's Ginevra, and the Queen in our old ballad of Sir Aldingar. The medieval imagination, after creating types of stateliness like Guinivere, of malice like Morgana, of love like Iseult, turned aside and dwelt upon the tender delicacy of a woman, whose whole strength is her beauty, gentleness, and patience; who suffers all things in the spirit of charity; whom the angels love and whom our Lady cherishes; who wins all hearts of men by her goodliness; and who, like Una, passes unscathed through peril and persecution until at last her joy is perfected by the fruition of her lawful love. It was precisely this element of romance that touched the Italian fancy; and the playwright of S. Uliva has shown considerable skill in his treatment of it. Piteous details are accumulated with remorseless pertinacity upon the head of the unfortunate Uliva, in order to increase the pathos of her situation. There is no mitigation of her hardships except in her own innocence, and in the loving compassion wrung by her beauty from her rude tormentors. This want of relief, together with the brusque passage from one incident to another, betrays a lack of dramatic art. But the poet, whoever he was, succeeded in sustaining the ideal of purity and beauty he conceived. He shows how all Uliva's sufferings as well as her good fortune were due to the passions her beauty inspired, and how it was her purity that held her harmless to the end.

Stella is the same story slightly altered, with a somewhat different cast of characters and an evil-hearted step-mother in the place of the malignant queen.[452] If we compare both fables with Grimm's version of the "Handless Maiden," the superiority of the Northern conception cannot fail to strike us. The Italian novella, though written for the people, exhibits the external pomp and grandeur of royalty. All its motives are drawn from the clash of human passions. Yet these are hidden beneath a superincumbent mass of trivialities. The German tale has a background of spiritual mystery—good and evil powers striving for the possession of a blameless soul. When the husband, who has been deceived by feminine malice, takes his long journey without food as a penitent to find his injured wife, how far deeper is the pathos and the poetry of the situation than the Italian apparatus of couriers with letter-bags, chancellors, tournaments, and royal progresses undertaken with a vast parade, can compass! The Northern fancy, stimulated by the simple beauty of the situation, confines itself to the passionate experience of the heart and soul. The Florentine playwright adheres to the material facts of life, and takes a childish pleasure in passing the splendors of kings and princes in review. By this method he vulgarizes the legend he handles. Beneath his touch it ceases to be holy ground. The enchantment of the myth has evanesced.

Rosana is simply the story of Floire et Blanchefleur, which Boccaccio had already worked into his Filocopo.[453] Austero, King of Rome, goes with his wife on pilgrimage to Holy Land. He falls into the hands of the King of Cesaria, and is slain with all his folk, except the queen. She is taken captive to Cesaria, where she gives birth to Rosana on the same day that Ulimeno is born to her master. When Ulimeno grows up, he loves the daughter of his father's slave. His parents seek to cure this passion by sending him to France, and at the same time sell Rosana to some merchants, who convey her to the Sultan's harem. Ulimeno returns to Cesaria in deep distress, and vows that he will never rest till he has regained his love. After a proper number of adventures, he finds Rosana in the seraglio, where notwithstanding the Sultan's admiration of her beauty, she has preserved her virginity. They are married, and Ulimeno is converted, with his realm, to Christianity. The prettiest parts of this play are the scenes in the seraglio, where Rosana refuses comfort from the Sultan's women, and the contrivances devised by Ulimeno to get speech with her. Except that Rosana and her parents are Christian and that the saints protect her, there is nothing to justify the title of Sacra Rappresentazione. It is a love-romance, like Shakspere's Pericles.

Another novella of less poetic interest is dramatized in Agnolo Ebreo.[454] Agnolo, the Jew, has a Christian wife, who persuades him instead of putting out his money at usury to lend it to Christ by giving it away in alms. Having thus cast his bread upon the waters, he recovers it again after not many days by picking up money in the streets and finding a jewel in a fish's belly. He is baptized, because he sees clearly that the God of the Christians can make him rich. Only its tedious solemnity prevents this play from being a farce.

