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Title: Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 2
Studies from the Chronicles of Rome
Author: Francis Marion Crawford
Release Date: April 25, 2009 [EBook #28600]
Language: English
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[Illustration]
AVE ROMA IMMORTALIS
STUDIES FROM THE CHRONICLES OF ROME
BY
FRANCIS MARION CRAWFORD
IN TWO VOLUMES
VOL. II
London
MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED
NEW YORK: THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1899
_All rights reserved_
Copyright, 1898,
By The Macmillan Company.
Set up and electrotyped October, 1898. Reprinted November,
December, 1898; January, 1899.
_Norwood Press_
_J. S. Cushing & Co.--Berwick & Smith_
_Norwood, Mass., U.S.A._
TABLE OF CONTENTS
VOLUME II
PAGE
REGION VII REGOLA 1
REGION VIII SANT' EUSTACHIO 23
REGION IX PIGNA 44
REGION X CAMPITELLI 64
REGION XI SANT' ANGELO 101
REGION XII RIPA 119
REGION XIII TRASTEVERE 132
REGION XIV BORGO 202
LEO THE THIRTEENTH 218
THE VATICAN 268
SAINT PETER'S 289
LIST OF PHOTOGRAVURE PLATES
VOLUME II
Saint Peter's _Frontispiece_
FACING PAGE
Palazzo Farnese 18
The Pantheon 46
The Capitol 68
General View of the Roman Forum 94
Theatre of Marcellus 110
Porta San Sebastiano 130
The Roman Forum, looking west 154
The Palatine 186
Castle of Sant' Angelo 204
Pope Leo the Thirteenth 228
Raphael's "Transfiguration" 256
Michelangelo's "Last Judgment" 274
Panorama of Rome, from the Orti Farnesiani 298
ILLUSTRATIONS IN THE TEXT
VOLUME II
PAGE
Region VII Regola, Device of 1
Portico of Octavia 3
San Giorgio in Velabro 11
Region VIII Sant' Eustachio, Device of 23
Site of Excavations on the Palatine 31
Church of Sant' Eustachio 39
Region IX Pigna, Device of 44
Interior of the Pantheon 49
The Ripetta 53
Piazza Minerva 55
Region X Campitelli, Device of 64
Church of Aracoeli 70
Arch of Septimius Severus 83
Column of Phocas 92
Region XI Sant' Angelo, Device of 101
Piazza Montanara and the Theatre of Marcellus 106
Site of the Ancient Ghetto 114
Region XII Ripa, Device of 119
Church of Saint Nereus and Saint Achilleus 125
The Ripa Grande and Site of the Sublician Bridge 128
Region XIII Trastevere, Device of 132
Ponte Garibaldi 137
Palazzo Mattei 140
House built for Raphael by Bramante, now torn down 145
Monastery of Sant' Onofrio 147
Equestrian Statue of Marcus Aurelius 159
Interior of Santa Maria degli Angeli 175
Palazzo dei Conservatori 189
Region XIV Borgo, Device of 202
Hospital of Santo Spirito 214
The Papal Crest 218
Library of the Vatican 235
Fountain of Acqua Felice 242
Vatican from the Piazza of St. Peter's 251
Loggie of Raphael in the Vatican 259
Biga in the Vatican Museum 268
Belvedere Court of the Vatican 272
Sixtine Chapel 279
Saint Peter's 289
Mamertine Prison 294
Interior of St. Peter's 305
Pietà of Michelangelo 318
Tomb of Clement the Thirteenth 321
Ave atque Vale. Vignette 327
[Illustration]
Ave Roma Immortalis
REGION VII REGOLA
'Arenula'--'fine sand'--'Renula,' 'Regola'--such is the derivation of
the name of the Seventh Region, which was bounded on one side by the
sandy bank of the Tiber from Ponte Sisto to the island of Saint
Bartholomew, and which Gibbon designates as a 'quarter of the city
inhabited only by mechanics and Jews.' The mechanics were chiefly
tanners, who have always been unquiet and revolutionary folk, but at
least one exception to the general statement must be made, since it was
here that the Cenci had built themselves a fortified palace on the
foundations of a part of the Theatre of Balbus, between the greater
Theatre of Marcellus, then held by the Savelli, and the often mentioned
Theatre of Pompey. There Francesco Cenci dwelt, there the childhood of
Beatrice was passed, and there she lived for many months after the
murder of her father, before the accusation was first brought against
her. It is a gloomy place now, with its low black archway, its mouldy
walls, its half rotten windows, and its ghostly court of balconies; one
might guess that a dead man's curse hangs over it, without knowing how
Francesco died. And he, who cursed his sons and his daughters and
laughed for joy when two of them were murdered, rebuilt the little
church just opposite, as a burial-place for himself and them; but
neither he nor they were laid there. The palace used to face the Ghetto,
but that is gone, swept away to the very last stone by the municipality
in a fine hygienic frenzy, though, in truth, neither plague nor cholera
had ever taken hold there in the pestilences of old days, when the
Christian city was choked with the dead it could not bury. There is a
great open space there now, where thousands of Jews once lived huddled
together, crowding and running over each other like ants in an anthill,
in a state that would have killed any other people, persecuted
occasionally, but on the whole, fairly well treated; indispensable then
as now to the spendthrift Christian; confined within their own quarter,
as formerly in many other cities, by gates closed at dusk and opened at
sunrise, altogether a busy, filthy, believing, untiring folk that
laughed at the short descent and high pretensions of a Roman baron, but
cringed and crawled aside as the great robber strode by in steel. And
close by the Ghetto, in all that remains of the vast Portico of Octavia,
is the little Church of Sant' Angelo in Pescheria where the Jews were
once compelled to hear Christian sermons on Saturdays.
[Illustration: PORTICO OF OCTAVIA
From a print of the last century]
Close by that church Rienzi was born, and it is for ever associated with
his memory. His name calls up a story often told, yet never clear, of a
man who seemed to possess several distinct and contradictory
personalities, all strong but by no means all noble, which by a freak of
fate were united in one man under one name, to make him by turns a hero,
a fool, a Christian knight, a drunken despot and a philosophic Pagan.
The Buddhist monks of the far East believe today that a man's individual
self is often beset, possessed and dominated by all kinds of fragmentary
personalities that altogether hide his real nature, which may in reality
be better or worse than they are. The Eastern belief may serve at least
as an illustration to explain the sort of mixed character with which
Rienzi came into the world, by which he imposed upon it for a certain
length of time, and which has always taken such strong hold upon the
imagination of poets, and writers of fiction, and historians.
Rienzi, as we call him, was in reality named 'Nicholas Gabrini, the son
of Lawrence'; and 'Lawrence,' being in Italian abbreviated to 'Rienzo'
and preceded by the possessive particle 'of,' formed the patronymic by
which the man is best known in our language. Lawrence Gabrini kept a
wine-shop somewhere in the neighbourhood of the Cenci palace; he seems
to have belonged to Anagni, he was therefore by birth a retainer of the
Colonna, and his wife was a washer-woman. Between them, moreover, they
made a business of selling water from the Tiber, through the city, at a
time when there were no aqueducts. Nicholas Rienzi's mother was
handsome, and from her he inherited the beauty of form and feature for
which he was famous in his youth. His gifts of mind were many, varied
and full of that exuberant vitality which noble lineage rarely
transmits; if he was a man of genius, his genius belonged to that order
which is never far removed from madness and always akin to folly. The
greatest of his talents was his eloquence, the least of his qualities
was judgment, and while he possessed the courage to face danger
unflinchingly, and the means of persuading vast multitudes to follow him
in the realization of an exalted dream, he had neither the wit to trace
a cause to its consequence, nor the common sense to rest when he had
done enough. He had no mental perspective, nor sense of proportion, and
in the words of Madame de Staël he 'mistook memories for hopes.'
He was born in the year 1313, in the turbulent year that followed the
coronation of Henry the Seventh of Luxemburg; and when his vanity had
come upon him like a blight, he insulted the memory of his beautiful
mother by claiming to be the Emperor's son. In his childhood he was sent
to Anagni. There it must be supposed that he acquired his knowledge of
Latin from a country priest, and there he lived that early life of
solitude and retirement which, with ardent natures, is generally the
preparation for an outburst of activity that is to dazzle, or delight,
or terrify the world. Thence he came back, a stripling of twenty years,
dazed with dreaming and surfeited with classic lore, to begin the
struggle for existence in his native Rome as an obscure notary.
It seems impossible to convey an adequate idea of the confusion and
lawlessness of those times, and it is hard to understand how any city
could exist at all in such absence of all authority and government. The
powers were nominally the Pope and the Emperor, but the Pope had obeyed
the commands of Philip the Fair and had retired to Avignon, and no
Emperor could even approach Rome without an army at his back and the
alliance of the Ghibelline Colonna to uphold him if he succeeded in
entering the city. The maintenance of order and the execution of such
laws as existed, were confided to a mis-called Senator and a so-called
Prefect. The Senatorship was the property of the Barons, and when Rienzi
was born the Orsini and Colonna had just agreed to hold it jointly to
the exclusion of every one else. The prefecture was hereditary in the
ancient house of Di Vico, from whose office the Via de' Prefetti in the
Region of Campo Marzo is named to this day; the head of the house was at
first required to swear allegiance to the Pope, to the Emperor, and to
the Roman People, and as the three were almost perpetually at swords
drawn with one another, the oath was a perjury when it was not a farce.
The Prefects' principal duty appears to have been the administration of
the Patrimony of Saint Peter, in which they exercised an almost
unlimited power after Innocent the Third had formally dispensed them
from allegiance to the Emperor, and the long line of petty tyrants did
not come to an end until Pope Eugenius the Fourth beheaded the last of
the race for his misdeeds in the fifteenth century; after him the office
was seized upon by the Barons and finally drifted into the hands of the
Barberini, a mere sinecure bringing rich endowments to its fortunate
possessor.
In Rienzi's time there were practically three castes in Rome,--priests,
nobles, and beggars,--for there was nothing which in any degree
corresponded to a citizen class; such business as there was consisted
chiefly in usury, and was altogether in the hands of the Jews. Rome was
the lonely and ruined capital of a pestilential desert, and its
population was composed of marauders in various degrees.
The priests preyed upon the Church, the nobles upon the Church and upon
each other, the beggars picked the pockets of both, and such men as were
bodily fit for the work of killing were enlisted as retainers in the
service of the Barons, whose steady revenues from their lands, whose
strong fortresses within the city, and whose possession of the coat and
mail armour which was then so enormously valuable, made them masters of
all men except one another. They themselves sold the produce of their
estates and the few articles of consumption which reached Rome from
abroad, in shops adjoining their palaces; they owned the land upon which
the corn and wine and oil were grown; they owned the peasants who
ploughed and sowed and reaped and gathered; and they preserved the
privilege of disposing of their own wares as they saw fit. They feared
nothing but an ambush of their enemies, or the solemn excommunication of
the Pope, who cared little enough for their doings. The cardinals and
prelates who lived in the city were chiefly of the Barons' own order and
under their immediate protection. The Barons possessed everything and
ruled everything for their own profit; they defended their privileges
with their lives, and they avenged the slightest infringement on their
powers by the merciless shedding of blood. They were ignorant, but they
were keen; they were brave, but they were faithless; they were
passionate, licentious and unimaginably cruel.
Such was the city, and such the government, to which Rienzi returned at
the age of twenty, to follow the profession of a notary, probably under
the protection of the Colonna. That the business afforded occupation to
many is proved by the vast number of notarial deeds of that time still
extant; but it is also sufficiently clear that Rienzi spent much of his
time in dreaming, if not in idleness, and much in the study of the
ancient monuments and inscriptions upon which no one had bestowed a
glance for generations. It was during that period of early manhood that
he acquired the learning and collected the materials which earned him
the title, 'Father of Archæology.' He seems to have been about thirty
years old when he first began to speak in public places, to such
audience as he could gather, expanding with ready though untried
eloquence the soaring thoughts bred in years of solitary study.
Clement the Sixth, a Frenchman, was elected Pope at Avignon, a man who,
according to the chronicler, contrasted favourably by his wisdom,
breadth of view, and liberality, with a weak and vacillating
predecessor. Seeing that they had to do with a man at last, the Romans
sent an embassy to him to urge his return to Rome. The hope had long
been at the root of Rienzi's life, and he must have already attained to
a considerable reputation of learning and eloquence, since he was chosen
to be one of the ambassadors. Petrarch conceived the highest opinion of
him at their first meeting, and never withdrew his friendship from him
to the end; the great poet joined his prayers with those of the Roman
envoys, and supported Rienzi's eloquence with his own genius in a Latin
poem. But nothing could avail to move the Pope. Avignon was the Capua of
the Pontificate,--a vast papal palace was in course of construction, and
the cardinals had already begun to erect sumptuous dwellings for
themselves. The Pope listened, smiled, and promised everything except
return; the unsuccessful embassy was left without means of subsistence;
and Rienzi, disappointed in soul, ill in body, and almost starving, was
forced to seek the refuge of a hospital, whither he retired in the
single garment which remained unsold from his ambassadorial outfit. But
he did not languish long in this miserable condition, for the Pope heard
of his misfortunes, remembered his eloquence, and sent him back to Rome,
invested with the office of Apostolic Notary, and endowed with a salary
of five golden florins daily, a stipend which at that time amounted
almost to wealth. The office was an important one, but Rienzi exercised
it by deputy, continued his studies, propagated his doctrines, and by
quick degrees acquired unbounded influence with the people. His hatred
of the Barons was as profound as his love of his native city was noble;
and if the unavenged murder of a brother, and the unanswered buffet of a
Colonna rankled in his heart, and stimulated his patriotism with the
sting of personal wrong, neither the one nor the other were the prime
causes of his actions. The evils of the city were enormous, his courage
was heroic, and after profound reflection he resolved upon the step
which determined his tragic career.
To the door of the Church of Saint George in Velabro he affixed a
proclamation, or a prophecy, which set forth that Rome should soon be
restored to the 'Good Estate'; he collected a hundred of his friends in
a meeting by night, on the Aventine, to decide upon a course of action,
and he summoned all citizens to appear before the church of Sant' Angelo
in Pescheria, towards evening, peacefully and without arms, to provide
for the restoration of that 'Good Estate' which he himself had
announced.
[Illustration: SAN GIORGIO IN VELABRO]
That night was the turning-point in Rienzi's life, and he made it a
Vigil of Arms and Prayer. In the mysterious nature of the destined man,
the pure spirit of the Christian knight suddenly stood forth in
domination of his soul, and he consecrated himself to the liberation of
his country by the solemn office of the Holy Ghost. All night he kneeled
in the little church, in full armour, with bare head, before the altar.
The people came and went, and others came after them and saw him
kneeling there, while one priest succeeded another in celebrating the
Thirty Masses of the Holy Spirit from midnight to early morning. The sun
was high when the champion of freedom came forth, bareheaded still, to
face the clear light of day. Around him marched the chosen hundred; at
his right hand went the Pope's vicar; and before him three great
standards displayed allegories of liberty, justice, and peace.
A vast concourse of people followed him, for the news had spread from
mouth to mouth, and there were few in Rome who had not heard his voice
and longed for the 'Good Estate' which he so well described. The nobles
heard of the assembly with indifference, for they were well used to
disturbances of every kind and dreaded no unarmed rabble. Colonna and
Orsini, joint senators, had quarrelled, and the Capitol was vacant;
thither Rienzi went, and thence from a balcony he spoke to the people of
freedom, of peace, of prosperity. The eloquence that had moved Clement
and delighted Petrarch stirred ten thousand Roman hearts at once; a
dissatisfied Roman count read in clear tones the laws Rienzi proposed to
establish, and the appearance of a bishop and a nobleman by the
plebeian's side gave the people hope and encouragement. The laws were
simple and direct, and there was to be but one interpretation of them,
while all public revenues were to be applied to public ends. Each Region
of the city was to furnish a contingent of men-at-arms, and if any man
were killed in the service of his country, Rome was to provide for his
wife and children. The fortresses, the bridges, the gates, were to pass
from the custody of the Barons to that of the Roman people, and the
Barons themselves were to retire forthwith from the city. So the Romans
made Rienzi Dictator.
The nobles refused to believe in a change which meant ruin to
themselves. Old Stephen Colonna laughed and said he would throw the
madman from the window as soon as he should be at leisure. It was near
noon when he spoke; the sun was barely setting when he rode for his life
towards Palestrina. The great bell of the Capitol called the people to
arms, the liberator was already the despot, and the Barons were already
exiles. Rienzi assumed the title of Tribune with the authority of
Dictator, and with ten thousand swords at his back exacted a humiliating
oath of allegiance from the representatives of the great houses. Upon
the Body and Blood of Christ they swore to the 'Good Estate,' they bound
themselves to yield up their fortresses within the city, to harbour
neither outlaws nor malefactors in their mountain castles, and to serve
the Republic loyally in arms whenever they should be called upon to do
so. The oath was taken by all, the power that could enforce it was
visible to all men's eyes, and Rienzi was supreme.
Had he been the philosopher that he had once persuaded himself he was;
had he been the pure-hearted Christian Knight of the Holy Spirit he had
believed himself when he knelt through the long Office in the little
church; had he been the simple Roman Tribune of the People that he
proclaimed himself, when he had seized the dictatorship, history might
have followed a different course, and the virtues he imposed upon Rome
might have borne fruit throughout all Italy. But with Rienzi, each new
phase was the possession of a new spirit of good or evil, and with each
successive change, only the man's great eloquence remained. While he was
a hero, he was a hero indeed; while he was a philosopher, his thoughts
were lofty and wise; so long as he was a knight, his life was pure and
blameless. But the vanity which inspired him, not to follow an ideal,
but to represent that ideal outwardly, and which inflamed him with a
great actor's self-persuading fire, required, like all vanity, the
perpetual stimulus of applause and admiration. He could have leapt into
the gulf with Curtius before the eyes of ten thousand grateful citizens;
but he could not have gone back with Cincinnatus to the plough, a
simple, true-hearted man. The display of justice followed the assumption
of power, it is true; but when justice was established, the unquiet
spirit was assailed by the thirst for a new emotion which no boasting
proclamation could satisfy, and no adulation could quench. The changes
he wrought in a few weeks were marvellous, and the spirit in which they
were made was worthy of a great reformer; Italy saw and admired,
received his ambassadors and entertained them with respect, read his
eloquent letters and answered them with approbation; and Rienzi's court
was the tribunal to which the King of Hungary appealed the cause of a
murdered brother. Yet his vanity demanded more. It was not long before
he assumed the dress, the habits, and the behaviour of a sovereign and
appeared in public with the emblems of empire. He felt that he was no
longer in spirit the Knight of the Holy Ghost, and he required for
self-persuasion the conference of the outward honours of knighthood. He
purified himself according to the rites of chivalry in the font of the
Lateran Baptistry, consecrated by the tradition of Constantine's
miraculous recovery from leprosy, he watched his arms throughout the
dark hours, and received the order from the sword of an honourable
nobleman. The days of the philosopher, the hero, and the liberator were
over, and the reign of the public fool was inaugurated by the most
extravagant boasts, and celebrated by a feast of boundless luxury and
abundance, to which the citizens of Rome were bidden with their wives
and daughters. Still unsatisfied, he demanded and obtained the ceremony
of a solemn coronation, and seven crowns were placed successively upon
his head as emblems of the seven spiritual gifts. Before him stood the
great Barons in attitudes of humility and dejection; for a moment the
great actor had forgotten himself in the excitement of his part, and
Rienzi again enjoyed the emotion of undisputed sovereignty.
But Colonna, Orsini and Savelli were not men to submit tamely in fact,
though the presence of an overwhelming power had forced them to outward
submission, and in his calmer moments the extravagant tribune was
haunted by the dream of vengeance. A ruffian asserted under torture that
the nobles were already conspiring against their victor, and Rienzi
enticed three of the Colonna and five of the Orsini to the Capitol,
where he had taken up his abode. He seized them, held them prisoners all
night, and led them out in the morning to be the principal actors in a
farce which he dared not turn to tragedy. Condemned to death, their sins
confessed, they heard the tolling of the great bell, and stood
bareheaded before the executioner. The scene was prepared with the art
of a consummate playwright, and the spectators were delighted by a
speech of rare eloquence and amazed by the sudden exhibition of a
clemency that was born of fear. Magnanimously pardoning those whom he
dared not destroy, Rienzi received a new oath of allegiance from his
captives and dismissed them to their homes.
The humiliation rankled. Laying aside their hereditary feud, Colonna and
Orsini made a desperate effort to regain their power. By a
misunderstanding they were defeated, and the third part of their force,
entering the city without the rest, was overwhelmed and massacred, and
six of the Colonna were slain. The low-born Rienzi refused burial for
their bodies, knighted his son on the spot where they had fallen, and
washed his hands in water that was mingled with their blood. It was his
last triumph and his basest.
His power was already declining, and though the people had assembled in
arms to beat off their former masters, they had lost faith in a leader
who had turned out a madman, a knave, and a drunkard. They refused to
pay the taxes he would have laid upon them, and resisted the measures he
proposed. Clement the Sixth, who had approved his wisdom, punished his
folly, and the so-called tribune was deposed, condemned for heresy, and
excommunicated. A Neapolitan soldier of fortune, an adventurer and a
criminal, took possession of Rome with only one hundred and fifty men,
in the name of the Pope, without striking a blow, and the people would
not raise a hand to help their late idol as he was led away weeping to
the Castle of Sant' Angelo, while the nobles looked on in scornful
silence. Rienzi was allowed to depart in peace after a short captivity
and became a wanderer and an outcast in Europe.
In many disguises he went from place to place, and did not fear to
return to Rome in the travesty of a pilgrim. The story of his adventures
would fill many pages, but Rome is not concerned with them. In vain he
appealed to adventurers, to enthusiasts, and to fanatics to help in
regaining what he had lost. None would listen to him, no man would draw
the sword. He came to Prague at last, obtained an audience of the
Emperor Charles the Fourth, appealed to the whole court, with
impassioned eloquence, and declared himself to be Rienzi. The attempt
cost him his freedom, for the prudent emperor forthwith sent him a
captive to the Pope at Avignon, where he was at first loaded with chains
and thrown into prison. But Clement hesitated to bring him to trial, his
friend Petrarch spoke earnestly in his favour, and he was ultimately
relegated to an easy confinement, during which he once more gave himself
up to the study of his favourite classics in peaceful resignation.
Meanwhile in Rome his enactments had been abolished with sweeping
indifference to their character and importance, and the old misrule was
reëstablished in its pristine barbarity. The feud between Orsini and
Colonna broke out again in the absence of a common danger. The plague
appeared in Europe and decimated a city already distracted by internal
discord. Rome was again a wilderness of injustice, as the chronicle
says; every one doing what seemed good in his own eyes, the Papal and
the public revenues devoured by marauders, the streets full of thieves,
and the country infested by outlaws. Clement died, and Innocent the
Sixth, another Frenchman, was elected in his stead, 'a personage of
great science, zeal, and justice,' who set about to reform abuses as
well as he could, but who saw that he could not hope to return to Rome
without long and careful preparation. He selected as his agent in the
attempt to regain possession of the States of the Church the Cardinal
Albornoz, a Spaniard of courage and experience.
[Illustration: PALAZZO FARNESE]
Meanwhile Rienzi enjoyed greater freedom, and assumed the character of
an inspired poet; than which none commanded greater respect and
influence in the early years of the Renascence. That he ever produced
any verses of merit there is not the slightest evidence to prove, but
his undoubted learning and the friendship of Petrarch helped him to
sustain the character. He never lacked talent to act any part which his
vanity suggested as a means of flattering his insatiable soul. He put on
the humility of a penitent and the simplicity of a true scholar; he
spoke quietly and wisely of Italy's future and he obtained the
confidence of the new Pope.
It was in this way that by an almost incredible turn of fortune, the
outcast and all but condemned heretic was once more chosen as a means of
restoring order in Rome, and accompanied Cardinal Albornoz on his
mission to Italy. Had he been a changed man as he pretended to be, he
might have succeeded, for few understood the character of the Romans
better, and there was no name in the country of which the memories
appealed so profoundly to the hearts of the people.
The catalogue of his deeds during the second period of power is long and
confused, but the history of his fall is short and tragic. Not without a
keen appreciation of the difference between his former position as the
freely chosen champion of the people, and his present mission as a
reformer supported by pontifical authority, he requested the Legate to
invest him with the dignity of a senator, and the Cardinal readily
assented to what was an assertion of the temporal power. Then Albornoz
left him to himself. He entered Rome in triumph, and his eloquence did
not desert him. But he was no longer the young and inspired knight,
self-convinced and convincing, who had issued from the little church
long ago. In person he was bloated with drink and repulsive to all who
saw him; and the vanity which had so often been the temporary basis of
his changing character had grown monstrous under the long repression of
circumstances. With the first moment of success it broke out and
dictated his actions, his assumed humility was forgotten in an instant,
as well as the well-worded counsels of wisdom by which he had won the
Pope's confidence; and he plunged into a civil war with the still
powerful Colonna. One act of folly succeeded another; he had neither
money nor credit, and the stern Albornoz, seeing the direction he was
taking, refused to send him assistance. In his extremity he attempted to
raise funds for his soldiers and money for his own unbounded luxury by
imposing taxes which the people could not bear. The result was certain
and fatal. The Romans rose against him in a body, and an infuriated
rabble besieged him at the Capitol.
It has been said that the vainest men make the best soldiers. Rienzi was
brave for a moment at the last. Seeing himself surrounded, and deserted
by his servants, he went out upon a balcony and faced the mob alone,
bearing in his hand the great standard of the Republic, and for the last
time he attempted to avert with words the tempest which his deeds had
called forth. But his hour had come, and as he stood there alone he was
stoned and shot at, and an arrow pierced his hand. Broken in nerve by
long intemperance and fanatic excitement, he burst into tears and fled,
refusing the hero's death in which he might still have saved his name
from scorn. He attempted to escape from the other side of the Capitol
towards the Forum, and in the disguise of a street porter he had
descended through a window and had almost escaped notice while the
multitude was breaking down the doors of the main entrance. Then he was
seen and taken, and they brought him in his filthy dress to the great
platform of the Capitol, not knowing what they should do with him and
almost frightened to find their tyrant in their power.
They thronged round him, looked at him, spoke to him, but he answered
nothing; for his hour was come, the star of his nativity was in the
house of death. In that respite, had he been a man, courage might have
awed them, eloquence might have touched them, and he might yet have
dreamed of power. But he was utterly speechless, utterly broken, utterly
afraid. A whole hour passed, and no hand was lifted against him; yet he
spoke not. Then one man, tired of his pale and bloated face, silently
struck a knife into his heart, and as he fell dead, the rabble rushed
upon him and stabbed him to pieces, and a long yell of murderous rage
told all Rome that Rienzi was dead.
They left his body to the dogs and went away to their homes, for it was
evening, and they were spent with madness. Then the Jews came, who hated
him also; and they dragged the miserable corpse through the streets; and
made a bonfire of thistles in a remote place and burned it; and what was
left of the bones and ashes they threw into the Tiber. So perished
Rienzi, a being who was not a man, but a strangely responsive
instrument, upon which virtue, heroism, courage, cowardice, faith,
falsehood and knavery played the grandest harmonies and the wildest
discords in mad succession, till humanity was weary of listening, and
silenced the harsh music forever. However we may think of him, he was
great for a moment, yet however great we may think him, he was little in
all but his first dream. Let him have some honour for that, and much
merciful oblivion for the rest.
[Illustration]
REGION VIII SANT' EUSTACHIO
The Eighth region is almost symmetrical in shape, extending nearly north
and south with a tolerably even breadth from the haunted palace of the
Santacroce, where the marble statue of the dead Cardinal comes down from
its pedestal to pace the shadowy halls all night, to Santa Maria in
Campo Marzo, and cutting off, as it were, the three Regions so long held
by the Orsini from the rest of the city. Taking Rome as a whole, it was
a very central quarter until the development of the newly inhabited
portions. It was here, near the churches of Saint Eustace and Saint
Ives, that the English who came to Rome for business established
themselves, like other foreigners, in a distinct colony during the
Renascence. Upon the chapel of Saint Ives, unconsecrated now and turned
into a lecture room of the University, a strange spiral tower shows the
talents of Borromini, Bernini's rival, at their lowest ebb. So far as
one can judge, the architect intended to represent realistically the
arduous path of learning; but whatever he meant, the result is as bad a
piece of Barocco as is to be found in Rome.
As for the Church of Saint Eustace, it commemorates a vision which
tradition attributes alike to Saint Julian the Hospitaller, to Saint
Felix, and to Saint Hubert. The genius of Flaubert, who was certainly
one of the greatest prose writers of this century, has told the story of
the first of these in very beautiful language, and the legend of Saint
Hubert is familiar to every one. Saint Eustace is perhaps less known,
for he was a Roman saint of early days, a soldier and a lover of the
chase, as many Romans were. We do not commonly associate with them the
idea of boar hunting or deer stalking, but they were enthusiastic
sportsmen. Virgil's short and brilliant description of Æneas shooting
the seven stags on the Carthaginian shore is the work of a man who had
seen what he described, and Pliny's letters are full of allusions to
hunting. Saint Eustace was a contemporary of the latter, and perhaps
outlived him, for he is said to have been martyred under Hadrian, when a
long career of arms had raised him to the rank of a general. It is an
often-told story--how he was stalking the deer in the Ciminian forest
one day, alone and on foot, when a royal stag, milk-white and without
blemish, crashed through the meeting boughs before him; how he followed
the glorious creature fast and far, and shot and missed and shot again,
and how at last the stag sprang up a steep and jutting rock and faced
him, and he saw Christ's cross between the branching antlers, and upon
the Cross the Crucified, and heard a still far voice that bade him be
Christian and suffer and be saved; and so, alone in the greenwood, he
knelt down and bowed himself to the world's Redeemer, and rose up again,
and the vision had departed. And having converted his wife and his two
sons, they suffered together with him; for they were thrust into the
great brazen bull by the Colosseum, and it was made red hot, and they
perished, praising God. But their ashes lie under the high altar in the
church to this day.
The small square of Saint Eustace is not far from Piazza Navona,
communicating with it by gloomy little streets, and on the great night
of the Befana, the fair spreads through the narrow ways and overflows
with more booths, more toys, more screaming whistles, into the space
between the University and the church. And here at the southeast corner
used to stand the famous Falcone, the ancient eating-house which to the
last kept up the Roman traditions, and where in old days, many a famous
artist and man of letters supped on dishes now as extinct as the dodo.
The house has been torn down to make way for a modern building. Famous
it was for wild boar, in the winter, dressed with sweet sauce and pine
nuts, and for baked porcupine and strange messes of tomatoes and cheese,
and famous, too, for its good old wines in the days when wine was not
mixed with chemicals and sold as 'Chianti,' though grown about Olevano,
Paliano and Segni. It was a strange place, occupying the whole of two
houses which must have been built in the sixteenth century, after the
sack of Rome. It was full of small rooms of unexpected shapes,
scrupulously neat and clean, with little white and red curtains, tiled
floors, and rush bottomed chairs, and the regular guests had their own
places, corners in which they had made themselves comfortable for life,
as it were, and were to be found without fail at dinner and at supper
time. It was one of those genial bits of old Rome which survived till a
few years ago, and was more deeply regretted than many better things
when it disappeared.
Behind the Church of Saint Eustace runs a narrow street straight up from
the Square of the Pantheon to the Via della Dogana Vecchia. It used to
be chiefly occupied at the lower end by poulterers' shops, but towards
its upper extremity--for the land rises a little--it has always had a
peculiarly dismal and gloomy look. It bears a name about which are
associated some of the darkest deeds in Rome's darkest age; it is called
the Via de' Crescenzi, the street and the abode of that great and evil
house which filled the end of the tenth century with its bloody deeds.
There is no more unfathomable mystery in the history of mediæval Rome
than the origin and power of Theodora, whose name first appears in the
year 914, as Lady Senatress and absolute mistress of the city. The
chronicler Luitprand, who is almost the only authority for this period,
heaps abuse upon Theodora and her eldest daughter, hints that they were
of low origin, and brands them with a disgrace more foul than their
crimes. No one can read their history and believe that they were
anything but patrician women, of execrable character but of high
descent. From Theodora, in little more than a hundred years, descended
five Popes and a line of sovereign Counts, ending in Peter, the first
ancestor of the Colonna who took the name; and, from her also, by the
marriage of her second daughter, called Theodora like herself, the
Crescenzi traced their descent. Yet no historian can say who that first
Theodora was, nor whence she came, nor how she rose to power, nor can
any one name the father of her children. Her terrible eldest child,
Marozia, married three sovereigns, the Lord of Tusculum, the Lord of
Tuscany, and at last Hugh, King of Burgundy, and left a history that is
an evil dream of terror and bloodshed. But the story of those fearful
women belongs to their stronghold, the great castle of Sant' Angelo. To
the Region of Saint Eustace belongs the history of Crescenzio, consul,
tribune and despot of Rome. In the street that bears the name of his
family, the huge walls of Severus Alexander's bath afforded the
materials for a fortress, and there Crescenzio dwelt when his kinswoman
Marozia held Hadrian's tomb, and after she was dead. Those were the
times when the Emperors defended the Popes against the Roman people. Not
many years had passed since Otto the First had done justice upon Peter
the Prefect, far away at the Lateran palace; Otto the Second reigned in
his stead, and Benedict the Sixth was Pope. The race of Theodora hated
the domination of the Emperor, and despised a youthful sovereign whom
they had never seen. They dreamed of restoring Rome to the Eastern
Empire, and of renewing the ancient office of Exarch for themselves.
Benedict stood in their way and was doomed. They chose their antipope, a
Roman Cardinal, one Boniface, a man with neither scruple nor conscience,
and set him up in the Pontificate; and, when they had done that,
Crescenzio seized Benedict and dragged him through the low black
entrance of Sant' Angelo, and presently strangled him in his dungeon.
But neither did Boniface please those who had made him Pope; and,
within the month, lest he should die like him he had supplanted, he
stealthily escaped from Rome to the sea, and it is recorded that he
stole and carried away the sacred vessels and treasures of the Vatican,
and took them to Constantinople.
