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In the centre is the Madonna and Child, flanked by two full-length saints on each side, SS. Francis and Nicholas, S. Simeon, and another male saint; above the Virgin is a half-length of the dead Christ; and, above the other saints, half-lengths of SS. Mary Magdalene and Christopher, Catherine and Anthony. It is signed "Antonius de Muriano, 1448."
In 1448 "a pestilence broke out, occasioned by the overflowing of waters, . . . also by the lying of many scholars in one room or dormitory in almost every Hall, which occasioned nasty air and smells, and consequently diseases." In the general dulness and squalor two things were remarkable: one, the last splendour of the feudal time; the other, the first dawn of the new learning from Italy.
The Earl at the moment held Galloway and Annandale, two of his brothers were Earls of Moray and Ormond; in October 1448, Ormond had distinguished himself by defeating and taking Percy, urging a raid into Scotland, at a bloody battle on the Water of Sark, near Gretna.
The most important of its remaining buildings is an embattled tower of refuge from the Scottish invader. Its inscription states that it was built in 1448 by Sir Henry Percy, fourth Earl of Northumberland. Opposite Hulne Priory is Brislee Hill, which presents the most renowned view in Alnwick Park.
Thus far Villani: to-day S. Miniato, the church, and the great palace built in 1234 by Andrea Mozzi, Bishop of Florence, come to us with memories, not of S. Miniato alone, that somewhat shadowy martyr of so long ago, but of S. Giovanni Gualberto also, of the Benedictines too, and of the Olivetans, of the siege of 1529, when Michelangelo fortified the place in defence of Florence, saving the tower from destruction, as it is said, by swathing it in mattresses; of Cosimo I, who from here held the city in leash. It is the most beautiful of the Tuscan-Romanesque churches left to us in Florence; built in 1013 in the form of a basilica, with a great nave and two aisles, the choir being raised high above the rest of the church on twenty-eight beautiful red ancient pillars, over a crypt where, under the altar, S. Miniato sleeps through the centuries. The fading frescoes of the aisles, the splendour and quiet of this great and beautiful church that has guarded Florence almost from the beginning, that has seen Buondelmonte die at the foot of the Statue of Mars, that has heard the voice of Dante and watched the flight of Corso Donati, have a peculiar fascination, almost ghostly in their strangeness, beyond anything else to be found in the city. And if for the most part the church is so ancient as to rival the Baptistery itself, the Renaissance has left there more than one beautiful thing. For between the two flights of steps that lead out of the nave into the choir, Michelozzo built in 1448, for Piero de' Medici a chapel to hold the crucifix, now in S. Trinit
In the smaller towns, where the scenic display was less, the effect of these spiritual plays on the character of the spectators may have been greater. We read that one of the great preachers of repentance of whom more will be said later on, Roberto da Lecce, closed his Lenten sermons during the plague of 1448, at Perugia, with a representation of the Passion.
It would seem as if his courage alone had sustained them, and when he was gone they sank and died also. In 1448 dom Pedro, who had never ceased to mourn the brother he had been powerless to save, exchanged an important Moorish prisoner for father John Alvaro, secretary to the infante.
At last, 1448, he set out against the Sultan with an army of twenty-four thousand of his most trusty soldiers. This time it was on the frontier of Servia, on the "Field of Blackbirds," that Hunyady encountered Sultan Amurath, who had an army of one hundred and fifty thousand men again more than five times the number of the Christians.
Perjury came to seven livres and three carlines. Pardon for murder, if not by poison, was cheaper. Even a parricide could buy forgiveness at God's tribunal at one ducat; four livres, eight carlines. Henry de Montfort, in the year 1448, purchased absolution for that crime at that price. Was it strange that a century or so of this kind of work should produce a Luther?
Accordingly, we find that, when the English burned the town of Dunbar in May, 1448, Douglas replied, in the following month, by sacking Alnwick. Retaliation came in the shape of an assault upon Dumfries in the end of June, and the Scots, with Douglas at their head, burned Warkworth in July.
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