donna was dead, nor would he be
persuaded that she was crowned Queen of Angels in heaven. And Mary, in
pity of his sorrow, sent him by the hands of children "the girdle with
which her body was girt,"--just a strip of the blue sky sprinkled with
stars,--"and therefore he understood that she was assumpt into heaven."
And if you ask how comes this precious thing in Prato, I ask where else,
then, could it be but in this little city among the children, where the
promise of Spring abides continually, and the Sun is ever in their
hearts. Ah, Rose of the world, dear Lily of the fields, you will return;
like Spring you will come from that heaven where you are, and in every
valley the flowers will run before you and the poppies will stray among
the corn, and the proud gladiolus will bow its violet head; then on the
hillside I shall hear again the silver laughter of the olives, and in
the wide valleys I shall hear all the rivers running to the sea, and the
sweet wind will wander in the villages, and in the walled cities I shall
find the flowers, and I too, with the children, shall wait on the hills
at dawn to see you pass by with the Sun in your arms because it is
spring--Stella Matutina, Causa nostrae laetitiae.

It was a certain lad of Prato, Michele by name, who, wandering in the
wake of the great army in Palestine in 1096 at evening, by one of the
wells of the desert, kissed the little daughter of a great priest, who
gave him the Girdle of Madonna for love. Returning to Prato with this
precious thing, and having nowhere to hide it, he put it, as a child
might do, under his bed, and every night the angels for fear mounted
guard about it. He died, and it came into the hands of a certain Uberto,
a priest of the city; then, one tried to steal it, but he was put to
death, and after, the Girdle was placed in the Duomo in a casket of
ivory in a chapel of marble between the pillars of serpentine and lamps
of gold. And Andrea Pisano carved a statue of Madonna, and they dressed
her in silk and placed her on an altar, in which lay hidden the promise
of spring. Then Ridolfo Ghirlandajo painted a fresco over the west door,
of Madonna with her Girdle, and indeed they did all they knew in honour
of their treasure: so that Mino da Fiesole and Rossellino made a pulpit
and set it there in the nave, and there, too, you may see Madonna
giving her Girdle to St. Thomas, and St. Stephen, the boy martyr, stoned
to death, and other remembrances. In the