Volume 8 — Glimpses Of Tuscany.

The Passion At Prato.

IV.

As Good Friday drew near, I was more than once asked by our maestro di casa if I meant to attend the Passion at Prato. Prato is an old walled town in the valley of the Arno, about ten miles from Florence. It contains some twelve thousand inhabitants, whose principal occupation consists in plaiting Leghorn straw, manufacturing Turkish red-caps, smelting copper, and quarrying the dark green serpentine, which figures so extensively in Italian church architecture. It is renowned in Christian art as the shrine of the Sacratissima Cintola. Our maestro explained that once in every three years, from time immemorial, the citizens of Prato had celebrated Good Friday by a nocturnal representation of the Passion; that it was a sight well worth seeing, and famous throughout Northern Italy; that he and his family were going, and that they had a window, or stand, very much at my service. My aunt, who thought nothing worth seeing but the Cascine and her native Lucca, shook her head despairingly, leaving me somehow under the impression that the affair was a large puppet-show accompanied by fireworks. So the matter dropped, and I quite forgot it, until invited on Holy Thursday by an English gentleman, long resident in Florence, to make one of a party to Prato, Friday afternoon. As the trains were uncomfortably full, and all the better public barouches engaged weeks before, we had to put up with an old blue hack, drawn by two lank, slovenly bays. But the hack-horses of Florence are singed cats. Although not unlike crop-eared mules, they can hold a trot or canter all day long, without seeming much more distressed than when they started. We were hardly through the Porta al Prato before our team struck an honest, even, steady lope that soon brought us to the Villa Demidoff.

The spring is a slow one, but the violets are out, the fruit-trees in bloom, and the roses budding. There is no dust; the road, like all Tuscan roads, smooth and firm, curbed and guttered, weeded to the edge, fringed with unbroken borders of olive, mulberry, and vines. Along the wayside, and in the doorways, old women and children are braiding straw. Men and girls, in holiday attire, are flocking to the great triennial festa; some in carts, drawn by mild-eyed, dove-colored oxen; some on foot; others in jaunty spring-wagons, jerked along by plucky little ponies. The whole country is astir, with a general concentration on Prato. It must surely be something worth seeing that provokes such a deliberate crowd. Still, I asked no questions. It is so much more interesting to anticipate a spectacle vaguely than exactly. The indefinite anxiety about the form in which a dawning unknown will finally present itself is always more engrossing than mere curiosity to realize a picture distinctly foreshadowed. Yet, while speculating on what the good people of Prato could possibly make of the awful mystery they were undertaking to represent, I must confess that I felt apprehensive lest some awkward handling should affront the unutterably sacred.

At sunset we reached the fine old walls, and came to a halt just inside the gate. To drive further was impossible. The city swarmed with contadini from the neighborhood; with natives and forestieri from Florence, Pisa, Pistoia, Lucca, and even Milan; with the beautiful maidens of Segna and the dark silk-venders of Pescia. It was evident, at a glance, that the ceremony was to be a procession. The piazzas were all ready for illumination; every window along the line of march displayed at least two lamps suspended from brackets of thick iron wire; every door and balcony was thronged with still, expectant faces.

As two of our party, a young artist and a mature cosmopolitan, were bent on seeing the cathedral, we managed to reach it after toiling through the crowd. It is wonderful how many objects your disciplined sight-seer can absorb at once. He is never satisfied with less than a constellation in his field of vision. The emotional jumble that maddens a novice serves only to tranquillize his nerves. He is utterly insensible to the charm of a separately entertained idea—the undulating, widening waves of thought dispersed evenly and unbrokenly from one central point of agitation. He is, apparently, never so happy as when the surface of sensation is pelted with fresh impressions, overshowered with novelties, tremulous and titillating with myriads of clashing circlets. But, although the Duomo is partly of the twelfth century, although it is said to enshrine the Sacratissima Cintola, although its choir contains the best specimens of Fra Lippo Lippi, I was not sorry to find the doors locked. My mind was so preoccupied with the coming Passion that I scarcely cared to do more than glance at the fine balcony built by Donatello for the exposition of the treasured girdle.