So Crescenzio first appears in the wild and confused history of that
century of dread, when men looked forward with certainty and horror to
the ending of the world in the year one thousand. And during a dozen
years after Benedict was murdered, the cauldron of faction boiled and
seethed in Rome. Then, in the year 987, when Hugh Capet took France for
himself and for his descendants through eight centuries, and when John
the Fifteenth was Pope in Rome, 'a new tyrant arose in the city which
had hitherto been trampled down and held under by the violence of the
race of Alberic,'--that is, the race of Theodora,--'and that tyrant was
Crescentius.' And Crescenzio was the kinsman of Alberic's children.
The second Otto was dead, and Otto the Third was a mere boy, when
Crescenzio, fortified in Sant' Angelo, suddenly declared himself Consul,
seized all power, and drove the Pope from Rome. This time he had no
antipope; he would have no Pope at all, and there was no Emperor either,
since the young Otto had not yet been crowned. So Crescenzio reigned
alone for awhile, with what he called a Senate at his back, and the
terror of his name to awe the Roman people. But Pope John was wiser than
the unfortunate Benedict, and a better man than Boniface, the antipope
and thief; and having escaped to the north, he won the graces of
Crescenzio's distant kinsman by marriage and hereditary foe, Duke Hugh
of Tuscany, grandson of Hugh of Burgundy the usurper; and from that
strong situation he proceeded to offer the boy Otto inducements for
coming to be crowned in Rome.
He wisely judged from what he had seen during his lifetime that the most
effectual means of opposing the boundless license of the Roman
patricians was to make an Emperor, even of a child, and he knew that the
name of Otto the Great was not forgotten, and that the terrible
execution of Peter the Prefect was remembered with a lively dread.
Crescenzio was not ready to oppose the force of the Empire; he was
surrounded by jealous factions at home, which any sudden revolution
might turn against himself, he weighed his strength against the danger
and he resolved to yield. The 'Senate,' which consisted of patricians as
greedy as himself, but less daring or less strong, had altogether
recovered the temporal power in Rome, and Crescenzio easily persuaded
them that it would be both futile and dangerous to quarrel with the
Emperor about spiritual matters. The 'Consul' and the 'Senate'--which
meant a tyrant and his courtiers--accordingly requested the Pope to
return in peace and exercise his episcopal functions in the Holy See.
Pope John must have been as bold as he was wise, for he did not
hesitate, but came back at once. He reaped the fruit of his wisdom and
his courage. Crescenzio and the nobles met him with reverence and
implored his forgiveness for their ill-considered deeds; the Pope
granted them a free pardon, wisely abstaining from any assertion of
temporal power, and sometimes apparently submitting with patience to the
Consul's tyranny. For it is recorded that some years later, when the
Bishops of France sent certain ambassadors to the Pope, they were not
received, but were treated with indignity, kept waiting outside the
palace three days, and finally sent home without audience or answer
because they had omitted to bribe Crescenzio.
[Illustration: SITE OF EXCAVATIONS ON THE PALATINE]
If Pope John had persuaded Otto to be crowned at once, such things might
not have taken place. It was many years before the young Emperor came to
Rome at last, and he had not reached the city when he was met by the
news that Pope John was dead. He lost no time, designated his private
chaplain, the son of the Duke of Franconia, 'a young man of letters, but
somewhat fiery on account of his youth,' to be Pope, and sent him
forward to Rome at once with a train of bishops, to be installed in the
Holy See. In so youthful a sovereign, such action lacked neither energy
nor wisdom. The young Pontiff assumed the name of Gregory the Fifth,
espoused the cause of the poor citizens against the tyranny of the
nobles, crowned his late master Emperor, and forthwith made a determined
effort to crush Crescenzio and regain the temporal power.
But he had met his match at the outset. The blood of Theodora was not
easily put down. The Consul laughed to scorn the pretensions of the
young Pope; the nobles were in arms, the city was his, and in the second
year of his Pontificate, Gregory the Fifth was driven ignominiously from
the gates in a state of absolute destitution. He was the third Pope whom
Crescenzio had driven out. Gregory made his way to Pavia, summoned a
council of Bishops, and launched the Major Excommunication at his
adversary. But the Consul, secure in Sant' Angelo, laughed again, more
grimly, and did as he pleased.
At this time Basil and Constantine, joint Emperors in Constantinople,
sent ambassadors to Rome to Otto the Third, and with them came a certain
John, a Calabrian of Greek race, a man of pliant conscience, tortuous
mind, and extraordinary astuteness, at that time Archbishop of Piacenza,
and formerly employed by Otto upon a mission to Constantinople.
Crescenzio, as though to show that his enmity was altogether against the
Pope, and not in the least against the Emperor, received these envoys
with great honour, and during their stay persuaded them to enter into a
scheme which had suddenly presented itself to his ambitious
intelligence. The old dream of restoring Rome to the Eastern Empire was
revived, the conspirators resolved to bring it to realization, and John
of Calabria was a convenient tool for their hands. He was to be Pope;
Crescenzio was to be despot, under the nominal protection and
sovereignty of the Greek Emperors, and the ambassadors were to conclude
the treaty with the latter. Otto was on the German frontier waging war
against the Slavs, and Gregory was definitely exiled from Rome. Nothing
stood in the way of the plot, and it was forthwith put into execution.
Certain ambassadors of Otto's were passing through Rome on their return
from the East and on their way to the Emperor's presence; they were
promptly seized and thrown into prison, in order to interrupt
communication between the two Empires. John of Calabria was consecrated
Pope, or rather antipope, Crescenzio took possession of all power, and
certain legates of Pope Gregory having ventured to enter Rome were at
once imprisoned with the Emperor's ambassadors. It was a daring stroke,
and if it had succeeded, the history of Europe would have been different
from that time forward. Crescenzio was bold, unscrupulous, pertinacious
and keen. He had the Roman nobles at his back and he controlled such
scanty revenues as could still be collected. He had violently expelled
three Popes, he had created two antipopes, and his name was terror in
the ears of the Church. Yet it would have taken more than all that to
overset the Catholic Church at a time when the world was ripe for the
first crusade; and though the Empire had fallen low since the days of
Charles the Great, it was fast climbing again to the supremacy of power
in which it culminated under Barbarossa and whence it fell with
Frederick the Second. A handful of high-born murderers and marauders
might work havoc in Rome for a time, but they could neither destroy that
deep-rooted belief nor check the growth of that imperial law by which
Europe emerged from the confusion of the dark age--to lose both law and
belief again amid the intellectual excitements of the Renascence.
Otto the Third was young, brave and determined, and before the treaty
with the Eastern Emperors was concluded, he was well informed of the
outrageous deeds of the Roman patricians. No sooner had he brought the
war on the Saxon frontier to a successful conclusion than he descended
again into Italy 'to purge the Roman bilge,' in the chronicler's strong
words. On his way, he found time to visit Venice secretly, with only six
companions, and we are told how the Doge entertained him in private as
Emperor, with sumptuous suppers, and allowed him to wander about Venice
all day as a simple unknown traveller, with his companions, 'visiting
the churches and the other rare things of the City,' whereby it is clear
that in the year 998, when Rome was a half-deserted, half-ruined city,
ruled by a handful of brigands living in the tomb of the Cæsars, Venice,
under the good Doge Orseolo the Second, was already one of the beautiful
cities of the world, as well as mistress of the Adriatic, of all
Dalmatia, and of many lovely islands.
Otto took with him Pope Gregory, and with a very splendid army of
Germans and Italians marched down to Rome. Neither Crescenzio nor his
followers had believed that the young Emperor was in earnest; but when
it was clear that he meant to do justice, Antipope John was afraid, and
fled secretly by night, in disguise. Crescenzio, of sterner stuff,
heaped up a vast provision of food in Sant' Angelo, and resolved to
abide a siege. The stronghold was impregnable, so far as any one could
know, for it had never been stormed in war or riot, and on its
possession had depended the long impunity of Theodora's race. The
Emperor might lay siege to it, encamp before it, and hem it in for
months; in the end he must be called away by the more urgent wars of the
Empire in the north, and Crescenzio, secure in his stronghold, would
hold the power still. But when the Roman people knew that Otto was at
hand and that the antipope had fled, their courage rose against the
nobles, and they went out after John, and scoured the country till they
caught him in his disguise, for his face was known to many. Because the
Emperor was known to be kind of heart, and because it was remembered
also that this John of Calabria, who went by many names, had by strange
chance baptized both Otto and Pope Gregory, the Duke of Franconia's son,
therefore the Romans feared lest justice should be too gentle; and
having got the antipope into their hands, they dealt with him savagely,
put out his eyes, cut out his tongue and sliced off his nose, and drove
him to prison through the city, seated face backwards on an ass. And
when the Emperor and the Pope came, they left him in his dungeon.
Now at Gaeta there lived a very holy man, who was Saint Nilus, and who
afterwards founded the monastery of Grottaferrata, where there are
beautiful wall paintings to this day. He was a Greek, like John of
Calabria, and though he detested the antipope he had pity on the man
and felt compassion for his countryman. So he journeyed to Rome and came
before Otto and Gregory, who received him with perfect devotion, as a
saint, and he asked of them that they should give him the wretched John,
'who,' he said, 'held both of you in his arms at the Font of Baptism,'
though he was grievously fallen since that day by his great hypocrisy.
Then the Emperor was filled with pity, and answered that the saint might
have the antipope alive, if he himself would then remain in Rome and
direct the monastery of Saint Anastasia of the Greeks. The holy man was
willing to sacrifice his life of solitary meditation for the sake of his
wretched countryman, and he would have obtained the fulfilment of his
request from Otto; but Pope Gregory remembered how he himself had been
driven out penniless and scantily clothed, to make way for John of
Calabria, and his heart was hardened, and he would not let the prisoner
go. Wherefore Saint Nilus foretold that because neither the Pope nor the
Emperor would have mercy, the wrath of God should overtake them both.
And indeed they were both cut off in the flower of their youth--Gregory
within one year, and Otto not long afterwards.
Meanwhile they sent Nilus away and laid siege to the Castle of Sant'
Angelo, where Crescenzio and his men had shut themselves up with a good
store of food and arms. No one had ever taken that fortress, nor did
any one believe that it could be stormed. But Pope and Emperor were
young and brave and angry, and they had a great army, and the people of
Rome were with them, every man. They used such engines as they
had,--catapults, and battering-rams, and ladders; and yet Crescenzio
laughed, for the stone walls were harder than the stone missiles, and
higher than the tallest ladders, and so thick that fire could not heat
them from without, nor battering-ram loosen a single block in a single
course; and many assaults were repelled, and many a brave soldier fell
writhing and broken into the deep ditch with his ladder upon him.
When the time of fate was fulfilled, the end came on a fair April
morning; one ladder held its place till desperate armed hands had
reached the rampart, and swift feet had sprung upon the edge, and one
brave arm beat back the twenty that were there to defend; and then there
were two, and three, and ten, and a score, and a hundred, and the great
castle was taken at last. Nor do we know surely that it was ever taken
again by force, even long afterwards in the days of artillery. But
Crescenzio's hour had come, and the Emperor took him and the twelve
chief nobles who were with him, and cut off their heads, one by one, in
quick justice and without torture, and the heads were set up on spikes,
and the headless bodies were hung out from the high crenellations of the
ramparts. Thus ended Crescenzio, but not his house, nor the line of
Theodora, nor died he unavenged.
[Illustration: CHURCH OF SANT' EUSTACHIO
From a print of the last century]
It is said and believed that Pope Gregory perished by the hands of the
Crescenzi, who lived in the little street behind the Church of Saint
Eustace. As for Otto, he came to a worse end, though he was of a pious
house, and laboured for the peace of his soul against the temptations of
this evil world. For he was young, and the wife of Crescenzio was
wonderfully fair, and her name was Stefania. She came weeping before him
and mourning her lord, and was beautiful in her grief, and knew it, as
many women do. And the young Emperor saw her, and pitied her, and loved
her, and took her to his heart in sin, and though he repented daily, he
daily fell again, while the woman offered up her body and her soul to be
revenged for the fierce man she had loved. So it came to pass, at last,
that she found her opportunity against him, and poured poison into his
cup, and kissed him, and gave it to him with a very loving word. And he
drank it and died, and the prophecy of the holy man, Nilus, was
fulfilled upon him.
The story is told in many ways, but that is the main truth of it,
according to Muratori, whom Gibbon calls his guide and master in the
history of Italy, but whom he did not follow altogether in his brief
sketch of Crescenzio's life and death, and their consequences. The
Crescenzi lived on, in power and great state. They buried the terrible
tribune in Santa Sabina, on the Aventine, where his epitaph may be read
today, but whither he did not retire in life, as some guide-books say,
to end his days in prayer and meditation. And for some reason, perhaps
because they no longer held the great Castle, they seem to have left the
Region of Saint Eustace; for Nicholas, the tribune's son, built the
small palace by the Tiber, over against the Temple of Hercules, though
it has often been called the house of Rienzi, whose name was also
Nicholas, which caused the confusion. And later they built themselves
other fortresses, but the end of their history is not known.
In the troubles which succeeded the death of Crescentius, a curious
point arises in the chronicle, with regard to the titles of the bishops
depending from the Holy See. It is certainly not generally known that,
as late as the tenth century, the bishops of the great cities called
themselves Popes--the 'Pope of Milan,' the 'Pope of Naples,' and the
like--and that Gregory the Seventh, the famous Hildebrand, was the first
to decree that the title should be confined to the Roman Pontiffs, with
that of 'Servus Servorum Dei'--'servant of the servants of God.' And
indeed, in those changing times such a confusion of titles must have
caused trouble, as it did when Gregory the Fifth, driven out by
Crescentius, and taking refuge in Pavia, found himself, the Pope of
Rome, confronted with Arnulf, the 'Pope' of Milan, and complained of his
position to the council he had summoned.
The making and unmaking of Popes, and the election of successors to
those that died, brings up memories of what Rome was during the vacancy
of the See, and of the general delight at the death of any reigning
Pontiff, good or bad. A certain monk is reported to have answered Paul
the Third, that the finest festival in Rome took place while one Pope
lay dead and another was being elected. During that period, not always
brief, law and order were suspended. According to the testimony of
Dionigi Atanagi, quoted by Baracconi, the first thing that happened was
that the prisons were broken open and all condemned persons set free,
while all men in authority hid themselves in their homes, and the
officers of justice fled in terror from the dangerous humour of the
people. For every man who could lay hands on a weapon seized it, and
carried it about with him. It was the time for settling private quarrels
of long standing, in short and decisive fights, without fear of
disturbance or interference from the frightened Bargello and the
terrorized watchmen of the city. And as soon as the accumulated private
spite of years had spent itself in a certain amount of free fighting,
the city became perfectly safe again, and gave itself up to laying
wagers on the election of the next Pope. The betting was high, and there
were regular bookmakers, especially in all the Regions from Saint
Eustace to the Ponte Sant' Angelo, where the banks had established
themselves under the protection of the Pope and the Guelph Orsini, and
where the most reliable and latest news was sure to be obtained fresh
from the Vatican. Instead of the Piazza di Spagna and the Villa Medici,
the narrow streets and gloomy squares of Ponte, Parione and Sant'
Eustachio became the gathering-place of society, high, low and
indiscriminate; and far from exhibiting the slightest signs of mourning
for its late ruler, the city gave itself up to a sort of Carnival
season, all the more delightful, because it was necessarily unexpected.
Moreover, the poor people had the delight of speculating upon the wealth
of the cardinal who might be elected; for, as soon as the choice of the
Conclave was announced, and the cry, 'A pope, a pope!' rang through the
streets, it was the time-honoured privilege of the rabble to sack and
plunder the late residence of the chosen cardinal, till, literally,
nothing was left but the bare walls and floors. This was so much a
matter of course, that the election of a poor Pope was a source of the
bitterest disappointment to the people, and was one of their principal
causes of discontent when Sixtus the Fifth was raised to the
Pontificate, it having been given out as certain, but a few hours
earlier, that the rich Farnese was to be the fortunate man.
[Illustration]
REGION IX PIGNA
There used to be a tradition, wholly unfounded, but deeply rooted in the
Roman mind, to the effect that the great bronze pine-cone, eleven feet
high, which stands in one of the courts of the Vatican, giving it the
name 'Garden of the Pine-cone,' was originally a sort of stopper which
closed the round aperture in the roof of the Pantheon. The Pantheon
stands at one corner of the Region of Pigna, and a connection between
the Region, the Pantheon and the Pine-cone seems vaguely possible,
though altogether unsatisfactory. The truth about the Pine-cone is
perfectly well known; it was part of a fountain in Agrippa's artificial
lake in the Campus Martius, of which Pigna was a part, and it was set up
in the cloistered garden of Saint Peter's by Pope Symmachus about
fourteen hundred years ago. The lake may have been near the Pantheon.
No one, so far as I am aware,--not even the excellent Baracconi,--offers
any explanation of the name and device of the Ninth Region.
Topographically it is nearly a square, of which the angles are the
Pantheon, the corner of Via di Caravita and the Corso, the Palazzo di
Venezia, and the corner of the new Via Arenula and Via Florida. Besides
the Pantheon it contains some of the most notable buildings erected
since the Renascence. Here are the palaces of the Doria, of the Altieri,
and the 'Palace of Venice' built by Paul the Second, that Venetian
Barbo, whose name may have nicknamed the racing horses of the Carnival.
Here were the strongholds of the two great rival orders, the Dominicans
and the Jesuits, the former in the Piazza della Minerva, the latter in
the Piazza del Gesù, and in the Collegio Romano; and here at the present
day, in the buildings of the old rivals, significantly connected by an
arched passage, are collected the greatest libraries of the city. That
of the Dominicans, wisely left in their care, has been opened to the
public; the other, called after Victor Emmanuel, is a vast collection of
books gathered together by plundering the monastic institutions of Italy
at the time of the disestablishment. The booty--for it was nothing
else--was brought in carts, mostly in a state of the utmost confusion,
and the books and manuscripts were roughly stacked in vacant rooms on
the ground floor of the Collegio Romano, in charge of a porter. Not
until a poor scholar, having bought himself two ounces of butter in the
Piazza Navona, found the greasy stuff wrapped in an autograph letter of
Christopher Columbus, did it dawn upon the authorities that the porter
was deliberately selling priceless books and manuscripts as waste paper,
by the hundredweight, to provide himself with the means of getting
drunk. That was about the year 1880. The scandal was enormous, a strict
inquiry was made, justice was done as far as possible, and an official
account of the affair was published in a 'Green Book'; but the amount of
the loss was unknown, it may have been incalculable, and it was
undeniably great.
The names visibly recorded in the Region have vast suggestions in
them,--Ignatius Loyola, the Dominicans, Venice, Doria, Agrippa, and the
buildings themselves, which are the record, will last for ages; the
opposition of Jesuit and Inquisitor, under one name or another, and of
both by the people, will live as long as humanity itself.
The crisis in the history of the Inquisition in Rome followed closely
upon the first institution of the Tribunal, and seventeen years after
Paul the Fourth had created the Court, by a Papal Bull of July
twenty-first, 1542, the people burned the Palace of the Inquisition and
threatened to destroy the Dominicans and their monastery.
[Illustration: THE PANTHEON]
So far as it is possible to judge the character of the famous Carafa
Pope, he was ardent under a melancholic exterior, rigid but ambitious,
utterly blind to everything except the matter he had in hand, proud to
folly, and severe to cruelty. A chronicler says of him, that his head
'might be compared to the Vesuvius of his native city, since he was
ardent in all his actions, wrathful, hard and inflexible, undoubtedly
moved by an incredible zeal for religion, but a zeal often lacking in
prudence, and breaking out in eruptions of excessive severity.' On the
other hand, his lack of perception was such that he remained in complete
ignorance of the outrageous deeds done in his name by his two nephews,
the one a cardinal, the other a layman, and it was not until the last
year of his life that their doings came to his knowledge.
This was the man to whom Queen Elizabeth sent an embassy, in the hope of
obtaining the Papal sanction for her succession to the throne. Henry the
Second of France had openly espoused the cause of Mary Queen of Scots,
whom Philip the Second of Spain was also inclined to support, after the
failure of his attempt to obtain the hand of Elizabeth for the Duke of
Savoy. With France and Spain against her, the Queen appealed to Rome,
and to Paul the Fourth. In the eyes of Catholics her mother had never
been the lawful wife of Henry the Eighth, and she herself was
illegitimate. If the Pope would overlook this unfortunate fact and
confirm her crown in the eyes of Catholic Europe, she would make an act
of obedience by her ambassador. She had been brought up as a Catholic,
she had been crowned by a Roman Catholic bishop, and on first ascending
the throne she had shown herself favourable to the Catholic party; the
request and proposition were reasonable, if nothing more. Muratori
points out that if a more prudent, discreet and gentle Pope had reigned
at that time, and if he had received Elizabeth's offer kindly, according
to the dictates of religion, which he should have considered to the
exclusion of everything else, and without entering into other people's
quarrels, nor into the question of his own earthly rights, England might
have remained a Catholic country. Paul the Fourth's answer, instead, was
short, cold and senseless. 'England,' he said, 'is under the feudal
dominion of the Roman Church. Elizabeth is born out of wedlock; there
are other legitimate heirs, and she should never have assumed the crown
without the consent of the Apostolic See.' This is the generally
accepted account of what took place, as given by Muratori and other
historians. Lingard, however, whose authority is undeniable, argues
against the truth of the story on the ground that the English Ambassador
in Rome at the time of Queen Mary's death never had an audience of the
Pope. It seems probable, nevertheless, that Elizabeth actually appealed
to the Holy See, though secretly and with the intention of concealing
the step in case of failure.
A child might have foreseen the consequences of the Pope's political
folly. Elizabeth saw her extreme danger, turned her back upon Rome
forever, and threw herself into the arms of the Protestant party as her
only chance of safety. At the same time heresy assumed alarming
proportions throughout Europe, and the Pope called upon the Inquisition
to put it down in Rome. Measures of grim severity were employed, and the
Roman people, overburdened with the taxes laid upon them by the Pope's
nephews, were exasperated beyond endurance by the religious zeal of the
Dominicans, in whose hands the inquisitorial power was placed.
[Illustration: INTERIOR OF THE PANTHEON]
Nor were they appeased by the fall of the two Carafa, which was
ultimately brought about by the ambassador of Tuscany. The Pope enquired
of him one day why he so rarely asked an audience, and he frankly
replied that the Carafa would not admit him to the Pope's presence
unless he would previously give a full account of his intentions, and
reveal all the secrets of the Grand Duke's policy. Then some one wrote
out an account of the Carafa's misdeeds and laid it in the Pope's own
Breviary. The result was sudden and violent, like most of Paul's
decisions and actions. He called a Consistory of cardinals, made open
apology for his nephews' doings, deprived them publicly of all their
offices and honours, and exiled them, in opposite directions and with
their families, beyond the confines of the Papal States.
But the people were not satisfied; they accused the Pope of treating his
nephews as scapegoats for his own sins, and the immediate repeal of many
taxes was no compensation for the terrors of the Inquisition. There were
spies everywhere. No one was safe from secret accusers. The decisions of
the tribunal were slow, mysterious and deadly. The Romans became the
victims of a secret reign of terror such as the less brave Neapolitans
had more bravely fought against and had actually destroyed a dozen years
earlier, when Paul the Fourth, then only a cardinal, had persuaded their
Viceroy to try his favourite method of reducing heresy. Yet such was the
fear of the Dominicans and of the Pope himself that no one dared to
raise his voice against the 'monks of the Minerva.'
The general dissatisfaction was fomented by the nobles, and principally
by the Colonna, who had been at open war with the Pope during his whole
reign. Moreover, the severities of his government had produced between
Colonna and Orsini one of those occasional alliances for their common
safety, which vary their history without adorning it. The Pope seized
the Colonna estates and conferred them upon his nephews, but was in turn
often repulsed as the fighting ebbed and flowed during the four years of
his Pontificate, for the Colonna as usual had powerful allies in the
Emperor and in his kingdom of Naples. Changeable as the Roman people
always were, they had more often espoused the cause of Colonna than that
of the Pope and Orsini. Paul the Fourth fell ill in the summer, when the
heat makes a southern rabble dangerous, and the certain news of his
approaching end was a message of near deliverance. He lingered and died
hard, though he was eighty-four years old and afflicted with dropsy. But
the exasperated Romans were impatient for the end, and the nobles were
willing to take vengeance upon their oppressor before he breathed his
last. As the news that the Pope was dying ran through the city, the
spell of terror was broken, secret murmuring turned to open complaint,
complaint to clamour, clamour to riot. A vast and angry multitude
gathered together in the streets and open places, and hour by hour, as
the eager hope for news of death was ever disappointed, and the hard
old man lived on, the great concourse gathered strength within itself,
seething, waiting, listening for the solemn tolling of the great bell in
the Capitol to tell them that Paul the Fourth had passed away. Still it
came not. And in the streets and everywhere there were retainers and
men-at-arms of the great houses, ready of tongue and hand, but friendly
with the people, listening to tales of suffering and telling of their
lords' angry temper against the dying Pope. A word here, a word there,
like sparks amid sun-dried stubble, till the hot stuff was touched with
fire and all broke out in flame.
Then words were no longer exchanged between man and man, but a great cry
of rage went up from all the throng, and the people began to move, some
knowing what they meant to do and some not knowing, nor caring, but
moving with the rest, faster and faster, till many were trampled down in
the press, and they came to the prisons, to Corte Savella and Tor di
Nona, and even to Sant' Angelo, and as they battered at the great doors
from without, the prisoners shouted for freedom from within, and their
gaolers began to loose their chains, fearing for their own lives, and
drew back the bolts to let the stream of riot in. So on that day four
hundred condemned men were taken out and let loose, before the Pope was
dead.
[Illustration: THE RIPETTA
From a print of the last century]
Yet the people had not enough, and they surged and roared in the
streets, quivering with rage not yet half spent. And again words ran
along, as fire through dry grass, and suddenly all men thought of the
Inquisition, down by the Tiber at the Ripetta. Thought was motion,
motion was action, action was to set men free and burn the hated prison
to the ground. The prisoners of the Holy Roman Office were seventy-two,
and many had lain there long unheard, for the trial of unbelief was
cumbrous in argument and slow of issue, and though the Pope could
believe no one innocent who was in prison, and though he was violent in
his judgments, the saintly Ghislieri was wise and cautious, and would
condemn no man hastily to please his master. When he in turn was Pope,
the people loved him, though at first they feared him for Pope Paul's
sake.
When they had burned the Inquisition on that day and set free the
accused persons, and it was not yet night, they turned back from the
Tiber, still unsatisfied, for they had shed little blood, or none at
all, perhaps, and the people of Rome always thirsted for that when their
anger was hot. Through the winding streets they went, dividing where the
ways were narrow and meeting again where there was room, always towards
Pigna, and the Minerva, and the dwelling of the learned black and white
robed fathers into whose hands the Inquisition had been given and from
whose monastery the good Ghislieri had been chosen to be cardinal. For
the rabble knew no difference of thought or act between him and the
dying Pope. They bore torches and weapons, and beams for battering down
the doors, and they reached the place, a raging horde of madmen.
Suddenly before them there were five men on horseback, who were just and
did not fear them. These men were Marcantonio Colonna and his kinsman
Giuliano Cesarini, and a Salviati, and a Torres and Gianbattista
Bernardi, who had all suffered much at the hands of the Pope and had
come swiftly to Rome when they heard that he was near death. And at the
sight of those calm knights, sitting there on their horses without
armour and with sheathed swords, the people drew back a moment, while
Colonna spoke. Presently, as he went on, they grew silent and
understood his words. And when they had understood, they saw that he
was right and their anger was quieted, and they went away to their
homes, satisfied with having set free those who had been long in prison.
So the great monastery was saved from fire and the monks from death. But
the Pope was not yet dead, and while he lived the people were restless
and angry by day and night, and ready for new deeds of violence; but
Marcantonio Colonna rode through the city continually, entreating them
to wait patiently for the end, and because he also had suffered much at
Paul's hands, they listened to him and did nothing more.
[Illustration: PIAZZA MINERVA]
The rest is a history which all men know: how the next Pope was just,
and put the Carafa to their trial for many deeds of bloodshed; how the
judgment was long delayed that it might be without flaw; how it took
eight hours at last to read the judges' summing up; and how Cardinal
Carafa was strangled by night in Sant' Angelo, while at the same hour
his brother and the two who had murdered his wife were beheaded in Tor
di Nona, just opposite the Castle, across the Tiber--a grim tragedy, but
the tragedy of justice.
Southward a few steps from the Church of the Minerva is the little
Piazza della Pigna, with a street of the same name leading out of it.
And at the corner of the place is a small church, dedicated to 'Saint
John of the Pine-cone,' that is, of the Region. Within lies one of the
noble Porcari in a curious tomb, and their stronghold was close by,
perhaps built in one block with the church itself.
The name Porcari calls up another tale of devotion, of betrayal, and of
death, with the last struggle for a Roman Republic at the end of the
Middle Age. It was a hopeless attempt, made by a brave man of simple and
true heart, a man better and nobler than Rienzi in every way, but who
judged the times ill and gave his soul and body for the dream of a
liberty which already existed in another shape, but which for its name's
sake he would not acknowledge. Stephen Porcari failed where Rienzi
partially succeeded, because the people were not with him; they were no
longer oppressed, and they desired no liberator; they had freedom in
fact and they cared nothing for the name of liberty; they had a ruler
with whom they were well pleased, and they did not long for one of whom
they knew nothing. But Stephen, brave, pure and devoted, was a man of
dreams, and he died for them, as many others have died for the name of
Rome and the phantom of an impossible Republic; for Rome has many times
been fatal to those who loved her best.
In the year 1447 Pope Eugenius the Fourth died, after a long and just
reign, disturbed far more by matters spiritual than by any worldly
troubles. And then, says the chronicler, a meeting of the Romans was
called at Aracoeli, to determine what should be asked of the Conclave
that was to elect a new Pope. And there, with many other citizens,
Stephen Porcari spoke to the Council, saying some things useful to the
Republic; and he declared that Rome should govern itself and pay a
feudal tribute to the Pope, as many others of the Papal States did. And
the Archbishop of Benevento forbade that he should say more; but the
Council and the citizens wished him to go on; and there was disorder,
and the meeting broke up, the Archbishop being gravely displeased, and
the people afraid to support Stephen against him, because the King of
Spain was at Tivoli, very near Rome.
Then the Cardinals elected Pope Nicholas the Fifth, a good man and a
great builder, and of gentle and merciful temper, and there was much
feasting and rejoicing in Rome. But Stephen Porcari pondered the
inspired verses of Petrarch and the strange history of Rienzi, and
waited for an opportunity to rouse the people, while his brother, or his
kinsman, was the Senator of Rome, appointed by the Pope. At last, after
a long time, when there was racing, with games in the Piazza Navona,
certain youths having fallen to quarrelling, and Stephen being there,
and a great concourse of people, he tried by eloquent words to stir the
quarrel to a riot, and a rebellion against the Pope. The people cared
nothing for Petrarch's verses nor Rienzi's memory, and Nicholas was kind
to them, so that Stephen Porcari failed again, and his failure was high
treason, for which he would have lost his head in any other state of
Europe. Yet the Pope was merciful, and when the case had been tried, the
rebel was sent to Bologna, to live there in peace, provided that he
should present himself daily before the Cardinal Legate of the City. But
still he dreamed, and would have made action of dreams, and he planned a
terrible conspiracy, and escaped from Bologna, and came back to Rome
secretly.
His plan was this. On the feast of the Epiphany he and his kinsmen and
retainers would seize upon the Pope and the Cardinals as prisoners, when
they were on their way to High Mass at Saint Peter's, and then by
threatening to murder them the conspirators would force the keepers of
Sant'Angelo to give up the Castle, which meant the power to hold Rome in
subjection. Once there, they would call upon the people to acclaim the
return of the ancient Republic, the Pope should be set free to fulfil
the offices of religion, while deprived of all temporal power, and the
vision of freedom would become a glorious reality.
But Rome was not with Porcari, and he paid the terrible price of
unpopular fanaticism and useless conspiracy. He was betrayed by the
folly of his nephew, who, with a few followers, killed the Pope's
equerry in a street brawl, and then, perhaps to save himself, fired the
train too soon. Stephen shut the great gates of his house and defended
himself as well as he could against the men-at-arms who were sent to
take him. The doors were closed, says the chronicler, and within there
were many armed men, and they fought at the gate, while those in the
upper story threw the tables from the windows upon the heads of the
besiegers. Seeing that they were lost, Stephen's men went out by the
postern behind the house, and his nephew, Battista Sciarra, with four
companions, fought his way through, only one of them being taken,
because the points of his hose were cut through, so that the hose
slipped down and he could not move freely. Those who had not cut their
way out were taken within by the governor's men, and Stephen was dragged
with ignominy from a chest in which he had taken refuge.
The trial was short and sure, for even the Pope's patience was
exhausted. Three days later, Stephen Infessura, the chronicler, saw the
body of Stephen Porcari hanging by the neck from the crenellations of
the tower that used to stand on the right-hand side of Sant' Angelo, as
you go towards the Castle from the bridge; and it was dressed in a black
doublet and black hose--the body of that 'honourable man who loved the
right and the liberty of Rome, who, because he looked upon his
banishment as without good cause, meant to give his life, and gave his
body, to free his country from slavery.'
Infessura was a retainer of the Colonna and no friend of any Pope's, of
course; yet he does not call the execution of Porcari an act of
injustice. He speaks, rather, with a sort of gentle pity of the man who
gave so much so freely, and paid bodily death and shame for his belief
in a lofty vision. Rienzi dreamed as high, rose far higher, and fell to
the depths of his miserable end by his vanity and his weaknesses.
Stephen Porcari accomplished nothing in his life, nor by his death; had
he succeeded, no one can tell how his nature might have changed; but in
failure he left after him the clean memory of an honest purpose, which
was perhaps mistaken, but was honourable, patriotic and unselfish.
