Dickens, Charles, 1812-1870 -- Travel -- Italy; Italy -- Description and travel; Novelists, English -- 19th century -- Biography
All Christian homage to the saint who lies within it! There are many
good and true saints in the calendar, but San Carlo Borromeo has—if I may
quote Mrs. Primrose on such a subject—‘my warm heart.’ A charitable
doctor to the sick, a munificent friend to the poor, and this, not in any
spirit of blind bigotry, but as the bold opponent of enormous abuses in
the Romish church, I honour his memory. I honour it none the less,
because he was nearly slain by a priest, suborned, by priests, to murder
him at the altar: in acknowledgment of his endeavours to reform a false
and hypocritical brotherhood of monks. Heaven shield all imitators of
San Carlo Borromeo as it shielded him! A reforming Pope would need a
little shielding, even now.
The subterranean chapel in which the body of San Carlo Borromeo is
preserved, presents as striking and as ghastly a contrast, perhaps, as
any place can show. The tapers which are lighted down there, flash and
gleam on alti-rilievi in gold and silver, delicately wrought by skilful
hands, and representing the principal events in the life of the saint.
Jewels, and precious metals, shine and sparkle on every side. A windlass
slowly removes the front of the altar; and, within it, in a gorgeous
shrine of gold and silver, is seen, through alabaster, the shrivelled
mummy of a man: the pontifical robes with which it is adorned, radiant
with diamonds, emeralds, rubies: every costly and magnificent gem. The
shrunken heap of poor earth in the midst of this great glitter, is more
pitiful than if it lay upon a dung-hill. There is not a ray of
imprisoned light in all the flash and fire of jewels, but seems to mock
the dusty holes where eyes were, once. Every thread of silk in the rich
vestments seems only a provision from the worms that spin, for the behoof
of worms that propagate in sepulchres.
In the old refectory of the dilapidated Convent of Santa Maria delle
Grazie, is the work of art, perhaps, better known than any other in the
world: the Last Supper, by Leonardo da Vinci—with a door cut through it
by the intelligent Dominican friars, to facilitate their operations at
dinner-time.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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