Three Rappresentazioni are written upon incidents of pilgrimage to the shrine of S. James of Compostella—Il Santo Barone, as he is always called. The first of these is entitled Rappresentazione di un Pellegrino.[455] It tells the tale of a certain Guglielmo who vowed the journey to Compostella on his sick bed. Upon the road he meets with a fiend in the disguise of S. James, who persuades him to commit suicide. No sooner is he dead, than the devil grasps his soul, as may be seen in Lorenzetti's fresco of the Campo Santo, and makes away with it toward hell. S. James stops him, and a voluble altercation takes place between them, at the end of which the soul, who keeps crying misericordia at intervals, is rescued and restored to its body. Then Guglielmo completes his vow, and returns joyfully to his wife. I due Pellegrini is more complex.[456] Arrigo Coletta leaves his wife and son at Rome; Constantino Constante leaves his wife and three sons at Genoa; and both set forth to Compostella. On the way they meet and make friends; but the Genoese dies before they have got far upon their journey. His Roman friend carries the dead body to Compostella, where S. James restores it to life, and both return in safety to their homes. After sojourning some time in Rome, Arrigo falls sick of leprosy, and has to go forth and wander up and down the earth. Chance brings him to the house of the Genoese who had received such benefits from him upon their pilgrimage. They consult doctors and wise men together, who assure them that no cure can be wrought unless the leper bathe from head to foot in the blood of virgins. This determines Constantino to sacrifice all that he holds dearest in the world. He kills his three sons, and prepares a bath of their blood, which restores his old benefactor to health. But the Saint of Compostella has still his eye upon his servants. A miracle brings the three boys back to life. They are found with golden apples in their hands, and the play ends with a general thanksgiving. The prosy bluntness with which the incidents of this strange story are treated as matter of fact, is scarcely less remarkable than the immorality which substitutes mere thaumaturgy for the finer instincts of humanity. The exaggerated generosity of Constantino might be paralleled from hundreds of novelle. This one virtue seems to have had extraordinary fascination for the Italians. I tre Pellegrini is based upon a legend of medieval celebrity, versified by Southey in his "Pilgrimage to Compostella."[457] A father, a mother, and a son of great personal beauty set forth together for the shrine of S. Iago. On the road they put up at an inn, where Falconetta, the host's daughter, falls in love with the boy and tempts him. Thwarted in her will, she vows to ruin him; and for this purpose, puts a silver cup into his traveling bag. In the morning the pilgrims are overtaken by the police, who find the cup and hang the beautiful young man. The parents complete their vow, and on the way back discover their son upon the gallows alive and well. Falconetta is burned, and her parents are hanged—the old host remarking, not without humor, that, though he was innocent of this crime, he had murdered enough people in his day to have deserved his fate. The style of this play merits more praise than can be bestowed on the Rappresentazioni in general. Falconetta is a real theatrical character, and the bustle of the inn on the arrival of the guests is executed with dramatic vigor.

In their Sacre Rappresentazioni the Florentines advanced to the very verge of the true drama. After adapting the Miracle-plays of medieval orthodoxy to their stage, they versified the Legends of the Saints, and went so far as to dramatize novels of a purely secular character. The Figliuol Prodigo and the farce appended to the Pellegrino contain the germs of vernacular comedy. S. Maddalena is a complete character. S. Uliva is delicately sketched and well sustained. The situation at the opening of the Tre Pellegrini is worked out with real artistic skill. Lastly, in the Esaltazione della Croce a regular five-act tragedy was attempted.

From the oratories of the Compagnie and the parlors of the convents this peculiar form of art was extended to the Courts and public theaters. Poliziano composed a Rappresentazione on the classical fable of Orpheus, and Niccolò da Correggio another on the myth of Cephalus and Procris.[458] Other attempts to secularize the religious drama followed, until, in 1521, Francesco Mantovano put the contemporary history of the French General Lautrec upon the boards.

Still the fact remains that the Sacre Rappresentazioni did not lead to the production of a national Italian theater. If we turn to the history of our Elizabethan stage, we shall find that, after the age of the Miracles and Moralities had passed, a new and independent work of art, emanating from the creative genius of Marlowe and Shakspere, put England in the possession of that great rarity, a Drama commensurate with the whole life of the nation at one of its most brilliant epochs. To this accomplishment of the dramatic art the Italians never attained. The causes of their failure will form the subject of a separate inquiry when we come to consider the new direction taken by the playwrights at the Courts of Ferrara and Rome.

As an apology for the space here devoted to the analysis of plays childish in their subject-matter, prosaic in their treatment, and fruitless of results, it may be urged that in the Sacre Rappresentazioni better than elsewhere we can study the limitations of the popular Italian genius at the moment when the junction was effected between humanism and the spirit of the people.