It is strange, unless it be an accident, that the great opponents, the
Dominicans and the Jesuits, should have established themselves on
opposite sides of the same street, and it is characteristic that the
latter should have occupied more land and built more showy buildings
than the former, extending their possessions in more than one direction
and in a tentative way, while the rigid Dominicans remained rooted to
the spot they had chosen, throughout many centuries. Both are gone, in
an official and literal sense. The Dominican Monastery is filled with
public offices, and though the magnificent library is still kept in
order by Dominican friars, it is theirs no longer, but confiscated to
the State, and connected with the Victor Emmanuel Library, in what was
the Jesuit Roman College, by a bridge that crosses the street of Saint
Ignatius. And the Jesuit College, on its side, is the property of the
State and a public school; the Jesuits' library is taken from them
altogether, and their dwelling is occupied by other public offices. But
the vitality which had survived ages was not to be destroyed by such a
trifle as confiscation. Officially both are gone; in actual fact both
are more alive than ever. When the Jesuits were finally expelled from
their College, they merely moved to the other side of the Dominican
Monastery, across the Via del Seminario, and established themselves in
the Borromeo palace, still within sight of their rivals' walls, and they
called their college the Gregorian University. The Dominicans, driven
from the ancient stronghold at last, after occupying it exactly five
hundred years, have taken refuge in other parts of Rome under the
security of title-deeds held by foreigners, and consequently beyond the
reach of Italian confiscation. Yet still, in fact, the two great orders
face each other.
It was the prayer of Ignatius Loyola that his order should be
persecuted, and his desire has been most literally fulfilled, for the
Jesuits have suffered almost uninterrupted persecution, not at the hands
of Protestants only, but of the Roman Catholic Church itself in
successive ages. Popes have condemned them, and Papal edicts have
expelled their order from Rome; Catholic countries, with Catholic Spain
at their head, have driven them out and hunted them down with a
determination hardly equalled, and certainly not surpassed at any time,
by Protestant Prussia or Puritan England. Non-Catholics are very apt to
associate Catholics and Jesuits in their disapproval, dislike, or
hatred, as the case may be; but neither Englishman nor German could
speak of the order of Ignatius more bitterly than many a most devout
Catholic.
To give an idea of the feeling which has always been common in Rome
against the Jesuits, it is enough to quote the often told popular legend
about the windy Piazza del Gesù, where their principal church stands,
adjoining what was once their convent, or monastery, as people say
nowadays, though Doctor Johnson admits no distinction between the words,
and Dryden called a nunnery by the latter name. The story is this. One
day the Devil and the Wind were walking together in the streets of Rome,
conversing pleasantly according to their habit. When they came to the
Piazza del Gesù, the Devil stopped. 'I have an errand in there,' he
said, pointing to the Jesuits' house. 'Would you kindly wait for me a
moment?' 'Certainly,' answered the Wind. The Devil went in, but never
came out again, and the Wind is waiting for him still.
When one considers what the Jesuits have done for mankind, as educators,
missionaries and civilizers, it seems amazing that they should be so
judged by the Romans themselves. Their devotion to the cause of
Christianity against paganism has led many of them to martyrdom in past
centuries, and may again so long as Asia and Africa are non-Christian.
Their marvellous insight into the nature and requirements of education
in the highest sense has earned them the gratitude of thousands of
living laymen. They have taught all over the world. Their courage, their
tenacity, their wonderful organization, deserve the admiration of
mankind. Neither their faults nor their mistakes seem adequate to
explain the deadly hatred which they have so often roused against
themselves among Christians of all denominations. All organized bodies
make mistakes, all have faults; few indeed can boast of such a catalogue
of truly good deeds as the followers of Saint Ignatius; yet none have
been so despised, so hated, so persecuted, not only by men who might be
suspected of partisan prejudice, but by the wise, the just and the
good.
[Illustration]
REGION X CAMPITELLI
Rome tends to diminutives in names as in facts. The first emperor was
Augustus, the last was Augustulus; with the Popes, the Roman Senate
dwindled to a mere office, held by one man, and respected by none; the
ascent to the Capitol, the path of triumphs that marked the subjugation
of the world, became in the twelfth century 'Fabatosta,' or 'Roast Beans
Lane'; and, in the vulgar tongue, 'Capitolium' was vulgarized to
'Campitelli,' and the word gave a name to a Region of the city. Within
that Region are included the Capitol, the Forum, the Colosseum and the
Palatine, with the palaces of the Cæsars. It takes in, roughly, the land
covered by the earliest city; and, throughout the greater part of Roman
history, it was the centre of political and military life. It merited
something better than a diminutive for a name; yet, in the latest
revolution of things, it has fared better, and has been more respected,
than many other quarters, and still the memories of great times and
deeds cling to the stones that are left.
In the dark ages, when a ferocious faith had destroyed the remnants of
Latin learning and culture, together with the last rites of the old
religion, the people invented legend as a substitute for the folklore of
all the little gods condemned by the Church; so that the fairy tale is
in all Europe the link between Christianity and paganism, and to the
weakness of vanquished Rome her departed empire seemed only explicable
as the result of magic. The Capitol, in the imagination of such tales,
became a tower of wizards. High above all, a golden sphere reflected the
sun's rays far out across the distant sea by day, and at night a huge
lamp took its place as a beacon for the sailors of the Mediterranean,
even to Spain and Africa. In the tower, too, was preserved the mystic
mirror of the world, which instantly reflected all that passed in the
empire, even to its furthest limits. Below the towers, also, and
surmounting the golden palace, there were as many statues as Rome had
provinces, and each statue wore a bell at its neck, that rang of itself
in warning whenever there was trouble in the part of the world to which
it belonged, while the figure itself turned on its base to look in the
direction of the danger. Such tales Irving tells of the Alhambra, not
more wonderful than those believed of Rome, and far less numerous.
There were stories of hidden treasure, too, without end. For, in those
days of plundering, men laid their hands on what they saw, and hid what
they took as best they might; and later, when the men of the Middle Age
and of the Renascence believed that Rome had been destroyed by the
Goths, they told strange stories of Gothmen who appeared suddenly in
disguise from the north, bringing with them ancient parchments in which
were preserved sure instructions for unearthing the gold hastily hidden
by their ancestors, because there had been too much of it to carry away.
Even in our own time such things have been done. In the latter days of
the reign of Pius the Ninth, some one discovered an old book or
manuscript, wherein it was pointed out that a vast treasure lay buried
on the northward side of the Colosseum within a few feet of the walls,
and it was told that if any man would dig there he should find, as he
dug deeper, certain signs, fragments of statues, and hewn tablets, and a
spring of water. So the Pope gave his permission, and the work began.
Every one who lived in Rome thirty years ago can remember it, and the
excited curiosity of the whole city while the digging went on. And,
strange to say, though the earth had evidently not been disturbed for
centuries, each object was found in succession, exactly as described, to
a great depth; but not the treasure, though the well was sunk down to
the primeval soil. It was all filled in again, and the mystery has never
been solved. Yet the mere fact that everything was found except the
gold, lends some possibility to the other stories of hidden wealth, told
and repeated from generation to generation.
The legend of the Capitol is too vast, too varied, too full of
tremendous contrasts to be briefly told or carelessly sketched.
Archæologists have reconstructed it on paper, scholars have written out
its history, poets have said great things of it; yet if one goes up the
steps today and stands by the bronze statue in the middle of the square,
seeing nothing but a paved space enclosed on three sides by palaces of
the late Renascence, it is utterly impossible to call up the past.
Perhaps no point of ancient Rome seems less Roman and less individual
than that spot where Rienzi stood, silent and terrified, for a whole
hour before the old stone lion, waiting for the curious, pitiless rabble
to kill him. The big buildings shut out history, hide the Forum, the
Gemonian steps, and the Tarpeian rock, and in the very inmost centre of
the old city's heart they surround a man with the artificialities of an
uninteresting architecture. For though Michelangelo planned the
reconstruction he did not live to see his designs carried out, and they
fell into the hands of little men who tried to improve upon what they
could not understand, and ruined it.
The truth is that half a dozen capitols have been built on the hill,
destroyed, forgotten, and replaced, each one in turn, during successive
ages. It is said that certain Indian jugglers allow themselves to be
buried alive in a state of trance, and are taken from the tomb after
many months not dead; and it is said that the body, before it is brought
to life again, is quite cold, as though the man were dead, excepting
that there is a very little warmth just where the back of the skull
joins the neck. Yet there is enough left to reanimate the whole being in
a little time, so that life goes on as before. So in Rome's darkest and
most dead days, the Capitol has always held within it a spark of
vitality, ready to break out with little warning and violent effect.
[Illustration: THE CAPITOL]
For the Capitol, not yet the Capitol, but already the sacred fortress of
Rome, was made strong in the days of Romulus, and it was in his time,
when he and his men had carried off the Sabine girls and were at war
with their fathers and brothers, that Tarpeia came down the narrow path,
her earthen jar balanced on her graceful head, to fetch spring water for
a household sacrifice. Her father kept the castle. She came down, a
straight brown girl with eager eyes and red lips, clad in the grey
woollen tunic that left her strong round arms bare to the shoulder.
Often she had seen the golden bracelets which the Sabine men wore on
their left wrists, and some of them had a jewel or two set in the gold;
but the Roman men wore none, and the Roman women had none to wear, and
Tarpeia's eyes were eager. Because she came to get water for holy things
she was safe, and she went down to the spring, and there was Tatius, of
the Sabines, drinking. When he saw how her eyes were gold-struck by his
bracelet, he asked her if she should like to wear it, and the blood came
to her brown face, as she looked back quickly to the castle where her
father was. 'If you Sabines will give me what you wear on your left
arms,' she said--for she did not know the name of gold--'you shall have
the fortress tonight, for I will open the gate for you.' The Sabine
looked at her, and then he smiled quickly, and promised for himself and
all his companions. So that night they went up stealthily, for there was
no moon, and the gate was open, and Tarpeia was standing there. Tatius
could see her greedy eyes in the starlight; but instead of his bracelet,
he took his shield from his left arm and struck her down with it for a
betrayer, and all the Sabine men threw their shields upon her as they
passed. So she died, but her name remains to the rock, to this day.
It was long before the temple planned by the first Tarquin was solemnly
dedicated by the first consuls of the Republic, and the earthen image of
Jupiter, splendidly dressed and painted red, was set up between Juno and
Minerva. Many hundred years later, in the terrible times of Marius and
Sylla, the ancient sanctuary took fire and was burned, and Sylla rebuilt
it. That temple was destroyed also, and another, built by Vespasian,
was burned too, and from the last building Genseric stole the gilt
bronze tiles in the year 455, when Christianity was the fact and Jupiter
the myth, one and twenty years before the final end of Rome's empire;
and the last of what remained was perhaps burned by Robert Guiscard
after serving as a fortress for the enemies of Gregory the Seventh.
[Illustration: CHURCH OF ARACOELI]
But we know, at last, that the fortress of the old city stood where the
Church of Aracoeli stands, and that the temple was on the other side,
over against the Palatine, and standing back a little from the Tarpeian
rock, so that the open square of today is just between the places of the
two. And when one goes up the steps on the right, behind the right-hand
building, one comes to a quiet lane, where German students of archæology
live in a little colony by themselves and have their Institute at the
end of it, and a hospital of their own; and there, in a wall, is a small
green door leading into a quiet garden, with a pretty view. Along the
outer edge runs a low stone wall, and there are seats where one may rest
and dream under the trees, a place where one might fancy lovers meeting
in the moonlight, or old men sunning themselves of an autumn afternoon,
or children playing among the flowers on a spring morning.
But it is a place of fear and dread, ever since Tarpeia died there for
her betrayal, and one may dream other dreams there than those of peace
and love. The vision of a pale, strong man rises at the edge, bound and
helpless, lifted from the ground by savage hands and hurled from the
brink to the death below,--Manlius, who saved the Capitol and loved the
people, and was murdered by the nobles,--and many others after him, just
and unjust, whirled through the clear air to violent destruction for
their bad or their good deeds, as justice or injustice chanced to be in
the ascendant of the hour. And then, in the Middle Age, the
sweet-scented garden was the place of terrible executions, and the
gallows stood there permanently for many years, and men were hanged and
drawn and quartered there, week by week, month by month, all the year
round, the chief magistrate of Rome looking on from the window of the
Senator's palace, as a duty; till one of them sickened at the sight of
blood, and ordained that justice should be done at the Bridge of Sant'
Angelo, and at Tor di Nona, and in the castle itself, and the summit of
the fatal rock was left to the birds, the wild flowers, and the merciful
purity of nature. And that happened four hundred years ago.
Until our own time there were prisons deep down in the old Roman vaults.
At first, as in old days, the place of confinement was in the Mamertine
prison, on the southeastern slope, beneath which was the hideous
Tullianum, deepest and darkest of all, whence no captive ever came out
alive to the upper air again. In the Middle Age, the prison was below
the vaults of the Roman Tabularium on the side of the Forum, but it is
said that the windows looked inward upon a deep court of the Senator's
palace. As civilization advanced, it was transferred a story higher, to
a more healthy region of the building, but the Capitoline prison was not
finally given up till the reign of Pius the Ninth, at which time it had
become a place of confinement for debtors only.
Institutions and parties in Rome have always had a tendency to cling to
places more than in other cities. It is thus that during so many
centuries the Lateran was the headquarters of the Popes, the Capitol
the rallying-place of the ever-smouldering republicanism of the people,
and the Castle of Sant' Angelo the seat of actual military power as
contrasted with spiritual dominion and popular aspiration. So far as the
latter is concerned its vitality is often forgotten and its vigour
underestimated.
One must consider the enormous odds against which the spirit of popular
emancipation had to struggle in order to appreciate the strength it
developed. A book has been written called 'The One Hundred and Sixty-one
rebellions of papal subjects between 896 and 1859'--a title which gives
an average of about sixteen to a century; and though the furious
partiality of the writer calls them all rebellions against the popes,
whereas a very large proportion were revolts against the nobles, and
Rienzi's attempt was to bring the Pope back to Rome, yet there can be no
question as to the vitality which could produce even half of such a
result; and it may be remembered that in almost every rising of the
Roman people the rabble first made a rush for the Capitol, and, if
successful, seized other points afterwards. In the darkest ages the
words 'Senate' and 'Republic' were never quite forgotten and were never
dissociated from the sacred place. The names of four leaders, Arnold of
Brescia, Stefaneschi, Rienzi and Porcari, recall the four greatest
efforts of the Middle Age; the first partially succeeded and left its
mark, the second was fruitless because permanent success was then
impossible against such odds, the third miscarried because Rienzi was a
madman and Cardinal Albornoz a man of genius, and the fourth, because
the people were contented and wanted no revolution at all. The first
three of those men seized the Capitol at once, the fourth intended to do
so. It was always the immediate object of every revolt, and the power to
ring the great Patarina, the ancient bell stolen by the Romans from
Viterbo, had for centuries a directing influence in Roman brawls. Its
solemn knell announced the death of a Pope, or tolled the last hour of
condemned criminals, and men crossed themselves as it echoed through the
streets; but at the tremendous sound of its alarm, rung backward till
the tower rocked, the Romans ran to arms, the captains of the Regions
buckled on their breastplates and displayed their banners, and the
people flocked together to do deeds of sudden violence and shortlived
fury. In a few hours Stefaneschi of Trastevere swept the nobles from the
city; between noon and night Rienzi was master of Rome, and it was from
the Capitol that the fierce edicts of both threatened destruction to the
unready barons. They fled to their mountain dens like wolves at sunrise,
but the night was never slow to descend upon liberty's short day, and
with the next dawn the ruined towers began to rise again; the people
looked with dazed indifference upon the fall of their leader, and
presently they were again slaves, as they had been--Arnold was hanged
and burned, Stefaneschi languished in a dungeon, Rienzi wandered over
Europe a homeless exile, the straight, stiff corpse of brave Stephen
Porcari hung, clad in black, from the battlement of Sant' Angelo. It was
always the same story. The Barons were the Sabines, the Latins and the
Æquians of Mediæval Rome; but there was neither a Romulus nor a
Cincinnatus to lead the Roman people against steel-clad masters trained
to fighting from boyhood, bold by inheritance, and sure of a power which
they took every day by violence and held year after year by force.
In imagination one would willingly sweep away the three stiff buildings
on the Capitol, the bronze Emperor and his horse, the marble Castor and
Pollux, the proper arcades, the architectural staircase, and the even
pavement, and see the place as it used to be five hundred years ago. It
was wild then. Out of broken and rocky ground rose the ancient Church of
Aracoeli, the Church of the Altar of Heaven, built upon that altar
which the Sibyl of Tivoli bade Augustus raise to the Firstborn of God.
To the right a rude fortress, grounded in the great ruins of Rome's
Archive House, flanked by rough towers, approached only by that old
triumphal way, where old women slowly roasted beans in iron
chafing-dishes over little fires that were sheltered from the north
wind by the vast wall. Before the fortress a few steps led to the main
door, and over that was a great window and a balcony with a rusty iron
balustrade--the one upon which Rienzi came out at the last, with the
standard in his hand. The castle itself not high, but strong, brown and
battered. Beyond it, the gallows, and the place of death. Below it, a
desolation of tumbling rock and ruin, where wild flowers struggled for a
holding in spring, and the sharp cactus sent out ever-green points
between the stones. Far down, a confusion of low, brown houses, with
many dark towers standing straight up from them like charred trees above
underbrush in a fire-blasted forest. Beyond all, the still loneliness of
far mountains. That was the scene, and those were the surroundings, in
which the Roman people reinstituted a Roman Senate, after a lapse of
nearly six hundred years, in consequence of the agitation begun and long
continued by Arnold of Brescia.
Muratori, in his annals, begins his short account of the year 1141 by
saying that the history of Italy during that period is almost entirely
hidden in darkness, because there are neither writers nor chroniclers of
the time, and he goes on to say that no one knows why the town of Tivoli
had so long rebelled against the Popes. The fact remains, astonishing
and ridiculous,--in the middle of the twelfth century imperial Rome was
at war with suburban Tivoli, and Tivoli was the stronger; for when the
Romans persuaded Pope Innocent the Second to lay siege to the town, the
inhabitants sallied out furiously, cut their assailants to pieces,
seized all their arms and provisions, and drove the survivors to
ignominious flight. Hence the implacable hatred between Tivoli and Rome;
and Tivoli became an element in the struggles that followed.
Now for many years, Rome had been in the hands of a family of converted
Jews, known as the Pierleoni, from Pietro Leone, first spoken of in the
chronicles as an iniquitous usurer of enormous wealth. They became
prefects of Rome; they took possession of Sant' Angelo and were the
tyrants of the city, and finally they became the Pope's great enemies,
the allies of Roger of Apulia, and makers of antipopes, of whom the
first was either Pietro's son or his grandson. They had on their side
possession, wealth, the support of a race which never looks upon
apostasy from its creed as final, the alliance of King Roger and of Duke
Roger, his son, and the countenance, if not the friendship, of Arnold of
Brescia, the excommunicated monk of northern Italy, and the pupil of the
romantic Abelard. And the Pierleoni had against them the Popes, the
great Frangipani family with most of the nobles, and Saint Bernard of
Clairvaux, who has been called the Bismarck of the Church. Arnold of
Brescia was no ordinary fanatic. He was as brave as Stefaneschi, as
pure-hearted as Stephen Porcari, as daring and eloquent as Rienzi in
his best days. The violent deeds of his followers have been imputed to
him, and brought him to his end; but it was his great adversary, Saint
Bernard, who expressed a regretful wish 'that his teachings might have
been as irreproachable as his life.' The doctrine for which he died at
last was political, rather than spiritual, human rather than
theological. In all but his monk's habit he was a layman in his later
years, as he had been when he first wandered to France and sat at the
feet of the gentle Abelard; but few Churchmen of that day were as
spotless in their private lives.
He was an agitator, a would-be reformer, a revolutionary; and the times
craved change. The trumpet call of the first Crusade had roused the
peoples of Europe, and the distracted forces of the western world had
been momentarily concentrated in a general and migratory movement of
religious conquest; forty years later the fortunes of the Latins in the
East were already waning, and Saint Bernard was meditating the inspiring
words that sent four hundred thousand warriors to the rescue of the Holy
Places. What Bernard was about to attempt for Palestine, Arnold dreamed
of accomplishing for Rome. In his eyes she was holy, too, her ruins were
the sepulchre of a divine freedom, worthy to be redeemed from tyranny
even at the price of blood, and he would have called from the tomb the
spirit of murdered liberty to save and illuminate mankind. Where
Bernard was a Christian, Arnold was a Roman in soul; where Bernard was
an inspired monk, Arnold was in heart a Christian, of that first
Apostolic republic which had all things in common.
At such a time such a man could do much. Rome was in the utmost
distress. At the election of Innocent the Second, the Jewish Pierleoni
had set up one of themselves as antipope, and Innocent had been obliged
to escape in spite of the protection of the still powerful Frangipani,
leaving the Israelitish antipope to rule Rome, in spite of the Emperor,
and in alliance with King Roger for nine years, until his death, when it
required Saint Bernard's own presence and all the strength of his fiery
words to dissuade the Romans from accepting another spiritual and
temporal ruler imposed upon them by the masterful Pierleoni. So Innocent
returned at last, a good man, much tried by misfortune, but neither wise
nor a leader of men. At that time the soldiers of Rome were beaten in
open battle by the people of Tivoli, a humiliation which it was not easy
to forget. And it is more than probable that the Pierleoni looked on at
the Pope's failure in scornful inaction from their stronghold of Sant'
Angelo, which they had only nominally surrendered to Innocent's
authority.
From a distance, Arnold of Brescia sadly contemplated Rome's disgrace
and the evil state of the Roman people. The yet unwritten words of Saint
Bernard were already more than true. They are worth repeating here, in
Gibbon's strong translation, for they perfect the picture of the times.
'Who,' asks Bernard, 'is ignorant of the vanity and arrogance of the
Romans? a nation nursed in sedition, untractable, and scorning to obey,
unless they are too feeble to resist. When they promise to serve, they
aspire to reign; if they swear allegiance, they watch the opportunity of
revolt; yet they vent their discontent in loud clamours, if your doors,
or your counsels, are shut against them. Dexterous in mischief, they
have never learnt the science of doing good. Odious to earth and heaven,
impious to God, seditious among themselves, jealous of their neighbours,
inhuman to strangers, they love no one, by no one are they beloved; and
while they wish to inspire fear, they live in base and continual
apprehension. They will not submit; they know not how to govern;
faithless to their superiors, intolerable to their equals, ungrateful to
their benefactors, and alike impudent in their demands and their
refusals. Lofty in promise, poor in execution: adulation and calumny,
perfidy and treason, are the familiar arts of their policy.'
Fearless and in earnest, Arnold came to Rome, and began to preach a
great change, a great reform, a great revival, and many heard him and
followed him; and it was not in the Pope's power to silence him, nor
bring him to any trial. The Pierleoni would support any sedition
against Innocent; the Roman people were weary of masters, they listened
with delight to Arnold's fierce condemnation of all temporal power, that
of the Pope and that of the Emperor alike, and the old words, Republic,
Senate, Consul, had not lost their life in the slumber of five hundred
years. The Capitol was there, for a Senate house, and there were men in
Rome to be citizens and Senators. Revolution was stirring, and Innocent
had recourse to the only weapon left him in his weakness. Arnold was
preaching as a Christian and a Catholic. The Pope excommunicated him in
a general Council. In the days of the Crusades the Major Interdiction
was not an empty form of words; to applaud a revolutionary was one
thing, to attend the sermons of a man condemned to hell was a graver
matter; Arnold's disciples deserted him, his friends no longer dared to
protect him under the penalty of eternal damnation, and he went out from
Rome a fugitive and an outcast.
Wandering from Italy to France, from France to Germany, and at last to
Switzerland, he preached his doctrines without fear, though he had upon
him the mark of Cain; but if the temporal sovereignty against which he
spoke could not directly harm him, the spiritual power pursued him
hither and thither, like a sword of flame. A weaker man would have
renounced his beliefs, or would have disappeared in a distant obscurity;
but Arnold was not made to yield. Goaded by persecution, divinely
confident of right, he faced danger and death and came back to Rome.
He arrived at a moment when the people were at once elated by the
submission of Tivoli, and exasperated against Innocent because he
refused to raze that city to the ground. The Pierleoni were ever ready
to encourage rebellion. The Romans, at the words Liberty and Republic,
rose in a body, rushed to the Capitol, proclaimed the Commonwealth, and
forthwith elected a Senate which assumed absolute sovereignty of the
city, and renewed the war with Tivoli. The institution then refounded
was not wholly abolished until, under the Italian kings, a
representative government took its place.
The success and long supremacy of Arnold's teaching have been unfairly
called his 'reign'; yet he neither caused himself to be elected a
Senator, nor at any time, so far as we can learn, occupied any office
whatsoever; neither did he profit in fortune by the changes he had
wrought, and to the last he wore the garb of poverty and led the simple
life which had extorted the reluctant admiration of his noblest
adversary. But he could not impose upon others the virtues he practised
himself, nor was it in his power to direct the force his teachings had
called into life. For the time being the Popes were powerless against
the new order. Innocent is said to have died of grief and humiliation,
almost before the revolution was complete. His successor, Celestin the
Second, reigned but five months and a half, busy in a quarrel with King
Roger, and still the new Senate ruled the city.
[Illustration: ARCH OF SEPTIMIUS SEVERUS]
But saving that it endured, it left no mark of good in Rome; the nobles
saw that a new weapon was placed in their hands, they easily elected
themselves to office, and the people, deluded by the name of a Republic,
had exchanged the sovereignty of the Pope, or the allegiance of the
Emperor, for the far more ruthless tyranny of the barons. The Jewish
Pierleoni were rich and powerful still, but since Rome was strong enough
to resist the Vatican, the Pontificate was no longer a prize worth
seizing, and they took instead, by bribery or force, the Consulship or
the Presidency of the Senate. Jordan, the brother of the antipope
Anacletus, obtained the office, and the violent death of the next Pope,
Lucius the Second, was one of the first events of his domination.
Lucius refused to bear any longer the humiliation to which his
predecessors had tamely submitted. Himself in arms, and accompanied by
such followers as he could collect, the Pope made a desperate attempt to
dislodge the Senate and their guards from the Capitol, and at the head
of the storming party he endeavoured to ascend the old road, known then
as Fabatosta. But the Pierleoni and their men were well prepared for the
assault, and made a desperate and successful resistance. The Pope fell
at the head of his soldiers, struck by a stone on the temple, mortally
wounded, but not dead. In hasty retreat, the dying man was borne by his
routed soldiers to the monastery of Saint Gregory on the Coelian,
under the safe protection of the trusty Frangipani, who held the
Palatine, the Circus Maximus, and the Colosseum. Of all the many Popes
who died untimely deaths he was the only one, I believe, who fell in
battle. And he got his deathblow on the slope of that same Capitol where
Gracchus and Manlius had died before him, each in good cause.
It has been wrongly said that he had all the nobles with him, and that
the revolution was of the people alone, aided by the Pierleoni. This is
not true. So far as can be known, the Frangipani were his only faithful
friends, but it is possible that the Count of Tusculum, seventh in
descent from Theodora, and nephew of the first Colonna, at that time
holding a part of the Aventine, may have also been the Pope's ally. Be
that as it may, the force that Lucius led was very small, and the
garrison of the Capitol was overwhelmingly strong.
Some say also that Arnold of Brescia was not actually in Rome at that
time, that the first revolution was the result of his unforgotten
teachings, bearing fruit in the hearts of the nobles and the people, and
that he did not come to the city till Pope Lucius was dead. However that
may be, from that time forward, till the coming of Barbarossa, Arnold
was the idol of the Romans, and their vanity and arrogance knew no
bounds. Pope Eugenius the Third was enthroned in the Lateran under the
protection of the Frangipani, but within the week he was forced to
escape by night to the mountains. The Pierleoni held Sant' Angelo; the
people seized and fortified the Vatican, deprived the Pope's Prefect of
his office, and forced the few nobles who resisted them to swear
allegiance to Jordan Pierleone, making him in fact dictator, and in name
their 'Patrician.' The Pope retorted by excommunicating him, and allying
himself with Tivoli, but was forced to a compromise whereby he
acknowledged the Senate and the supremacy of the Roman people, who,
already tired of their dictator, agreed to restore the Prefect to
office, and to express some sort of obedience, more spiritual than
temporal, to the Pope's authority. But Arnold was still supreme, and
after a short stay in the city Eugenius was again a fugitive.
It was then that he passed into France, when Lewis the Seventh was ready
armed to lead the Second Crusade to the Holy Land; and through that
stirring time Rome is dark and sullen, dwelling aloof from Church and
Empire in the new-found illusion of an unreal and impossible greatness.
Seven hundred years later an Italian patriot exclaimed, 'We have an
Italy, but we have no Italians.' And so Arnold of Brescia must many
times have longed for Romans to people a free Rome. He had made a
republic, but he could not make free men; he had called up a vision, but
he could not give it reality; like Rienzi and the rest, he had 'mistaken
memories for hopes,' and he was fore-destined to pay for his belief in
his country's life with the sacrifice of his own. He had dreamed of a
liberty serene and high, but he had produced only a dismal confusion: in
place of peace he had brought senseless strife; instead of a wise and
simple consul, he had given the Romans the keen and rapacious son of a
Jewish usurer for a dictator; where he had hoped to destroy the temporal
power of Pope and Emperor, he had driven the greatest forces of his age,
and two of the greatest men, to an alliance against him.
So he perished. Eugenius died in Tivoli, Anastasius reigned a few
months, and sturdy Nicholas Breakspeare was Adrian the Fourth. Conrad
the Emperor also died, poisoned by the physicians King Roger sent him
from famous Salerno, and Frederick Barbarossa of Hohenstauffen, his
nephew, reigned in his stead. Adrian and Frederick quarrelled at their
first meeting in the sight of all their followers in the field, for the
young Emperor would not hold the Englishman's stirrup on the first day.
On the second he yielded, and Pope and Emperor together were invincible.
Then the Roman Senate and people sent out ambassadors, who spoke hugely
boasting words to the red-haired soldier, and would have set conditions
on his crowning, so that he laughed aloud at them; and he and Adrian
went into the Leonine city, but not into Rome itself, and the Englishman
crowned the German. Yet the Romans would fight, and in the heat of the
summer noon they crossed the bridge and killed such straggling guards as
they could find; then the Germans turned and mowed them down, and killed
a thousand of the best, while the Pierleoni, as often before, looked on
in sullen neutrality from Sant' Angelo, waiting to take the side of the
winner. Then the Emperor and the Pope departed together, leaving Rome to
its factions and its parties.
Suddenly Arnold of Brescia is with them, a prisoner, but how taken no
man can surely tell. And with them also, by Soracte, far out in the
northern Campagna, is Di Vico, the Prefect, to judge the leader of the
people. The Pope and the Emperor may have looked on, while Di Vico
judged the heretic and the rebel; but they did not themselves judge him.
The Prefect, Lord of Viterbo, had been long at war with the new-formed
Senate and the city, and owed Arnold bitter hatred and grudge.
The end was short. Arnold told them all boldly that his teaching was
just, and that he would die for it. He knelt down, lifted up his hands
to heaven, and commended his soul to God. Then they hanged him, and when
he was dead they burnt his body and scattered the ashes in the river,
lest any relics of him should be taken to Rome to work new miracles of
revolution. No one knows just where he died, but only that it was most
surely far out in the Campagna, in the hot summer days, in the year
1155, and not within the city, as has been so often asserted.
He was a martyr--whether in a good cause or a foolish one, let those
judge who call themselves wise; there was no taint of selfishness in
him, no thought of ambition for his own name, and there was no spot upon
his life in an age of which the evils cannot be written down, and are
better not guessed. He died for something in which he believed enough to
die for it, and belief cannot be truer to itself than that. So far as
the Church of today may speak, all Churchmen know that his heresies of
faith, if they were real, were neither great nor vital, and that he was
put to death, not for them, but because he was become the idol and the
prophet of a rebellious city. His doctrine had spread over Italy, his
words had set the country aflame, his mere existence was a lasting cause
of bloody strife between city and city, princes and people, nobles and
vassals. The times were not ripe, and in the inevitable course of fate
it was foreordained that he must perish, condemned by Popes and
Emperors, Kings and Princes; but of all whole-souled reformers, of all
patriot leaders, of all preachers of liberty, past and living, it is not
too much to say that Arnold of Brescia was the truest, the bravest and
the simplest.
* * * * *
To them all, the Capitol has been the central object of dreams, and upon
its walls the story of their failure has often been told in grotesque
figures of themselves. When Rienzi was first driven out, his effigy was
painted, hanged by the heels upon one of the towers, and many another
'enemy of the state' was pictured there--Giuliano Cesarini, for one, and
the great Sforza, himself, with a scornful and insulting epigraph; as
Andrea del Castagno, justly surnamed the 'Assassin,' painted upon the
walls of the Signoria in Florence the likeness of all those who had
joined in the great conspiracy of the Pazzi, hung up by the feet, as may
be seen to this day.
It has ever been a place of glory, a place of death and a place of
shame, but since the great modern changes it is meant to be only the
seat of honour, and upon the slope of the Capitol the Italians, in the
first flush of victorious unity, have begun to raise a great monument to
their greatest idol, King Victor Emmanuel. If it is not the best work of
art of the sort in existence it will probably enjoy the distinction of
being the largest, and it is by no means the worst, for the central
statue of the 'Honest King' has been modelled with marvellous skill and
strength by Chiaradia, whose name is worthy to be remembered; yet the
vastness of the architectural theatre provided for its display betrays
again the giantism of the Latin race, and when in a future century the
broad flood of patriotism shall have subsided within the straight river
bed of sober history, men will wonder why Victor Emmanuel, honest and
brave though he was, received the greater share of praise, and Cavour
and Garibaldi the less, seeing that he got Italy by following the advice
of the one, if not by obeying his dictation, and by accepting the
kingdom which the other had destined for a republic, but was forced to
yield to the monarchy by the superior genius of the statesman.
