The churches at La Verna form part of a vast mass of buildings. We were told that the convent affords accommodation for five hundred friars. As we were about to enter the main church we met some of them walking in a procession, two and two. They had been celebrating service in church, and now they walked down the gallery to conclude it in the chapel, chanting as they went along. We afterwards met them again coming out. There were forty of them, vigorous men for the most part, wearing the rough brown frock and cord, with sandals on their bare feet. It was difficult to tell at a glance from what class they were drawn; certainly not from the higher and more refined. They greatly differed as to age, and the older men had the better appearance. On the whole they were not dignified in bearing, and in person did not look as clean as they might have done. We spent a long time in church, looking at the altar-piece and reading what the guide-book to the Casentino of Beni had to say of La Verna. This is the only guide-book to the district as far as I know. It was our constant companion, but we found that it required close and repeated reading, for it is a queer jumble of all kinds of information. We then wandered along the gallery which bridges the abyss between the settlement and the isolated bit of rock on which stands the Chapel of the Stigmata. With its dark panelling and its one large altar-piece this chapel is a true place of rest. Its large della Robbia represents the Crucifixion, with the figures of the Virgin, St John the Baptist, St Jerome and St Francis standing and kneeling below. This association of saints of later date with the characters of Scripture comes at first as a shock to the historical mind; to the Middle Ages it appeared natural. St Anthony of Padua, in a vision, saw the child Christ sitting on his prayer-book. St Bernard, in a vision, saw the Virgin standing before him. When these scenes came to be represented in art they assumed the form of real incidents. And by a further development, St Francis and other holy men and women of the Middle Ages were pictured in contemplation of the Nativity, the Crucifixion and other decisive moments in Biblical history as though they had been present at them in the flesh.