The Fortnightly (Volume 6) (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1866. Excerpt: ... that the refusal to confess his sins to a priest at the point of death would be sufficient to obtain for Perugino dishonourable burial, the marginal note quoted above proves not only that Perugino did not disbelieve in the immortality of the soul, but that he so strongly believed in it that he wished to know what would be its state beyond the grave, travelling under conditions then very unfrequent. Pietro did not believe in the efficacy of confession and priestly absolution. If this was the amount of his unbelief, I think his anxious advocates may at last be satisfied that from his memory has been wiped the "brutta macchia d'incredulo." But not alone in painting and its more closely cognate arts has Perugia been fruitful. I find mention but of one Perugian musician for whom even local partiality dares claim immortality; and despite the "Swans' Lament for the death of the Phoenix of Musicians," I doubt whether the life written by the Canonico Giovanni Angiolo Guidarelli in 1660, will save from greedy forgetfulness the name of the illustrious Cavaliere Baldassare Perri. But in literary compositions Perugia has ever been amazingly prolific. I have before me a catalogue of some five hundred works written mostly by Perugians, and when not by them, always concerning their city. Giacinto Vincioli published, between 1712 and 1729, the lives of as many as seventy-seven Perugian poets The industrious Vermiglioli, whose valuable library is now in the possession of the Baglioni family, makes a note in his "Bibliographia" to the effect that these seventy-seven might have had many more added to them, had not Vincioli been ignorant of various Perugian bards from the fourteenth century downwards, well worthy of notice; and he goes on to give the names of twenty-six of t...