That day is not far distant. After a period of great and disastrous
activity, the sleepy indifference of 1830 is again settling upon Rome,
the race for imaginary wealth is over, time is a drug in the market,
money is scarce, dwellings are plentiful, the streets are quiet by day
and night, and only those who still have something to lose or who
cherish very modest hopes of gain, still take an interest in financial
affairs. One may dream again, as one dreamed thirty years ago, when all
the clocks were set once a fortnight to follow the sun.
Rome is restoring to Cæsar the things that are Cæsar's. They are much
bigger and finer things than the symmetrical, stuccoed cubes which have
lately been piled up everywhere in heaven-offending masses, and one is
glad to come back to them after the nightmare that has lasted twenty
years. Moreover, one is surprised to find how little permanent effect
has been produced by the squandering of countless millions during the
building mania, beyond a cruel destruction of trees, and a few
modifications of natural local accidents. To do the moderns justice,
they have done no one act of vandalism as bad as fifty, at least,
committed by the barons of the Middle Age and the Popes of the
Renascence, though they have shown much worse taste in such new things
as they have set up in place of the old.
The charm of Rome has never lain in its architecture, nor in the beauty
of its streets, though the loveliness of its old-fashioned gardens
contributed much which is now in great part lost. Nor can it be said
that the enthralling magic of the city we used to know lay especially in
its historical association, since Rome has been loved to folly by
half-educated girls, by flippant women of the world and by ignorant
idlers without number, as well as by most men of genius who have ever
spent much time there.
[Illustration: COLUMN OF PHOCAS, LOOKING ALONG THE FORUM]
In the Middle Age one man might know all that was to be known. Dante
did; so did Lionardo da Vinci. But times have changed since a mediæval
scholar wrote a book 'Concerning all things and certain others also.' We
cannot all be archæologists. Perhaps when we go and stand in the Forum
we have a few general ideas about the relative position of the old
buildings; we know the Portico of the Twelve Gods in Council, the Temple
of Concord, the Basilica Julia, the Court of Vesta, the Temple of Castor
and Pollux; we have a more vague notion of the Senate Hall; the hideous
arch of Septimius Severus stares us in the face; so does the lovely
column of evil Phocas, the monster of the east, the red-handed
centurion-usurper who murdered an Emperor and his five sons to reach the
throne. And perhaps we have been told where the Rostra stood, and the
Rostra Julia, and that the queer fragment of masonry by the arch is
supposed to be the 'Umbilicus,' the centre of the Roman world. There is
no excuse for not knowing these things any more than there is any very
strong reason for knowing them, unless one be a student. There is a plan
of the Forum in every guide book, with a description that changes with
each new edition.
And yet, without much definite knowledge,--with 'little Latin and less
Greek,' perhaps,--many men and women, forgetting for one moment the
guide book in their hands, have leaned upon a block of marble with
half-closed, musing eyes, and breath drawn so slow that it is almost
quite held in day-dream wonder, and they have seen a vision rise of past
things and beings, even in the broad afternoon sunshine, out of stones
that remember Cæsar's footsteps, and from walls that have echoed
Antony's speech. There they troop up the Sacred Way, the shock-headed,
wool-draped, beak-nosed Romans; there they stand together in groups at
the corner of Saturn's temple; there the half-naked plebeian children
clamber upon the pedestals of the columns to see the sights, and double
the men's deep tones with a treble of childish chatter; there the noble
boy with his bordered toga, his keen young face, and longing backward
look, is hurried home out of the throng by the tall household slave, who
carries his school tablets and is answerable with his skin for the boy's
safety. The Consul Major goes by, twelve lictors marching in single file
before him--black-browed, square-jawed, relentless men, with their rods
and axes. Then two closed litters are carried past by big, black, oily
fellows, beside whom walk freedmen and Greek slaves, and three or four
curled and scented parasites, the shadows of the great men. Under their
very feet the little street boys play their games of pitching at tiny
pyramids of dried lupins, unless they have filberts, and lupins are
almost as good; and as the dandified hanger-on of Mæcenas, straining his
ear for the sound of his patron's voice from within the litter,
heedlessly crushes the little yellow beans under his sandal, the
particular small boy whose stake is smashed clenches his fist, and with
flashing eyes curses the dandy's dead to the fourth generation of
ascendants, and he and his companions turn and scatter like mice as one
of the biggest slaves threateningly raises his hand.
[Illustration: GENERAL VIEW OF THE FORUM]
Absurd details rise in the dream. An old crone is selling roasted
chestnuts in the shadow of the temple of Castor and Pollux; a tipsy
soldier is reeling to his quarters with his helmet stuck on wrong side
foremost; a knot of Hebrew money-changers, with long curls and high
caps, are talking eagerly in their own language, clutching the little
bags they hide in the sleeves of their yellow Eastern gowns--the men who
mourned for Cæsar and for Augustus, whose descendants were to burn
Rienzi's body among the thistles by Augustus's tomb, whose offspring
were to breed the Pierleoni; a bright-eyed, skinny woman of the people
boxes her daughter's ears for having smiled at one of the rich men's
parasites, and the girl, already crying, still looks after the
fashionable good-for-nothing, under her mother's upraised arm.
All about stretches the vast humming city of low-built houses covering
the short steep hills and filling all the hollow between. Northeastward
lies the seething Suburra; the yellow river runs beyond the Velabrum and
the cattle market to the west; southward rise the enchanted palaces of
Cæsar; due east is the Esquiline of evil fame, redeemed and made lovely
with trees and fountains by Mæcenas, but haunted even today, say modern
Romans, by the spectres of murderers and thieves who there died bloody
deaths of quivering torture. All around, as the sun sinks and the cool
shadows quench the hot light on the white pavements, the ever-increasing
crowds of men--always more men than women--move inward, half
unconsciously, out of inborn instinct, to the Forum, the centre of the
Empire, the middle of the world, the boiling-point of the whole earth's
riches and strength and life.
Then as the traveller muses out his short space of rest, the vision
grows confused, and Rome's huge ghosts go stalking, galloping, clanging,
raving through the surging dream-throng,--Cæsar, Brutus, Pompey,
Catiline, Cicero, Caligula, Vitellius, Hadrian,--and close upon them
Gauls and Goths and Huns, and all barbarians, till the dream is a medley
of school-learned names, that have suddenly taken shadows of great faces
out of Rome's shadow storehouse, and gorgeous arms and streaming
draperies, and all at once the sight-seer shivers as the sun goes down,
and passes his hand over his eyes, and shakes himself, and goes away
rather hastily, lest he should fall sick of a fever and himself be
gathered to the ghosts he has seen.
It matters very little whether the day-dream much resembles the reality
of ages long ago, whether boys played with lupins or with hazel-nuts
then, or old women roasted chestnuts in the streets, or whether such
unloving spirits should be supposed to visit one man in one vision. The
traveller has had an impression which has not been far removed from
emotion, and his day has not been lost, if it be true that emotion is
the soul's only measure of time. There, if anywhere, lies Rome's secret.
The place, the people, the air, the crystal brightness of winter, the
passion-stirring scirocco of autumn, the loveliness of the long spring,
the deep, still heat of summer, the city, the humanity, the memories of
both, are all distillers of emotion in one way or another.
Above all, the night is beautiful in Rome, when the moon is high and all
is quiet. Go down past the silver Forum to the Colosseum and see what it
is then, and perhaps you will know what it was in the old days. Such
white stillness as this fell then also, by night, on all the broad space
around the amphitheatre of all amphitheatres, the wonder of the world,
the chief monument of Titus, when his hand had left of Jerusalem not one
stone upon another. The same moonbeams fell slanting across the same
huge walls, and whitened the sand of the same broad arena when the great
awning was drawn back at night to air the place of so much death. In the
shadow, the steps are still those up which Dion the Senator went to see
mad Commodus play the gladiator and the public fool. On one of those
lower seats he sat, the grave historian, chewing laurel leaves to steady
his lips and keep down his laughter, lest a smile should cost his head;
and he showed the other Senators that it was a good thing for their
safety, and there they sat, in their rows, throughout the long
afternoon, solemnly chewing laurel leaves for their lives, while the
strong madman raved on the sand below, and slew, and bathed himself in
the blood of man and beast. There is a touch of frightful humour in the
tale.
And one stands there alone in the stillness and remembers how, on that
same night, when all was over, when the corpses had been dragged away,
it may have been almost as it is now. Only, perhaps, far off among the
arches and on the tiers of seats, there might be still a tiny light
moving here and there; the keepers of that terrible place would go their
rounds with their little earthen lamps; they would search everywhere in
the spectators' places for small things that might have been lost in the
press--a shoulder-buckle of gold or silver or bronze, an armlet, a
woman's earring, a purse, perhaps, with something in it. And the fitful
night-breeze blew now and then and made them shade their lights with
their dark hands. By the 'door of the dead' a torch was burning down in
its socket, its glare falling upon a heap of armour, mostly somewhat
battered, and all of it blood-stained; a score of black-browed smiths
were picking it over and distributing it in heaps, according to its
condition. Now and then, from the deep vaults below the arena, came the
distant sound of a clanging gate or of some piece of huge stage
machinery falling into its place, and a muffled calling of men. One of
the keepers, with his light, was singing softly some ancient minor
strain as he searched the tiers. That would be all, and presently even
that would cease.
One thinks of such things naturally enough; and then the dream runs
backward, against the sun, as dreams will, and the moon rays weave a
vision of dim day. Straightway tier upon tier, eighty thousand faces
rise, up to the last high rank beneath the awning's shade. High in the
front, under the silken canopy sits the Emperor of the world,
sodden-faced, ghastly, swine-eyed, robed in purple; all alone, save for
his dwarf, bull-nosed, slit-mouthed, hunch-backed, sly. Next, on the
lowest bench, the Vestals, old and young, the elder looking on with hard
faces and dry eyes, the youngest with wide and startled looks, and
parted lips, and quick-drawn breath that sobs and is caught at sight of
each deadly stab and gash of broadsword and trident, and hands that
twitch and clutch each other as a man's foot slips in a pool of blood,
and the heavy harness clashes in the red, wet sand. Then grey-haired
senators; then curled and perfumed knights of Rome; and then the people,
countless, vast, frenzied, blood-thirsty, stretching out a hundred
thousand hands with thumbs reversed, commanding death to the
fallen--full eighty thousand throats of men and women roaring, yelling,
shrieking over each ended life. A theatre indeed, a stage indeed, a play
wherein every scene of every act ends in sudden death.
And then the wildest, deadliest howl of all on that day; a handful of
men and women in white, and one girl in the midst of them; the clang of
an iron gate thrown suddenly open; a rushing and leaping of great, lithe
bodies of beasts, yellow and black and striped, the sand flying in
clouds behind them; a worrying and crushing of flesh and bone, as of
huge cats worrying little white mice; sharp cries, then blood, then
silence, then a great laughter, and the sodden face of mankind's drunken
master grows almost human for a moment with a very slow smile. The wild
beasts are driven out with brands and red-hot irons, step by step,
dragging backward nameless mangled things in their jaws, and the
bull-nosed dwarf offers the Emperor a cup of rare red wine. It drips
from his mouth while he drinks, as the blood from the tiger's fangs.
"What were they?" he asks.
"Christians," explains the dwarf.
[Illustration]
REGION XI SANT' ANGELO
The Region of Sant' Angelo, as has been already said, takes its name
from the small church famous in Rienzi's story. It encloses all of what
was once the Ghetto, and includes the often-mentioned Theatre of
Marcellus, now the palace of the Orsini, but successively a fortress of
the Pierleoni, appropriately situated close to the Jews' quarter, and
the home of the Savelli. The history of the Region is the history of the
Jews in Rome, from Augustus to the destruction of their dwelling-place,
about 1890. In other words, the Hebrew colony actually lived during
nineteen hundred years at that point of the Tiber, first on one side of
the river, and afterwards on the other.
It is said that the first Jews were brought to Rome by Pompey, as
prisoners of war, and soon afterwards set free, possibly on their paying
a ransom accumulated by half starving themselves, and selling the
greater part of their allowance of corn during a long period. Seventeen
years later, they were a power in Rome; they had lent Julius Cæsar
enormous sums, which he repaid with exorbitant interest, and after his
death they mourned him, and kept his funeral pyre burning seven days and
nights in the Forum. A few years after that time, Augustus established
them on the opposite side of the Tiber, over against the bridge of
Cestius and the island. Under Tiberius their numbers had increased to
fifty thousand; they had synagogues in Rome, Genoa and Naples, and it is
noticeable that their places of worship were always built upon the shore
of the sea, or the bank of a river, whence their religious services came
to be termed 'orationes littorales'--which one might roughly translate
as 'alongshore prayers.'
They were alternately despised, hated, feared and flattered. Tacitus
calls them a race of men hated by the gods, yet their kings, Herod and
Agrippa--one asks how the latter came by an ancient Roman name--were
treated with honour and esteem. The latter was in fact brought up with
Drusus, the son of the Emperor Tiberius, his son was on terms of the
greatest intimacy with Claudius, and his daughter or grand-daughter
Berenice was long and truly loved by Titus, who would have made her
Empress had it been possible, to the great scandal of the Emperor's many
detractors, as Suetonius has told. Sabina Poppæa, Nero's lowly and evil
second wife, loved madly one Aliturius, a Jewish comic actor and a
favourite of Nero; and when the younger Agrippa induced Nero to imprison
Saint Peter and Saint Paul, and Josephus came to Pozzuoli, having
suffered shipwreck like the latter, this same Josephus, the historian of
the Jews, got the actor's friendship and by his means moved Poppæa, and
through her, Nero, to a first liberation of those whom he describes as
'certain priests of my acquaintance, very excellent persons, whom on a
small and trifling charge Felix the procurator of Judæa had put in irons
and sent to Rome to plead their cause before Cæsar.' It should not be
forgotten that Josephus was himself a pupil of Banus, who, though not a
Christian, is believed to have been a follower of John the Baptist. And
here Saint John Chrysostom, writing about the year 400, takes up the
story and tells how Saint Paul attempted to convert Poppæa and to
persuade her to leave Nero, since she had two other husbands living; and
how Nero turned upon him and accused him of many sins, and imprisoned
him, and when he saw that even in prison the Apostle still worked upon
Poppæa's conscience, he at last condemned him to die. Other historians
have said that Poppæa turned Jewess for the sake of her Jewish actor,
and desired to be buried by the Jewish rite when she was dying of the
savage kick that killed her and her child--the only act of violence Nero
seems to have ever regretted. However that may be, it is sure that she
loved the comedian, and that for a time he had unbounded influence in
Rome. And so great did their power grow that Claudius Rutilius, a Roman
magistrate and poet, a contemporary of Chrysostom, and not a Christian,
expressed the wish that Judæa might never have been conquered by Pompey
and subdued again by Titus, 'since the contagion of the cancer, cut out,
spreads wider, and the conquered nation grinds its conquerors.'
And so, with varying fortune, they survived the empire which they had
seen founded, and the changes of a thousand years, they themselves
inwardly unchanged and unchanging, while following many arts and many
trades besides money-lending, and they outlived persecution and did not
decay in prosperity. In their seven Roman synagogues they set up models
of the temple Titus had destroyed, and of the seven-branched candlestick
and of the holy vessels of Jerusalem which were preserved in the temple
of Peace as trophies of the Jews' subjection; they made candlesticks and
vessels of like shape for their synagogues, nursing their hatred,
praying for deliverance, and because those sacred things were kept in
Rome, it became a holy city for them, and they throve; and by and by
they oppressed their victors. Then came Domitian the Jew-hater, and
turned them out of their houses and laid heavy taxes upon them, and
forced them for a time to live in the caves and wild places and
catacombs of the Aventine, and they became dealers in spells
and amulets and love philtres, which they sold dear to the
ever-superstitious Romans, and Juvenal wrote scornful satires on them.
Presently they returned, under Trajan, to their old dwellings by the
Tiber. Thence they crept along the Cestian bridge to the island, and
from the island by the Fabrician bridge to the other shore, growing rich
again by degrees, and crowding their little houses upon the glorious
portico of Octavia, where Vespasian and Titus had met the Senate at dawn
on the day when they triumphed over the Jews and the fall of Jerusalem,
and the very place of the Jews' greatest humiliation became their
stronghold for ages.
Then all at once, in the twelfth century, they are the masters. The
Pierleoni hold Sant' Angelo, and close to their old quarters fortify the
Theatre of Marcellus, and a Pierleone is antipope in name, but a real
and ruling Pope in political fact, while Innocent the Second wanders
helplessly from town to town, and later, while Lewis the Seventh of
France leads the Second Crusade to the rescue of the Holy Sepulchre, the
'Vicar of Christ' is an outcast before the race of those by whom Christ
was crucified. That was the highest point of the Jews' greatness in
Rome.
[Illustration: PIAZZA MONTANARA AND THE THEATRE OF MARCELLUS
From a print of the last century]
But it is noticeable that while the Hebrew race possesses in the very
highest degree the financial energy to handle and accumulate money, and
the tenacity to keep it for a long time, it has never shown that sort of
strength which can hold land or political power in adverse
circumstances. In the twelfth century the Pierleoni were the masters of
Rome; in the thirteenth, they had disappeared from history, though they
still held the Theatre of Marcellus; in the fourteenth they seem to have
perished altogether and are never heard of again. And it should not be
argued that this was due to any overwhelming persecution and destruction
of the Jews, since the Pierleoni's first step was an outward, if not a
sincere, conversion to Christianity. In strong contrast with these facts
stands the history of the Colonna. The researches of the learned Coppi
make it almost certain that the Colonna descend from Theodora, the
Senatress of Rome, who flourished in the year 914; Pietro della Colonna
held Palestrina, and is known to have imprisoned there, 'in an empty
cistern,' the governor of Campagna, in the year 1100; like the Orsini,
the Colonna boast that during more than five hundred years no treaty was
drawn up with the princes of Europe in which their two families were not
specifically designated; and at the time of the present writing, in the
last days of the nineteenth century, Colonna is still not only one of
the greatest names in Europe, but the family is numerous and
flourishing, unscathed by the terrible financial disasters which began
to ruin Italy in 1888, not notably wealthy, but still in possession of
its ancestral palace in Rome, and of immense tracts of land in the
hills, in the Campagna, and in the south of Italy--actively engaged,
moreover, in the representative government of Italy, strong, solid and
full of life, as though but lately risen to eminence from a sturdy
country stock--and all this after a career that has certainly lasted
eight hundred years, and very probably nearer a thousand. Nor can any
one pretend that it owes much to the power or protection of any
sovereign, since the Colonna have been in almost constant opposition to
the Popes in history, have been exiled and driven from Italy more than
once, and have again and again suffered confiscation of all they
possessed in the world. There have certainly not been in the same time
so many confiscations proclaimed against the Jews.
The question presents itself: why has a prolific race which, as a whole,
has survived the fall of kingdoms and empires without end, with singular
integrity of original faith and most extraordinary tenacity of tradition
and custom, together with the most unbounded ambition and very superior
mental gifts, never produced a single family of powerful men able to
maintain their position more than a century or two, when the nations of
Europe have produced at least half a dozen that have lasted a thousand
years? If there be any answer to such a question, it is that the pursuit
and care of money have a tendency to destroy the balance and produce
degeneration by over-stimulating the mind in one direction, and that not
a noble one, at the expense of the other talents; whereas the struggle
for political power sharpens most of the faculties, and the acquisition
and preservation of landed property during many generations bring men
necessarily into a closer contact with nature, and therefore induce a
healthier life, tending to increase the vitality of a race rather than
to diminish it. Whether this be true or not, it is safe to say that no
great family has ever maintained its power long by the possession of
money, without great lands; and by 'long' we understand at least three
hundred years.
With regard to the Jews in Rome it is a singular fact that they have
generally been better treated by the religious than by the civil
authorities. They were required to do homage to the latter every year
in the Capitol, and on this occasion the Senator of Rome placed his foot
upon the heads of the prostrate delegates, by way of accentuating their
humiliation and disgrace, but the service they were required to do on
the accession of a new Pope was of a different and less degrading
nature. The Israelite School awaited the Pope's passage, on his return
from taking possession of the Lateran, standing up in a richly hung
temporary balcony, before which he passed on his way. They then
presented him with a copy of the Pentateuch, which he blessed on the
spot, and took away with him. That was all, and it amounted to a
sanction, or permission, accorded to the Jewish religion.
As for the sumptuary laws, the first one was decreed in 1215, after the
fall of the Pierleoni, and it imposed upon all Jews, and other heretics
whomsoever, the wearing of a large circle of yellow cloth sewn upon the
breast. In the following century, according to Baracconi, this mark was
abolished by the statutes of the city and the Jews were made to wear a
scarlet mantle in public; but all licensed Jewish physicians, being
regarded as public benefactors, were exempted from the rule. For the
profession of medicine is one which the Hebrews have always followed
with deserved success, and it frequently happened in Rome that the
Pope's private physician, who lived in the Vatican and was a personage
of confidence and importance, was a professed Israelite from the
Ghetto, who worshipped in the synagogue on Saturdays and looked with
contempt and disgust upon his pontifical patient as an eater of unclean
food. There was undoubtedly a law compelling a certain number of the
Jews to hear sermons once a week, first in the Trinità dei Pellegrini,
and afterwards in the Church of Sant' Angelo in the Fishmarket, and it
was from time to time rigorously enforced; it was renewed in the present
century under Leo the Twelfth, and only finally abolished, together with
all other oppressive measures, by Pius the Ninth at the beginning of his
reign. But when one considers the frightful persecution suffered by the
race in Spain, it must be conceded that they were relatively well
treated in Rome by the Popes. Their bitterest enemies and oppressors
were the lower classes of the people, who were always ready to attack
and rifle the Ghetto on the slightest pretext, and against whose
outrageous deeds the Jews had no redress.
[Illustration: THEATRE OF MARCELLUS]
It was their treatment by the people, rather than the matter itself,
which made the carnival races, in which they were forced to run after a
hearty meal, together with a great number of Christians, an intolerable
tyranny; and when Clement the Ninth exempted them from it, he did not
abolish the races of Christian boys and old men. The people detested the
Jews, hooted them, hissed them, and maltreated them with and without
provocation. Moses Mendelssohn, the father of the composer, wrote to a
friend from Berlin late in the eighteenth century, complaining bitterly
that in that self-styled city of toleration, the cry of 'Jew' was raised
against him when he ventured into the streets with his little children
by daylight, and that the boys threw stones at them, as they passed, so
that he only went out late in the evening. Things were no better in Rome
under Paul the Fourth, but they were distinctly better in Rome than in
Berlin at the time of Mendelssohn's writing.
Paul the Fourth, the Carafa Pope, and the friend of the Inquisition,
confined the Jews to the Ghetto. There can be no doubt but that the act
was intended as a measure of severity against heretics, and as such Pius
the Ninth considered it indefensible and abolished it. In actual fact it
must have been of enormous advantage to the Jews, who were thus provided
with a stronghold against the persecutions and robberies of the rabble.
The little quarter was enclosed by strong walls with gates, and if the
Jews were required to be within them at night, on pain of a fine, they
and their property were at least in safety. This fact has never been
noticed, and accounts for the serenity with which they bore their
nightly imprisonment for three centuries. Once within the walls of the
Ghetto they were alone, and could go about the little streets in perfect
security; they were free from the contamination as well as safe from the
depredations of Christians, and within their own precincts they were not
forced to wear the hated orange-coloured cap or net which Paul the
Fourth imposed upon the Jewish men and women. To a great extent, too,
such isolation was already in the traditions of the race. A hundred
years earlier Venice had created its Ghetto; so had Prague, and other
European cities were not long in following. Morally speaking their
confinement may have been a humiliation; in sober fact it was an immense
advantage; moreover, a special law of 'emphyteusis' made the leases of
their homes inalienable, so long as they paid rent, and forbade the
raising of the rent under any circumstances, while leaving the tenant
absolute freedom to alter and improve his house as he would, together
with the right to sublet it, or to sell the lease itself to any other
Hebrew; and these leases became very valuable. Furthermore, though under
the jurisdiction of criminal courts, the Jews had their own police in
the Ghetto, whom they chose among themselves half yearly.
It has been stated by at least one writer that the church and square of
Santa Maria del Pianto--Our Lady of Tears--bears witness to the grief of
the people when they were first forced into the Ghetto in the year 1556.
But this is an error. The church received the name from a tragedy and a
miracle which are said to have taken place before it ten years earlier.
It was formerly called San Salvatore in Cacaberis, the Church of the
'Saviour in the district of the kettle-makers.' An image of the Blessed
Virgin stood over the door of a house close by; a frightful murder was
done in broad day, and at the sight tears streamed from the statue's
eyes; the image was taken into the church, which was soon afterwards
dedicated to 'Our Lady of Tears,' and the name remained forever to
commemorate the miraculous event.
Besides mobbing the Jews in the streets and plundering them when they
could, the Roman populace invented means of insulting them which must
have been especially galling. They ridiculed them in the popular
open-air theatres, and made blasphemous jests upon their most sacred
things in Carnival. It is not improbable that 'Punch and Judy' may have
had their origin in something of this sort, and 'Judy' certainly
suggests 'Giudea,' a Jewess. What the Roman rabble had done against
Christians in heathen days, the Christian rabble did against the Jews in
the Middle Age and the Renascence. They were robbed, ridiculed,
outraged, and sometimes killed; after the fall of the Pierleoni, they
appear to have had no civil rights worth mentioning; they were taxed
more heavily than the Christian citizens, in proportion as they were
believed to be more wealthy, and were less able to resent the
tax-gatherer; their daughters were stolen away for their beauty, less
consenting than Jessica, and with more violence, and the Merchant of
Venice is not a mere fiction of the master playwright. All these things
were done to them and more, yet they stayed in Rome, and multiplied, and
grew rich, being then, as when Tacitus wrote of them, 'scrupulously
faithful and ever actively charitable to each other, and filled with
invincible hatred against all other men.'
[Illustration: SITE OF THE ANCIENT GHETTO]
The old Roman Ghetto has been often described, but no description can
give any true impression of it; the place where it stood is a vast open
lot, waiting for new buildings which will perhaps never rise, and the
memory of it is relegated to the many fast-fading pictures of old Rome.
Persius tells how, on Herod's birthday, the Jews adorned their doors
with bunches of violets and set out rows of little smoky lamps upon the
greasy window-sills, and feasted on the tails of tunny fish--the meanest
part--pickled, and eaten off rough red earthen-ware plates with draughts
of poor white wine. The picture was a true one ten years ago, for the
manners of the Ghetto had not changed in that absolute isolation. The
name itself, 'Ghetto,' is generally derived from a Hebrew root meaning
'cut off'--and cut off the Jews' quarter was, by walls, by religion, by
tradition, by mutual hatred between Hebrews and other men. It has been
compared to a beehive, to an anthill, to an old house-beam riddled and
traversed in all directions by miniature labyrinths of worm-holes,
crossing, intercommunicating, turning to right and left, upwards and
downwards, but hardly ever coming out to the surface. It has been
described by almost every writer who ever put words together about Rome,
but no words, no similes, no comparisons, can make those see it who were
never there. In a low-lying space enclosed within a circuit of five
hundred yards, and little, if at all, larger than the Palazzo Doria,
between four and five thousand human beings were permanently crowded
together in dwellings centuries old, built upon ancient drains and
vaults that were constantly exposed to the inundations of the river and
always reeking with its undried slime; a little, pale-faced,
crooked-legged, eager-eyed people, grubbing and grovelling in masses of
foul rags for some tiny scrap richer than the rest and worthy to be sold
apart; a people whose many women, haggard, low-speaking, dishevelled,
toiled half doubled together upon the darning and piecing and smoothing
of old clothes, whose many little children huddled themselves into
corners, to teach one another to count; a people of sellers who sold
nothing that was not old or damaged, and who had nothing that they would
not sell; a people clothed in rags, living among rags, thriving on rags;
a people strangely proof against pestilence, gathering rags from the
city to their dens, when the cholera was raging outside the Ghetto's
gates, and rags were cheap, yet never sickening of the plague
themselves; a people never idle, sleeping little, eating sparingly,
labouring for small gain amid dirt and stench and dampness, till Friday
night came at last, and the old crier's melancholy voice ran through the
darkening alleys--'The Sabbath has begun.'
And all at once the rags were gone, the ghostly old clothes that swung
like hanged men, by the neck, in the doorways of the cavernous shops,
flitted away into the utter darkness within; the old bits of iron and
brass went rattling out of sight, like spectres' chains; the hook-nosed
antiquary drew in his cracked old show-case; the greasy frier of fish
and artichokes extinguished his little charcoal fire of coals; the
slipshod darning-women, half-blind with six days' work, folded the
half-patched coats and trousers, and took their rickety old
rush-bottomed chairs indoors with them.
Then, on the morrow, in the rich synagogue with its tapestries, its
gold, and its gilding, the thin, dark men were together in their hats
and long coats, and the sealed books of Moses were borne before their
eyes and held up to the North and South and East and West, and all the
men together lifted up their arms and cried aloud to the God of their
fathers. But when the Sabbath was over, they went back to their rags and
their patched clothes and to their old iron and their junk and their
antiquities, and toiled on patiently again, looking for the coming of
the Messiah.
And there were astrologers and diviners and magicians and witches and
crystal-gazers among them to whom great ladies came on foot, thickly
veiled, and walking delicately amidst the rags, and men, too, who were
more ashamed of themselves, and slunk in at nightfall to ask the Jews
concerning the future--even in our time as in Juvenal's, and in
Juvenal's day as in Saul's of old. Nor did the papal laws against
witchcraft have force against Jews, since the object of the laws was to
save Christian souls from the hell which no Jew could escape save by
conversion. And the diviners and seers and astrologers of the Ghetto
were long in high esteem, and sometimes earned fortunes when they hit
the truth, and when the truth was pleasant in the realization.
They are gone now, with the Ghetto and all that belonged to it. The Jews
who lived there are either becoming absorbed in the population of Rome,
or have transferred themselves and their rags to other places, where
lodgings are cheap, but where they no longer enjoy the privilege of
irrevocable leases at rents fixed for all time. A part of them are
living between Santa Maria Maggiore and the Lateran, a part in
Trastevere, and they exercise their ancient industries in their new
homes, and have new synagogues instead of the old ones. But one can no
longer see them all together in one place. Little by little, too, the
old prejudices against them are disappearing, even among the poorer
Romans, whose hatred was most tenacious, and by and by, at no very
distant date, the Jews in Rome will cease to be an isolated and peculiar
people. Then, when they live as other men, amongst other folks, as in
many cities of the world, they will get the power in Rome, as they have
begun to get it already, and as they have it already in more than one
great capital. But a change has come over the Jewish race within the
last fifty years, greater than any that has affected their destinies
since Titus destroyed the Temple and brought thousands of them, in the
train of Pompey's thousands, to build the Colosseum; and the wisest
among them, if they be faithful and believing Jews, as many are, ask
themselves whether this great change, which looks so like improvement,
is really for good, or whether it is the beginning of the end of the
oldest nation of us all.
[Illustration]
REGION XII RIPA
In Italian, as in Latin, Ripa means the bank of a river, and the Twelfth
Region took its name from being bounded by the river bank, from just
below the island all the way to the Aurelian walls, which continue the
boundary of the triangle on the south of Saint Sebastian's gate; the
third side runs at first irregularly from the theatre of Marcellus to
the foot of the Palatine, skirts the hill to the gas works at the north
corner of the Circus Maximus, takes in the latter, and thence runs
straight to the gate before mentioned. The Region includes the Aventine,
Monte Testaccio, and the baths of Caracalla. The origin of the device,
like that of several others, seems to be lost.
The Aventine, ever since the auguries of Remus, has been especially the
refuge of opposition, and more especially, perhaps, of religious
opposition. In very early times it was especially the hill of the
plebeians, who frequently retired to its heights in their difficulties
with the patricians, as they had once withdrawn to the more distant Mons
Sacer in the Campagna. The temple of Ceres stood in the immediate
neighbourhood of the Circus, on the line of approach to the Aventine,
and contained the archives of the plebeian Ædiles. In the times of the
Decemvirs, much of the land on the hill was distributed among the
people, who probably lived within the city, but went out daily to
cultivate their little farms, just as the inhabitants of the hill
villages do today.
If this were not the case, it would be hard to explain how the Aventine
could have been a solitude at night, as it was in the time of the
Bacchic orgies, of which the discovery convulsed the republic, and ended
in a religious persecution. That was when Scipio of Asia had been
accused and not acquitted of having taken a bribe of six thousand pounds
of gold and four hundred and eighty pounds of silver to favour
Antiochus. It was in the first days of Rome's corruption, when the
brilliant army of Asia first brought the love of foreign luxury to Rome;
when the soldiers, enriched with booty, began to have brass bedsteads,
rich coverlets and curtains, and other things of woven stuff in their
magnificent furniture, and little Oriental tables with one foot, and
decorated sideboards; when people first had singing-girls, and
lute-players, and players on the sharp-strung 'triangle,' and actors, to
amuse them at their feasts; when the feasts themselves began to be
extravagant, and the office of a cook, once mean and despised, rose to
be one of high estimation and rich emolument, so that what had been a
slave's work came to be regarded as an art. It was no wonder that such
changes came about in Rome, when every triumph brought hundreds and
thousands of pounds of gold and silver to the city, when Marcus Fulvius
brought back hundreds of crowns of gold, and two hundred and eighty-five
bronze statues, and two hundred and thirty statues of marble, with other
vast spoils, and when Cnæus Manlius brought home wealth in bullion and
in coin, which even in these days, when the value of money is far less,
would be worth any nation's having.
And with it all came Greek corruption, Greek worship, Greek vice. For
years the mysteries of Dionysus and the orgies of the Mænads were
celebrated on the slopes of the Aventine and in those deep caves that
riddle its sides, less than a mile from the Forum, from the Capitol,
from the house of the rigid Cato, who found fault with Scipio of Africa
for shaving every day and liking Greek verses. The evil had first come
to Rome from Etruria, and had then turned Greek, as it were, in the days
of the Asian triumphs; and first it was an orgy of drunken women only,
as in most ancient times, but soon men were admitted, and presently a
rule was made that no one should be initiated who was over twenty years
of age, and that those who refused to submit to the horrid rites after
being received should perish in the deepest cave of the hill, while the
noise of drums and clashing cymbals and of shouting drowned their
screams. And many boys and girls were thus done to death; and the
conspiracy of the orgies was widespread in Rome, yet the secret was well
kept.
