preachers of his time. On St. Augustine's day, in the Campagna of Verona, when the banks of the Adige saw 300,000 people met together, there, by the river-side, rose an enormous pulpit, whence John, who stood in it to harangue and bless the vast assembly, might be seen by all. In the Picture Gallery of the University of Oxford is a remarkably interesting picture of a Friar Preacher addressing a multitude arranged in the piazza, from a wooden pulpit raised in front of the west door of a grand church of brick, similar in style to St. Anastasia in Verona. On the 5th of October, 1227, Giordano da Modena, Bishop of Padua, blessed the first stone of the church of St. Augustine in Padua. It was completed in 1303, under the direction of Fra Benvenuto da Bologna, and utterly ruined in 1822 f. The magnificent cruciform church of SS. John and Paul in Venice, founded by St. Dominic, was begun in 1246. From the resemblance of the apse and the arrangement of its windows to that of the church of the Frari, in the same city, Cicognara is of opinion that Niccolo Pisano furnished the design. The work progressed but slowly, from want of funds, and it appears that Niccolo da Imola or Fra Benvenuto da Bologna, Dominican lay-brothers, finished it in the fourteenth century. The plan presents a nave with five bays: the eastern face of the transept contains the polygonal choir between four apsidal chapels. St. Anastasia in Verona is a majestic cruciform church of the thirteenth century, built by the Friars Preachers: it is groined throughout; the apse polygonal; the nave of six bays, with columns of marble; the seventh bay lofty, and opening into the transept. The clerestory windows, as at Santa Maria Novella and the Minerva, are circular, but in this instance enriched with sexfoil cusping. The arches are plain, and evidently prepared for the painted decorations, which are exquisite; the effect of the interior is truly solemn and imposing. Adjacent to the west front is the beautiful little chapel of St. Peter of Verona, with plate tracery in the circular windows similar in character to the window in the south transept of the church of St. Anastasia. The church of St. Dominic, in Siena, stands on high ground, immediately overlooking the house of St. Catherine. The plan is in the form of a tau-cross; the nave, choir, and transepts of uniform height, and the eastern chapels of the latter, nearly on a line with the choir, alone of inferior altitude; the whole is built of brick. The nave is sixty-nine feet in width, spanned by a braced roof, and opens by an arch, without piers, into the transept, which has a continuous roof from end to end. The choir has a plain quadripartite vault, the stalls for the religious being behind the high altar. All the windows are single lancet openings, except the central window at the east end, which has been adorned with geometrical tracery. Although the character "St. Dominic and the Dominicans," pp. 185-7. f P. Marchese. of the fabric has been miserably defaced, its magnificent proportions bear witness to its former grandeur. Probably earthquakes have had a share in levelling its ancient tower. In the church of St. Dominic, Pistoia, the Friars Preachers did not adopt the prevalent Lombard style. Spacious naves, and transepts with eastern chapels, as at Siena, were preferred; the choir and eastern part being groined, and the nave covered with a roof of open timber-work. As there are no friars, the nuns of the third order now possess St. Dominic's church, which was commenced in 12805, and has been sadly modernized. The Dominican church of St. Romanus at Lucca is in the usual spacious, open style, though scarcely a fragment of antiquity remains. The convent, of considerable size, is likewise modernized, the triple semi-round windows on each side of the door of the chapter-room being the only vestiges of the old work. The present Dominican church of Santa Maria in Castello claims the highest antiquity and prominent interest among the existing churches of Genoa. It is attributed to the early part of the eleventh century, and is constructed of old materials in the manner of the basilican churches in Rome. There are six bays on each side of the nave, with columns of granite; several of the capitals are antique, and the others, which correspond in figure, evince very classical taste. The aisles nearly equal the nave in height, and the clerestory opens into them: the roofs are groined. The sacro crocifisso, brought from the splendid church of St. Dominic, which stood on the site of the theatre, is a wooden figure of our Lord upon a Y cross, brought to Europe from the East in the tenth century h. The groining of the cloisters is adorned with beautiful frescoes of the fifteenth century. At this convent dwells the famous F. Marchese, O. P., to whose indefatigable researches among the archives we are indebted for the valuable memoirs of the lives of the most eminent artists of the Order, to which we have made constant reference. The Dominican church at Strasbourg is large and magnificent. It consists of a central row of columns forming two naves, the northern one having an aisle, against which runs the venerable cloister, and the southern nave, towards the street, having an aisle, and also buttresses so deep as to have chapels between them, as at Ghent. Lengthwise there are ten bays, round columns, and unadorned capitals; the clerestory has plain lancet windows, and the whole is groined. There is great severity in the style, except in the large windows between the buttresses towards the street. Many old Lombardic inscriptions remain, as well as some good late frescoes on the west wall. The choir, P. Marchese. The cloister walls of the abbey of St. Matthew, in Genoa, are filled with ancient monumental inscriptions, as in the Campo Santo at Pisa and Santa Maria Novella, from this church, the last remains of which were destroyed in 1853. which is of immense length, now forms the public library. At the west end of the south aisle is the resting-place of the great Dominican Thauler. At the suppression of the large Dominican convent in Cologne, founded in 1224, and destroyed in recent times, of which the choir was built by B. Albert the Great, his remains were translated to the north transept of St. Andrew's Church. The ample blue vestment of velvet, with stole and maniple, taken from his tomb, is still preserved, and used on his feast-day. Among the most remarkable buildings raised by the Friars Preachers was their old church at Ghent, commenced A.D. 12401, and unhappily destroyed little more than a year ago. It stood on the south side of the convent, and was confiscated during the French Revolution of 1790. Since the re-establishment of the Friars in Ghent, until about 1850, they rented the church from its lay proprietor, and tried again and again to purchase it and a portion of the conventual buildings, but without success. It was a parallelogram of ten bays, without aisles, about 167 ft. by 53 ft. in the clear, with side chapels formed between the buttresses, which are internal, and pierced with arches. The arched and boarded roof was of uniform height throughout, intersected by transverse and diagonal wooden ribs, which sprang from the shafts attached to the buttress-piers. A plan and sketches of the exterior and interior will assist the description and preserve the recollections of this interesting church, wherein the genius of the architect in raising a pleasing elevation and imposing interior on a simple plan is well exemplified, and which is admirably suited for modern use in London and other large towns k. The convent still remains, subdivided into houses, &c. It was the finest of the Order in Belgium, and differed much from the other Dominican houses in that country, in being formed of two quadrangles, instead of numerous irregular and detached blocks of building. i Belgium Dominicanum. Historia Provincia Germaniæ inferioris Sacri Ordinis Prædicatorum. Collectore F. Bernardo de Jonghe, ejusdem ordinis, Ganda vensis filio. The style agreed with the date, supposing the church to have been about twenty years in building, as is probable, that is, from 1240 to 1260,-and was Early French throughout, and the design had a remarkable effect to the most casual observer, being one large room without any division, and with a lofty pointed ceiling of very large span. The vaulting-shafts attached to the angles of the pierbuttresses had capitals of what is called the stiff-leaf foliage, usual in the Early French style; at the west end were three fine windows of the same style with foliated circles in the head; the arrangement of these windows shewed that there never could have been any aisles or any division of the interior, and that none were intended. These windows had long been blocked up, and the side windows almost entirely cut away. The exterior was spoiled, and the whole was in a very dilapidated state; and the roof was bound together with iron rods. But the design of the whole was admirable, both exterior and interior. On each side was a range of gables over the chapels, with the buttresses rising between them higher than the points of the gables.-ED. |