curse, the assured fact remains, that if you will obey God, there will
come a moment when the voice of man will be raised, with all its
holiest natural authority, against you. The friend and the wise
adviser--the brother and the sister--the father and the master--the
entire voice of your prudent and keen-sighted acquaintance--the entire
weight of the scornful stupidity of the vulgar world--for _once_,
they will be against you, all at one. You have to obey God rather than
man. The human race, with all its wisdom and love, all its indignation
and folly, on one side,--God alone on the other. You have to choose.

That is the meaning of St. Francis's renouncing his inheritance; and it
is the beginning of Giotto's gospel of Works. Unless this hardest of
deeds be done first,--this inheritance of mammon and the world cast
away,--all other deeds are useless. You cannot serve, cannot obey, God
and mammon. No charities, no obediences, no self-denials, are of any
use, while you are still at heart in conformity with the world. You go
to church, because the world goes. You keep Sunday, because your
neighbours keep it. But you dress ridiculously, because your neighbours
ask it; and you dare not do a rough piece of work, because your
neighbours despise it. You must renounce your neighbour, in his riches
and pride, and remember him in his distress. That is St. Francis's
'disobedience.'

And now you can understand the relation of subjects throughout the
chapel, and Giotto's choice of them.

The roof has the symbols of the three virtues of labour--Poverty,
Chastity, Obedience.

A. Highest on the left side, looking to the window. The life of St.