Now there was a certain youth at that time, whose father had died, and
whose mother was one of the Mænads and had married a man as bad as
herself. He and she were guardians of her son's fortune, and they had
squandered it, and knew that when he came of age they should not be able
to give an account of their guardianship. They therefore determined to
initiate him at the Bacchic orgy, for he was of a brave temper, and they
knew that he would not submit to the rites, and so would be torn to
pieces by the Mænads, and they might escape the law in their fraud. His
mother called him, and told him that once, when he had been ill, she had
promised the gods that she would initiate him in the Bacchanalia if he
recovered, and that it was now time to perform her vow. And doubtless
she delighted his ignorance with an account of a beautiful and solemn
ceremony.
But this youth was dearly loved by a woman whose faith to him covered
many sins. She had been a slave when a girl, and with her mistress had
been initiated, and knew what the rites were, and how evil and terrible;
and since she had been freed she had never gone to them. So when her
lover told her he was to go, thinking it good news, she was terrified,
and told him that it were better that both he and she should die that
night, than that he should be so contaminated. When he knew the truth,
he went home and told his mother and his stepfather boldly that he would
not go; and they, being beside themselves with anger and disappointment,
called four slaves and threw him out into the street. For which deed
they died. For the young man went to his father's sister, and told all;
and she sent him to the Consul to tell his story, who called the woman
that loved him, and promised her protection, so that at last she told
the truth, and he brought the matter before the Senate. Then there was
great horror at what was told, and the people who had been initiated
fled in haste by thousands, and the city was in a turmoil, while the
Senate made new and terrible laws against the rites. Many persons were
put to death, and a few were taken and imprisoned on suspicion, and
many, being guilty, killed themselves. For it was found that more than
seven thousand men and women had conspired in the orgies, and the
contamination had spread throughout Italy.
As for the youth, and the woman who had saved the State out of love for
him, the Senate and the people made a noble and generous decree. For
him, he received a sum of money from the public treasury in place of the
fortune his mother had stolen from him, and he was exempted from
military service, unless he chose to be a soldier, and from ever
furnishing a horse to the State. But for the woman, whose life had been
evil, it was publicly decreed that her sins should be blotted out, that
she should have all rights of holding, transferring and selling
property, of marrying into another gens and of choosing a guardian, as
if she had received all from a husband by will; that she should be at
liberty to marry a man of free descent, and that he who should marry her
was to incur no degradation, and that all consuls and prætors in the
future should watch over her and see that no harm came to her, as long
as she lived. Her people made her an honourable Roman matron, and
perhaps the stern old senators thus rewarded her in order that the man
she had saved might marry her without shame. But whether he did or not,
no one knows.
[Illustration: CHURCH OF SAINT NEREUS AND SAINT ACHILLÆUS
From a print of the last century]
This is the first instance in which a religion, and the orgies were so
called by the Romans, was practised upon the Aventine in opposition to
that of the State. It was not the last. Under Domitian, Juvenal found a
host of Jews established there, on the eastern slope and about the
fountain of Egeria, and thirty years before him Saint Paul lived on the
Aventine in the Jewish house of Aquila and Priscilla where Santa Prisca
stands today. It is worth noting that Aquila, an eagle, the German
Adler, was already then a Jewish name. Little by little, however, the
Jews went back to the Tiber, and the Aventine became the stronghold of
the Christians; there they built many of their oldest churches, and
thence they carried out their dead to the near catacombs of Saint
Petronilla, the church better known as that of Saint Nereus and Saint
Achillæus. And there are many other ancient churches on the hill, and on
the road that leads to Saint Sebastian's gate, and beyond the walls, on
the Appian Way as far as Saint Callixtus; lonely, peaceful shrines,
beautiful with the sculptures and pavements and mosaics of the Cosmas
family who lived and worked between six and seven hundred years ago. On
the other side of the hill, near the Circus, Saint Augustine taught
rhetoric for a living, though he knew no Greek and was perhaps no great
Latin scholar either--still an unbeliever then, an astrologer and a
follower after strange doctrines, one whom no man could have taken for a
future bishop and Father of the Church, who was to be author of two
hundred and thirty-two theological treatises, as well as of an
exposition of the Psalms and the Gospels. Here Saint Gregory the Great,
once Prefect of Rome, preached and prayed, and here the fierce
Hildebrand lived when he was young, and called himself Gregory when he
was Pope, perhaps, because he had so often meditated here upon the life
and acts of the wise Saint, in the places hallowed by his footsteps.
Later, the Aventine was held by the Savelli, who dwelt in castles long
since destroyed, even to the foundations, by the fury of their enemies;
and there the two Popes of the house, Honorius the Third--a famous
chronicler in his day--and Honorius the Fourth, found refuge when the
restless Romans 'annoyed them,' as Muratori mildly puts it. They were
brave men in their day, mostly Guelphs, and faithful friends of the
Colonna, and it is told how one of them died in a great fight between
Colonna and Orsini.
It was in that same struggle which culminated in the execution of
Lorenzo Colonna, the Protonotary, that Pope Sixtus the Fourth destroyed
the last remains of the Sublician Bridge, at the foot of the Aventine.
So, at least, tradition says. From that bridge the Roman pontiffs had
taken their title, 'Pontifex,' a bridge-maker, because it was one of
their chief duties to keep it in repair, when it was the only means of
crossing the Tiber, and the safety of the city might depend upon it at
any time; and for many centuries the bridge was built of oak, and
without nails or bolts of iron, in memory of the first bridge which
Horatius had kept. Now those who love to ponder on coincidences may see
one in this, that the last remnant of the once oaken bridge, kept whole
by the heathen Pontifex, was destroyed by the Christian Pontifex, whose
name was 'of the oak'--for so 'della Rovere' may be translated if one
please.
Years ago, one might still distinctly see in the Tiber the remains of
piers, when the water was low, at the foot of the Aventine, a little
above the Ripa Grande; and those who saw them looked on the very last
vestige of the Sublician Bridge, that is to say, of the stone structure
which in later times took the place of the wooden one; and that last
trace has been destroyed to deepen the little harbour. In older days
there were strange superstitions and ceremonies connected with the
bridge that had meant so much to Rome. Strangest of all was the
procession on the Ides of May,--the fifteenth of that month,--when the
Pontiffs and the Vestals came to the bridge in solemn state, with men
who bore thirty effigies made of bulrushes in likeness to men's bodies,
and threw them into the river, one after the other, with prayers and
hymns; but what the images meant no man knows. Most generally it was
believed in Rome that they took the place of human beings, once
sacrificed to the river in the spring. Ovid protests against the mere
thought, but the industrious Baracconi quotes Sextus Pompeius Festus to
prove that in very early times human victims were thrown into the Tiber
for one reason or another, and that human beings were otherwise
sacrificed until the year of the city 657, when, Cnæus Cornelius
Lentulus and Publius Licinius Crassus being consuls, the Senate made a
law that no man should be sacrificed thereafter. The question is one for
scholars; but considering the savage temper of the Romans, their dark
superstitions, the abundance of victims always at hand, and the
frequency of human sacrifices among nations only one degree more
barbarous, there is no reason for considering the story very improbable.
[Illustration: THE RIPA GRANDE AND SITE OF THE SUBLICIAN BRIDGE]
Within the limits of this region the ancient Brotherhood of Saint John
Beheaded have had their church and place of meeting for centuries. It
was their chief function to help and comfort condemned criminals from
the midnight preceding their death until the end. To this confraternity
belonged Michelangelo, among other famous men whose names stand on the
rolls to this day; and doubtless the great master, hooded in black and
unrecognizable among the rest, and chanting the penitential psalms in
the voice that could speak so sharply, must have spent dark hours in
gloomy prisons, from midnight to dawn, beside pale-faced men who were
not to see the sun go down again; and in the morning, he must have stood
upon the very scaffold with the others, and seen the bright axe smite
out the poor life. But neither he nor any others of the brethren spoke
of these things except among themselves, and they alone knew who had
been of the band, when they bore the dead man to his rest at last, by
their little church, when they laid Beatrice Cenci before the altar in
Saint Peter's on the Janiculum, and Lucrezia in the quiet church of
Saint Gregory by the Aventine. They wrote down in their journal the
day, the hour, the name, the death; no more than that. And they went
back to their daily life in silence.
But for their good deeds they obtained the right of saving one man from
death each year, conceded them by Paul the Third, the Farnese Pope,
while Michelangelo was painting the Last Judgment--a right perhaps asked
for by him, as one of the brothers, and granted for his sake. Baracconi
has discovered an account of the ceremony. At the first meeting in
August, the governor of the confraternity appointed three brethren to
visit all the prisons of Rome and note the names of the prisoners
condemned to death, drawing up a precise account of each case, but
ascertaining especially which ones had obtained the forgiveness of those
whom they had injured. At the second meeting in August, the reports were
read, and the brethren chose the fortunate man by ballot.
[Illustration: PORTO SAN SEBASTIANO]
Then the whole dark company went in procession to the prison. The beadle
of the order marched first, bearing his black wand in one hand, and in
the other a robe of scarlet silk and a torch for the pardoned man; two
brothers followed with staves, others with lanterns, more with lighted
torches, and after them was borne the crucifix, the sacred figure's arms
hanging down, perhaps supposed to be in the act of receiving the
pardoned man, and a crown of silvered olive hung at its feet--then more
brothers, and last of all the Governor and the chaplain. The prison
doors were draped with tapestries, box and myrtle strewed the ground,
and the Governor received the condemned person and signed a receipt for
his body. The happy man prostrated himself before the crucifix, was
crowned with the olive garland, the Te Deum was intoned, and he was led
away to the brotherhood's church, where he heard high mass in sight of
all the people. Last, and not least, if he was a pauper, the brethren
provided him with a little money and obtained him some occupation; if a
stranger, they paid his journey home.
But the Roman rabble, says the writer, far preferred an execution to a
pardon, and would follow a condemned man to the scaffold in thousands.
If he was to be hanged, the person who touched the halter was the most
fortunate, and much money was often paid for bits of the rope; and at
night, when the wretched corpse was carried away to the church by the
brethren, the crowd followed in long procession, mumbling prayers, to
kneel on the church steps at last and implore the dead man's liberated
spirit to suggest to them, by some accident, numbers to be played at the
lottery--custom which recalls the incantations of the witches by the
crosses of executed slaves on the Esquiline.
[Illustration]
REGION XIII TRASTEVERE
All that part of Rome which lies on the right bank of the Tiber is
divided into two Regions; namely, Trastevere and Borgo. The first of
these is included between the river and the walls of Urban the Eighth
from Porta Portese and the new bridge opposite the Aventine to the
bastions and the gate of San Spirito; and Trastevere was the last of the
thirteen Regions until the end of the sixteenth century, when the
so-called Leonine City was made the fourteenth and granted a captain and
a standard of its own.
The men of Trastevere boast that they are of better blood than the other
Romans, and they may be right. In many parts of Italy just such small
ancient tribes have kept alive, never intermarrying with their
neighbours nor losing their original speech. There are villages in the
south where Greek is spoken, and others where Albanian is the language.
There is one in Calabria where the people speak nothing but Piedmontese,
which is as different from the Southern dialects as German is from
French. Italy has always been a land of individualities rather than of
amalgamations, and a country of great men, rather than a great country.
It is true that the Trasteverines have preserved their individuality,
cut off as they have been by the river from the modernizing influences
which spread like a fever through the length and breadth of Rome. Their
quarter is full of crooked little streets and irregularly shaped open
places, the houses are not high, the windows are small and old
fashioned, and the entrances dark and low. There are but few palaces and
not many public buildings. Yet Trastevere is not a dirty quarter; on the
contrary, to eyes that understand Italians, there is a certain dignity
in its poverty, which used to be in strong contrast with the slipshod
publicity of household dirt in the inhabited parts of Monti. The
contrast is, in a way, even more vivid now, for Monti, the first Region,
has suffered most in the great crisis, and Trastevere least of all. Rome
is one of the poorest cities in the civilized world, and when she was
trying to seem rich, the element of sham was enormous in everything. In
the architecture of the so-called new quarters the very gifts of the
Italians turned against them; for they are born engineers and
mathematicians, and by a really marvellous refinement of calculation
they have worked miracles in the construction of big buildings out of
altogether insufficient material, while the Italian workman's
traditional skill in modelling stucco has covered vast surfaces of
unsafe masonry with elaborately tasteless ornamentation. One result of
all this has been a series of catastrophes of which a detailed account
would appal grave men in other countries; another consequence is the
existence of a quantity of grotesquely bad street decoration, much of
which is already beginning to crumble under the action of the weather.
It is sadder still, in many parts of Monti to see the modern ruins of
houses which were not even finished when the crash put an end to the
building mania, roofless, windowless, plasterless, falling to pieces and
never to be inhabited--landmarks of bankruptcy, whole streets of
dwellings built to lodge an imaginary population, and which will have
fallen to dust long before they are ever needed, stuccoed palaces meant
to be the homes of a rich middle class, and given over at derisory rents
to be the refuge of the very poor. In the Monti, ruin stares one in the
face, and poverty has battened upon ruin, as flies upon garbage.
But Trastevere escaped, being despised by the builders on account of its
distance from the chief centres. It has even preserved something of the
ancient city in its looks and habits. Then, as now, the wine shops and
cook shops opened directly upon the street, because they were, as they
still often are, mere single, vaulted chambers, having no communication
with the inner house by door or stairway. The little inner court, where
the well is, may have been wider in those days, but it must always have
been a cool, secluded place, where the women could wrangle and tear one
another's hair in decent privacy. In the days when everything went to
the gutter, it was a wise precaution to have as few windows as possible
looking outward. In old Rome, as in Trastevere, there must have been an
air of mystery about all dwelling-houses, as there is everywhere in the
East. In those days, far more than now, the head of the house was lord
and despot within his own walls; but something of that power remains by
tradition of right at the present time, and the patriarchal system is
not yet wholly dead. The business of the man was to work and fight for
his wife and children, just as to fight and hunt for his family were the
occupations of the American Indian. In return, he received absolute
obedience and abject acknowledgment of his superiority. The
government-fed Indian and the Roman father of today do very little
fighting, working, or hunting, but in their several ways they still
claim much of the same slavish obedience as in old times. One is
inclined to wonder whether nowadays the independence of women is not due
to the fall in value of men, since it is no longer necessary to pursue
wild beasts for food, since fighting is reduced to a science, taught in
three months, and seldom needed for a long time, and since work has
become so largely the monopoly of the nimble typewriter. Women ask
themselves and others, with at least a show of justice, since man's
occupation is to sit still and think, whether they might not, with a
little practice, sit quite as still as he and think to as good a
purpose. In America, for instance, it was one thing to fell big trees,
build log huts, dam rivers, plough stony ground, kill bears, and fight
Indians; it is altogether another to sit in a comfortable chair before a
plate-glass window, and dictate notes to a dumb and skilful
stenographer.
But with the development of women's independence, the air of privacy,
not to say of mystery, disappears from the modern dwelling. In
Trastevere things have not gone as far as that. One cannot tread the
narrow streets without wondering a little about the lives of the grave,
black-haired, harsh-voiced people who go in and out by the dark
entrances, and stand together in groups in Piazza Romana, or close to
Ponte Sisto, early in the morning, and just before midday, and again in
the cool of the evening.
It seems to be a part of the real simplicity of the Italian Latin to put
on a perfectly useless look of mystery on all occasions, and to assume
the air of a conspirator when buying a cabbage; and more than one gifted
writer has fallen into the error of believing the Italian character to
be profoundly complicated. One is too apt to forget that it needs much
deeper duplicity to maintain an appearance of frankness under trying
circumstances than to make a mystery of one's marketing and a profound
secret of one's cookery. There are few things which the poor Italian
more dislikes than to be watched when he is buying and preparing his
food, though he will ask any one to share it with him when it is ready;
but he is almost as prone to hide everything else that goes on inside
his house, unless he has fair warning of a visit, and full time to make
preparation for a guest. In the feeling there is great decency and
self-respect, as well as a wish to show respect to others.
[Illustration: PONTE GARIBALDI]
To Romans, Trastevere suggests great names--Stefaneschi, Anguillara,
Mattei, Raphael, Tasso. The story of the first has been told already.
Straight from the end of the new bridge that bears the name of
Garibaldi, stands the ancient tower of the great Guelph house of
Anguillara that fought the Orsini long and fiercely, and went down at
last before them, when it turned against the Pope. And when he was dead
the Orsini bought the lands and strongholds he had given to his
so-called nephew, and set the eel of Anguillara in their own escutcheon,
in memory of a struggle that had lasted more than a hundred years. The
Anguillara were seldom heard of after that; nor does anything remain of
them today but the melancholy ruins of an ancient fortress on the lake
of Bracciano, not far from the magnificent castle, and the single tower
that bears their name in Rome.
But Baracconi has discovered a story or a legend about one of them who
lived a hundred years later, and who somehow was by that time lord of
Cære, or Ceri, again, as some of his ancestors had been. It was when
Charles the Fifth came to Rome, and there were great doings; for it was
then that the old houses that filled the lower Forum were torn down in a
few days to make him a triumphal street, and many other things were
done. Then the Emperor gave a public audience in Rome, and out of
curiosity the young Titta dell' Anguillara went in to see the imperial
show. There he saw that a few of the nobles wore their caps, and he,
thinking himself as good as they, put on his own. The Grand Chamberlain
asked him why he was covered. 'Because I have a cold,' he answered, and
laughed. He was told that only Grandees of Spain might wear their caps
in the Emperor's presence. 'Tell the Emperor,' said the boy, 'that I,
too, am a Grandee in my house, and that if he would take my cap from my
head, he must do it with his sword,' and he laid his hand to the hilt of
his own. And when the Emperor heard the story, he smiled and let him
alone.
Many years ago, before the change of government, the Trasteverine
family, into whose possession the ancient tower had come, used to set
out at Christmas-tide a little show of lay figures representing the
Nativity and the Adoration of the Kings, in the highest story of the
strange old place, and almost in the open air. It was a pretty and a
peaceful sight. The small figures of the Holy Family, of the Kings, of
the shepherds and their flocks, were modelled and coloured with
wonderful skill, and in the high, bright air, with the little landscape
as cleverly made up as the figures, it all stood out clearly and
strangely lifelike. There were many of these Presepi, as they were
called, in Rome at that season, but none so pretty as that in the gloomy
old tower, of which every step had been washed with blood.
Of all tales of household feud and vengeance and murder that can be
found in old Rome, one of the most terrible is told of the Mattei, whose
great palace used to stand almost opposite the bridge of Saint
Bartholomew, leading to the island, and not more than two hundred yards
from the Anguillara tower. It happened in the year 1555, about the time
when Paul the Fourth, of inquisitorial memory, was elected Pope, thirty
years before the sons of the Massimo murdered their father's unworthy
wife, and Orsini married Victoria Accoramboni; and the deeds were done
within the walls of the old house of which a fragment still remains in
the Lungaretta, with a door surmounted by the chequered shield of the
Mattei.
[Illustration: PALAZZO MATTEI
From a print of the last century]
At that time there were four brothers of the name, Marcantonio, Piero,
Alessandro, and Curzio; and the first two quarrelled mortally, wherefore
Piero caused Marcantonio to be murdered by hired assassins. Of these
men, Alessandro, who dearly loved both his murdered brother and his
younger brother Curzio, slew one with his own hand, but the rest
escaped, and he swore a blood feud against Piero. Yet, little by little,
his anger subsided, and there was a sort of armed peace between the two.
Then it happened that Piero, who was rich, fell in love with his own
niece, the beautiful Olimpia, the dowerless daughter of his other
brother Curzio; and Curzio, tempted by the hope of wealth, consented to
the match, and the dispensation of the Church was obtained for the
marriage. It is not rare, even nowadays, for a man to marry his niece in
Europe, whether they be Catholics or Protestants, but the Italians are
opposed to such marriages; and Alessandro Mattei, pitying the lovely
girl, whose life was to be sold for money, and bitterly hating the
murderer bridegroom, swore that the thing should not be. Yet he could
not prevent the wedding, for Piero was rich and powerful, and of a
determined character. So Piero was married, and after the wedding, in
the evening, he gave a great feast in his house, and invited to it all
the kinsmen of the family, with their wives.
And Alessandro Mattei came also, with his son, Girolamo, and bringing
with him two men whom he called his friends, but whom no one knew. These
were hired murderers, but Piero smiled pleasantly and made a pretence
of being well satisfied. The company feasted together, and drank old
wine, with songs and rejoicings of all sorts. Then Alessandro rose to go
home, for it was late, and Piero led him to the door of the hall to take
leave of him courteously, so that all the kinsfolk might see that there
was peace, for they were all looking on, some sitting in their places
and some standing up out of respect for the elder men as they went to
the door. Alessandro stood still, exchanging courtesies with his
brother, while his servants brought him his cloak, and the arquebuse he
carried at night for safety; for he had his palace across the Tiber,
where it stands today. Then taking the hand-gun, he spoke no more words,
but shot his brother in the breast, and killed him, and fled, leaving
his son behind, for the young man had wished to stay till the end of the
feast, and the two hired assassins had been brought by his father to
protect him, though he did not know it.
When they heard the shot, the women knew that there was blood, so they
sprang up and put out the lights in an instant, that the men might not
see to kill one another; therefore Curzio, the bride's father, did not
see that his brother Alessandro had gone out after the killing. He crept
about with a long knife, feeling in the dark for the embroidered doublet
which Alessandro wore, and when he thought that he had found it, he
struck; but it was Girolamo who was dressed like his father, and the
two who were to watch him were on each side of him, and one of them
feeling that Curzio was going to strike, and knowing him also by the
touch of what he wore, killed him quietly before his blow went home, and
dragged out Girolamo in haste, for the door was open, and there was some
light in the stairs, whence the servants had fled. But others had sought
Alessandro, and other blows had been dealt in the dark, and the bride
herself was wounded, but not mortally.
Girolamo and the man who had killed Curzio came to the Bridge of Saint
Bartholomew, where Alessandro was waiting, very anxious for his son; and
when he saw him in the starlight he drew a long breath. But when he knew
what had happened and how the murderer had killed Curzio to save the
boy, Alessandro was suddenly angry, for he had loved Curzio dearly. So
he quickly drew his dagger and stabbed the man in the breast, and threw
his body, yet breathing, over the bridge into the river. But that night
he left Rome secretly and quickly, and he lived out his days an outlaw,
while Girolamo, who was innocent of all, became the head of the Mattei
in Rome.
It is no wonder that the knife is a tradition in Trastevere. Even now it
is the means of settling difficulties, but less often by treachery than
in the other regions. For when two young men have a difference it is
usual for them to go together into some quiet inner court or walled
garden, and there they wind their handkerchiefs round their right wrists
and round the hilt of the knife to get a good hold, and they muffle
their left arms in their jackets for a shield, and face each other till
one is dead. If it be barbarous, it is at least braver than stabbing in
the dark.
Raphael is remembered in Trastevere for the beautiful little palace of
the Farnesina, which he decorated for the great and generous banker,
Agostino Chigi, and for the Fornarina, whose small house with its Gothic
window stands near the Septimian gate, where the old Aurelian wall
crosses Trastevere and the Lungara to the Tiber. And he has made
Trastevere memorable for the endless types of beauty he found there,
besides the one well-loved woman, and whom he took as models for his
work. He lived at the last, not in the house on the Roman side, which
belonged to him and is still called his, but in another, built by
Bramante, close to the old Accoramboni Palace, in the Piazza Rusticucci,
before Saint Peter's, and that one has long been torn down.
[Illustration: HOUSE BUILT FOR RAPHAEL BY BRAMANTE, NOW TORN DOWN]
We know little enough of that Margaret, called the Fornarina from her
father's profession; but we know that Raphael loved her blindly,
passionately, beyond all other thoughts; as Agostino Chigi loved the
magnificent Imperia for whom the Farnesina was built and made beautiful.
And there was a time when the great painter was almost idle, out of love
for the girl, and went about languidly with pale face and shadowed eyes,
and scarcely cared to paint or draw. He was at work in the Vatican then,
or should have been, and in the Farnesina, too; but each day, when he
went out, his feet led him away from the Pope's palace and across the
square, by the Gate of the Holy Spirit and down the endless straight
Lungara towards the banker's palace; but when he reached it he went on
to the Fornarina's house, and she was at the window waiting for him. For
her sake he refused to marry the great Cardinal Bibbiena's well-dowered
niece, Maria, and the world has not ceased to believe that for too much
love of the Fornarina he died. But before that, as Fabio Chigi tells,
Pope Leo the Tenth, being distressed by the painter's love sickness,
asked Agostino Chigi if there were not some way to bring him back to
work. And the great banker, as anxious for his Farnesina as the Pope was
for his Vatican, spirited away the lovely girl for a time, she
consenting for her lover's sake. And Chigi then pretended to search for
her, and comforted Raphael with news of her and promises of her return,
so that after being half mad with anxiety he grew calmer, and worked for
a time at his painting. But soon he languished, and the cure was worse
than the evil; so that one day Chigi brought the girl back to him
unawares and went away, leaving them together.
Of the end we know nothing, nor whether Margaret was with him when he
died; we know nothing, save that she outlived him, and died in her turn,
and lies in a grave which no one can find. But when all Rome was in
sorrow for the dead man, when he had been borne through the streets to
his grave, with his great unfinished Transfiguration for a funeral
banner, when he had been laid in his tomb in the Pantheon, beside Maria
Bibbiena, who had died, perhaps, because he would not love her, then
the pale Margaret must have sat often by the little Gothic window near
the Septimian gate, waiting for what could not come any more. For she
had loved a man beyond compare; and it had been her whole life.
[Illustration: MONASTERY OF SANT' ONOFRIO
From an old engraving]
If one comes from the Borgo by the Lungara, and if one turns up the
steep hill to the right, there is the place where Tasso died,
seventy-five years after Raphael was gone. The small monastery of Sant'
Onofrio, where he spent the last short month of his life, used to be a
lonely and beautiful place, and is remembered only for his sake, though
it has treasures of its own--the one fresco painted in Rome by Lionardo
da Vinci, and paintings by Domenichino and Pinturicchio in its portico
and little church, as well as memories of Saint Philip Neri, the
Roman-born patron saint of Rome. All these things barely sufficed to
restrain the government from turning it into a barrack for the city
police a few years ago, when the name of one of Italy's greatest poets
should alone have protected it. It was far from the streets and
thoroughfares in older times, and the quiet sadness of its garden called
up the infinite melancholy of the poor poet who drew his last breath of
the fresh open air under the old tree at the corner, and saw Rome the
last time, as he turned and walked painfully back to the little room
where he was to die. It is better to think of it so, when one has seen
it in those days, than to see it as it is now, standing out in vulgar
publicity upon the modern avenue.
There died the man who had sung, and wandered, and loved; who had been
slighted, and imprisoned for a madman; who had escaped and hidden
himself, and had yet been glorious; who had come to Rome at last to
receive the laureate's crown in the Capitol, as Petrarch had been
crowned before him. His life is a strange history, full of discordant
passages that left little or no mark in his works, so that it is a
wonder how a man so torn and harassed could labour unceasingly for many
years at a work so perfectly harmonious as 'Jerusalem Freed'; and it
seems strange that the hot-headed, changeable southerner should have
stood up as the determined champion of the Epic Unity against the
school of Ariosto, the great northern poet, who had believed in
diversity of action as a fundamental principle of the Epic; it is
stranger still and a proof of his power that Tasso should have earned
something like universal glory against the long-standing supremacy of
Ariosto in the same field, in the same half-century, and living at the
same court. Everything in Tasso's life was contradictory, everything in
his works was harmonious. Even after he was dead, the contrasts of glory
and misery followed his bones like fate. He died in the arms of Cardinal
Aldobrandini, the Pope's nephew, almost on the eve of his intended
crowning in the Capitol; he was honoured with a magnificent funeral, and
his body was laid in an obscure corner, enclosed in a poor deal coffin.
It was six years before the monks of Sant' Onofrio dug up the bones and
placed them in a little lead box 'out of pity,' as the inscription on
the metal lid told, and buried them again under a poor slab that bore
his name, and little else; and when a monument was at last made to him
in the nineteenth century, by the subscriptions of literary societies,
it was so poor and unworthy that it had better not have been set up at
all. A curious book might be written upon the vicissitudes of great
men's bones.
Opposite the Farnesina stands the great Palazzo Corsini, once the
habitation of the Riario family, whose history is a catalogue of
murders, betrayals, and all possible crimes, and whose only redeeming
light in a long history was that splendid and brave Catherine Sforza,
married to one of their name, who held the fortress of Forlì so bravely
against Cæsar Borgia, who challenged him to single combat, which he
refused out of shame, who was overcome by him at last, and brought
captive to the Vatican in chains of gold, as Aurelian brought Zenobia.
In the days of her power she had lived in the great palace for a time.
It looks modern now; it was once a place of evil fame, and is said to
have been one of the few palaces in Rome which contained one of those
deadly shafts, closed by a balanced trap door that dropped the living
victim who stepped upon it a hundred and odd feet at a fall, out of
hearing and out of sight for ever. From the Riario it was bought at
last, in 1738, by the Corsini, and when they began to repair it, they
found the bones of the nameless dead in heaps far down among the
foundations.
There also lived Christina, Queen of Sweden, of romantic and execrable
memory, for twenty years; and here she died, the strangest compound of
greatness, heroism, vanity and wickedness that ever was woman to the
destruction of man; ending her terrible life in an absorbing passion for
art and literature which attracted to itself all that was most delicate
and refined at the end of the seventeenth century; dabbling in alchemy,
composing verses forgotten long ago, discoursing upon art with Bernini,
dictating the laws of verse to the poet Guidi, collecting together a
vast library of rare books and a great gallery of great pictures, and
of engravings and medals and beautiful things of every sort--the only
woman, perhaps, who was ever like Lucrezia Borgia, and outdid her in all
ways.
Long before her time, a Riario, the Cardinal of Saint George, had like
tastes and drew about him the thinkers and the writers of his age, when
the Renascence was at its climax and the Constable of Bourbon had not
yet been shot down at the walls a few hundred yards from the Corsini
palace, bequeathing the plunder of Rome to his Spaniards and Germans.
Here Erasmus spent those hours of delight of which he eloquently wrote
in after years, and here, to this day, in the grand old halls whence the
Riario sent so many victims to their deaths below, a learned and
literary society holds its meetings. Of all palaces in Rome in which she
might have lived, fate chose this one for Queen Christina, as if its
destiny of contrasts past and future could best match her own.
Much more could be told of Trastevere and much has been told already;
how Beatrice Cenci lies in San Pietro in Montorio, how the lovely
Farnesina, with all its treasures, was bought by force by the Farnese
for ten thousand and five hundred scudi,--two thousand and one hundred
pounds,--how the Region was swept and pillaged again and again by
Emperors and nobles, and people and Popes, without end.
But he who should wander through the Regions in their order, knowing
that the greatest is last, would tire of lingering in the long Lungara
and by the Gate of the Holy Spirit, while on the other side lies the
great Castle of Sant' Angelo, and beyond that the Vatican, and Saint
Peter's church; and for that matter, a great part of what has not been
told here may be found in precise order and ready to hand in all those
modern guide books which are the traveller's first leading-strings as he
learns to walk in Rome.
* * * * *
Yet here, on the threshold of that Region which contains many of the
world's most marvellous treasures of art--at the Gate of the Holy
Spirit, through which Raphael so often passed between love and work--I
shall say a few words about that development in which Italy led the
world, and something of the men who were leaders in the Renascence.
Art is not dependent on the creations of genius alone. It is also the
result of developing manual skill to the highest degree. Without genius,
works of art might as well be turned out by machinery; without manual
skill, genius could have no means of expression. As a matter of fact, in
our own time, it is the presence of genius, without manual skill, or
foolishly despising it, that has produced a sort of school called the
impressionist.
To go back to first principles, the word Art, as every child knows, is
taken directly from the Latin ars, artis, which the best Latin
dictionary translates or defines: 'The faculty of joining anything
corporeal or spiritual properly or skilfully,' and therefore: 'skill,
dexterity, art, ability,' and then: 'skill or faculty of the mind or
body that shows itself in performing any work, trade, profession, art,
science.' From the meaning of the Latin word we may eliminate what
refers to spiritual things; not because literature, for instance, is not
art, as well as music and the rest, but because we have to do with
painting, sculpture, architecture, metal working, and the like, in which
actual manual skill is a most integral element.
Now it is always admitted that art grew out of handicraft, when
everything was made by hand, and when the competition between workers
was purely personal, because each man worked for himself and not for a
company in which his individuality was lost. That is nowhere more clear
than in Italy, though the conditions were similar throughout Europe
until the universal introduction of machinery. The transition from
handicraft to art was direct, quick and logical, and at first it
appeared almost simultaneously in all the trades. The Renascence appears
to us as a sort of glorious vision in which all that was beautiful
suddenly sprang into being again, out of all that was rough and chaotic
and barbarous. In real fact the Renascence began among carpenters, and
blacksmiths, and stone masons, and weavers, when they began to take
pride in their work, when they began to try and ornament their own
tools, when the joiner who knew nothing of the Greeks began to trace a
pattern with a red-hot nail on the clumsy wooden chest, when the smith
dinted out a simple design upon the head of his hammer, when the mason
chipped out a face or a leaf on the corner of the rough stone house, and
when the weaver taught himself to make patterns in the stuff he wove.
The true beginning of the Renascence was the first improvement of
hand-work after an age in which everything people used had been rougher
and worse made than we can possibly imagine. Then one thing suggested
another, and each generation found some new thing to do, till the result
was a great movement and a great age. But there never was, and never
could have been, any art at all without hand-work. Progress makes almost
everything by machinery, and dreams of abolishing hand-work altogether,
and of making Nature's forces do everything, and provide everything for
everybody, so that nobody need work at all, and everybody may have a
like share in what is to cost nobody anything. Then, in the dream,
everybody will be devoted to what we vaguely call intellectual pursuits,
and the human race will be raised to an indefinitely high level. In
reality, if such things were possible, we should turn into oysters, or
into something about as intelligent. It is the experience of all ages
that human beings will not work unless they are obliged to, and
degenerate rapidly in idleness, and there have not been many exceptions
to the rule. Art grew out of hand-work, but it grew in it, too, as a
plant in the soil; when there is no more hand-work, there will be no
more art. The two belong to each other, and neither can do without the
other.
