amo. The penitents on this occasion wore for badge a dove with the
olive-branch. They staid fifteen days in Florence, scourging themselves
before the altars of the Dominican churches, and feasting, five hundred
at a time, in the Piazzi di S. M. Novella. Corio, in the _Storia di
Milano_ (p. 281), gives an interesting account of these 'white
penitents,' as they were called, in the year 1399: 'Multitudes of men,
women, girls, boys, small and great, townspeople and countryfolk, nobles
and burghers, laity and clergy, with bare feet and dressed in white
sheets from head to foot,' visited the towns and villages of every
district in succession. 'On their journey, when they came to a
cross-road or to crosses, they threw themselves on the ground, crying
_Misericordia_ three times; then they recited the Lord's Prayer and the
Ave Maria. On their entrance into a city, they walked singing _Stabat
Mater dolorosa_ and other litanies and prayers. The population of the
places to which they came were divided: for some went forth and told
those who staid that they should assume the same habit, so that at one
time there were as many as 10,000, and at another as many as 15,000 of
them.' After admitting that the fruit of this devotion was in many cases
penitence, amity, and alms-giving, Corio goes on to observe: 'However,
men returned to a worse life than ever after it was over.' It is
noticeable that Italy was devastated in 1400 by a horrible plague; and
it is impossible not to believe that the crowding of so many penitents
together on the highways and in the cities led to this result.

During the anarchy of Italy between 1494--the date of the invasion of
Charles VIII.--and 1527--the date of the sack of Rome--the voice of
preaching friars and hermits was often raised, and the effect was always
to drive the people to a frenzy of revivalistic piety. Milan was the
center of the military operations of the French, the Swiss, the
Spaniards, and the Germans. No city suffered more cruelly, and in none
were fanatical prophets received with greater superstition. In 1516
there appeared in Milan 'a layman, large of stature, gaunt, and beyond
measure wild, without shoes, without shirt, bareheaded, with bristly
hair and beard, and so thin that he seemed another Julian the hermit.'
He lived on water and millet-seed, slept on the bare earth, refused alms
of all sorts, and preached with wonderful authority. In spite of the
opposition of the Archbishop and the