dead, had audience of the prior of the friary; a chapter was convened and
the assembled brothers heard from the confessor's own mouth how Ser
Ciappelletto had been a holy man, as had appeared by his confession, and
were exhorted to receive the body with the utmost veneration and pious care,
as one by which there was good hope that God would work many miracles. To
this the prior and the rest of the credulous confraternity assenting, they
went in a body in the evening to the place where the corpse of Ser
Ciappelletto lay, and kept a great and solemn vigil over it; and in the
morning they made a procession habited in their surplices and copes with
books in their hands and crosses in front; and chanting as they went, they
fetched the corpse and brought it back to their church with the utmost pomp
and solemnity, being followed by almost all the folk of the city, men and
women alike. So it was laid in the church, and then the holy friar who had
heard the confession got up in the pulpit and began to preach marvellous
things of Ser Ciapelletto's life, his fasts, his virginity, his simplicity
and guilelessness and holiness; narrating among the other matters that of
which Ser Ciappelletto had made tearful confession as his greatest sin, and
how he had hardly been able to make him conceive that God would pardon him;
from which he took occasion to reprove his hearers; saying:--"And you,
accursed of God, on the least pretext, blaspheme God and His Mother, and all
the celestial court. And much beside he told of his loyalty and purity; and,
in short, so wrought upon the people by his words, to which they gave entire
credence, that they all conceived a great veneration for Ser Ciappelletto,
and at the close of the office came pressing forward with the utmost
vehemence to kiss the feet and the hands of the corpse, from which they tore
off the cerements, each thinking himself blessed to have but a scrap thereof
in his possession; and so it was arranged that it should be kept there all
day long, so as to be visible and accessible to all. At nightfall it was
honourably interred in a marble tomb in one of the chapels, where on the
morrow, one by one, folk came and lit tapers and prayed and paid their vows,