The field will be unholy. No cloisters of noble
history can ever be built round such an one.
28. But the very earth of this at Pisa was holy, as you know. That
"armata" of the Tuscan city brought home not only marble and ivory, for
treasure; but earth,--a fleet's burden,--from the place where there was
healing of soul's leprosy: and their field became a place of holy
tombs, prepared for its office with earth from the land made holy by
one tomb; which all the knighthood of Christendom had been pouring out
its life to win.
29. I told you just now that this sculpture of Niccola's was the
beginning of Christian architecture. How do you judge that Christian
architecture in the deepest meaning of it to differ from all other?
All other noble architecture is for the glory of living gods and men;
but this is for the glory of death, in God and man. Cathedral,
cloister, or tomb,--shrine for the body of Christ, or for the bodies of
the saints. All alike signifying death to this world;--life, other than
of this world.
Observe, I am not saying how far this feeling, be it faith, or be it
imagination, is true or false;--I only desire you to note that the
power of all Christian work begins in the niche of the catacomb and
depth of the sarcophagus, and is to the end definable as architecture
of the tomb.
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