THE FRANCISCAN MONASTERY 153
angles and is covered by an octagonal cupola. Behind it stands the monastery of S. Maria, once used as an arsenal, now a barrack. Next door to the façade of S. Salvadore comes the Franciscan church and monastery. The entrance to the cloister has a coat of arms over the door and the symbol IÔS, which occurs again and again over doorways in Ragusa ; it is said to have come into use, on secular buildings, at the time of the great earthquake. The Franciscan monastery was begun in 1319, though the church was considerably modified at a later date. The beautiful cloister of the convent, however, remains very much as it was originally designed, though the earthquake wrought serious mischief and entailed some rebuilding. The cloister is entirely Romanesque and, as Sir Thomas Jackson points out, is thoroughly Dalmatian in character. The arches are all round-headed, and each bay encloses six round-headed lights, divided by very lofty and graceful coupled octagonal shafts, standing one behind the other, with a common base and a common abacus, but each couple of shafts has its own separate capital. These capitals are of extraordinary variety and quaintness ; monsters, masks, apes, four dogs back to back, winged demons, like the gargoyles of