Luca, Fra

The religious name of Romola's brother Bernardino de' Bardi, who has left his family to become a Dominican monk. He had been brought up to share in his father's studies, but, in spite of the fact that he was the blind man's one hope, had turned from scholarship to mysticism, deserting his father to join the Dominicans, and had become a wanderer and hermit in Eastern lands. On his way home, broken in health, he meets aman who has seen Baldassarre Calvo, Tito Melema's deserted father, and from him receives a letter to Tito begging him to save his father from slavery. He delivers the note, and is thus the one person who knows that Tito is aware that his father is alive. Although he has this knowledge, which might have saved his sister Romola from her disastrous marriage to Tito Melema, he does not warn her of it, but instead, when dying, gives her a visionary, mystical warning which merely distresses her. It is at Fra Luca's death bed that Romola first sees Savonarola, who is later to influence her so greatly.

<em>Romola</em>

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