Page:The Mediaeval Mind Vol 1.djvu/538

516 brother Eccelino, so as to do his evil deeds more safely; and he did not hold his hand from the slaughter of citizens and subjects. One day he hanged twenty-five prominent men of Treviso, who had done him no ill; because he feared they would! And thirty noble women, mothers, wives and daughters of these, were brought there to see them hanging; and he had these women stripped half naked, that those who were hanging might see them so. The men were hanged quite close to the ground; and he forced these women to go so close that their faces were struck by the legs and feet of those who were dying in anguish."

Such was the kind of devil-madness that might walk abroad in Italy in the Middle Ages. Let us relieve our minds by a story our friend tells of a certain boy placed in a Franciscan convent in Bologna, to become a monk.

"When asleep he snored so mightily, that no one could have peace in the same house with him, so horribly did he disturb those who slept as well as those who were at their vigils. And they made him sleep in the shed where wood and staves were stored, but even then the brothers could not escape, so did that voice of malediction resound through the whole place. And all the priests and wise-acres among the brothers met in the director's chamber, to eject him from the Order because of his insupportable offence: I was there. It was decided to return him to his mother, who had deceived the Order, since she had known his defect before letting him go. But he was not returned to his mother, for the Lord performed a miracle through Brother Nicolas [a holy brother through whom God had worked other miracles as well]. This brother seeing that the boy was to be expelled for no fault, but for a natural defect, called him at daybreak to assist at mass. When the mass was finished, the boy as commanded knelt before him, back of the altar, hoping to receive some grace. Brother Nicolas touched his face and nose with his hands, in the wish to confer health upon him, if the Lord would grant it, and commanded him to keep this secret. What more? The boy at once was cured, and after that slept as quietly as a dormouse without annoying any brother."

Thus we have this Chronicle, rambling, incoherent, picturesque, with its glimpses of all this pretty world, for which our Salimbene, despite his cowl, has an uncloistered eye—its keenness for incident and circumstance undeflected by the inner sight with which it could also look on the