us His Body to eat, His Blood to drink (35), is nailed to the Cross (36); crucified (37), and again adored as a Child by the Magi (38), speaks with Mary in the garden (1), is buried (2); the angel announces His birth (3), He is crucified (4), and born in Bethlehem (5).  It is the rosary of Jesus that we tell, consisting of the glorious and sorrowful mysteries of His life and death.  It is the spirit of Christianity that we see here, blossoming everywhere, haphazard like the wild flowers that are the armies of spring.  As Benozzo Gozzoli has expressed with an immense good fortune, the very spirit of the Renaissance at its birth almost, the spirit and the joy of youth, so Angelico with as simple an eagerness and a more sure sincerity has expressed here the very spirit of Christianity,—­He that loseth his life shall gain it:  take no thought for your life.

[Illustration:  THE CRUCIFIXION

By Fra Angelica.  S. Marco, Florence

Alinari]

It was here, then, amid all this mystical and heavenly beauty, that first S. Antonino and later Savonarola sought to oppose the “new religion of love and beauty” which had already filled Florence with a new joy.  At first, certainly, that new joy seemed not unfriendly to the mysterious and heavenly beauty of the Christian ideal.  It is not till later, when both have been a little spoiled by love, that there seems to have been any antagonism between them.  It is true that it was only with reluctance that S. Antonino accepted the Arch-bishopric of Florence, but this seems rather to have been owing to humility, the most beautiful characteristic of a beautiful nature, than to any perception that he might have to oppose that new spirit fostered so carefully, and indeed so unwittingly, by Cosimo de’ Medici, his benefactor.  Born of Florentine parents in 1389, the son of a notary, Antonino, at the age of sixteen, had entered the convent of S. Domenico at Fiesole, not without a severe test of his steadfastness, for Fra Domenico made him learn the whole of Gratian’s decree by heart before he would admit him to the Order.  Later, he became priest, wrote his Summa Theologicae, and was called by Eugenius, who loved him, to the General Council in Florence in 1439; while there he was made Prior of the Convent of S. Marco.  Having set his Congregation in order, and, as such a man was bound to do, endeared himself to the Florentines, he set out for other convents, not in Tuscany only, but in Naples, which needed his presence.  He was absent for two years.  During that time the See of Florence became vacant, and Eugenius, to the great joy of the city, appointed Antonino Archbishop.  Surprised and troubled that he should have been thought of for such a dignity, he set out to hide himself in Sardinia, but, being prevented, came at last to Siena, whence he wrote to the Pope begging him to change his mind, saying that he was old, sick and unworthy.  How little he knew Eugenius, the on altogether inflexible