Campanile

“ Still, the outside can not be forgotten, even in the ecclesiastical atmosphere, and as the big bell up in the campanile booms the hour clear and mellow through the sound of voice and instrument, the world, the flesh and the devil stir the worshipers with a restless little movement of anxiety to get back into the sunshine again. ”

“ In the fairest of Italian cities stands the finest of terrestrial structures—a campanile or bell-tower, twenty-five feet square, two hundred and seventy-three feet high, built of white and colored marble in alternate blocks, covered with a royal luxuriance of sculpture framed in medallions, studded everywhere with the most beautiful statuary disposed in Gothic niches, and finished from base to battlement like a lady's cabinet inlaid with pearl and gold. ”

“ The round campanile that towers and seems to totter in its strange dilapidation beside the church is so beautiful that it surprises one at once by its melancholy nobility in the midst of so much meanness and desolation. It is a building of the ninth century, and may well have been used as much as a watch tower as a bell tower. Till recently it had at its base a sacristy, but this has been swept away. Of old the church too had before it a great narthex of which certain ruins are left, among them a little tower on the left. ”

“ At night, when man and beast rest after the fatigues of the day, and silence and quiet begin, he feels a tender harmony, delicate and mysterious, as the memory of the days of innocence, or as the hope of a future life. The harmony of night is, as it were, the breath of sleeping nature.
Look, now, into what a labyrinth I have been dragged by the music I heard at St Stephen's! The campanile of this cathedral is pointed and very high; it can be seen from all parts of the city. One sees at once that it is the campanile of the ecclesia major. ”

“ Beside it rises, in accordant style, the Campanile, which was begun in 1297, and beyond, at the east end of the church, is a beautiful chapel, built nearly two centuries later—in 1462—for Pigello Portinari by a Tuscan architect, probably Michele Michelozzo. The tall brick Campanile, soaring in its direct simplicity and strength, each storey marked by a line of graceful archetti and of bricks set pointwise above them, making a sort of dogtooth ornamentation, and its angles faced with white stone, contrasts in an interesting manner with the proud little building below. ”

“ The campanile is all of white marble, but the cathedral has the bands of black and white, softened in effect by the yellowing which time has given to the white. There is a family likeness among all these structures: they all have the delicate little colonnades and circular arches. But the baptistery has stronger traits of the Gothic style in the pinnacles that crown the encircling colonnade.
After some dusty delay outside the railway station we set off back again to Livorno, and forthwith got on board our steamboat again—to awake next morning (being Palm-Sunday) at Civita Vecchia. ”

“ A building should always be detached on all sides so that its form may be seen.
[Footnote: The original text is reproduced on Pl. XCII, No. 1 to the left hand at the bottom.]
754.
Here there cannot and ought not to be any _campanile_; on the contrary it must stand apart like that of the Cathedral and of San Giovanni at Florence, and of the Cathedral at Pisa, where the campanile is quite detached as well as the dome. Thus each can display its own perfection. If however you wish to join it to the church, make the lantern serve for the campanile as in the church at Chiaravalle. ”

“ The banner and pall are black, with white embroidery, and the members of a red-clothed confraternity attend the funerals, bearing a crucifix and tapers. Many of them are quite old men, and they raise a quavering chant as they climb the steep ascent to the cathedral, which is a late Renaissance building, and not interesting, though finely placed. The campanile is an evident copy of that of S. Mark at Venice. ”

“ The Close occupies entirely the south-west quadrant of the city, being bounded by South and West Streets and the City Wall. The central tower and spire, rising to a height of 277 feet, are conspicuous for many miles around, but the west front is much shut in. Perhaps the most pleasing view is that seen from the meadows on the south of the city, from which point the Campanile fits in admirably with the general mass of the building.”— (J. C.-B.)
This Campanile, in which eight bells hang, stands on the north side of the Cathedral, and was built in the Fourteenth Century. ”

