The interior of the Cathedral does not offer much to admire—nevertheless its general effect is sufficiently imposing. But it is outside in the court, the present piazza, that all the beauty of the place reveals itself. It is not a ruin—of the sixteen original granite columns not one has been displaced, and this portion of the Palace of Spalato is as in the days when Diocletian came into his Temple to pray. Can the reader believe that all this is really within five days of London?
Dalmatia has been the birthplace of many men of letters and science, and Spalato can boast of having even given a Protestant Dean to our royal Windsor, in the person of the celebrated Mark Anthony de Dominis, once Catholic Archbishop of Spalato, whose life and death would furnish materials for a sensational novel. As his history is not commonly known, it may, perhaps, interest some of my readers to hear it now.
He was born about the year 1570, and educated at the Illyrian College of the Jesuits, in Loretto, from whence he passed to Padua, where he became Professor of Mathematics. In the year 1600, he was created Bishop of Segna, and in 1602 he was raised to the Archbishopric of Spalato, where, during the terrible plague of 1607, he nobly distinguished himself by his liberality to the poor, and his fearless and humane attendance on the sick in the administration of his sacerdotal duties—emulating the courage and devotion, under similar circumstances, of Borromeo of Milan. He occupied the Archiepiscopal throne of Spalato for fourteen years, during which period his time was divided between the performance of his ecclesiastical duties, and the investigations of science. He converted the upper part of the Palace, at Spalato, into a Laboratory and an Observatory, and the window is still shown where he is supposed to have made the discovery of the prismatic colour of light, "by the falling drops of water;" which discovery, including a description of the nature of the rainbow, he published to the world in a work printed at Venice in 1611. His fickleness in matters of religion, however, proved his ruin; his Chapter accused him of heretical opinions, upon which he withdrew to Venice at the close of 1615, having previously vacated his See in favour of his nephew Sforza Ponsoni. During his residence in that city, he wrote a work in favour of the Republic, which was condemned by the Inquisition, when he determined on withdrawing, for safety, to a Protestant country.