[Illustration: THE FORUM
Looking West]
Of course, I do not mean to say that there was a succession of
centuries, or even one century, during which no pictures were painted in
Italy, or no sculptures carved. The tradition of the arts survived, like
the tradition of Latin poetry, with the same result, that rude works
were produced in the early churches and convents. But there was no life
in those things; and when, after a long time, after the early Crusades,
Byzantine artists came to Italy, their productions were even worse than
those of the still ignorant Italians, because they were infinitely more
pretentious, with their gildings and conventionalities and
expressionless types, and were not really so near the truth. What I mean
is that the revival of real art came from a new beginning deep down and
out of sight, among humble craftsmen and hard-working artisans, who
found out by degrees that their hands could do more than they had been
taught to do, and that objects of daily use need not be ugly or merely
plain in order to be strong and well made and serviceable. And as this
knowledge grew among them with practice and by experiment, they rose to
the power of using for new purposes of beauty the old methods of
painting and sculpture, which had survived, indeed, but which were of no
value to the old-fashioned artists who had learned them from generation
to generation, without understanding and without enthusiasm.
The highest of the crafts in the Middle Age was goldsmithing. When
almost every other artistic taste had disappeared from daily life in
that rough time, the love of personal adornment had survived, and when
painters and sculptors were a small band of men, trained to represent
certain things in certain ways--trained like a church choir, in fact, to
the endless repetition of ancient themes--the goldsmiths had latitude
and freedom to their hearts' desire and so many buyers for their work
that their own numbers were not nearly so limited as those of 'artists'
in the narrow sense. One chief part of their art lay in drawing and
modelling, another in casting metals, another in chiselling, and they
were certainly the draughtsmen of an age in which the art of drawing was
practically lost among painters; and it was because they learned how to
draw that so many of them became great painters when the originality of
two or three men of genius had opened the way.
One says 'two or three,' vaguely, but the art had grown out of infancy
when they appeared, and there was an enormous distance between Cimabue,
whom people call the father of painting, and the Cosmas family, of whom
the last died about the time that Cimabue was born. But though Cimabue
was a noble, the Cosmas family who preceded him were artisans first and
artists afterwards, and men of the people; and Giotto, whom Cimabue
discovered sketching sheep on a piece of slate with a pointed stone, was
a shepherd lad. So was Andrea Mantegna, who dominated Italian art a
hundred and fifty years later--so was David, one of the greatest poets
that ever lived, and so was Sixtus the Fifth, one of the strongest popes
that ever reigned--all shepherds.
It is rather remarkable that although so many famous painters were
goldsmiths, none of the very greatest were. Among the goldsmiths were
Orcagna, Ghiberti, Ghirlandajo, Antonio del Pollaiuolo, Francia,
Verrocchio, Andrea del Sarto. But Benvenuto Cellini, the greatest of
goldsmiths, was never a painter, and the very greatest painters were
never goldsmiths, for Cimabue, Giotto, Mantegna, Lionardo da Vinci,
Perugino, Raphael, Michelangelo, all began in the profession that made
them the greatest artists of their age. It is very hard to get at an
idea of what men thought about art in those times. Perhaps it would be
near the truth to say that it was looked upon as a universal means of
expression. What strikes one most in the great pictures of that time is
their earnestness, not in the sense of religious faith, but in the
determination to do nothing without a perfectly clear and definite
meaning, which any cultivated person could understand, and at which even
a child might guess. Nothing was done for effect, nothing was done
merely for beauty's sake. It was as if the idea of usefulness, risen
with art from the hand-crafts, underlay the intentions of beauty, or of
devotion, or of history, which produced the picture. In those times,
when the artist put in any accessory he asked himself: 'Does it mean
anything?' whereas most painters of today, in the same case, ask
themselves: 'Will it look well?' The difference between the two points
of view is the difference between jesting and being in earnest--between
an art that compared itself with an ideal future, and the art of today
that measures itself with an ideal past. The great painters of the
Renascence appealed to men and to men's selves, whereas the great
painters of today appeal chiefly to men's eyes and to that much of men
which can be stirred through the eye only.
It was not that those early artists were religious enthusiasts, moved by
a spiritual faith such as that which inspired Fra Angelico and one or
two others. Few of them were religious men; several of them, like
Perugino, were freethinkers. It was not, I think, because they looked
upon art itself as a very sacred matter, not to be jested with, since
they used their art against their enemies for revenge and ridicule. It
was rather because everyone was in earnest then, and was forced to be by
the nature of the times; whereas people now are only relatively in
earnest, and stake their money only where men once staked their lives.
That was one reason. Another may be that the greatest painters of those
times were practically men of universal genius and were always men of
vast reading and cultivation, the equals and often the superiors of the
learned in all other branches of science, literature and art. They were
not only great painters, but great men and great thinkers, and far above
doing anything solely 'for effect.' Lionardo da Vinci has been called
the greatest man of the fifteenth century--so has Michelangelo--so,
perhaps, has Raphael. They seemed able to do everything, and they have
not been surpassed in what they did as painters, sculptors, architects,
engineers, fortifiers of cities, mathematicians, thinkers. No one
nowadays ever thinks of a painter as being anything but a painter, and
people shrug their shoulders at the idea that an artist can do anything
of the kind called 'serious' in this age.
[Illustration: EQUESTRIAN STATUE OF MARCUS AURELIUS]
One asks what were the surroundings, the customs, the habits, in which
these men grew to be already great at an age when modern boys are at
college. One asks whether that system of teaching or education, whatever
it may have been, was not much more likely to make great men than ours.
And the answer suggests itself: our teaching is for the many, and the
teaching of that day was for the few.
Let anyone try and imagine the childhood of Giotto as the account of it
has come down to us through almost all the authorities. He was born in
the year 1276--when Dante was about eleven years old. That was the time
when the wars of Guelphs and Ghibellines were at their height. That was
the year in which Count Ugolino della Gherardesca got back his lordship
over Pisa--where he was to be starved to death with his two sons and two
grandsons some twelve years later. That was the time when four Popes
died in sixteen months--the time when the Sicilian Vespers drove Charles
of Anjou from Sicily for ever--when Guido da Montefeltro was fighting
and betraying and fighting again--the time of Dante's early youth, in
which fell most of those deeds for which he consigned the doers to hell
and their names to immortality.
Imagine, then, what a shepherd's hut must have been in those days, in a
narrow valley of the Tuscan hills--the small cottage built of unhewn
stones picked up on the hillside, fitted together one by one, according
to their irregular shapes, and cemented, if at all, with clay and mud
from the river bed--the roof of untrimmed saplings tied together and
thatched with chestnut boughs, held down by big stones, lest the wind
should blow them away. The whole, dark brown and black with the rich
smoke of brushwood burned in the corner to boil the big black cauldron
of sheep's milk for the making of the rank 'pecorino' cheese. One square
room, lighted from the door only. The floor, the beaten earth. The beds,
rough-hewn boards, lying one above the other, like bunks, on short
strong lengths of sapling stuck into the wall. For mattresses, armfuls
of mountain hay. The people, a man, his wife and two or three children,
dressed winter and summer in heavy brown homespun woollen and
sheepskins. For all furniture, a home-made bench, black with age and
smoke. The food, day in, day out, coarse yellow meal, boiled thick in
water and poured out to cool upon the black bench, divided into portions
then with a thin hide thong, crosswise and lengthwise, for each person a
yellow square, and eaten greedily with unwashed hands that left a little
for the great sheep-dog. The drink, spring water and the whey left from
the cheese curds, drunk out of a small earthen pot, passed from mouth
to mouth. A silent bunch of ignorant human beings, full of thought for
the morrow, and of care for the master's sheep that were herded together
in the stone pen all round the hut; fighting the wolves in winter, and
in summer time listening for the sound of war from the valley, when
Guelph and Ghibelline harried all the country, and killed every stray
living thing for food. And among these half-starved wretches was a boy
of twelve or thirteen years, weak-jointed, short-winded, little better
than a cripple and only fit to watch the sheep on summer days when the
wolves were not hungry--a boy destined to be one of the greatest
artists, one of the greatest architects, and one of the most cultivated
men of that or any other age--Giotto.
The contrast between his childhood and his manhood is so startling that
one cannot realize it. It means that in those days the way from nothing
to much was short and straight for great minds--impossible and
impracticable for small ones. Great intelligences were not dwarfed to
stumps by laborious school work, were not stuffed to a bursting point by
cramming, were not artificially inflamed by the periodical blistering of
examinations; but average intelligences had not the chance which a
teaching planned only for the average gives them now. Talent, in the
shape of Cimabue, found genius, in the form of Giotto, clothed in rags,
sketching sheep with one stone on another; talent took genius and fed it
and showed it the way, and presently genius overtopped talent by a
mountain's head and shoulders. Cimabue took Giotto from his father, glad
to be rid of the misshapen child that had to be fed and could do nothing
much in return; and from the smoky hut in the little Tuscan valley the
lad was taken straight to the old nobleman painter's house in the most
beautiful city of Italy, was handed over to Brunetto Latini, Dante's
tutor, to be taught book-learning, and was allowed to spend the other
half of his time in the painting room, at the elbow of the greatest
living painter.
The boy was a sort of apprentice-servant, of course, as all beginners
were in those times. In the big house, he probably had a pallet bed in
one of those upper dormitories where the menservants slept, and he
doubtless fed with them in the lower hall at first. They must have
laughed at his unmannerly ways, and at his surprise over every new
detail of civilized life, but he had a sharp tongue and could hold his
own in a word-fight. There were three tables in a gentleman's house in
the Middle Age,--the master's, which was served in different rooms,
according to the weather and the time of year; secondly, the 'tinello,'
or canteen, as we should call it, for the so-called gentlemen
retainers--among whom, by the bye, ranked the chief butler and the head
groom, besides the chaplain and the doctor; thirdly, the servants' hall,
where all the lower people of the house fed together. Then, as now in
old countries, the labour of a large household was indefinitely
subdivided, and no servant was expected to do more than one thing, and
every servant had an assistant upon whom he forced all the hard work. A
shepherd lad, brought in from the hills in his sheepskin coat, sheepskin
breeches, and leg swathings of rags and leather, would naturally be the
butt of such an establishment. On the other hand, the shepherd boy was a
genius and had a tongue like a razor, besides being the favourite of the
all-powerful master; and as it was neither lawful nor safe to lay hands
on him, his power of cutting speech made him feared.
So he learned Latin with the man who had taught Dante,--and Dante was
admitted to be the most learned man of his times,--and he ground the
colours and washed the brushes for Cimabue, and drew under the master's
eye everything that he saw, and became, as the chronicler Villani says
of him, 'the most sovereign master of painting to be found in his time,
and the one who most of all others took all figures and all action from
nature.' And Villani was his contemporary, and knew him when he was
growing old, and recorded his death and his splendid funeral.
One-half of all permanent success in art must always lie in the
mechanical part of it, in the understanding and use of the tools. They
were primitive in Giotto's day, and even much later, according to our
estimate. Oil painting was not dreamt of, nor anything like a lead
pencil for drawing. There was no canvas on which to paint. No one had
thought of making an artist's palette. Not one-tenth of the substances
now used for colours were known then. A modern artist might find himself
in great difficulties if he were called upon to paint a picture with
Cimabue's tools.
But to Giotto they must have seemed marvellous after his pointed stone
pencil and his bit of untrimmed slate. Everything must have surprised
and delighted him in his first days in Florence--the streets, the
houses, the churches, the people, the dresses he saw; and the boy who
had begun by copying the sheep that were before his eyes on the
hillside, instantly longed to reproduce a thousand things that pleased
him. So, when he was already old enough to understand life and its
beauty, he was suddenly transported to the midst of it, just where it
was most beautiful; and because he instantly saw that his master's art
was unreal and far removed from truth, dead, as it were, and bound hand
and foot in the graveclothes of Byzantine tradition, his first impulse
was to wake the dead in a blaze of life. And this he did.
And after him, from time to time, when art seemed to be stiffening again
in the clumsy fingers of the little scholars of the great, there came a
true artist, like Giotto, who realized the sort of deathlike trance into
which art had fallen, and roused it suddenly to things undreamed
of--from Giotto to Titian. And each did all that he meant to do. But
afterwards came Tintoretto, who said that he would draw like
Michelangelo and paint like Titian; but he could not, though he made
beautiful things: and he was the first great artist who failed to go
farther than others had gone before him; and because art must either
advance or go backward, and no one could advance any more, it began to
go backward, and the degeneration set in.
About three hundred years elapsed between Giotto's birth and Titian's
death, during which the world changed from the rough state of the Middle
Age to a very high degree of civilization; and men's eyes grew tired of
what they saw all the time, while many of the strong types which had
made the change faded away. Men grew more alike, dress grew more alike,
thoughts grew more alike. It was the beginning of that overspreading
uniformity which we have in our time, which makes it so very easy for
any one man to be eccentric, but which makes it so very hard for any one
man to be really great. One might say that in those times humanity
flowed in very small channels, which a strong man of genius could thwart
and direct. But humanity now is a stream so broad that it is almost like
an ocean, in which all have similar being, and the big fish come to the
surface, and spout and blow and puff without having any influence at all
on the tide.
There was hardly any such thing possible as eccentricity in Giotto's
time. When the dress and manners and language of every little town
differed distinctly from those of the nearest village, every man dressed
as he pleased, behaved as he had been taught, and spoke the dialect of
his native place. There was a certain uniformity among the priesthood,
whose long cassock was then the more usual dress of civilians in great
cities in times of peace and who spoke Latin among themselves and wrote
it, though often in a way that would make a scholar's blood run cold.
But there was no uniformity among other classes of men. A fine gentleman
who chose to have his cloth tights of several colours, one leg green and
one blue, or each leg in quarters of four colours, attracted no
attention whatever in the streets; and if one noble affected simple
habits and went about in an old leathern jerkin that was rusty in
patches from the joints of his armour, the next might dress himself in
rich silk and gold embroidery, and wear a sword with a fine enamelled
hilt. No one cared, except for himself, and it must have been hard
indeed to produce much effect by any eccentricity of appearance. But
there was the enormous and constantly changing variety that takes an
artist's eye at every turn,--which might make an artist then of a man
who nowadays would be nothing but a discontented observer with artistic
tastes.
I do not think that these things have ever been much noticed as factors
in the development of European art. Consider what Florence, for
instance, was to the eye at that time. And then consider that, until
that time, art had been absolutely prohibited from painting what it saw,
being altogether a traditional business in which, as Burckhardt says,
the artist had quite lost all freedom of mind, all pleasure and interest
in his work, in which he no longer invented, but had only to reproduce
by mechanical repetition what the Church had discovered for him, in
which the sacred personages he represented had shrivelled to mere
emblems, and the greater part of his attention and pride was directed to
the rich and almost imperishable materials in which alone he was allowed
to work for the honour and glory of the Church.
In the second Council of Nicea, held in the year 787, the question of
sacred pictures was discussed, and in the acts of the Council the
following statement is found:--
'It is not the invention of the painter which creates the picture, but
an inviolable law, a tradition of the Church. It is not the painters,
but the holy fathers, who have to invent and dictate. To them manifestly
belongs the composition, to the painter only the execution.'
It would be hard to find a clearer definition of the artist's place and
work before Giotto.
Consider all these things, and then think of the sensations of the first
man upon whom it flashed all at once that he might be free and might
paint everything he saw, not as monks dictated to him, but as he saw
it, to the best of his strength and talent. He must have felt like a
creature that had been starved, suddenly turned out free to roam through
a world full of the most tempting things and with a capacity to enjoy
them all. He did not realize his freedom completely at first; it was
impossible for him to throw off at once all the traditions in which he
had been brought up and taught; but he realized enough to change the
whole direction of all the art that came after him.
Two things are remarkable about the early Italian artists. With the
solitary exception of Cimabue--the first of the Renascence--none of them
was born rich, but, on the other hand, a great many of them were not
born poor either. Giotto and Mantegna were shepherd boys, it is true;
but Michelangelo was the son of a small official of ancient family in
the provinces, the mayor of the little city of Chiusi e Caprese;
Lionardo da Vinci's father was a moderately well-to-do land-holder;
Raphael's was a successful painter, and certainly not in want. Secondly,
a very great number of them made what must have been thought good
fortunes in those days, while they were still young men. Some, like
Andrea del Sarto, squandered their money and died in misery; one or two,
like Fra Angelico, refused to receive money themselves for their work
and handed over their earnings to a religious community. None, so far as
I can find out, toiled through half a lifetime with neither recognition
nor pay, as many a great artist has done in our times--like the
Frenchman Millet, for instance, whose Angelus fetched such a fabulous
price after his death. The truth is that what we mean by art had just
been discovered, and it met with immediate and universal appreciation,
and the result was a demand for it which even a greater number of
painters could not have oversatisfied. Consequently, there was plenty to
do for every man of genius, and there were people not only willing to
pay great sums for each work, but who disputed with each other for the
possession of good paintings, and quarrelled for what was equivalent to
the possession of great artists.
Another element in the lives of these men, as in the lives of all who
rose to any eminence in those days, was the great variety that
circumstances introduced into their existence. Change and variety are
favourable to creative genius as they are unfavourable to uncreative
study. The scholar and the historian are best left among their books for
twenty years at a time, to execute the labour of patient thought which
needs perpetual concentration on one subject. If Gibbon had continued to
be an amateur soldier and a man of the world, as he began, he might have
written a history, but it would not have been the most astonishing
history of modern times. In Macaulay's brilliant and often too creative
work, one sees the influence of his changing political career, to the
detriment of sober study. For the more the creative man sees and lives
in his times, the more he is impelled to create. In the midst of his
best years of painting, Lionardo da Vinci was called off to build
canals, and Cæsar Borgia kept him busy for two years in planning and
constructing fortifications. Immediately before that time he had
finished his famous Last Supper, in Milan, and immediately afterwards he
painted the Battle of Anghiari--now lost--which was the picture of his
that most strongly impressed the men of his day.
Similarly, Michelangelo was interrupted in his work when, the Constable
of Bourbon having sacked Rome, the Medici were turned out of Florence,
and the artist was employed by the Republic to fortify and defend the
city. It was betrayed, and he escaped and hid himself--and the next
great thing he did was the Last Judgment, in the Sixtine Chapel. He did
stirring work in wild times, besides painting, and hewing marble, and
building Saint Peter's.
That brings one back to thinking how much those men knew. Their
universal knowledge seems utterly unattainable to us, with all our
modern machinery of education. Michelangelo grew up in a suburb of
Florence, to which his father moved when he was a child, at a notary's
desk, his father trying to teach him enough law to earn him a
livelihood. Whenever he had a chance, he escaped to draw in a corner, or
to spend forbidden hours in an artist's studio. He was taught Latin and
arithmetic by an old schoolmaster, who was probably a priest, and a
friend of his father's. At fourteen he earned money in Ghirlandajo's
studio, which means that he was already an artist. At twenty-five he was
probably the equal of any living man as sculptor, painter, architect,
engineer and mathematician. Very much the same might be said of
Lionardo. One asks in vain how such enormous knowledge was acquired, and
because there is no answer, one falls back upon wild theories about
untaught genius. But whatever may be said of painting and sculpture,
neither architecture nor engineering, and least of all the mathematics
so necessary to both, can be evolved from the inner consciousness.
Men worked harder then than now, and their teachers and their tools
helped them less, so that they learned more thoroughly what they learned
at all. And there was much less to distract a man then, when he had
discovered his own talent, while there was everything to spur him.
Amusements were few, and mostly the monopoly of rich nobles; but success
was quick and generous, and itself ennobled the men who attained to
it--that is, it instantly made him the companion, and often the friend,
of the most cultivated men and women of the day. Then, as now, success
meant an entrance into 'society' for those whose birth had placed them
outside of it. But 'society' was different then. It consisted chiefly of
men who had fought their own way to power, and had won it by a
superiority both intellectual and physical, and of women who often
realized and carried out the unsatisfied intellectual aspirations of
their husbands and fathers. For wherever men have had much to do, and
have done it successfully, what we call culture has been more or less
the property of the women. In those times, the men were mostly occupied
in fighting and plotting, but the beautiful things produced by newly
discovered art appealed to them strongly. Women, on the other hand, had
nothing to do. With the end of the Middle Age, the old-fashioned
occupations of women, such as spinning, weaving and embroidering with
their maids, went out of existence, and the mechanical work was absorbed
and better done by the guilds. Fighting was then a large part of life,
but there was something less of the petty squabbling and killing between
small barons, which kept their women constant prisoners in remote
castles, for the sake of safety; and there was war on a larger scale
between Guelph and Ghibelline, Emperor and Pope, State and State. The
women had more liberty and more time. There were many women students in
the universities, as there are now, in Italy, and almost always have
been, and there were famous women professors, whose lectures were
attended by grown men. No one was surprised at that, and there was no
loud talk about women's rights. Nobody questioned the right of women to
learn as much as they could, where-ever anything was taught. There were
great ladies, good and bad, like Vittoria Colonna and Lucrezia Borgia,
who were scholars, and even Greek scholars, and probably equal to any
students of their time. Few ladies of Michelangelo's day did not know
Latin, and all were acquainted with such literature as there was--Dante,
Macchiavelli, Aretino, Ariosto and Petrarch,--for Tasso came later,--the
Tuscan minor poets, as well as the troubadours of Provence--not to
mention the many collections of tales, of which the scenes were destined
to become the subjects of paintings in the later days of the Renascence.
Modern society is the enemy of individuality, whether in dress, taste or
criticism, and the fear of seeming different from other people is
greater than the desire to rise higher than other people by purely
personal means. In the same way, socialism is the enemy of all personal
distinction, whatever the socialists may say to the contrary, and is
therefore opposed to all artistic development and in favour of all that
is wholesale, machine-made, and labour-saving. And nobody will venture
to say that modern tendencies are not distinctly socialistic.
[Illustration: INTERIOR OF SANTA MARIA DEGLI ANGELI
The Baths of Diocletian remodelled by Michelangelo]
We are almost at the opposite extreme of existence from the early
Renascence. That was the age of small principalities; ours is the day of
great nations. Anyone who will carefully read the history of the Middle
Age and of the Renascence will come to the inevitable conclusion that
the greatest artists and writers of today are very far from being the
rivals of those who were great then. Shakespeare was almost the
contemporary of Titian; there has been neither a Shakespeare nor a
Titian since, nor any writer nor artist in the most distant manner
approaching them. Yet go backward from them, and you will find Dante, as
great as Shakespeare, and at least three artists, Michelangelo, Lionardo
da Vinci and Raphael, quite as great as Titian. They lived in a society
which was antisocialistic, and they were the growth of a period in which
all the ideas of civilized mankind tended in a direction diametrically
opposed to that taken by our modern theories. This is undeniable. The
greatest artists, poets and literary men are developed where all
conditions most develop individuality. The modern state, in which
individuality is crushed by the machinery of education in order that all
men may think alike, favours the growth of science alone; and scientific
men have the least individuality of all men who become great, because
science is not creative like art and literature, nor destructive like
soldiering, but inquisitive, inventive and speculative in the first
place, and secondly, in our age, financial. In old times, when a
discovery was made, men asked, 'What does it mean? To what will it
lead?' Now, the first question is, 'What will it be worth?' That does
not detract from the merit of science, but it shows the general tendency
of men's thoughts. And it explains two things, namely, why there are no
artists like Michelangelo nor literary men like Shakespeare in our
times--and why the majority of such artists and literary men as we have
are what is commonly called reactionaries, men who would prefer to go
back a century or two, and who like to live in out-of-the-way places in
old countries, as Landor lived in Florence, Browning in Venice,
Stevenson in Samoa, Liszt in Rome,--besides a host of painters and
sculptors, who have exiled themselves voluntarily for life in Italy and
France. The whole tendency of the modern world is scientific and
financial, and the world is ruled by financiers and led by a financial
society which honours neither art nor literature, but looks upon both as
amusements which it can afford to buy, and which it is fashionable to
cultivate, but which must never for a moment be considered as equal in
importance to the pursuit of money for its own sake.
It was the great scope for individuality, the great prizes to be won by
individuality, the honour paid to individuality, that helped the early
painters to their high success. It was the abundance of material,
hitherto never used in art, the variety of that material, in an age when
variety was the rule and not the exception, it was the richness of that
material, not in quantity and variety only, but in individual quality,
that made early paintings what we see. It was their genuine and true
love of beauty, and of nature and of the eternal relations between
nature and beauty, that made those men great artists. It was the
hampering of individuality, the exhaustion and disappearance of material
and the degeneration of a love of beauty to a love of effect, that put
an end to the great artistic cycle in Italy, and soon afterwards in the
rest of the world, with Rembrandt and Van Dyck, the last of the really
great artists.
Progress is not civilization, though we generally couple the two words
together, and often confound their values. Progress has to do with what
we call the industrial arts, their development, and the consequent
increase of wealth and comfort. Civilization means, on the other hand,
among many things, the growth and perfecting of art, in the singular;
the increase of a general appreciation of art; the refinement of manners
which follows upon a widespread improvement of taste; the general
elevation of a people's thoughts above the hard conditions in which a
great people's struggles for existence, preëminence and wealth take
place.
Progress, in its right acceptation, ought also to mean some sort of
moral progress--such, for instance, as has transformed our own
English-speaking race in a thousand years or more from a stock of very
dangerous pirates to a law-abiding people--if we may fairly say as much
as that of ourselves.
Civilization has nothing to do with morality. That is rather a shocking
statement, perhaps, but it is a true one. It may be balanced by saying
that civilization has nothing to do with immorality either. The early
Christians were looked upon as very uncivilized people by the Romans of
their time, and the meanest descendants of the Greeks secretly called
the Romans themselves barbarians. In point of civilization and what we
call cultivation, Alcibiades was immeasurably superior to Saint Paul,
Peter the Hermit or Abraham Lincoln, though Alcibiades had no morality
to speak of and not much conscience. Moreover, it is a fact that great
reformers of morals have often been great enemies of art and destroyers
of the beautiful. Fra Bartolommeo, who is thought by many to have
equalled Raphael in the latter's early days, became a follower of
Savonarola, burned all his wonderful drawings and studies, and shut
himself up in a monastery to lead a religious life; and though he
yielded after several years to the command of his superiors, and began
painting again, he confined himself altogether to devotional subjects as
long as he lived, and fell far behind Raphael, who was certainly not an
exemplary character, even in those days.
In Europe, and in the Latin languages, there is a distinction, and a
universally accepted one, between education and instruction. It is
something like that which I am trying to make clear between Civilization
and Progress. An 'instructed man' means a man who has learned much but
who may have no manners at all, may eat with his knife, forget to wash
his hands, wear outlandish clothes, and be ignorant even of the ordinary
forms of politeness. An 'educated person,' on the contrary, may know
very little Latin, and no Greek, and may be shaky in the multiplication
table; but he must have perfect manners to deserve the designation, and
tact, with a thorough knowledge of all those customs and outward forms
which distinguish what calls itself civilized society from the rest of
the world. Anyone can see that such instruction, on the one hand, and
such education, on the other, are derived from wholly different
sources, and must lead to wholly different results; and it is as common
nowadays to find men who have the one without the other, as it ever was
in ancient Greece or Rome. I should like to assert that it is more
common, since Progress is so often mistaken for Civilization and tacitly
supposed to be able to do without it, and that Diogenes would not be
such a startling exception now as he was in the days of Alexander the
Great. But no one would dare to say that Progress cannot go on in a high
state of Civilization. All that can be stated with absolute certainty is
that they are independent of each other, since Progress means 'going on'
and therefore 'change'; whereas Civilization may remain at the same high
level for a very long period, without any change at all. Compare our own
country with China, for instance. In the arts--the plural 'arts'--in
applied science, we are centuries ahead of Asia; but our manners are
rough and even brutal compared with the elaborate politeness of the
Chinese, and we should labour in vain to imitate the marvellous
productions of their art. We may prefer our art to that of the far East,
though there are many critics who place the Japanese artists much higher
than our own; but no one can deny the superior skill of the Asiatics in
the making of everything artistic.
Nor must we undervalue in art the importance of the minor and special
sort of progress which means a real and useful improvement in methods
and materials. That is doubtless a part, a first step, in the general
progress which tends ultimately to the invention of machinery, but
which, in its development, passes through the highest perfection of
manual work.
The first effect of this sort of progress in art was to give men of
genius new and better tools, and therefore a better means of expression.
In a way, almost every painter of early times was an inventor, and had
to be, because for a long time the methods and tools of painting were
absurdly insufficient. Every man who succeeded had discovered some new
way of grinding and mixing colours, of preparing the surface on which he
worked, of using the brush and the knife, and of fixing the finished
picture by means of varnishes. The question of what painters call the
vehicle for colour was always of immense importance. Long before Giotto
began to work there seem to have been two common ways of painting,
namely, in fresco, with water-colours, and on prepared surfaces by means
of wax mixed with some sort of oil.
In fresco painting, the mason, or the plasterer, works with the painter.
A surface as large as the artist expects to use during a few hours is
covered with fresh stucco by the mason, and thoroughly smoothed with a
small trowel. Stucco, as used in Italy, is a mixture of slaked lime and
white marble dust, or very fine sand which has been thoroughly sifted.
If stained to resemble coloured or veined marbles, and immediately
ironed till it is dry with hot smooth irons, the surface of the mass is
hardened and polished to such a degree that it is almost impossible to
distinguish it from real marble without breaking into it. Waxing gives
it a still higher polish. But if water-colours are used for painting a
picture upon it, and if the colours are laid on while the stucco is
still damp, they unite with the lime, and slowly dry to a surface which
is durable, but neither so hard nor so polished as that produced when
the stucco is ironed. The principal conditions are that the stucco must
be moist, the wall behind it absolutely dry and the colours very thin
and flowing. Should the artist not cover all that has been prepared for
his day's work, the remainder has to be broken out again and laid on
fresh the next day. It is now admitted that the wall-paintings of the
ancients were executed in this way. As it was impossible for the artist
at any time to have the whole surface of the freshly stuccoed wall at
his disposal in order to draw his picture before painting it, he either
drew the design in red upon the rough dry plaster, and then had the
stucco laid over it in bits, or else he made a cartoon drawing of the
work in its full size. The outlines were then generally pricked out with
a stout pin, and the cartoon cut up into pieces of convenient
dimensions, so that the painter could lay them against the fresh stucco
and rub the design through, or pounce it, as we should say, with
charcoal dust, like a stencil. He then coloured it as quickly as he
could. If he made a mistake, or was not pleased with the effect, there
was no remedy except the radical one of breaking off the stucco, laying
it on fresh, and beginning over again. It was clearly impossible to
paint over the same surface again and again as can be done in oil
painting.
No one knows exactly when eggs were first used in fresco painting, nor
does it matter much. Some people used the yolk and the white together,
some only one or the other, but the egg was, and is, always mixed with
water. Some artists now put gum tragacanth into the mixture. It is then
used like water in water-colour work, but is called 'tempera' or
'distemper.' The effect of the egg is to produce an easy flow of the
colour with so little liquid that the paint does not run on the surface,
as it easily does in ordinary water-colours. The effect of the yellow
yolk of the egg upon the tints is insignificant, unless too much be
used. By using egg, one may paint upon ordinary prepared canvas as
easily as with oils, which is impossible with water-colour.
As for the early paintings upon panels of wood, before oils were used,
they were meant to be portable imitations of fresco. The wood was
accordingly prepared by covering it with a thin coating of fine white
cement, or stucco, which was allowed to dry and become perfectly hard,
because it was of course impossible to lay it on fresh every day in
such small quantities. The vehicle used could therefore not be water,
which would have made the colours run. The most common practice of the
Byzantine and Romanesque schools seems to have been to use warm melted
wax in combination with some kind of oil, the mixture being kept ready
at hand over a lighted lamp, or on a pan of burning charcoal. There are
artists in Europe, still, who occasionally use wax in this way, though
generally mixed with alcohol or turpentine, and the result is said to be
very durable. Sir Joshua Reynolds painted many pictures in this way.
With regard to using oils on a dry surface in wall painting, instead of
fresco, Lionardo da Vinci tried it repeatedly with the result that many
of his wall paintings were completely lost within thirty or forty years
after they had been painted. The greatest of those which have survived
at all, the Last Supper in Milan, has had to be restored so often that
little of the original picture remains untouched.
The enormous value of linseed oil and nut oil as a vehicle was apparent
as soon as it was discovered in Holland. Its great advantages are that,
unlike water or egg, it will carry a large quantity of colour upon the
canvas at the first stroke, that it dries slowly, so that the same
ground may be worked over without haste while it is still fresh, and
that it has a very small effect in changing the tints of the original
paints used. One may see what value was attached to its use from the
fact that those who first brought it to Italy worked in secret. Andrea
Castagno, surnamed the Assassin, learned the method from his best
friend, Domenico Veneziano, and then murdered him while he was singing a
serenade under a lady's window, in order to possess the secret alone.
But it soon became universally known and made a revolution in Italian
painting.
In the older times, when rare and valuable pigments were used, as well
as large quantities of pure gold, the materials to be employed and their
value were stipulated for in the contract made between the painter and
his employer before the picture was begun, and an artist's remuneration
at that time was much of the nature of a salary, calculated on an
approximate guess at the time he might need for the work. That was, of
course, a survival from the time of the Byzantine artists, to whom gold
and silver and paints were weighed out by the ecclesiastics for whom
they painted, and had to be accounted for in the finished picture. There
is a story told of an artist's apprentice, who made a considerable sum
of money by selling the washings of his master's brushes when the latter
was using a great quantity of ultramarine; and that shows the costliness
of mere paints at that time. As for the more valuable materials, the
great altar picture in Saint Mark's, in Venice, is entirely composed of
plates of pure gold enamelled in different colours, and fastened in a
sort of mosaic upon the wood panel as required, the lights and shades
being produced by hatching regular lines through the hard enamel with a
sharp instrument. The whole technical history of painting lies between
that sort of work and the modern painter's studio.
