United States or Guinea-Bissau ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
One day that the sister whose turn it was to attend to the victualling department found herself unable to put upon the table any thing but two or three small fragments of bread, she went to consult the Saint, who immediately proposed to go out with her and beg. According to her invariable custom, she asked Agnese de Sellis, her coadjutoress, for permission so to do.
At St Agnese there were some 150 carriages collected, almost all hired ones, of the poorer sort. The private vehicles were very few indeed; not a quarter of the muster at most. The church itself was gaily filled, but not crowded in any part. Priests, monks, and women formed nine-tenths of the congregation.
Her soul was perfectly at peace; she could joyfully accept the death that now appeared inevitable; she could thank God earnestly that the struggle was past, and Evangelista and Agnese safely lodged in His arms. She looked forward to a speedy reunion with these beloved ones; and marked the progress of her disease as the prisoner watches the process by which his chains are riven.
Rothermel, in his Italian pictures, revealed an artistic nature related to humanity in its most agitated moods, as in the "Lear," and in the "Saint Agnese," this beautiful picture being, however, a higher conception, inasmuch as in it the spirit might find some rest in the stillness of the maiden Agnese, already saint and about to be martyr, and in the deep blue sky, on whose field linger white clouds, like lambs "shepherded by the slow unwilling winds."
Along the road between the Convent of Santa Agnese and the Porta Pia, where the great demonstrations took place some weeks ago, there was little sign of crowd or excitement. The day was chilly and cheerless; but the chilliness of the wind itself precluded the idea of rain, so that it was not the weather which deterred the concourse of the faithful.
Yet these three men probably had lived, eaten, drunk, and talked together from the cradle to that hour: so true it is that use and custom quicken all our powers, especially of gossiping and scandal-mongering. S. Agnese is the highest and most notable of all these villages. The cold and heat upon its absolutely barren rock must be alike intolerable.
One day their grandmother, Agnese di Maino, came to see the duke's sons with an old gentleman from Navarre, who went home declaring that he had never seen such wise and well-educated children; another time we hear of a Madonna Giovanna coming to spend the day at the palace, and dancing all the evening with Lodovico Maria; and when the duchess took her younger children to visit Don Tommaseo de' Rieti, general laughter was excited by the little four-year-old Ascanio, the future cardinal, who walked straight up to a portrait of the duke, exclaiming, "There is my lord father!"
The little note with which this group closes is not written to a great recluse, but to a tailor's wife. With the simple, Catherine showed herself simple; but Monna Agnese is to lead the consecrated life no less than Sister Daniella.
Boldetti in his Cemeterii de' martiri notices the short columns supporting small vases, in corners of the chapels in the catacombs; and Bottari has published and illustrated in his Roma sotterranea an interesting fresco discovered in the catacombs of S. Agnese, and representing five figures carrying vessels closely resembling those still used for holy water; four of those figures carry branches supposed to be of the palm-tree: the fifth holds an aspergillum with which holy water is still sprinkled.
A fact which indicates that this map could not have existed as late as 1536, in the form in which it is now presented, if it existed then at all, is that the western sea is delineated upon a map of the world, made in that year, by Baptista Agnese, an Italian cosmographer, without any reference to the Verrazzano discoveries, under circumstances which would have led him to have recognized them if he knew of them, and which would have required him to have done so if this map were his authority.
Word Of The Day