The Prime Jewels Of
This Royal Collection Are The Grilled Bones Of San Lorenzo Himself,
Bearing Dim Traces Of His Sacred Gridiron.
The sacristan will show you also the retable of the miraculous wafer,
which bled when trampled on by Protestant heels at Gorcum in 1525.
This
has always been one of the chief treasures of the Spanish crown. The
devil-haunted idiot Charles II. made a sort of idol of it, building it
this superb altar, consecrated "in this miracle of earth to the miracle
of heaven." When the atheist Frenchmen sacked the Escorial and stripped
it of silver and gold, the pious monks thought most of hiding this
wonderful wafer, and when the storm passed by, the booby Ferdinand VII.
restored it with much burning of candles, swinging of censers, and
chiming of bells. Worthless as it is, it has done one good work in the
world. It inspired the altar-picture of Claudio Coello, the last best
work of the last of the great school of Spanish painters. He finished it
just before he died of shame and grief at seeing Giordano, the nimble
Neapolitan, emptying his buckets of paint on the ceiling of the grand
staircase, where St. Lawrence and an army of martyrs go sailing with a
fair wind into glory.
The great days of art in the Escorial are gone. Once in every nook and
corner it concealed treasures of beauty that the world had nearly
forgotten. The Perla of Raphael hung in the dark sacristy.
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