never, it would seem, the slightest doubt in his faith. At the time of the illness or death of his father and brothers, his first concern was ever that they should receive the sacrament.[1] He had a boundless confidence in prayer, "which he regarded as more efficacious than all the medicines in the world";[2] he attributed to its power all the good which had come to him and believed that it preserved him from evil. In his solitude he was subject to crises of mystic adoration. By chance the recollection of one of these has been handed down to us: a contemporary narrative shows us the ecstatic face of the hero of the Sistine, praying, alone, at night, in his garden in Rome, and imploring with his sorrowful eyes the starry sky.[3]
- ↑ Letter to Buonarroto, on the subject of his father's illness (November 23, 1516). Letter to Leonardo, on the subject of the death of Giovan Simone (January 1548): "I should like to know if he confessed and if he received the sacrament. If I knew that this was so, I should suffer less . . ."
- ↑ "Più credo agli orazioni che alle medicine" (Letter to Leonardo, April 25, 1549).
- ↑ ". . . In the year of Our Lord 1513, in the first year of the pontificate of Leo X., Michael Angelo, who was then in Rome—and I believe, unless I am mistaken, that it was in the autumn—one night, in the open air, in a garden of his house, prayed and raised his eyes to heaven. Suddenly he saw a marvellous meteor, a triangular sign, with three rays: one, pointing towards the east, bright and smooth, like the blade of a polished sword, but with a hook at the end; the other, the colour of a ruby, blue red, stretching over Rome; and the third, the colour of fire and forked, and of such a length that it reached as far as Florence . . . On seeing this divine sign Michael Angelo went
of sacrilege and simony in Rome. For instance, the sonnet commencing with the words:
Qua si fa elmj di chalicj e spade,
E 'l sangue di Christo si vend' a giumelle . . .
"There, with chalices, they make swords and helmets; and the blood of Christ is sold with both hands . . ."