Before oil painting became general, artists were largely dependent on
commissions in order to do any work except drawing. Fresco needed a
wall, and work done in that manner could not be removed from place to
place. The old-fashioned panel work with its gold background was so
expensive that few artists could afford to paint pictures on the mere
chance of selling them. But the facilities and the economy of pure
tempera work, and work in oils, soon made easel pictures common.
Between the time of Giotto and that of Mantegna another means of
expression, besides painting, was found for artists, if not by accident,
by the ingenuity of the celebrated goldsmith, Maso Finiguerra, who was
the first man in Italy, and probably the first in the world, to take off
upon paper impressions in ink from an engraved plate.
[Illustration: THE PALATINE]
The especial branch of goldsmithing which he practised was what the
Italians still call 'niello' work, or the enamelling of designs upon
precious metals. The method of doing such work is this. Upon the piece
to be enamelled the design is first carefully drawn with a fine point,
precisely as in silver chiselling, and corrected till quite perfect in
all respects. This design is then cut into the metal with very sharp
tools, evenly, but not to a great depth. When completely cut, the
enamelling substance, which is generally sulphate of silver, is placed
upon the design in just sufficient quantities, and the whole piece of
work is then put into a furnace and heated to such a point that the
enamel melts and fills all the cuttings of the design, while the metal
itself remains uninjured. This is an easier matter than might be
supposed, because gold and silver, though soft under the chisel, will
not melt except at a very high temperature. When the enamel has cooled,
the whole surface is rubbed down to a perfect level, and the design
appears with sharp outlines in the polished metal.
Now anyone who has ever worked with a steel point on bright metal knows
how very hard it is to judge of the correctness of the drawing by merely
looking at it, because the light is reflected in all directions into
one's eyes, not only from untouched parts of the plate, but from the
freshly cut lines. The best way of testing the work is to blacken it
with some kind of colour that is free from acid, such as a mixture of
lampblack and oil, to rub the surface clean so as to leave the ink only
in the engraved lines, and then take an impression of the drawing upon
damp paper. That is practically what Finiguerra did, and in so doing he
discovered the art of engraving. Probably goldsmiths had done the same
before him, as they have always done since, but none of them had thought
of drawing upon metal merely for the sake of the impression it would
make, and without any intention of using the metal afterwards. Within
fifty years of Finiguerra's invention very beautiful engravings were
sold all over Italy, and many famous painters engraved their own
works--foremost among these, Mantegna and Botticelli.
Early Italian art rose thus by regular steps, from the helpless,
traditional, imitative work of the Romanesque and Byzantine artists to
its highest development. It then passed a succession of climaxes in the
masterpieces of Lionardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Raphael and Titian, and
thence descended gradually to the miserably low level of the eighteenth
century.
It is easy to trace the chief objects which painting had in view in its
successive phases. Tradition, Reality and Illusion were the three.
Cimabue was still a Traditionist. Giotto was the first Realist. Mantegna
first aimed at the full illusion which finished art is capable of
producing, and though not so great a man as Giotto, was a much greater
painter. Then came Lionardo, Michelangelo and Raphael, the men of
universal genius, who could make use of tradition without being
commonplace, who could be realistic without being coarse, and who
understood how to produce illusion without being theatrical. In the
decay of Italian art what strikes one most strongly is the combination
of the three faults which the great men knew how to avoid--coarseness,
commonplace thought and theatrical execution.
[Illustration: PALAZZO DEI CONSERVATORI
From a print of the last century]
Cimabue had found out that it was possible to paint sacred pictures
without the dictation of priests, as prescribed by the Council of Nice.
The idea discovered by Giotto, or rather the fact, namely, that nature
could be copied artistically, produced a still greater revolution, and
he had hosts of scholars and followers and imitators. But they were
nothing more, or at the most it may be said that they developed his idea
to the furthest with varying success. It was realism--sometimes a kind
of mystic evocation of nature, disembodied and divinely pure, as in
Beato Angelico; often exquisitely fresh and youthful, as in his pupil,
Benozzo Gozzoli, whose vast series of frescoes half fills the Camposanto
of Pisa--sometimes tentative and experimental, or gravely grand, as in
Masaccio, impetuous and energetic as in Fra Lippo Lippi, fanciful as in
Botticelli--but still, always realism, in the sense of using nature
directly, without any distinct effort at illusion, the figures mostly
taken from life, and generally disposed in one plane, the details
minute, the landscapes faithful rather than suggestive.
The lives of those men were all typical of the times in which they
lived, and especially the life of the holy man we call Beato Angelico,
of saintly memory, that of the fiery lay brother, Filippo Lippi, whose
astounding talents all but redeemed his little less surprising sins--and
lastly that of Andrea Mantegna.
The first two stand out in tremendous contrast as contemporaries--the
realist of the Soul, and the realist of the Flesh, the Saint and the
Sinner, the Ascetic and the Sensualist.
Beato Angelico--of his many names, it is easier to call him by the one
we know best--was born in 1387. At that time the influence of the Empire
in Italy was ended, and that of the Popes was small. The Emperors and
the Popes had in fact contended for the control of municipal rights in
the free Italian cities; with the disappearance of those rights under
the Italian despots the cause of contention was gone, as well as the
partial liberty which had given it existence. The whole country was cut
up into principalities owned and ruled by tyrants. Dante had been dead
about sixty years, and the great imperial idea which he had developed in
his poem had totally failed. The theoretical rights of man, as usual in
the world's history, had gone down before the practical strength of
individuals, whose success tended, again, to call into activity other
individuals, to the general exaltation of talent for the general
oppression of mediocrity. In other words, that condition had been
produced which is most favourable to genius, because everything between
genius and brute strength had been reduced to slavery in the social
scale. The power to take and hold, on the one hand, and the power to
conceive and execute great works on the other, were as necessary to each
other as supply and demand; and all moral worth became a matter of
detail compared with success.
In such a state of the world, a man of creative genius who chanced to be
a saint was an anomaly; there was no fit place for him but a monastery,
and no field for his powers but that of Sacred Art. It was as natural
that Angelico should turn monk as that Lippo Lippi, who had been made
half a monk against his will, should turn layman.
In the peaceful convent of Saint Mark, among the Dominican brethren,
Beato Angelico's character and genius grew together; the devout artist
and the devotional mystic were inseparably blended in one man, and he
who is best remembered as a famous painter was chosen by a wise Pope to
be Archbishop of Florence, for his holy life, his gentle character and
his undoubted learning.
He could not refuse the great honour outright; but he implored the Pope
to bestow it upon a brother monk, whom he judged far more worthy than
himself. He was the same consistent, humble man who had hesitated to eat
meat at the Pope's own table without the permission of the prior of his
convent--a man who, like the great Saint Bernard, had given up a
prosperous worldly existence in pure love of religious peace. It was no
wonder that such a man should become the realist of the angels and a
sort of angel among realists--himself surnamed by his companions the
'Blessed' and the 'Angelic.'
Beside him, younger than he, but contemporary with him, stands out his
opposite, Filippo Lippi. He was not born rich, like Angelico. He came
into the world in a miserable by-way of Florence, behind a Carmelite
convent. His father and mother were both dead when he was two years old,
and a wretchedly poor sister of his father took care of him as best she
could till he was eight. When she could bear the burden no longer, she
took him to the door of the monastery, as orphans were taken in those
days, and gave him over to the charity of the Carmelite fathers. Most
of the boys brought to them in that way grew up to be monks, and some of
them became learned; but the little Filippo would do nothing but scrawl
caricatures in his copybook all day long, and could not be induced to
learn anything. But he learned to draw so well that when the prior saw
what he could do, he allowed him to paint; and at seventeen the lad who
would not learn to read or write knew that he was a great artist, and
turned his back on the monastery that had given him shelter, and on the
partial vows he had already taken. He was the wildest novice that ever
wore a frock. He had almost missed the world, since a little more
inclination, a little more time, might have made a real monk of him. But
he had escaped, and he took to himself all the world could give, and
revelled in it with every sensation of his gifted, sensuous nature. It
was only when he could not get what he wanted that he had curious
returns of monkish reasoning. The historian of his life says that he
would give all he possessed to secure the gratification of whatever
inclination chanced to be predominant at the moment; but if he could by
no means accomplish his wishes, he would then depict the object which
attracted his attention and he would try, by reasoning and talking with
himself, to diminish the violence of his inclination.
There was no lack of adventure in his life, either. Once, at Ancona, on
the Adriatic, he ventured too far out to sea in an open boat, and he
and his companions were picked up by a Barbary pirate and carried off to
Africa. But for his genius he might have ended his days there, instead
of spending only eighteen months in slavery. A clever drawing of the
pirate chief, made on a whitewashed wall with a bit of charcoal from a
brazier, saved him. The Moor saw it, was delighted, set him to paint a
number of portraits, in defiance of Moses, Mahomet and the Koran, and
then, by way of reward, brought him safe across the water to Naples and
gave him his liberty.
He painted more pictures, earned money, and worked his way back to
Florence. As long as he worked at all he did marvels, but a pretty face
was enough to make him forget his art, his work and the Princes and
Dukes who employed him. Cosimo de Medici once shut him up with his
picture, to keep him at it; he tore the sheets of his bed into strips,
knotted them together, escaped by the window--and was of course
forgiven. The nuns of Saint Margaret employed him to paint an
altar-piece for them; he persuaded them to let the most beautiful of
their novices sit as a model for one of the figures; he made love to
her, of course, and ran away with her, leaving the picture unfinished.
It is characteristic of him that though he never forsook her, he refused
the Pope's offer of a dispensation from his early vows which would have
enabled him to marry her--for he hated all ties and bonds alike, and a
regular marriage would have seemed to him almost as bad as slavery in
Africa.
Lippo represented one extreme of character, Beato Angelico the other.
Between them were many men of almost equal genius, but of more common
temper, such as Botticelli, who was Lippo's pupil, or Benozzo Gozzoli,
the pupil of Angelico. Of Sandro Botticelli we know at least that he
resembled his master in one respect--he positively refused to learn
anything from books, and it was in sheer despair that his father,
Filipepe, apprenticed the boy to a goldsmith, who rejoiced in the
nickname of Botticello--'the little tun'--perhaps on account of his
rotund figure, and it was from this first master of his that the boy
came to be called 'Botticello's Sandro.' The goldsmith soon saw that the
boy was a born painter, and took him to Lippo Lippi to be taught. Both
Botticelli and Gozzoli, like many first-rate artists of that time, were
quiet, hard-working men, devoted to their art, and not remarkable for
anything else. The consequence is that little is known about their
lives. It is natural that we should know most about the men who were
most different from their companions, such as Michelangelo on the one
hand, and Benvenuto Cellini on the other, or Beato Angelico and Lippo
Lippi, or the clever Buffalmacco--whose practical jokes were told by
Boccaccio and Sacchetti, and have even brought him into modern
literature--and Lionardo da Vinci. Then, as now, there were two types
of artists, considered as men; there were Bohemians and scholars.
Lionardo and Michelangelo were grave and learned students; so was Beato
Angelico in a sense limited to theology. But Benvenuto, Lippo Lippi and
Buffalmacco were typical Bohemians. As for the latter, he seems scarcely
ever to have painted a picture without playing off a practical jest upon
his employer, and he began his career by terrifying his master, who
insisted upon waking him to work before dawn. He fastened tiny wax
tapers upon the backs of thirty black beetles, and as soon as he heard
the old man stirring and groping in the dark, he lighted the tapers
quickly, and drove the beetles into the room, through a crack under the
door, and they ran wildly hither and thither on the pavement. The master
took them for demons come to carry off his soul; he almost lost his
senses in a fit, and he used half the holy water in Florence to exorcise
the house. But ever afterwards he was too much frightened to get up
before daylight, and Buffalmacco slept out the long night in peace.
Andrea Mantegna, the great painter and engraver, who made the final step
in the development of pictorial art in Italy, was a shepherd's son, like
Giotto, born about one hundred years after Giotto's death. Similar
conditions and a similar bent of genius produced different results in
different centuries. Between Giotto and Mantegna the times had changed;
men lived differently, thought differently and saw differently.
How Mantegna got into the studio of the learned master Squarcione of
Padua is not known. The shepherd lad may have strayed in on a summer's
day, when the door was open, and attracted the painter's attention and
interest. One of the greatest living painters today was a Bavarian
peasant boy, who used to walk ten miles barefoot to the city and back on
Sundays, carrying his shoes to save them, in order to go into the free
galleries and look at the pictures; and somehow, without money, nor
credit, nor introduction, he got into the studio of a good master, and
became a great artist. Mantegna may have done the same. At all events,
he became old Squarcione's favourite pupil.
But when he was inside the studio, he found there a vast collection of
antique fragments of sculpture, which the master had got together from
all sources, and which the pupils were drawing. He was set to drawing
them, too, as the best way of learning how to paint.
That was the logical manifestation and characteristic expression of
Renascence, which was a second birth of Greek and Roman art, science and
literature--one might call it, in Italy, the second birth of civilized
man. It brought with it the desire and craving for something more than
realism, together with the means of raising all art to the higher level
required in order to produce beautiful illusions. Men had found time to
enjoy as well as to fight and pray. In other words, they fought and
prayed less, and the result was that they had more leisure. The women
had begun to care for artistic things much earlier, and they had taught
their children to care for them, and the result was a general tendency
of taste to a higher level. Genius may be an orphan and a foundling, but
taste is the child of taste. Genius is the crude, creative force; but
the gentle sense of appreciation, neither creative nor crude, but
receptive, is most often acquired at home and in childhood. A full-grown
man may learn to be a judge and a critic, but he cannot learn to have
taste after he is once a man. Taste belongs to education rather than to
instruction, and it is the mother that educates, not the schoolmaster.
That faculty of taste was what Italy had acquired between the time of
Cimabue and the time of Mantegna--roughly speaking, between the year
1200 and the year 1450--between the first emancipation of art from the
old Byzantine and Romanesque thraldom and the time when the new art had
so overspread the country that engravings of the most famous pictures
began to be sold in the streets in every important city in Italy. Only a
few years after Mantegna's death, Albert Dürer, the great painter
engraver of Nüremberg, appeared before the council of Venice to try and
get a copyright for his engravings, which were being so cleverly forged
by the famous Raimondi that the copies were sold in the Piazza of Saint
Mark as originals. In passing, it is interesting to remember that Dürer,
whose engravings now sell for hundreds of dollars each, sold them
himself at his own house for prices varying between the values of
fifteen and twenty-five cents, according to the size of the plate. The
Council of Venice refused him the copyright he asked, but interdicted
the copyist from using Dürer's initials.
The immense sale of prints popularized art in Italy at the very time
when the first great printing houses, like the Aldine, were popularizing
learning. Culture, in the same sense in which we use the word, became
preëminently the fashion. Everyone wished to be thought clever, and a
generation grew up which not only read Latin authors with pleasure,
wrote Latin correctly, and had some acquaintance with Greek, but which
took a lively interest in artistic matters, and constituted a real
public for artists, a much larger and a much more critical one than
could be found today among an equal population in any so-called
civilized country. The era of collectors began then, and Mantegna's old
master was the first of them. Every man of taste did his best to get
possession of some fragment of antique sculpture, everyone bought
engravings, everyone went to see the pictures of the great
masters--everyone tried to get together a little library of printed
books. It took two hundred and fifty or three hundred years to develop
the Renascence, but what it produced in Italy alone has not been
surpassed, and in many ways has not been equalled, in the four hundred
years that have followed it.
With its culmination, individualities, even the strongest, became less
distinctly defined, and the romantic side of the art legend was ended.
It is so in all things. The romance of the ocean belongs to those who
first steered the perilous course that none had dared before; many have
been in danger by the sea, many have perished in the desperate trial of
the impossible, but none can be Columbus again; many have done brave
deeds in untracked deserts, but none again can be the pioneers who first
won through to our West. The last may be the greatest, but the first
will always have been the first, the daring, the romantic, who did what
no man had done before them.
And so it is also in the peaceful ways of art. Giotto, Beato Angelico,
Lippo Lippi, Botticelli, never attained to the greatness of Lionardo or
Michelangelo or Raphael. Sober criticism can never admit that they did,
whatever soft-hearted enthusiasts may say and write. But those earlier
men had something which the later ones had not, both in merit and in
genius. They fought against greater odds, with poorer weapons, and where
their strength failed them, heart and feeling took the place of
strength; and their truth and their tenderness went straight to the
heart of their young world, as only the highest perfection of illusion
could appeal to the eyes of the critical, half-sceptic generation that
came after them.
And so, although it be true that art is not dependent on genius alone,
but also on mechanical skill, yet there is something in art which is
dependent on genius and on nothing else. It is that something which
touches, that something which creates, that something which itself is
life; that something which belongs, in all ages, to those who grope to
the light through darkness; that something of which we almost lose sight
in the great completeness of the greatest artists, but which hovers like
a halo of glory upon the brows of Italy's earliest, truest and tenderest
painters.
[Illustration]
REGION XIV BORGO
Borgo, the 'Suburb,' is the last of the fourteen Regions, and is one of
the largest and most important of all, for within its limits stand Saint
Peter's, the Vatican, and the Mausoleum of Hadrian--the biggest church,
the biggest palace and the biggest tomb in the whole world.
To those who know something of Rome's great drama, the Castle of Sant'
Angelo is the most impressive of all her monuments. Like the Colosseum,
it stands out in its round strength alone, sun-gilt and shadowy brown
against the profound sky. Like the great Amphitheatre, it has been
buffeted in the storms of ages and is war-worn without, to the highest
reach of a mounted man, and dinted above that by every missile invented
in twelve hundred years, from the slinger's pebble or leaden bullet to
the cannon ball of the French artillery. Like the Colosseum, it is the
crestless trunk of its former self. But it has life in it still, whereas
the Colosseum died to a ruin when Urban the Eighth showed his successor
how to tear down the outer wall and build a vast palace with a hundredth
part of the great theatre.
Sant' Angelo is a living fortress yet, and nearly a thousand years have
passed, to the certain knowledge of history, since it was ever a single
day unguarded by armed men. Thirty generations of men at arms have stood
sentry within its gates since Theodora Senatrix, the strong and sinful,
flashed upon history out of impenetrable darkness, seized the fortress
and made and unmade popes at her will, till, dying, she bequeathed the
domination to her only daughter, and her name to the tale of Roman
tyranny.
The Castle has been too often mentioned in these pages to warrant long
description of it here, even if any man who has not lived for years
among its labyrinthine passages could describe it accurately. The great
descending corridor leads in a wide spiral downwards to the central spot
where Hadrian lay, and in the vast thickness of the surrounding
foundations there is but stone, again stone and more stone. From the
main entrance upwards the fortress is utterly irregular within, full of
gloomy chambers, short, turning staircases, dark prisons, endless
corridors; and above are terraces and rooms where much noble blood has
been shed, and where many limbs have been racked and tortured, and
battlements from which men good and bad, guilty and innocent, have been
dropped a rope's length by the neck to feed the crows.
Here died Stephen Porcari, the brave and spotless; here died Cardinal
Carafa for a thousand crimes; and here Lorenzo Colonna, caught and
crushed in the iron hands of Sixtus the Fourth, laid his bruised head,
still stately, on the block--'a new block,' says Infessura, who loved
him and buried him, and could not forget the little detail. The story is
worth telling, less for its historical value than for the strange
exactness with which it is all set down.
Pope Sixtus, backed by the Orsini, was at war with the Colonna to the
end of his reign; but once, on a day when there was truce, he seems to
have said in anger that he cared not whom the Colonna served nor with
whom they allied themselves. And Lorenzo Colonna, Protonotary Apostolic,
with his brothers, took the Pope at his word, and they joined forces
with the King of Naples, fortifying themselves in their stronghold of
Marino, whence the eldest son of the family still takes his title. The
Pope, seeing them in earnest and fearing King Ferdinand, sent an embassy
of two cardinals to them, entreating them to be reconciled with the
Church. But they answered that they would not, for his Holiness had
given them permission to ally themselves with whom they pleased, and
refused them money for service, and they said that they could not live
without pay--a somewhat ironical statement for such men as the Colonna,
who lived rather by taking than by giving an equivalent for anything
received.
[Illustration: CASTLE OF SANT' ANGELO]
Then the Pope made war upon King Ferdinand, and when there had been much
bloodshed, and plundering and burning on both sides, Prospero Colonna
quarrelled with the Duke of Calabria, who was on Ferdinand's side and
for whom he had been fighting, and came over to the Church, and so the
Colonna were restored to favour, and the Pope made a treaty with the
King against Venice, and so another year passed.
But after that the quarrel was renewed between Pope Sixtus and Lorenzo
Colonna, on pretext that a certain part of the agreement to which they
had come had not been executed by the Protonotary; and while the matter
was under discussion, the Cardinal of Saint George, nephew of the great
Count Jerome Riario, sent word privately to the Protonotary Colonna,
warning him either to escape from Rome or to be on his guard if he
remained, 'because some one was plotting against him, and hated him.'
Wherefore Lorenzo shut himself up in the dwelling of Cardinal Colonna,
between the Colonna palace and Monte Cavallo on the Quirinal hill, and
many young men, attached to the great house, began to watch in arms,
day and night, turn and turn about. And when this became known, the
Orsini also began to arm themselves and keep watch at Monte Giordano.
Scenting a struggle, a Savelli, siding with Colonna, struck the first
blow by seizing forty horses and mules of the Orsini in a farm building
on the Tivoli road; and immediately half a dozen robber Barons joined
Savelli, and they plundered right and left, and one of them wrote a long
and courteous letter of justification to the Pope. But Orsini retorted
swiftly, 'lifting' horses and cattle that belonged to his enemies and
making prisoners of their retainers. Among others he took two men who
belonged to the Protonotary. And the latter, unable to leave Rome in
safety, began to fortify himself in the Cardinal's house with many
fighting men, and with many strange weapons, 'bombardelle, cerobottane,'
and guns and catapults. Whereupon the Pope sent for Orsini, and
commanded him, as the faithful adherent of the Church, to go and take
the Protonotary prisoner to his house. But while Orsini was marshalling
his troops with those of Jerome Riario, at Monte Giordano and in Campo
de' Fiori, the Pope sent for the municipal officers of the city and
explained that he meant to pardon the Protonotary if the latter would
come to the Vatican humbly and of his own free will; and certain of
these officers went to the Protonotary as ambassadors, to explain this.
To them he answered, in the presence of Stephen Infessura, the
chronicler who tells the story, that he had not fortified himself
against the Church, but against private and dangerous enemies, against
whom he had been warned, and that he had actually found that his house
was spied upon by night; but that he was ready to carry out the terms of
the old agreement, and finally, that he was ready to go freely to the
Pope, trusting himself wholly to His Holiness, without any earnest or
pledge for his safety, but that he begged the Pope not to deliver him
into the hands of the Orsini. Yet even before he had spoken, the Orsini
were moving up their men, by way of Saint Augustine's Church, which is
near Piazza Navona. Nevertheless Colonna, the Protonotary, mounted his
horse to ride over to the Vatican.
But John Philip Savelli stood in the way, and demanded of the officers
what surety they would give for Colonna; and they promised him safety
upon their own lives. Then Savelli answered them that they should
remember their bond, for if Colonna did not come back, or if he should
be hurt, he, Savelli, would be avenged upon their bodies. And Colonna
rode out, meaning to go to the Pope, but his retainers mounted their
horses and rode swiftly by another way and met him, and forced him back.
For they told him that if he went, his end would be near, and that they
themselves would be outlawed; and some said that before they would let
him go, they would cut him to pieces themselves rather than let his
enemies do it. And furiously they forced him back, him and his horse,
through the winding streets, and brought him again into the stronghold,
and bade the officers depart in peace.
And the second time two of the officers returned and told the
Protonotary to come, for he should be safe. And again he mounted his
horse, and struck with the flat of his blade a man who hindered him, and
leaped the barrier raised for defence before the palace and rode away.
And again his own men mounted and followed him, and overtook him at the
cross of Trevi, near by. And one, a giant, seized his bridle and forced
him back, saying, 'My Lord, we will not let you go! Rather will we cut
you in quarters ourselves; for you go to ruin yourself and us also.'
But when they had him safe within the walls, he wrung his hands, and
cried out that it was they who, by hindering him, were destroying
themselves and him. But many answered, 'If you had gone, you would never
have come back.' And it was then the twenty-first hour of the day, and
there were left three hours before dark.
But the Pope, seeing that Colonna did not come, commanded the Orsini to
bring him by force, as they might, even by slaying the people, if the
people should defend him; and he ordered them to burn and pillage the
regions of Monti, Trevi and Colonna. And with Orsini there were some of
those fierce Crescenzi, who still lived in Rome. And they all marched
through the city, bearing the standard of the Church, and they passed by
Trevi and surrounded the house on Monte Cavallo, and proclaimed the ban
against all men who should help the Protonotary; wherefore many of the
people departed in fear. Then Orsini first leapt the barrier, and his
horse was killed under him by a bombard that slew two men also; and
immediately all the Colonna's men discharged their firearms and
catapults and killed sixteen of their enemies. But the Orsini advanced
upon the house.
Then, about the twenty-third hour, the Colonna were weary of fighting
against so many, and their powder was not good, so that they fell back
from the main gateway, and the Orsini rushed in and filled the arched
ways around the courtyard, and set fire to the hay and straw in the
stables, and fought their way up the stairs, sacking the house.
They found the Protonotary in his room, wounded in the hand and sitting
on a chest, and Orsini told him that he was a prisoner and must come.
'Slay me, rather,' he answered. But Orsini bade him surrender and have
no fear. And he yielded himself up, and they took him away through the
smoking house, slippery with blood. They found also John Philip
Savelli, and they stripped him of the cuirass he wore, and setting their
swords to him, bade him cry, 'Long live Orsini!' And he answered, 'I
will not say it.' Then they wounded him deep in the forehead and smote
off both his hands, and gave him many wounds in face and body, and left
him dead. And they plundered all the goods of Cardinal Colonna, his
plate, his robes, his tapestries, his chests of linen, and they even
carried off his cardinal's hat.
So the Protonotary, on the faith of Orsini, was led away to the Pope in
his doublet, but some one lent him a black cloak on the way. And as they
went, Jerome Riario rode beside him and jeered at him, crying out, 'Ha,
ha! thou traitor, I shall hang thee by the neck this night!' But Orsini
answered Jerome, and said, 'Sir, you shall hang me first!' for he had
given his word. And more than once on the way, Riario, drunk with blood,
drew his dagger to thrust it into Colonna, but Orsini drove him off, and
brought his prisoner safely to the Pope. And his men sacked the quarter
of the Colonna; and among other houses of the Colonna's retainers which
were rifled they plundered that of Paul Mancino, near by, whose
descendant was to marry the sister of Mazarin; and also, among the
number, the house of Pomponius Letus, the historian, from whom they took
all his books and belongings and clothes, and he went away in his
doublet and buskins, with his stick in his hand, to make complaint
before the municipality.
Then for a whole month all that part of Rome which was dominated by the
Colonna was given over to be pillaged and burned by their enemies, while
in still Sant' Angelo, the tormentors slowly tore Lorenzo Colonna to
pieces, so that the Jewish doctor who was called in to prolong his life
said that nothing could save him, for his limbs were swollen and pierced
through and through, and many of his bones were broken, and he was full
of many deep wounds. Yet in the end, lest he should die a natural death,
they prepared the new block and the axe to cut off his head.
'Moreover,' says Infessura, in his own language, 'on the last day of
June, when the people were celebrating in Rome the festivity of the most
happy decapitation of Saint Paul the Apostle, whose head was cut off by
the most cruel Nero--on that very day, about an hour and a half after
sunrise, the aforesaid Holiness of our Sovereign Lord caused the
Protonotary Colonna to be beheaded in the Castle; and there were present
the Senator and the Judge of the crime. And when the Protonotary was led
out of prison early in the morning to the grating above the Castle, he
turned to the soldiers who were there and told them that he had been
grievously tormented, wherefore he had said certain things not true. And
immediately afterwards, when he was in the closed place below, where he
was beheaded, the Senator and Judge sat down as a Tribunal, and caused
to be read the sentence which they passed against him, although no
manner of criminal procedure had been observed, since all the
confessions were extorted under torture, and he had no opportunity of
defending himself.' Therefore, when this sentence had been read, the
Protonotary addressed those present and said: 'I wish no one to be
inculpated through me. I say this in conscience of my soul, and if I
lie, may the devil take me, now that I am about to go out of this life;
and so thou, Notary who hast read the sentence, art witness of this, and
ye all are witnesses, and I leave the matter to your conscience, that
you should also proclaim it in Rome,--that those things written in this
sentence are not true, and that what I have said I have said under great
torture, as ye may see by my condition.' He would not let them bind his
hands, but knelt down at the block, and forgave the executioner, who
asked his pardon. And then he said in Latin, 'Lord, into thy hands I
commend my spirit,' and called thrice upon Christ the Saviour, and at
the third time, the word and his head were severed together from his
body.
Then they placed the body in a wooden coffin and took it to Santa Maria
Transpontina, the first church on the right, going from the Castle
toward Saint Peter's, and when none came to take it away, they sent word
to his mother. And she, white-haired and tearless, with burning eyes,
came; and she took her son's head from the coffin and held it up to the
people, saying, 'Behold the justice of Sixtus,' and she laid it in its
place tenderly; and with torches, and the Confraternities, and many
priests, the body was taken to the Church of the Holy Apostles, and
buried in the Colonna Chapel near the altar.
But before it was buried it was seen in the coffin, and taken out, and
laid in it again, and all saw the torments which the man had suffered in
his feet, which were swollen and bound up with rags; and also the
fingers of his hands had been twisted, so that the inside was turned
clean outwards, and on the top of his head was a wound, where priests
make the tonsure, as though the scalp had been raised by a knife; and he
was dressed in a cotton doublet, yet his own had been of fine black
silk. Also they had put on him a miserable pair of hose, torn from the
half of the leg downwards; and a red cap with a trencher was upon his
head, and it was rather a long cap, and the narrator believed that the
gaolers had dressed him thus as an insult. 'And I Stephen, the scribe,
saw it with my eyes, and with my hands I buried him, with Prosper of
Cicigliano, who had been his vassal; and no other retainers of the
Colonna would have anything to do with the matter, out of fear, as I
think.'
Five hundred years had passed since Theodora's day, four hundred more
are gone since Lorenzo the Protonotary laid his head upon the block, and
still the tradition of terror and suffering clings to Sant' Angelo, and
furnishes the subject of an all but modern drama. Such endurance in the
character of a building is without parallel in the history of
strongholds, and could be possible only in Rome, where the centuries
pass as decades, and time is reckoned by the thousand years.
[ILLUSTRATION: HOSPITAL OF SANTO SPIRITO
From a print of the last century]
The main and most important memories in the Region of Borgo, apart from
the Castle, and Saint Peter's and the Vatican, are those connected with
the Holy Office, the hospital and insane asylum of Santo Spirito, and
with the Serristori barracks. In Rome, to go to Santo Spirito means to
go mad. It is the Roman Bedlam. But there is another association with
the name, and a still sadder one. There, by the gate of the long, low
hospital, is still to be seen the Rota--the 'wheel'--the revolving
wooden drum, with its small aperture, corresponding to an opening in the
grating, through which many thousand infants have been passed by
starving women to the mystery within, to a nameless death, or to grow up
to a life almost as nameless and obscure. The mother, indeed, received a
ticket as a sort of receipt by which she could recognize her child if
she wished, but the children claimed were very few. Within, they were
received by nursing Sisters, and cared for, not always wisely, but
always kindly, and some of them grew up to happy lives. Modern charity,
in its philistinism and well-regulated activity, condemns such wholesale
readiness to take burdens which might sometimes be borne by those who
lay them down. But modern charity, in such condemnation, does not take
just account of a mother's love, and believes that to receive nameless
children in such a way would 'encourage irresponsibility,' if not vice.
And yet in Rome, where half the population could neither read nor write,
infanticide was unknown, and fewer children were passed in through the
Rota yearly than are murdered in many a modern city. For the last thing
the worst mother will do is to kill her child; last only before that
will she part with it. Which was more moral, the unrestricted charity of
the Rota, or the unrestricted, legal infanticide of the old-fashioned
'baby-farm,' where superfluous children were systematically starved to
death by professional harpies?
On by the Borgo Santo Spirito, opposite the old church of the
Penitentiaries, stands the Palazzo Serristori, memorable in the
revolutionary movement of 1867. It was then the barracks of the Papal
Zouaves--the brave foreign legion enlisted under Pius the Ninth, in
which men of all nations were enrolled under officers of the best blood
in Europe, hated more especially by the revolutionaries because they
were foreigners, and because their existence, therefore, showed a
foreign sympathy with the temporal power, which was a denial of the
revolutionary theory which asserted the Papacy to be without friends in
Europe. Wholesale murder by explosives was in its infancy then as a fine
art; but the spirit was willing, and a plot was formed to blow up the
castle of Sant' Angelo and the barracks of the Zouaves. The castle
escaped because one of the conspirators lost heart and revealed the
treachery; but the Palazzo Serristori was partially destroyed. The
explosion shattered one corner of the building. It was said that the
fuse burned faster than had been intended, so that the catastrophe came
too soon. At all events, when it happened, about dark, only the
musicians of the band were destroyed, and few of the regiment were in
the building at all, so that about thirty lives were sacrificed, where
the intention had been to destroy many hundreds. In the more sane
condition of Europe today, it seems to us amazing that Pius the Ninth
should have been generally blamed for signing the death warrant of the
two atrocious villains who did the deed, and for allowing them to be
executed. The fact that he was blamed, and very bitterly, gives some
idea of the stupid and senseless prejudice against the popes which was
the result of Antonelli's narrow and reactionary policy.
