nswers these
lines, "Is thine hour come to waken, slumbering Night?"]

[Footnote 34: This and the preceding quotations are from Mrs.
Oliphant's _Makers of Florence_.]

XV

CENTRAL FIGURES IN THE LAST JUDGMENT

There are in the Bible certain references to a great day when the Son
of Man shall be seen "coming in the clouds with great power and
glory." "And he shall send his angels with a great sound of a trumpet,
and they shall gather together his elect from the four winds, from one
end of heaven to the other."[35] St. Paul, in a letter which he wrote
to the Christians in Corinth, speaks of this as a "mystery," and
says:[36] "We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a
moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet
shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall
be changed."

[Footnote 35: Matthew, chapter xxiv. verse 31.]

[Footnote 36: 1 Corinthians, chapter xv. verses 51, 52.]

In the Middle Ages these passages were interpreted very literally and
had a great influence over the people. At that time the Christian
religion was a religion of fear rather than of love, and men were
continually picturing in their minds God's angry separation of the
good from the wicked.

How much such thoughts occupied them we may see from Dante's great
poem describing a vision of the Inferno, Purgatory, and Paradise.
This was written in the thirteenth century, and in the same period
appeared a short Latin lyric, or hymn, called "Dies Irae," or the Day
of Wrath, from an expression used by the old Hebrew prophet Zephaniah.
The author was a Franciscan monk named Thomas of Celano, and we may
see how deeply he felt from these verses:--

"Ah! what terror is impending
When the Judge is seen descending,
And each secret veil is rending.

"To the throne, the trumpet sounding,
Through the sepulchres resounding,
Summons all, with voice astounding.

"Sits the Judge, the raised arraigning,
Darkest mysteries explaining,
Nothing unavenged remaining."

This vivid word picture forms the subject of many great paintings by
the older Italian masters, known under the title of the Last Judgment.
Michelangelo's was one of the last of these, and in general
arrangement his composition resembles those of his predecessors.

From the upper air a company of angels descends, carrying a cross, a
crown of thorns, and other instruments of the Saviour's