We drifted about the piazza till dark, when an electrical movement and murmur of the people announced the near approach of the initial moment. Instantly a thousand ladders are up against the house-sides; swiftly and mysteriously the throng of on-lookers melts away; the bands of Pistoia and Prato unite in a minor march; the momently deserted streets are filled with radiance and music—the great triennial festa has begun. Half-past seven; a perfect night; no moon, a low breeze, and faint starlight. We are in the rear of the starting-point; the procession must traverse the whole town—two hours—before it reaches us. But we shall have the best of it then, for the close is said to be even more solemn and better ordered than the start.

The narrow sidewalks are lined with spectators; doors, windows, and balconies alive with faces; but there is little movement and less conversation. Although we had a room of our own, we found ourselves addressing each other in whispers. At nine o'clock the silence deepened; the low rustling in the balconies ceased; our hostess crossed herself; the glare of coming torches lights up a living lane of men bare-headed, of women mutely praying with clasped hands; and then a solitary Roman knight, with casque and spangled robe, and steed unshod, glides noiselessly into view, like an apparition. After him a band of mounted knights, clad as at Calvary, ride slowly, silently together; then a blast from twenty trumpets, in superb unison, by twenty Bersaglieri of the Guard; and then—a sight which to this day brings the tears to my eyes as I recall it—thirty gladiatorial lictors, ten abreast, stripped to the waist, bare-headed, belted, filleted—all picked men of equal height—moving with a step that spurned the ground, light but swift and stern as fate. How that wonderful step startled us! How its determined energy transported us to Jerusalem! They have sustained it for two hours without the slightest symptom of weariness. They march on as if they could keep the pace forever.

After these, in helmet and cuirass, with shield and sword and spear, come the Roman legionaries, true to tradition in gait, garb, and array.

"Watch the sway of their spears," whispered our artist friend, as the long lances flashed through the air with the even sweep of an admiral's oars.

It was worth watching: nearly as much so as the wonderful stride of the lictors. And, all the while, you could not hear a footfall, a comment, or a murmur; the procession passed like a vision through the heart of that still, torchlit, reverent multitude. But, as the dread sequel approached, I began to tremble—began to fear they might overdo it—although the marching of those drilled lictors and the swaying of those legionary spears might have reassured me. Fresh companies of knights, fresh sections of the cohort are filing forward, every man of them as earnest and absorbed as if he were climbing the hill of the Crosses Three. Not a sign or gesture of levity, distraction, or fatigue; not even a side-glance at the living walls that hemmed them in.

As the vanguard melts away, the sudden glare of many torches, the sudden chaunt of many voices, again invade the solemn stillness with music and light. Marshalled groups of ecclesiastics, each group with its separate choir, are seen advancing in endless perspective; and in the centre of each choir, between two torch-bearers, a lovely boy, with downcast eyes and rigid face, supports some symbol of the Passion. One by one, at measured intervals, the precious emblems of salvation are thus successively displayed—each with its guard of acolytes, its escort of deacons and sub-deacons, its swelling choral, its angelic boy-bearer. Those rapt, concentrated, inspired young faces! I see them now bending in meek beauty over the Scourge, the Crown, the Reed, the Cross, the Nails, the Sponge, the Spear.

And when these too have passed, there is another pause, another interval of darkness, another pulseless silence, broken as before by the tide of radiance and song. Seven white banners inscribed with the Seven Last Words are borne by with the same mournful pomp, the same separate array. Whose the music, I know not: neither Haydn's, I am sure, nor Mercadante's, I think; but quite as effective, for the moment, as either. We looked and listened spell-bound; an overpowering illusion held us speechless and motionless; a dread expectation weighed at our hearts like lead; we were body and soul at Calvary, as once more the torchlight died away. And in the darkness, we asked ourselves, "Will they venture farther? Will they attempt the act of sacrifice itself? Why, the city of Prato would reel like Jerusalem—her graves would open and her dead would walk!"

But Prato is too merciful for that. After an interval of profound suspense, a lofty sable catafalque, encircled by priests arrayed in stole and surplice, is borne silently along—and on it, pale and unmoving, the shrouded image of the divine Victim, with all the agony of the Passion on the white lips and crimson brow. Consummatum est!—But as we sat unexpectant of more, another figure emerged from the settling gloom—the life-size effigy of the Mater Dolorosa, "following with clasped hands and streaming eyes the dead form of her Son." After all that long array of living actors, the introduction of any effigy, however perfect, must create a disillusion. And this one is far from perfect—far more suggestive of the Prado than of Calvary. The dead on the catafalque is appropriately represented by the inanimate; but when knights, soldiers, lictors, centurions, are moving, breathing flesh and blood, its application to the equally living Mother is a violent incongruity. The action has been too intensely vitalized to assimilate a counterfeit vitality, however sacred its significance.