“ It is to the Lombard architects of the north of Italy that we are indebted for the introduction and development of the campanile, which, when used in connexion with a sacred building, is a feature peculiar to Christian architecture—Christians alone making use of the bell to gather the multitude to public worship. The campanile of Italy serves the same purpose as the tower or steeple of the churches in the north and west of Europe, but differs from it in design and position with regard to the body of the church. ”

“ The north and south walls of the nave and transepts are cased in much later work than the west front and are good specimens of Italian pointed of the thirteenth century. The carving of foliage in this work is very bad and what little moulding there is hardly looks like the work of Gothic men. There is a good inlaid string-course under the windows. A fine campanile stands a little in advance of the south-west angle of the cathedral. It is of Romanesque date and built of brownish rough stone below and of white stone (or marble) above; it is of very considerable height and effect. ”

“ That the work of the said church, already commenced, of one nave can be continued, and that it will be good, safe, firm, and without risk. That the abutments and foundations of the old work are so, and that those which have to be made will be so if constructed in the same way, and that they are sufficient to support the vault which such a work ought to have. But that the abutments made towards the campanile require to be strengthened more than those constructed on the south side. ”

“ Like bells generally in North Italy they hang half-way out of the windows of the campanile, instead of being wholly within the belfry as our English bells are. This is why an Italian campanile is such a much more slender object than an English belfry; it has less to cover. When the bells are rung by being raised and swung in and out of the window, there is one ringer to each bell, and the following is all that is attempted ”

“ The spire was the natural consummation. Internally, the sublimity of space in the cupola had been superseded by another kind of infinity in the prolongation of the nave; externally, the spherical surface had been proved, by the futility of Arabian efforts, incapable of decoration; its majesty depended on its simplicity, and its simplicity and leading forms were alike discordant with the rich rigidity of the body of the building. The campanile became, therefore, principal and central ”

“ While we were in winter quarters on Miner’s Hill, the religiously inclined men of the regiment erected a log chapel in which to hold services in the evening and on Sundays. No church bell summoned them to worship, but a few taps of the drum or a few notes from the bugle, or, better still, the singing of some old, familiar hymn learned in boyhood in New England homes, served as a “church call,” and from every part of the camp the men came to reverently worship the God of battles. ”

“ There are fig trees in every garden, the ground covered with perpetual green, except when burnt up in the summer by the heat of the sun. There is a beautiful Roman chapel, and a formidable garrison about a quarter of a mile below the town. ”

“ Your interest begins as you come in sight of the convent perched on its little mountain and lifting against the sky, around the bell-tower of its gorgeous chapel, a coronet of clustered cells. You make your way into the lower gate, through a clamouring press of deformed beggars who thrust at you their stumps of limbs, and you climb the steep hillside through a shabby plantation which it is proper to fancy was better tended in the monkish time. ”

“ I told my two companions to keep watch at the door of the chapel, and turned at once to the fugitives.
"You see those steps leading to the ledge?" I asked them. "Well, I am going to ascend them. When I reach the top I will open the door and look into the interior of the chapel, and if the moment is favourable I will give you a sign. You will then ascend and follow me along the wall to the granary. Once there—if God allows us to get there—you will rest yourselves. I will come to you when the soldiers are gone—they ought to leave at daybreak. You understand?" ”

“ And I see, too, that more moving than all the pomp of scene and ceremony is the sense which everyone has of the presence in the grey old Cathedral of another congregation that has not been called, and yet is there—the congregation of the armies of the dead. They died in the day of struggle, often in the night of defeat, but if there is victory now it is theirs also, and if there is rejoicing it is for them to share it. ”

“ The shrubs and flowers about the ancient well were blooming away in the intense light, and the twisted pillars and chiselled capitals of the perfect little colonnade seemed to enclose them like the sculptured rim of a precious vase. Standing out among the flowers you may look up and see a section of the summit of the great façade of the church. The robed and mitred apostles, bleached and rain-washed by the ages, rose into the blue air like huge snow figures. ”

