On the opposite wall is the Church militant and triumphant. Before Santa Maria del Fiore, here symbolising the Church militant, sit the two ideal guides of man, according to the dual scheme of Dante's _De Monarchia_--the Pope and the Emperor. On either side are seated in a descending line the great dignitaries of the Church and the Empire; Cardinal and Abbot, King and Baron; while all around are gathered the clergy and the laity, religious of every order, judges and nobles, merchants and scholars, with a few ladies kneeling on the right, one of whom is said to be Petrarch's Laura. Many of these figures are apparently portraits, but the attempts at identification--such as that of the Pope with Benedict XI., the Emperor with Henry VII.--are entirely untrustworthy. The Bishop, however, standing at the head of the clergy, is apparently Agnolo Acciaiuoli, Bishop of Florence; and the French cavalier, in short tunic and hood, standing opposite to him at the head of the laity (formerly called Cimabue), is said--very questionably--to be the Duke of Athens. At the feet of the successors of Peter and Cæsar are gathered the sheep and lambs of Christ's fold, watched over by the black and white hounds that symbolise the Dominicans. On the right, Dominic urges on his watchdogs against the heretical wolves who are carrying off the lambs of the flock; Peter Martyr hammers the unbelievers with the weapon of argument alone; Aquinas convinces them with the light of his philosophic doctrine. But beyond is Acrasia's Bower of Bliss, a mediaeval rendering of what Spenser hereafter so divinely sung in the second book of the _Faerie Queene_. Figures of vice sit enthroned; while seven damsels, Acrasia's handmaidens, dance before them; and youth sports in the shade of the forbidden myrtles. Then come repentance and the confessional; a Dominican friar (not one of the great Saints, but any humble priest of the order) absolves the penitents; St Dominic appears again, and shows them the way to Paradise; and then, becoming as little children, they are crowned by the Angels, and St. Peter lets them through the gate to join the Church Triumphant. Above in the Empyrean is the Throne of the Lord, with the Lamb and the four mystical Beasts, and the Madonna herself standing up at the head of the Angelic Hierarchies. In the great cloisters beyond, the Ciompi made their headquarters in 1378, under their Eight of Santa Maria Novella; and, at the request of their leaders, the prior of the convent sent some of his preachers to furnish them with spiritual consolation and advice.