"But what then?" asks the genius of Prato. "Am I to forego this tribute to my dear Padrona because it shocks the sensibilities of a speculative tourist? Does not my cathedral enshrine the very girdle of the Assumption that fell to the kneeling Thomas? Can you fix a single unorthodox or unscriptural significance upon these time-honored obsequies? In the final throes of crucifixion, was not the last thought of the dying Son, the last concern of the expiring Redeemer, for his Mother? Was not 'Behold thy Mother!' the last charge of the thirsting lips? We obey the Ecce Homo of Pilate: dare we disobey the Ecce Mater of Jesus?"

Let it be discriminated, however, that in the Ecce Mater we are summoned to contemplate our Blessed Lady, not in her agony, but in her maternity—in her relationship rather to the future than to the present. The Evangelists are singularly careful not to distinguish any finite sorrow—not even hers—from the overwhelming spectacle of immolated Deity. Had the Mater Dolorosa formed part of the funeral tableau, had she been pictured Dolentem CUM filio, had she been stationed directly at the bier so as to constitute a group or Pietà—although the inconsistency of effigy remained, yet the marbles of Angelo and the canvas of Raphael would have abundantly prepared us for the sight. But at that supreme moment, to present her, after a distinct interval, as a separate spectacle, was at variance with all the examples of Christian art. The Stabat Mater does not wander an inch from the Cross; though here, with exquisite propriety, as the sorrow of the Mother is revealed, the cross she clings to is so dimmed by her tears that we catch only mournful twilight glimpses of the DULCEM Natum—veiled, infinite, triumphant woe, but none of the vivid, minute, specific agony of the Passion.

The sublime reticence of the Evangelists, so far from diminishing the true glory of the Handmaid of the Lord, is in inspired accord both with her maiden humility and maternal dignity. The fathomless processes of redemption present themselves to our limited perceptions rather as consecutive than simultaneous. The paternal, the filial, the spiritual aspect of the Holy Trinity seems each consecutively prominent in the church. As the special work of the Redeemer is consummated, the special work of the Comforter begins. The sphere of the Paraclete is as broadly defined, as lovingly respected by the Son, as the sphere of the Padre Eterno. Infinitely dear as is the bond between babe and mother, we instinctively sympathize with the mystical courtesy that reserved the full exaltation of the Bride of the Dove, like the gift of the cloven tongues of fire, for the operation of the Holy Ghost.

"Vergine sola al mondo sensa esempio, Che'l ciel di tue bellezze innamorasti."

And the hearts of the faithful, now as at Ephesus, are jealously alive to the full significance of her paramount title, "Mater Dei."

The mission of Peter, to feed the sheep, is not more emphatic than the mission of John as the child and guardian of Mary. The apostolic inheritor of the keys, and the executor of the cross who took her as his own, walk side by side through the ages, not in the flesh, indeed, but in the spirit, following the Lord till his coming. In this relation, the dearest disciple is as deathless as the church; under this aspect, Christian art loves to depict him; under this aspect he becomes the preferred of the Paraclete, as he has been the best beloved of Jesus—becomes the great herald of the incarnation; the prophet to whose vision the doors in heaven are opened; the bearer of the mystic challenge, "And the SPIRIT and the BRIDE say come!"

Salve Regina! Much as I should have preferred the chime of the Stabat Mater to any more direct suggestion, or to aught in imitative art save the very face of the San Sisto transformed by maternal sorrow, yet no man in Prato bows with deeper heartfelt reverence than I to the image of our ever honored Lady. Tuscany is not Mariolatrous enough for me. I should like it better with a Madonna presiding over every fountain and hallowing every pathway. And, in the deep hush that precedes the stir with which Prato struggles back to herself, the soul's conception of the Juxta crucem lacrymosa takes the place of the vanishing effigy, and, aided by the inspired seers of art, constructs some tenderer semblance of the blessed countenance.

"——ch' a Christo Piu s' assomiglia."

There was but little conversation as we drove back in the midnight. And when at last, in the starry distance, arose the mighty cupola of Santa Maria del Fiore, I caught myself searching among the towers of Florence for the lonely spire of Santo Spirito.