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The Prior and the Brothers of our House being gathered together in the choir before High Mass brought these relics into the church, carrying the Standard of the Cross and lighted tapers in their hands, and afterward the Prior placed them on the different altars, having enclosed them in reliquaries in seemly wise in honour of the Saints.
On the 10th of Vendemiaire, year III., there is found "in his apartments" a superb and complete assortment of ecclesiastical objects, "forty-nine copes and chasubles, silk or satin, covered with gold or silver; fifty-four palles of the same description;" a quantity of "reliquaries, vases and spoons, censers, laces, silver and gold fringe, thirty-two pieces of silk," etc.
There are also six arm reliquaries of the usual pattern, two of which have little doors of niello, two or three heads, and an ostensory, at the top of which is a thorn from the crown of thorns. The church of S. Simeone was a "Colleggiata," instituted in 1150 by Archbishop Lampridius, and dedicated to S. Stephen.
At daybreak next day, the mob swept upon the churches and stripped them to the very walls. Pictures, statues; organs, ornaments, chalices of silver and gold, reliquaries, albs, chasubles, copes, ciboriea, crosses, chandeliers, lamps; censers, all of richest material, glittering with pearls, rubies, and other precious stones, were scattered in heaps of ruin upon the ground.
It has flowing hair down to the shoulders. Several arm reliquaries of late fourteenth century are up to the usual standard. One is of S. Crisogono; one of S. Donate, with many jewels and a pierced band of quatrefoils with some of a larger number representing the opening of the sleeve; one with plaques of translucent enamel and vine scrolls said to contain a finger of S. John the Baptist, &c.
The Church shared largely in this wealth; crosses, reliquaries, and sacred vessels of all kinds, were made of the most costly material, and encrusted with gems. One of these ancient works may still be seen in Cologne Cathedral the chasse, or reliquary, containing the reputed skulls of the three Magi, of whom we shall soon have to speak more fully.
The sacristan asserted that there were also twelve golden statuettes a span high, and some smaller silver vases; but all the reliquaries have disappeared except two, which have been preserved at Vienna since 1888.
It was the moment when painting was beginning to claim for the figures of real men and women the walls and vaulted spaces whence had hitherto glowered, with vacant faces and huge ghostlike eyes, mosaic figures, from their shimmering golden ground; the moment when the Pisan artists had sculptured solemnly draped madonnas and kings not quite unworthy of the carved sarcophagi which stood around them; the moment when, merging together old Byzantine traditions and Northern examples, the architects of Florence, Siena, and Orvieto conceived a style which made cathedrals into marvellous and huge reliquaries of marble, jasper, alabaster, and mosaics.
He sat alone in the closet, still hung with saints' images and jewelled reliquaries, where his cousin had so often given him audience, and whence, through the open door, he could see the embroidered curtains and plumed baldachin of the state bed which was presently to receive him. All day his heart had beat with high ambitions; but now a weight sank upon his spirit.
Alternate courses of white and black marble, cornices loaded with grave or animated portraits of the Popes, sculptured shrines, altars, pulpits, reliquaries, fonts and holy-water vases, panels of inlaid wood and pictured pavements, bronze candelabra and wrought-iron screens, gilding and colour and precious work of agate and lapis lazuli the masterpieces of men famous each in his own line delight the eye in all directions.
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