United States or Bouvet Island ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
"Yea, truly, signorini miei. This fellow-captive of mine was a cavaliere in his own land, but he had been betrayed and sold by his enemies, and he mourned piteously for la sposa sua his bride, as they say here. A goodly man and a tall, piteously cramped in the narrow deck, I grieved to leave him there when the good confraternita at Genoa paid my ransom.
He says nothing, but shakes his box at you, often threateningly, and always with an air of mystery. This is a penitent Saccone; and as this confraternita is composed solely of noblemen, he may be one of the first princes or cardinals in Rome, performing penance in expiation of his sins; or, for all you can see, it may be one of your intimate friends.
Then follows a huge wooden cross, garlanded with golden ivy-leaves, and also upheld by the confraternita, who stagger under its weight. This figure is of life-size, carved in wood, surrounded by gilt angels, and so heavy that sixteen stout facchini, whose shabby trousers show under their improvised costume, are required to bear it along. With this the procession comes to its climax.
Sometimes a santa elemosina is demanded after the oddest fashion. It was only yesterday that I met one of the confraternita, dressed in a shabby red suit, coming up the street, with the invariable oblong tin begging-box in his hand, a picture of Christ on one side, and of the Madonna on the other.
In the Via Giulia, in addition to San Giovanni dei Fiorentini, San Biagio della Pagnotta, San Eligio degli Orefici, and three or four others, there was the so-called Church of the Dead, Santa Maria dell' Orazione; and this church, which is at the lower end behind the Farnese palace, was often visited by Pierre, who liked to dream there of the wild life of Rome, and of the pious brothers of the Confraternita della Morte, who officiate there, and whose mission is to search for and bury such poor outcasts as die in the Campagna.
A visit to the mangled remnants of his frescoes in S. Caterina will repay the student of art. This was once, apparently, a double church, or a church with the hall and chapel of a confraternita appended to it.
The effect of this costume is very ghastly: especially in the case of a certain Blue Confraternita belonging to Genoa, who, to say the least of them, are very ugly customers, and who look suddenly encountered in their pious ministration in the streets as if they were Ghoules or Demons, bearing off the body for themselves.
In the Via Giulia, in addition to San Giovanni dei Fiorentini, San Biagio della Pagnotta, San Eligio degli Orefici, and three or four others, there was the so-called Church of the Dead, Santa Maria dell' Orazione; and this church, which is at the lower end behind the Farnese palace, was often visited by Pierre, who liked to dream there of the wild life of Rome, and of the pious brothers of the Confraternita della Morte, who officiate there, and whose mission is to search for and bury such poor outcasts as die in the Campagna.
In the Via Giulia, in addition to San Giovanni dei Fiorentini, San Biagio della Pagnotta, San Eligio degli Orefici, and three or four others, there was the so-called Church of the Dead, Santa Maria dell' Orazione; and this church, which is at the lower end behind the Farnese palace, was often visited by Pierre, who liked to dream there of the wild life of Rome, and of the pious brothers of the Confraternita della Morte, who officiate there, and whose mission is to search for and bury such poor outcasts as die in the Campagna.
It is curious that even as the last cantos of the Divine Comedy were discovered by means of a dream, so a dream went before the discovery of the bones of Dante. "The sacristan of the Franciscan confraternity," we read, "called La Confraternita della Mercede, was wont to sleep in the damp recesses of the ancient chapel of Braccioforte."
Word Of The Day