You are in the chapel next the high altar of the great Franciscan
church of Florence. A few hundred yards west of you, within ten
minutes' walk, is the Baptistery of Florence. And five minutes' walk
west of that is the great Dominican church of Florence, Santa Maria
Novella.
Get this little bit of geography, and architectural fact, well into
your mind. There is the little octagon Baptistery in the middle; here,
ten minutes' walk east of it, the Franciscan church of the Holy Cross;
there, five minutes walk west of it, the Dominican church of St. Mary.
Now, that little octagon Baptistery stood where it now stands (and was
finished, though the roof has been altered since) in the eighth
century. It is the central building of Etrurian Christianity,--of
European Christianity.
From the day it was finished, Christianity went on doing her best, in
Etruria and elsewhere, for four hundred years,--and her best seemed to
have come to very little,--when there rose up two men who vowed to God
it should come to more. And they made it come to more, forthwith; of
which the immediate sign in Florence was that she resolved to have a
fine new cross-shaped cathedral instead of her quaint old little
octagon one; and a tower beside it that should beat Babel:--which two
buildings you have also within sight.
But your business is not at present with them; but with these two
earlier churches of Holy Cross and St.
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