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THE MAKERS OF FLORENCE.

CHAPTER VIII.

II.—THE GOOD ARCHBISHOP.
“ What is the use of the cloister in the midst of society,”
says Padre Marchese (himself a Prate Predicatore of San
Marco), “if it is not a focus and center of morality and
religion, diffusing and planting deeply in the hearts of the
people ideas of honesty, justice, and virtue, in order to
temper and hold in balance the brutal force of the passions
which threaten continually to absorb all the thoughts and
affections of men? In this brief description of the monas-
tic life is summed up the life of Sant’ Antonino and of his
disciples. The saintly Costanzo da Fabriano, and Fathers
Santi Schialtesi and Girolamo Lapaccini, with a chosen
band of students, went through the cities, towns, and vil-
lages of Tuscany, or wherever necessity called them,
extinguishing party strife, instructing the people, and bring-
ing back the lost into the path of virtue. Sant’ Antonino
used his ability and wonderful charity in encouraging the
best studies, aiding in the reform of the clergy, and giving
a helping hand to all the charitable works which were
rendered necessary by the distresses of those unhappy
times. And since the people of Florence took great de-
light in the arts, and were in the habit of drawing com-
fort and pleasure from them, the blessed Giovanni Angelico
undertook the noble office of making those very arts minis-
ters of religious and moral perfection ; educating a school
of painters, pure, heavenly-minded, and toned to that high
sublime which raises man from the mud of this world and
 
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