268. I have named two men, in this group, whose names are more familiar to your ears than any others, Angelico and Michael Angelo;--who yet are absent from my list of those whose works I wish you to study, being both extravagant in their enthusiasm,--the one for the nobleness of the spirit, and the other for that of the flesh. I name them now, because the gifts each had were exclusively Florentine; in whatever they have become to the mind of Europe since, they are utterly children of the Val d'Arno. 269. You are accustomed, too carelessly, to think of Angelico as a child of the Church, rather than of Florence. He was born in l387,--just eleven years, that is to say, after the revolt of Florence _against_ the Church, and ten after the endeavour of the Church to recover her power by the massacres of Faenza and Cesena. A French and English army of pillaging riders were on the other side of the Alps,--six thousand strong; the Pope sent for it; Robert Cardinal of Geneva brought it into Italy. The Florentines fortified their Apennines against it; but it took winter quarters at Cesena, where the Cardinal of Geneva massacred five thousand persons in a day, and the children and sucklings were literally dashed against the stones. 270. That was the school which the Christian Church had prepared for their brother Angelica. But Fèsole, secluding him in the shade of her mount of Olives, and Florence revealing to him the true voice of his Master, in the temple of St. Mary of the Flower, taught him his lesson of peace on earth, and permitted him his visions of rapture in heaven. And when the massacre of Cesena was found to have been in vain, and the Church was compelled to treat with the revolted cities who had united to mourn for her victories, Florence sent her a living saint, Catherine of Siena, for her political Ambassador. 271. Of Michael Angelo I need not tell you: of the others, we will read the lives, and think over them one by one; the great fact which I have written this course of lectures to enforce upon your minds is the dependence of all the arts on the virtue of the State, and its kindly order. The absolute mind and state of Florence, for the seventy years of her glory, from 1280 to 1350, you find quite simply and literally described in the ll2th Psalm, of which I read you the descriptive verses, in the words in which they sang it, from this typically perfect manuscript of the time:-- Gloria et divitie in domo ejus, justitia ejus manet in seculum seculi. Exortum est in tenebris lumen reotis, misericors, et miserator, et Justus. Jocundus homo, qui miseretur, et commodat: disponet sermones suos in judicio. Dispersit, dedit pauperibus; justitia ejus manet in seculum seculi; cornu ejus exaltabitur in gloria. I translate simply, praying you to note as the true one, the _literal_ meaning of every word:--