, that if it
were broken or set aside in a place of contempt, the city would suffer
peril and injury, and undergo great changes. And although the
Florentines had lately become Christians, they still observed many
pagan customs, and long continued to observe them, and they still
stood in awe of their ancient idol of Mars, so little were they
perfected as yet in the holy faith; and this done, they consecrated
their said temple in honour of God and of the blessed S. John the
Baptist, and called it the Duomo of S. Giovanni; and they decreed that
the feast on the day of his nativity should be celebrated with solemn
sacrifices, and that a race should be run for a samite cloak, and this
custom has been always observed by the Florentines on that day. And
they had baptismal fonts erected in the middle of the temple, where
people and children were and still are baptized; and on Holy Saturday,
when in the said fonts the baptismal water and fire were blessed, they
ordered that the said holy fire should be carried through the city
after the custom of Jerusalem, so that some one should enter into
every house with a lighted torch, for them to kindle their fires
from. And from this solemnity came the privilege of the "great torch,"
which pertained to the house of the Pazzi, from some hundred and
seventy years before 1300; because one of their ancestors, named
Pazzo, strong and tall in person, bore a larger torch than any other,
and was the first to take the sacred fire, and then the others
received it from him. The said duomo, after that it had been
consecrated to Christ, was enlarged by the space where to-day is the
choir, and the altar of the blessed John; but at the time that the
said duomo was the temple of Mars, this addition had not been made
thereto, nor the turret and ball at the summit; and indeed it was open
above after the fashion of Santa Maria Ritonda of Rome, to the intent
their idol, the god Mars, which was in the midst of the temple, might
be open to the sky. But after the second rebuilding of Florence, in
the year of Christ 1150, the cupola was built upon columns, and the
ball, and the golden cross which is at the top, by the consuls of the
Art of Calimala, to which the commonwealth of Florence had committed
the charge of the building of the said work in honour of S. John. And
by many people which have journeyed through the world it is said to be
the most beautiful temple or duomo of any that may be found; and in
our t