nts, and the variety in
Renaissance art is therefore endless. Let us consider the narrative or
dramatic side, on which, as I have elsewhere tried to show, all that
could be done was done, only repetition ensuing, very early in the
history of Italian art, by the Pisans, Giotto and Giotto's followers.

These have their counterpart, their precursors, in the writers and
reciters of devotional romances.

Among the most remarkable of these is the "Life of the Magdalen,"
printed in certain editions of Frate Domenico Cavalca's well known
charming translations of St. Jerome's "Lives of the Saints." Who the
author may be seems quite doubtful, though the familiar and popular
style might suggest some small burgher turned Franciscan late in life.
As the spiritual love lyrics of Jacopone stand to the _Canzonieri_ of
Dante and of Dante's circle of poets, so does this devout novel stand to
Boccaccio's more serious tales, and even to his "_Fiammetta_;" only, I
think that the relation of the two novelists is the reverse of that of
the poets; for, with an infinitely ruder style, the biographer of the
Magdalen, whoever he was, has also an infinitely finer psychological
sense than Boccaccio. Indeed, this little novel ought to be reprinted,
like "Aucasin et Nicolette," as one of the absolutely satisfactory
works, so few but so exquisite, of the Middle Ages.

It is the story of the relations of Jesus with the family of Lazarus,
whose sister Mary is here identified with the Magdalen; and it is, save
for the account of the Passion, which forms the nucleus, a perfect tissue
of inventions. Indeed, the author explains very simply that he is
narrating not how he knows of a certainty that things did happen, but
how it pleases him to think that they might have happened. For the man
puts his whole heart in the story, and alters, amplifies, explains away
till his heart is satisfied. The Magdalen, for instance, was not all
the sort of woman that foolish people think. If she took to scandalous
courses, it was only from despair at being forsaken by her bridegroom,
who left her on the wedding-day to follow Christ to the desert, and who
was no other than the Evangelist John. Moreover, let no vile imputations
be put upon it; in those days, when everybody was so good and modest, it
took very little indeed (in fact, nothing which our wicked times would
notice at all) to get a woman into disrepute.

Judged by our low fourteenth-century standard, this sinning