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To the left of the entrance is a wonderful old baptismal font of pure copper, which has been the envy of all collectors. One wonders looking at the ancient vessel whether it was baptized with the blood of all the martyrs who died for San Xavier Francesca Garcez, for instance? There is a window in this baptistry, too, that is the envy of critics and collectors.
When the deposed Euphemius asked of him a safe conduct for his journey into banishment, and Macedonius received authority to grant it, he went into the baptistry to give it, but caused his archdeacon first to remove his omophorion, and appeared in the garb of a simple priest to give his predecessor a sum of money collected for him. He was much praised for this.
It had been a refuge in time of persecution, and there S. Gatianus, the first Bishop of Tours, in the third century had sheltered. But now Martin and his disciples set to work to enlarge and remodel the subterranean habitations; they scooped out a chapel, and they formed a baptistry. In 853 the Northmen came up the Loire and massacred a hundred and sixteen of the monks. Only twenty-four escaped.
Food is consumed on places which, in bygone days, it dared not even be carried over." At night, in the baptistry, with lamps dimly burning, the women were stripped even of their tunics, plunged three times in the pool, then anointed, dressed in white, and kissed. She was not, however, a virgin, but a young mother with a baby at her breast.
A moon nearly full, which seemed to veil while it in reality heightened their beauty, enabled me to see these venerable edifices to advantage. The hanging tower is a beautiful pile of white marble; the Cathedral is one of the most chastely elegant specimens of architecture in all Italy; the baptistry, too peculiar to be classic, is, nevertheless, a tasteful and elegant design.
A few seconds later, looking up the streets, I saw another troop of soldiers, rushing down toward this church at full speed. It seems that while I was being beaten in the main auditorium, in the baptistry of the church they were killing, in cold blood, the Archbishop, who was suspected of a predilection for the opposite party, and who had refused to retract or resign from his office.
There is a little arcade of three round-headed unadorned arches cut in the cliff that served as a cloister, and there is the old baptistry where Martin admitted his converts into the Christian Church, sunk in the rock for adult and complete submersion, and the niches in the wall for the sacred oils. Adjoining is the cave in which the neophyte unclothed and afterwards reclothed himself.
I, therefore, offer to erect the church building and the church may pay me six per cent. annually until I die, and then the building will belong to the church as a legacy which I intend to leave." As the work on the house progressed he signified his desire to be the first one to be baptized in the baptistry.
The border of veined marble, the altar of mosaics and fine relief, the architecture of the outlying baptistry, the wreathed angel, all speak of Italy in that lovely moment when the Gothic had not been entirely abandoned and the Renaissance was but an opening bud. The highest work of painter and weaver artists both continued through thirty or forty years.
It is set more deeply in the wall than any window in the Tower of London, with pointed Gothic top that sends shafts of sunlight clear across the earthen floor. From the baptistry I ascended to the upper towers. The stairs are old timber set in adobe and brick, through solid walls of a thickness of six feet. The view from the belfries above is wonderful.
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