“ Some part of the edifice had been a baronial chapel, and here were effigies of warriors stretched upon their beds of stone with folded hands--cross-legged, those who had fought in the Holy Wars-- girded with their swords, and cased in armour as they had lived. ”

“ At the presentation of colours to a regiment a solemn service of prayer and praise is held, and when these colours return in honour, shot-rent from victorious conflict, they are reverently placed in stately abbey, venerable cathedral, or parish church, never more to issue from the peace and rest of the home of God until by lapse of years they crumble into indistinguishable dust. ”

“ And the Cathedral yard—for all it slept so full of dead men's bones—was that day a bright and busy place. Troops of happy girls were there in their jackets of gray, braided with gold or silver, and with belts of filigree; troops of young men, too, in their knee breeches, with bows of red ribbon, their dark-gray stockings and sealskin shoes; old men as well in their coats of homespun; and old women in their long blue cloaks; children in their plaited kirtles, and here and there a traveller with his leather wallet for his snuff and money. ”

“ The splendidly dressed troops that line the nave of the cathedral, the variety and richness of vestments which clothe the various church and lay dignitaries, abbots, priests, canons, prelates, cardinals, doctors, dragoons, senators, and grenadiers, which march in procession, complete, as they proceed up the vast space of this wondrous temple, a spectacle nowhere to be equalled within the pale of European civilisation. ”

“ The Papal palace, with its terrible Glacière, its chapel painted by Simone Memmi, its endless corridors and staircases, its torture-chamber, funnel-shaped to drown and suffocate—so runs tradition—the shrieks of wretches on the rack, is now a barrack, filled with lively little French soldiers, whose politeness, though sorely taxed, is never ruffled by the introduction of inquisitive visitors into their dormitories, eating-places, and drill-grounds. ”

“ Two parallel rows of silk flags, the scarlet of the artillery, the somber blue of the infantry, and the gold of the cavalry, hang from the long covered galleries on either side of the nave. The deep rich shades of the magnificent memorial window shroud the chancel in a “dim religious light.” Nor is the service lacking in military pomp. Company after company of gray-clad cadets, their brass buttons shining, file briskly into the Chapel. ”

“ When we are fortunate enough to be able to set up our field chapel, or to celebrate Mass and Benediction in some church half-destroyed by the enemy, it is a curious spectacle to see the officers mingled indifferently with their men ‘waiting their turn.’ No favour is shown to the commissioned ranks—one chaplain hears the confession, the other gives Holy Communion. ”

“ All the armies of the world may camp round the fortress, and the hurtling noise of battle may be loud in the plains, but up upon the impregnable cliff crowned by its battlements there is a central citadel, with a chapel in the heart of it ”

“ The sublime Cathedral, from all its marble population of sculptured saints and from all its thousands of pinnacles, sent up one constant song. Through the streets marched soldiers--regular, irregular, horse, foot, and dragoons; cannon thundered at intervals through every day; volunteer militia companies sprang up like butterflies to flash their gay uniforms in the sun. ”

“ Several thousand troops, cavalry and footmen, were drawn up between the steps and the obelisk, in the centre of the piazza, and the immense area embraced by the two circling colonnades was crowded by, perhaps, a hundred thousand people, with eyes directed to one single point. The variety of bright costumes, the gay liveries of the ambassadors' and cardinals' carriages, the vast body of soldiery, and the magnificent frame of columns and fountains in which this gorgeous picture was contained, formed the grandest scene conceivable. ”

“ The chapel wherein the most Holy Graal appeared is all emptied of its sacred hallows; the hermits that are by the forest are fain of your coming, for never see they there a knight pass by that believeth in God. And so you shall have achieved this enterprise, it is a thing whereof shall God be well pleased."
XXI. "Fair uncle," saith Perceval, "Thither will I go, sith that you commend it to me, for no reason is it that he should have the castle that hath entered thereinto. Of better right ought my mother to have it, that was the next-born to King Fisherman, of whose death am I right sorrowful." ”