Art -- Italy -- Venice; Venice (Italy) -- Description and travel
The carvings on each side of the high altar (not those "by an anonymous"
but others) tell very admirably the life of the patron saint of the
school whose "S.R.," nobly devised in brass, will be found so often both
here and in the church across the way. S. Rocco, or Saint Rocke, as
Caxton calls him, was born at Montpelier in France of noble parentage.
His father was lord of Montpelier. The child, who came in answer to
prayer, bore at birth on his left shoulder a cross and was even as a
babe so holy that when his mother fasted he fasted too, on two days in
the week deriving nourishment from her once only, and being all the
gladder, sweeter, and merrier for this denial. The lord of Montpelier
when dying impressed upon his exemplary son four duties: namely, to
continue to be vigilant in doing good, to be kind to the poor, to
distribute all the family wealth in alms, and to haunt and frequent the
hospitals.
Both his parents being dead, Rocco travelled to Italy. At Acquapendente
he healed many persons of the pestilence, and also at Cesena and at
Rome, including a cardinal, whom he rendered immune to plague for ever
more by drawing a cross on his forehead. The cardinal took him to see
the pope, in whose presence Rocco's own forehead shone with a
supernatural light which greatly impressed the pontiff. After much
further wandering and healing, Rocco himself took the disease under both
his arms and was so racked with pain that he kept the other patients in
the hospital awake. This distressing him, he crept away where his groans
were out of hearing, and there he lay till the populace, finding him,
and fearing infection, drove him from the city. At Piacenza, where he
took refuge, a spring of fair water, which is there to this day, gushed
out of the earth for his liquid refreshment and as mark of heaven's
approval; while the hound of a neighbouring sportsman brought him bread
from the lord Golard's table: hence the presence of a dog in all
representations of the saint. In the church of S. Rocco across the way
Tintoretto has a picture of this scene in which we discern the dog to
have been a liver-and-white spaniel.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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