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In that troubled epoch the voice of the preacher was seldom heard; sermons, however, were occasionally delivered by the Franciscans and the Dominicans in the churches of Ara Coeli and Santa Maria sopra Minerva; and at these our saints never failed to assist. Their spiritual guide had given them leave to go to communion several times a week.

Though the style of San Luigi dei Francesi is better, more soberly elegant, the only thing that touched him even there was the thought of the heroic or saintly Frenchmen, who sleep in foreign soil beneath the flags. And as he sought for something Gothic, he ended by going to see Santa Maria sopra Minerva,* which, he was told, was the only example of the Gothic style in Rome.

Archives of Modena. Cartari says in the same despatch that the robes he had described were intended for presents. Li Ambasciatori Veneziani le presentarono due vesti grandi in forma di palii velluto Cremesino foderati di ermelini, quali levatesi di sopra loro le presentarono. Cagnolo. Ano dato materia di ridere ad hogni homo cum suo presente.

Gherardo, then, having come by reason of this and of his other works into very great repute and fame, both in his own country and abroad, envious death, ever the enemy of noble actions, cut short in the finest period of his labour the infinite expectation of much greater works, for which the world was looking from him; for at the age of forty-nine he came unexpectedly to his end, and was buried with most honourable obsequies in the Church of S. Jacopo Sopra Arno.

The most significant matter connected with this scene in the early version of the poem is the stage direction, which reads thus: "Orfeo cantando sopra il monte in su la lira e seguente versi latini fu interotto da un pastore nunciatore della morte di Euridice." The name of the actor of Orfeo is mentioned as Baccio Ugolino.

I likewise visited the Libreria Casanatense, belonging to the convent of the church called S. Maria Sopra Minerva. I had a recommendation to the principal librarian, a Dominican friar, who received me very politely, and regaled me with a sight of several curious MSS. of the classics.

His chief work was a long Canzone sopra l'Amore, which was so deep and philosophic that seven weighty commentaries in both Latin and Italian have as yet failed to sound all its depths. In the story of the early love of Cino da Pistoja for Ricciarda dei Selvaggi there is a genuine and homely charm which makes us feel that here indeed true love had found a place.

Roman antiquities had the same keen interest for him which they held for the greatest of his contemporaries, and he made free use of them in the architecture of his pictures. He has fine work in the Carmelite Church, Florence, and in S. Maria Sopra Minerva, Rome. Much of some of his pictures is painted over.

When his final illness was upon him, the brethren of Santa Maria Sopra Minerva, where he resided, gathered about him, and chanted the Salve Regina. He died on the 18th of February, 1455, when sixty-seven years old. His tombstone is in the church of Santa Maria Sopra Minerva, in Rome; on it lies the figure of a Dominican monk in marble. Pope Nicholas V. wrote his epitaph in Latin.

These three terrible unknown chiefs of the Inquisition were never named among the people except with bated breath, as "i tre di sopra," the three above, lest some echo should condemn the speakers.