His dominant spirit was that of reform; as he tried to regenerate
mind, morals, literature, and state government, so he would reform art,
and fling over it the spiritual light which illumed his own soul.
It was natural that such a mind should act on the devotional character
of Baccio. What could he do but join when every church was full of
worshippers, each shrine at the street corners had a crowd of devout
women on their knees before it--when thousands of faces were uplifted
in the vast expanse of the Duomo, and every face burned with fervour as
the divine flame from the preacher lit the lamp of each soul--when in
the streets he met long processions of men, women, and children, the
echoes of whose hymns (Laudi) filled the narrow streets, and went up to
the clear air above them?
Then came that strange carnival when there were no maskers in the city,
but white-robed boys went from house to house to collect the vanities
for the burning--when the flames of the fires, hitherto saturnalian,
were the flames of a holocaust, wherein each one cast the sins and
temptations, even the pretty things which, though dear to himself,
withdrew him from God.
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