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In this passion for reliques two different sentiments seem to have been combined the merely superstitious belief in the efficacy of charms, which caused the Venetians to guard the body of S. Mark so jealously, and the Neapolitans to watch the liqifaction of the blood of S. Januarius with a frenzy of excitement and that nobler respect for the persons of the mighty dead which induced Sigismondo Malatesta to transport the body of Gemistus Pletho to Rimini, and which rendered the supposed coffin of Aristotle at Palermo an object of admiration to Mussulman and Christian alike.
The cathedral with the beautiful door, and the columns of African and Egyptian granite that once ornamented the temple of Apollo, contains the famous sacred blood of San Gennaro or Januarius, which is preserved in two phials in a silver tabernacle, and miraculously liquefies three times a year, to the great admiration of the people.
I am afraid that if I had a lover like St. Januarius I should not grant him many favours." "Is he very ugly, then?" "If his portrait is a good likeness, you can see for yourself by examining his statue." Gaiety leads to freedom, and freedom to friendship. Mental graces are superior to bodily charms.
Then came the Sabbath, and they attended morning service in the Cathedral, in the very chapel of San Januarius which is decorated with pictures by Domenichino, Guido Reni, and Lanfranco, the completion of which was prevented by the jealousy of the Neapolitan painters.
He seemed to see a departed friend, Ferrandus Januarius, with whom he had often discoursed on the immortality of the soul, and whom he now asked whether it was true that the pains of Hell were really dreadful and eternal. The shadow gave an answer like that of Achilles when Odysseus questioned him.
Now the Pompeii folks didn't know a saint or a bishop by sight, and Jupiter, as Aunt Caroline says, was never properly qualified to interfere. That's how it was, I presume. I don't suppose the people of Naples take much stock in the laws of nature; they don't have to, with Januarius in a drawer. And real estate keeps booming right along."
Januarius, that jumped out of a wooden box in a hackney coach, because a gentleman swore, will be nothing to the scenes we’ll witness; and if St. Patrick should sport his tibia at an evening party of Daniel O’Connell’s, it would not in the least surprise me. These are great blessings, and I am fully sensible of them.
II. was "A View of Society and Manners in Italy." Vol. In this particular volume what interested me most, perhaps, was the very spirited and intelligent account of the miracle of the liquefaction of the blood of Saint Januarius, but it gave me an hour's mighty agreeable reading. So much for Number Two. No.
Think of the fate of your teacher, the great Annibale, whom a knavish crew of fellow-painters in Naples persecuted so that he could not get a single great work to undertake, but was everywhere shown the door with despite, which brought him to his untimely grave. Think what happened to our Domenichino, when he was painting the cupola of the chapel of St. Januarius.
He was an Ohio boy, and his early schooling had been obtained in old-time American fashion in a little log school; where, by the way, one of the other boys was Januarius Aloysius MacGahan, afterward the famous war correspondent and friend of Skobeloff.
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