Page:Historical Lectures and Addresses.djvu/127

 and his poetry was the very expression of emotional religion. Once he was seen weeping, and on being asked why he wept, he answered: "I weep because Love is not loved". These words express the meaning of the whole of Jacopone's life and poetry, the most intense, personal, passionate love towards his Master. It was this emotional poetry which struck an entirely new note in Italian and, consequently, European literature.

In art, the influence of the friars was even more felt. First, in architecture they modified, or even entirely changed the conception of a church, which, in their opinion, was meant to be not a place for pageantry on special occasions, but mainly a preaching house. The original form of the friars' church was a building without aisles, with a long nave, short transepts and a very shallow choir; the side altars were placed in the transepts, so that the whole body of the church was available for preaching. It was covered with a flat roof, which was supposed to be good for sound, and only the chancel had a vaulted roof. In painting also, with the Franciscan movement came an enormous development of the power of articulate expression. Those who would understand the art of Italy, and its motive in painting the different scenes chosen from the life of our Lord, must read the Meditation of Bonaventura on the Life of Christ. The whole school of Siena simply carried out the human and intimate motive which Francis had introduced into his teaching; the painters were the exhibitors and setters forth of the Franciscan method.