[Illustration]
LEO THE THIRTEENTH
We commonly speak of the nineteenth century as an age of superior
civilization. The truth of the assertion depends on what civilization
means, but there is no denying that more blood has been shed by
civilized nations during the last one hundred and twenty years than in
any equal period of the world's history. Anyone may realize the fact by
simply recalling the great wars which have devastated the world since
the American Revolution.
But the carnage was not uninterrupted. The record of death is divided in
the midst by the thirty years of comparative peace which followed the
battle of Waterloo and preceded the general revolution of 1848. Napoleon
had harried the world, from Moscow to Cairo, from Vienna to Madrid,
pouring blood upon blood, draining the world's veins dry, exhausting
the destroying power of mankind in perpetual destruction. When he was
gone, Europe was utterly worn out by his terrible energy, and collapsed
suddenly in a state of universal nervous prostration. Then came the long
peace, from 1815 to 1848.
During that time the European nations, excepting England, were governed
by more or less weak and timid sovereigns, and it was under their feeble
rule that the great republican idea took root and grew, like a cutting
from the stricken tree of the French Revolution, planted in the heart of
Europe, nurtured in secret, and tended by devoted hands to a new
maturity, but destined to ruin in the end, as surely as the parent
stock.
Those thirty and odd years were a sort of dull season in Europe--an
extraordinarily uneventful period, during which the republican idea was
growing, and during which the monarchic idea was decaying. Halfway
through that time--about 1830--Joseph Mazzini founded the Society of
Young Italy, in connection with the other secret societies of Europe,
and acquired that enormous influence which even now is associated with
his name. Mazzini and Garibaldi meant to make a republic of Italy. The
House of Savoy did not at that time dream of a united Italian Kingdom.
The most they dared hope was the acquisition of territory on the north
by the expulsion of the Austrians. England and circumstances helped the
Savoy family in their sudden and astonishing rise of fortune; for at
that time Austria was the great military nation of Europe, while France
was the naval power second to England, and through the Bourbons, Italy
was largely under the influence of Austria. England saw that the
creation of an independent friendly power in the Mediterranean would
both tend to diminish Austria's strength by land, and would check France
in her continued efforts to make the shores of the Mediterranean hers.
She therefore encouraged Italy in revolution, and it is generally
believed that she secretly furnished enormous sums of money, through Sir
James Hudson, minister in Turin, to further the schemes of Mazzini. The
profound hatred of Catholics which was so much more marked in England
then than now, produced a strong popular feeling there in favour of the
revolutionaries, who inveighed against all existing sovereignties in
general, but were particularly bitter against the government of the
Popes. The revolution thus supported by England, and guided by such men
as Mazzini and Garibaldi, made progress. The legendary nature of Rome,
as mistress of the world, appealed also to many Italians, and 'Rome'
became the catchword of liberty. The situation was similar in other
European countries; secret societies were as active, and to the
revolutionaries the result seemed as certain.
But the material of monarchic opposition was stronger elsewhere than in
Italy. Prussia had Hohenzollerns and Austria had Hapsburgs--races that
had held their own and reigned successfully for hundreds of years. The
smaller German principalities had traditions of conservative obedience
to a prince, which were not easily broken. On the other hand, in Italy
the government of the Bourbons and their relatives was a barbarous
misrule, of which the only good point was that it did not oppress the
people with taxes, and in Rome the Pontifical chair had been occupied by
a succession of politically insignificant Popes from Pius the Seventh,
Napoleon's victim, to Gregory the Sixteenth. There was no force in Italy
to oppose the general revolutionary idea, except the conservatism of
individuals, in a country which has always been revolutionary. Much the
same was true of France. But in both countries there were would-be
monarchs waiting in the background, ready to promote any change whereby
they might profit--Louis Napoleon, and the Kings of Sardinia, Charles
Albert first, and after his defeat by the Austrians and his abdication,
the semi-heroic, semi-legendary Victor Emmanuel.
Gregory the Sixteenth died in 1846, and Pius the Ninth was elected in
his stead--a man still young, full of the highest ideals and of most
honest purpose; enthusiastic, a man who had begun life in military
service and was destined to end it in captivity, and upon whom it was
easy to impose in every way, since he was politically too credulous for
any age, and too diffident, if not too timid, for the age in which he
lived. His private virtues made him a model to the Christian world,
while his political weakness made him the sport of his enemies. The only
stable thing in him was his goodness; everything else was in perpetual
vacillation. In every true account of every political action of Pius the
Ninth, the first words are, 'the Pope hesitated.' And he hesitated to
the last--he hesitated through a pontificate of thirty-two years, he
outreigned the 'years of Peter,' and he lost the temporal power.
The great movement came to a head in 1848. A year of revolutions, riots,
rebellions and new constitutions. So perfectly had it been organized
that it broke out almost simultaneously all over Europe--in France,
Italy, Prussia and Austria. Just when the revolution was rife Pius the
Ninth proclaimed an amnesty. That was soon after his election, and he
vacillated into a sort of passive approval of the Young Italian party.
It was even proposed that Italy should become a confederation of free
states under the presidency of the Pope. No man in his senses believed
in such a possibility, but at that time an unusual number of people were
not in their senses; Europe had gone mad.
Everyone knows the history of that year, when one Emperor, several
Kings, and numerous princes and ministers scattered in all directions,
like men running away from a fire that is just going to reach a quantity
of explosives. The fire was the reaction after long inactivity. Pius the
Ninth fled like the rest, when his favourite minister, Count Rossi, had
been stabbed to death on the steps of the Cancelleria. Some of the
sovereigns got safely back to their thrones. The Pope was helped back by
France and kept on his throne, first by the Republic, and then, with one
short intermission, by Louis Napoleon. In 1870, the French needed all
their strength for their own battles, and gave up fighting those of the
Vatican.
During that long period, from 1849 to 1870, Pius the Ninth governed Rome
in comparative security, in spite of occasional revolutionary outbreaks,
and in kindness if not in wisdom. Taxation was insignificant. Work was
plentiful and well paid, considering the country and the times.
Charities were enormous. The only restriction on liberty was political,
never civil. Reforms and improvements of every kind were introduced.
When Gregory the Sixteenth died, Rome was practically a mediæval city;
when the Italians took it, twenty-four years later, it was a fairly
creditable modern capital. The government of Pius the Ninth was
paternal, and if he was not a wise father, he was at all events the
kindest of men. The same cannot be said of Cardinal Antonelli, his prime
minister, who was the best hated man of his day, not only in Europe and
Italy, but by a large proportion of Churchmen. He was one of those
strong and unscrupulous men who appeared everywhere in Europe as
reactionaries in opposition to the great revolution. On a smaller
scale--perhaps because he represented a much smaller power--he is to be
classed with Disraeli, Metternich, Cavour and Bismarck. In palliation of
many of his doings, it should be remembered that he was not a priest;
for the Cardinalate is a dignity not necessarily associated with the
priesthood, and Antonelli was never ordained. He was a fighter and a
schemer by nature, and he schemed and fought all his life for the
preservation of the temporal power in Rome. He failed, and lived to see
his defeat, and he remained till his death immured in the Vatican with
Pius the Ninth. He used to live in a small and almost mean apartment,
opening upon the grand staircase that leads up from the court of Saint
Damasus.
When the Italians entered Rome through the breach at the Porta Pia,
Italy was unified. It is a curious fact that Italy was never at any time
unified except by force. The difference between the unification under
Julius Cæsar and Augustus, and the unification under Victor Emmanuel, is
very simple. Under the first Cæsars, Rome conquered the Italians; under
the House of Savoy, the Italians conquered Rome.
The taking of Rome in 1870 was the deathblow of mediævalism; and the
passing away of King Victor Emmanuel and of Pope Pius the Ninth was the
end of romantic Italy, if one may use the expression to designate the
character of the country through all that chain of big and little events
which make up the thrilling story of the struggle for Italian unity.
After the struggle for unity, began the struggle for life--more
desperate, more dangerous, but immeasurably less romantic. There is all
the difference between the two which lies between unsound banking and
perilous fighting. The long Pontificate of Pius the Ninth came to a
close almost simultaneously with the reign and the life of Victor
Emmanuel, first King of United Italy, after the Pope and the King had
faced each other during nearly a third of the century, two political
enemies of whom neither felt the slightest personal rancour against the
other. On his death-bed, the King earnestly desired the Pope's parting
blessing, but although the Pope gave it, the message arrived too late,
for the old King was dead. Little more than a month later, Pius the
Ninth departed this life. That was the end of the old era.
The disposition of Europe in the year 1878, when Leo the Thirteenth was
crowned, was strongly anti-Catholic. England had reached the height of
her power and influence, and represented to the world the
scientific-practical idea in its most successful form. She was then
traversing that intellectual phase of so-called scientific atheism of
which Huxley and Herbert Spencer were the chief teachers. Their view
seems not to have been so hostile to the Catholic Church in particular
as it was distinctly antagonistic to all religion whatsoever. People
were inclined to believe that all creeds were a thing of the past, and
that a scientific millennium was at hand. No one who lived in those days
can forget the weary air of pity with which the Huxleyites and the
Spencerians spoke of all humanity's beliefs. England's enormous
political power somehow lent weight to the anti-religious theories of
those two leading men of science, which never really had the slightest
hold upon the believing English people. Italians, for instance, readily
asserted that England had attained her position among nations by the
practice of scientific atheism, and classed Darwin the discoverer with
Spencer the destroyer; for all Latins are more or less born
Anglomaniacs, and naturally envy and imitate Anglo-Saxon character, even
while finding fault with them, just as we envy and imitate Latin art and
fashions. Under a German dynasty and a Prime Minister of Israelitish
name and extraction, the English had become the ideal after which half
of Europe hankered in vain. England's influence was then distinctly
anti-Catholic.
Germany, fresh in unity, and still quivering with the long-forgotten
delight of conquest, was also, as an Empire, anti-Catholic, and the
Kultur Kampf, which was really a religious struggle, was at its height.
Germany's religions are official at the one extreme and popular at the
other; but there is no intermediate religion to speak of--and what we
should call cultured people, scientific men, the professorial class, are
largely atheistic.
For some time after the proclamation of the Empire, Germany meant
Prussia to the rest of the world--Prussia officially evangelical,
privately sceptical, the rigid backbone of the whole German military
mammoth. The fact that about one-third of the population of the Empire
is Catholic was overlooked by Prussia and forgotten by Europe.
France--Catholic in the provinces--was Paris just then--republican
Paris. And all French Republics have been anti-Catholic, as all French
monarchies have been the natural allies of the Vatican, as institutions,
though individual Kings, like Francis the First, have opposed the Popes
from time to time. France, in 1878, was recovering with astonishing
vitality from her defeat, but the new growth was unlike the old. The
definite destruction of the old France had taken place in 1870; and the
new France bore little resemblance to the old. It was, as it is now,
Catholic, but anti-papal.
The smaller northern powers, Scandinavia and Holland, were anti-Catholic
of course. Russia has always been the natural enemy of the Catholic
Church. Of the remaining European nations, only Austria could be said to
have any political importance, and even she was terrorized by the new
German Empire.
Italy had been the scene of one of those quick comedies of national
self-transformation which start trains of consequences rather than
produce immediately great results. One may call it a comedy, not in a
depreciating sense, but because the piece was played out to a successful
issue with little bloodshed and small hindrance. It had been laid down
as a principle by the playwrights that the Vatican was the natural enemy
of Italian unity; and the playwrights and principal actors, Cavour,
Garibaldi and others, were all atheists. The new Italy of their creation
was, therefore, an anti-Catholic power, while the whole Italian people,
below the artificial scientific level, were, as they are now,
profoundly, and even superstitiously, religious. That was the state of
the European world when Leo the Thirteenth was elected.
[Illustration: POPE LEO XIII.
From the Portrait by Lenbach]
The Popes have always occupied an exceptional position as compared with
other sovereigns. There is not, indeed, in the history of any nation or
community any record of an office so anomalous. To all intents and
purposes Christianity is a form of socialism, the Church is a democracy,
and the government of the Popes has been despotic, in the proper
sense,--that is, it has been one of 'absolute authority.' It is probably
not necessary to say anything about the first statement, which few, I
fancy, will be inclined to deny. Pure socialism means community of
property, community of social responsibility, and community of
principles. As regards the democratic rules by which the Church governs
itself, there cannot be two ways of looking at them. Peasant and prince
have an equal chance of wearing the triple crown; but in history it will
be found that it has been more often worn by peasants than by princes,
and most often by men issuing from the middle classes. Broadly, the
requirements have always been those answered by personal merit rather
than by any other consideration. The exceptions have perhaps been many,
and the abuses not a few, but the general principle cannot be denied,
and the present Pope came to the supreme ecclesiastical dignity by much
the same steps as the majority of his predecessors. Since his elevation
to the pontificate the Pecci family have established, beyond a doubt,
their connection with the noble race of that name, long prominent in
Siena, and having an ancient and historical right to bear arms and the
title of count--a dignity of uncertain value in Italy, south of the
Tuscan border, but well worth having when it has originated in the
northern part of the country.
Joachim Vincent Pecci, since 1878 Pope, under the name of Leo the
Thirteenth, was born at Carpineto, in the Volscian hills, in 1810. His
father had served in the Napoleonic wars, but had already retired to his
native village, where he was at that time a landed proprietor of
considerable importance and the father of several children. Carpineto
lies on the mountain side, in the neighbourhood of Segni, in a rocky
district, and in the midst of a country well known to Italians as the
Ciociaria. This word is derived from 'cioce,' the sandals worn by the
peasants in that part of the country, in the place of shoes, and bound
by leathern thongs to the foot and leg over linen strips which serve for
stockings. The sandal indeed is common enough, or was common not long
ago, in the Sabine and Samnian hills and in some parts of the Abruzzi,
but it is especially the property of the Volscians, all the way from
Montefortino, the worst den of thieves in Italy, down to the Neapolitan
frontier. Joachim Pecci was born with a plentiful supply of that rough,
bony, untiring mountaineer's energy which has made the Volscians what
they have been for good or evil since the beginning of history.
Those who have been to Carpineto have seen the dark old pile in which
the Pope was born, with its tower which tops the town, as the dwellings
of the small nobles always did in every hamlet and village throughout
the south of Europe. For the Pecci were good gentlefolk long ago, and
the portraits of Pope Leo's father and mother, in their dress of the
last century, still hang in their places in the mansion. His Holiness
strongly resembles both, for he has his father's brow and eyes, and his
mother's mouth and chin. In his youth he seems to have been a very dark
man, as clearly appears from the portrait of him painted when he was
Nuncio in Brussels at about the age of thirty-four years. The family
type is strong. One of the Pope's nieces might have sat for a portrait
of his mother. The extraordinarily clear, pale complexion is also a
family characteristic. Leo the Thirteenth's face seems cut of live
alabaster, and it is not a figure of speech to say that it appears to
emit a light of its own.
Born and bred in the keen air of the Volscian hills, he is a southern
Italian, but of the mountains, and there is still about him something of
the hill people. He has the long, lean, straight, broad-shouldered frame
of the true mountaineer, the marvellously bright eye, the eagle
features, the well-knit growth of strength, traceable even in extreme
old age; and in character there is in him the well-balanced combination
of a steady caution with an unerring, unhesitating decision, which
appears in those great moments when history will not wait for little
men's long phrases, when the pendulum world is swinging its full stroke,
and when it is either glory or death to lay strong hands upon its
weight. But when it stops for a time, and hangs motionless, the little
men gather about it, and touch it boldly, and make theories about its
next unrest.
In the matter of physique, there is, indeed, a resemblance between Leo
the Thirteenth, President Lincoln and Mr. Gladstone--long, sinewy men
all three, of a bony constitution and indomitable vitality, with large
skulls, high cheek-bones, and energetic jaws--all three men of great
physical strength, of profound capacity for study, of melancholic
disposition, and of unusual eloquence. It might almost be said that
these three men represent three distinct stages of one type--the real or
material, the intellectual and the spiritual. From earliest youth each
of the three was, by force of circumstances, turned to the direction
which he was ultimately to follow. Lincoln was thrown upon facts for his
education; Gladstone received the existing form of education in its
highest development, while the Pope was brought up under the domination
of spiritual thoughts at a time when they had but lately survived the
French Revolution. Born during the height of the conflict between belief
and unbelief, Leo the Thirteenth, by a significant fatality, was raised
to the pontificate when the Kultur Kampf was raging and the attention of
the world was riveted on the deadly struggle between the Roman Catholic
Church and Prince Bismarck--a struggle in which the great chancellor
found his equal, if not his master.
The Pope spent his childhood in the simple surroundings of Carpineto,
than which none could be simpler, as everyone knows who has ever visited
an Italian country gentleman in his home. Early hours, constant
exercise, plain food and farm interests made a strong man of him, with
plenty of simple common sense. As a boy he was a great walker and
climber, and it is said that he was excessively fond of birding, the
only form of sport afforded by that part of Italy, and practised there
in those times, as it is now, not only with guns, but by means of nets.
It has often been said that poets and lovers of freedom come more
frequently from the mountains and the seashore than from a flat inland
region. Leo the Thirteenth ranks high among the scholarly poets of our
day, and is certainly conspicuous for the liberality of his views. As
long as he was in Perugia, it is well known that he received the
officers of the Italian garrison and any government officials of rank
who chanced to be present in the city, not merely now and then, or in a
formal way, but constantly and with a cordiality which showed how much
he appreciated their conversation. It may be doubted whether in our
country an acknowledged leader of a political minority would either
choose or dare to associate openly with persons having an official
capacity on the other side.
But the stiff mannerism of the patriarchal system which survived until
recently from the early Roman times gave him that formal tone and
authoritative manner which are so characteristic of his conversation in
private. His deliberate but unhesitating speech makes one think of
Goethe's 'without haste, without rest.' Yet his formality is not of the
slow and circumlocutory sort; on the contrary, it is energetically
precise, and helps rather than mars the sound casting of each idea. The
formality of strong people belongs to them naturally, and is the
expression of a certain unchanging persistence; that of the weak is
mostly assumed for the sake of magnifying the little strength they have.
The Pope's voice is as distinctly individual as his manner of speaking.
It is not deep nor very full, but, considering his great age, it is
wonderfully clear and ringing, and it has a certain incisiveness of
sound which gives it great carrying power. Pius the Ninth had as
beautiful a voice, both in compass and richness of quality, as any
baritone singer in the Sixtine choir. No one who ever heard him intone
the 'Te Deum' in Saint Peter's, in the old days, can forget the grand
tones. He was gifted in many ways--with great physical beauty, with a
rare charm of manner, and with a most witty humour; and in character he
was one of the most gentle and kind-hearted men of his day, as he was
also one of the least initiative, so to say, while endowed with the high
moral courage of boundless patience and political humility. Leo the
Thirteenth need speak but half a dozen words, with one glance of his
flashing eyes and one gesture of his noticeably long arm and
transparently thin hand, and the moral distance between his predecessor
and himself is at once apparent. There is strength still in every
movement, there is deliberate decision in every tone, there is lofty
independence in every look. Behind these there may be kindliness,
charity, and all the milder gifts of virtue; but what is apparent is a
sort of energetic, manly trenchancy which forces admiration rather than
awakens sympathy.
[Illustration: LIBRARY OF THE VATICAN]
When speaking at length on any occasion he is eloquent, but with the
eloquence of the dictator, and sometimes of the logician, rather than
that of the persuader. His enunciation is exceedingly distinct in Latin
and Italian, and also in French, a language in which he expresses
himself with ease and clearness. In Latin and Italian he chooses his
words with great care and skill, and makes use of fine distinctions, in
the Ciceronian manner, and he certainly commands a larger vocabulary
than most men.
His bearing is erect at all times, and on days when he is well his step
is quick as he moves about his private apartments. 'Il Papa corre
sempre,'--'the Pope always runs'--is often said by the guards and
familiars of the antechamber. A man who speaks slowly but moves fast is
generally one who thinks long and acts promptly--a hard hitter, as we
should familiarly say.
It is not always true that a man's character is indicated by his daily
habits, nor that his intellectual tendency is definable by the qualities
of his temper or by his personal tastes. Carlyle was one instance of the
contrary; Lincoln was another; Bismarck was a great third, with his iron
head and his delicate feminine hands. All men who direct, control or
influence the many have a right to be judged by the world according to
their main deeds, to the total exclusion of their private lives. There
are some whose public actions are better than their private ones, out of
all proportion; and there are others who try to redeem the patent sins
of their political necessities by the honest practice of their private
virtues. In some rare, high types, head, heart and hand are balanced to
one expression of power, and every deed is a mathematical function of
all three.
Leo the Thirteenth probably approaches as nearly to such superiority as
any great man now living. As a statesman, his abilities are admitted to
be of the highest order; as a scholar he is undisputedly one of the
first Latinists of our time, and one of the most accomplished writers in
Latin and Italian prose and verse; as a man, he possesses the simplicity
of character which almost always accompanies greatness, together with a
healthy sobriety of temper, habit and individual taste rarely found in
those beings whom we might call 'motors' among men. It is commonly said
that the Pope has not changed his manner of life since he was a simple
bishop. He is, indeed, a man who could not easily change either his
habits or his opinions; for he is of that enduring, melancholic,
slow-speaking, hard-thinking temperament which makes hard workers, and
in which everything tends directly to hard work as a prime object, even
with persons in whose existence necessary labour need play no part, and
far more so with those whose smallest daily tasks hew history out of
humanity in the rough state.
Of the Pope's statesmanship and Latinity the world knows much, and is
sure to hear more, while he lives--most, perhaps, hereafter, when
another and a smaller man shall sit in the great Pope's chair. For he is
a great Pope. There has not been his equal, intellectually, for a long
time, nor shall we presently see his match again. The era of
individualities is not gone by, as some pretend. Men of middle age have
seen in a lifetime Cavour, Louis Napoleon, Garibaldi, Disraeli,
Bismarck, Leo the Thirteenth--and the young Emperor of Germany. With
the possible exception of Cavour, who died, poisoned as some say, before
he had lived out his life, few will deny that of all these the present
Pope possesses, in many respects, the most evenly balanced and
stubbornly sane disposition. That fact alone speaks highly for the
judgment of the men who elected him, in Italy's half-crazed days,
immediately after the death of Victor Emmanuel.
At all events, there he stands, at the head of the Holy Roman Catholic
and Apostolic Church, as wise a leader as any who in our day has wielded
power; as skilled, in his own manner, as any who hold the pen; and
better than all that, as straightly simple and honest a Christian man as
ever fought a great battle for his faith's sake.
Straight-minded, honest and simple he is, yet keen, sensitive and nobly
cautious; for there is no nobility in him who risks a cause for the
vanity of his own courage, and who, in blind hatred of his enemies,
squanders the devotion of those who love him. In a sense, today, the
greater the man the greater the peacemaker, and Leo the Thirteenth ranks
highest among those who have helped the cause of peace in this century.
In spite of his great age, the Holy Father enjoys excellent health, and
leads a life full of occupations from morning till night. He rises very
early, and when, at about six o'clock in the morning, his valet, Pio
Centra, enters his little bedroom, he more often finds the Pope risen
than asleep. He is accustomed to sleep little--not more than four or
five hours at night, though he rests a short time after dinner. We are
told that sometimes he has been found asleep in his chair at his
writing-table at dawn, not having been to bed at all. Of late he
frequently says mass in a chapel in his private apartments, and the mass
is served by Pio Centra. On Sundays and feast-days he says it in another
chapel preceding the throne-room. The little chapel is of small
dimensions, but by opening the door into the neighbouring room a number
of persons can assist at the mass. The permission, when given, is
obtained on application to the 'Maestro di Camera,' and is generally
conceded only to distinguished foreign persons. After saying mass
himself, the Holy Father immediately hears a second one, said by one of
the private chaplains on duty for the week, whose business it is to take
care of the altar and to assist. Frequently he gives the communion with
his own hand to those who are present at his mass. After mass he
breakfasts upon coffee and goat's milk, and this milk is supplied from
goats kept in the Vatican gardens--a reminiscence of Carpineto and of
the mountaineer's early life.
Every day at about ten he receives the Secretary of State, Cardinal
Rampolla, and converses with him for a good hour or more upon current
affairs. On Tuesdays and Fridays the Secretary of State receives the
Diplomatic Corps in his own apartments, and on those days the Under
Secretary confers with the Pope in his chief's place. The acting prefect
of the 'Holy Apostolic Palaces' is received by the Pope when he has
business to expound. On the first and third Fridays of each month the
Maggiordomo is received, and so on, in order, the cardinal prefects of
the several Roman congregations, the Under Secretaries, and all others
in charge of the various offices. In the papal antechamber there is a
list of them, with the days of their audiences.
During the morning the Pope receives cardinals, bishops and ambassadors
who are going away on leave, or who have just returned, princes and
members of the Roman nobility, and distinguished foreigners. At ten
o'clock he takes a cup of broth brought by Centra. At two in the
afternoon, or a little earlier, he dines, and he is most abstemious,
although he has an excellent digestion. His private physician, Doctor
Giuseppe Lapponi, has been heard to say that he himself eats more at one
meal than the Holy Father eats in a week. Every day, unless indisposed,
some one is received in private audience. These audiences are usually
for the cardinal prefects of the congregations, the patriarchs,
archbishops and bishops who are in Rome at the time, and distinguished
personages.
When the weather is fine the Pope generally walks or drives in the
garden. He is carried out of his apartments to the gate in a
sedan-chair by the liveried 'sediarii,' or chair-porters; or if he goes
out by the small door known as that of Paul the Fifth, the carriage
awaits him, and he gets into it with the private chamberlain, who is
always a monsignore. It is as well to say here, for the benefit of
non-Catholics, that 'monsignori' are not necessarily bishops, nor even
consecrated priests, the title being really a secular one. Two Noble
Guards of the corps of fifty gentlemen known under that name ride beside
the carriage doors. The closed carriage is a simple brougham, having the
Pope's coat of arms painted on the door, but in summer he occasionally
goes out in an open landau. He drives several times round the avenues,
and when he descends, the officer of the Guards dismounts and opens the
carriage door. He generally walks in the neighbourhood of the Chinese
pavilion and along the Torrione, where the papal observatory is built.
Leo the Thirteenth is fond of variety--and no wonder, shut up for life
as he is in the Vatican; he enjoys directing work and improvements in
the gardens; he likes to talk with Vespignani, the architect of the Holy
Apostolic Palaces, who is also the head of the Catholic party in the
Roman municipality, to go over the plans of work he has ordered, to give
his opinion, and especially to see that the work itself is executed in
the shortest possible time. Time is short for a pope; Sixtus the Fifth,
who filled Rome and Italy with himself, reigned only five years;
Rodrigo Borgia eleven years; Leo the Tenth, but nine.
[Illustration: FOUNTAIN OF ACQUA FELICE]
In 1893 the Pope began to inhabit the new pavilion designed and built by
Vespignani in pure fifteenth-century style. It is built against the
Torrione, the ancient round tower constructed by Saint Leo the Fourth
about the year 850. In 1894 Leo the Thirteenth made a further extension,
and joined another building to the existing one by means of a loggia, on
the spot once occupied by the old barracks of the papal gendarmes, who
are still lodged in the gardens, and whose duty it is to patrol the
precincts by day and night. Indeed, the fact that two dynamiters were
caught in the garden in 1894 proves that a private police is necessary.
During the great heat of summer the Pope, after saying mass, goes into
the garden about nine in the morning and spends the whole day there,
receiving everyone in the garden pavilion he has built for himself, just
as he would receive in the Vatican. He dines there, too, and rests
afterward, guarded by the gendarmes on duty, to whom he generally sends
a measure of good wine--another survival of a country custom; and in the
cool of the day he again gets into his carriage, and often does not
return to the Vatican till after sunset, toward the hour of Ave Maria.
In the evening, about an hour later,--at 'one of the night,' according
to the old Roman computation of time,--he attends at the recitation of
the rosary, or evening prayers, by his private chaplain, and he requires
his immediate attendants to assist also. He then retires to his room,
where he reads, studies or writes verses, and at about ten o'clock he
eats a light supper.
While in the garden he is fond of talking about plants and flowers with
the director of the gardens. He walks with the officer of the Noble
Guards and with the private chamberlain on duty. He speaks freely of
current topics, tells anecdotes of his own life and visits the gazelles,
goats, deer and other animals kept in the gardens. From the cupola of
Saint Peter's the whole extent of the grounds is visible, and when the
Pope is walking, the visitors, over four hundred feet above, stop to
watch him. He has keen eyes, and sees them also. 'Let us show
ourselves!' he exclaims on such occasions. 'At least they will not be
able to say that the Pope is ill!'
The Pope's favourite poets are Virgil and Dante. He knows long passages
of both by heart, and takes pleasure in quoting them. When Father
Michael, the apostolic prefect to Erithrea, was taking his leave, with
the other Franciscans who accompanied him to Africa, his Holiness
recited to them, with great spirit, Dante's canto upon St. Francis.
The Pope reads the newspapers, passages of interest being marked for him
by readers in order to save time. He frequently writes letters to the
bishops, and composes encyclicals in a polished and Ciceronian style of
Latin. The encyclicals are printed at the private press of the Vatican,
an institution founded by him and furnished with all modern
improvements. They are first published in the 'Osservatore Romano,' the
official daily paper of the Vatican, and then finally translated into
Italian and other languages, and sent out to the bishops abroad. Leo the
Thirteenth likes to see and talk with men of letters, as well as to read
their books. Two years ago he requested Professor Brunelli of Perugia to
buy for him the poetical works of the Abbé Zanella. The request is
characteristic, for his Holiness insisted upon paying for the book, like
anyone else.
When great pilgrimages are to be organized, the first step taken is to
form committees at the place of origin. The leader of the pilgrimage is
usually the head of the diocese, who then writes to Rome to make the
arrangements. The Committee on Pilgrimages provides quarters for the
pilgrims, at the Lazaret of Saint Martha, or elsewhere, that they may be
properly lodged and fed. On the occasion of the celebrated French
workingmen's pilgrimage, the great halls in the Belvedere wing,
including the old quarters of the engineer corps, and of the artillery
and the riding-school, were opened as dining-halls, where the pilgrims
came morning and evening to their meals; the kitchen department and the
general superintendence were in charge of Sisters, and everything was
directed by the Roman Committee of Pilgrimages. The visitors were
received by the Circolo, or Society of Saint Peter's, and by the first
Artisan Workmen's Association, the members of which waited at table,
wearing aprons. The Circolo has an office for pilgrimages which
facilitates arrangements with the railways, and provides lodgings in
hotels, inns and private houses in Rome for the well-to-do; but the
General Committee on Pilgrimages provides lodgings for the poor. The
head of the pilgrimage also makes arrangements for the mass which the
Holy Father celebrates for the pilgrims, and for the audience which
follows. If the pilgrimage is large, the mass is said in Saint Peter's;
if small, in the Vatican, either in the Loggia of the Beatification or
in the Sala Ducale. At the audience the pilgrims place their offerings
in the Pope's hands, and he blesses the rosaries, crosses and other
objects of devotion, and gives small silver medals in memory of the
occasion.
Since 1870 the Pope has not conducted the solemn services either in
Saint Peter's or in the Sixtine Chapel. The only services of this kind
in which he takes part are those held in the Sixtine Chapel on the
anniversary of the death of Pius the Ninth, and on the anniversary of
his own coronation, March 3. At these two functions there are also
present the Sacred College, the bishops and prelates, the Roman
nobility, the Knights of Malta, the Diplomatic Corps in full dress, and
any foreign Catholic royal princes who may chance to be in Rome at the
time. At the 'public' consistories, held with great pomp in the Sala
Regia, the Pope gives the new hat to each new cardinal; but there are
also 'private' consistories held in the beautiful Sala del Concistoro,
near the hall of the Swiss Guards, at the entrance to the Pope's
apartments.
Moreover, the Pope appears at beatifications and canonizations, and
during the present pontificate these have been generally held in the
Hall of Beatifications, a magnificent room with a tribune, above the
portico of Saint Peter's, turned into a chapel for the occasion, with
innumerable candles and lamps, the transparency of the beatified person,
called the Gloria, and standards on which are painted representations of
miracles. The last of these ceremonies was held in Saint Peter's, with
closed doors, but in the presence of an enormous concourse, with the
greatest pomp, the whole of the Noble Guard and the Palatine Guard
turning out, and order being preserved by the Swiss Guards, the
gendarmes, and the vergers of the basilica, known as the 'Sanpietrini.'
In Holy Week, in order to meet the wants of the many eminent and devout
Catholics who then flock to Rome, the Holy Father celebrates mass two or
three times in the Sala Ducale, which is then turned into a chapel.
During these masses motetts are sung by the famous Sixtine choir, under
the direction of the old Maestro Mustafa, once the greatest soprano of
the century, but at the same time so accomplished a musician as to have
earned the common name of 'Palestrina redivivus.' It is to be regretted
that he has never allowed any of his beautiful compositions to be
published. On such occasions as Christmas Day or the feast of Saint
Joachim, by whose name the Pope was christened, he receives the College
of Cardinals, the bishops present in Rome, many prelates, the heads of
religious bodies, some officers of the old pontifical army and of the
guards, and the dignitaries of the papal court, in his own private
library, where he talks familiarly with each in turn, and quite without
ceremony. Reigning sovereigns, princes and distinguished persons are
received in the grand throne-room, where the throne is covered with red
velvet, with coats of arms at the angles of the canopy. Upon a large
pier-table, in the rococo style, between the windows and opposite the
throne, stands a great crucifix of ivory and ebony, between two
candlesticks. The carpet used at such times was presented by Spain.
Before the Emperor of Germany's visit the Pope himself gave particular
directions for the dressing of the throne and the arrangement of the
rooms.
When great personages are received their suites are also presented,
after which the Pope retires with his guest to the small private
throne-room.
Before coming to the Pope's presence it is necessary to pass through
many anterooms, the Sala Clementina, the hall of the palfrenieri and
sediarii,--that is, of the grooms and chair-porters,--the hall of the
gendarmes, the antechamber of the Palatine Guard, that of the officers
on duty, the hall of the Arras, that of the chamberlains and Noble
Guards and at last the antechamber of the Maestro di Camera--there are
eight in all. Persons received in audience are accompanied by the
'camerieri segreti,' who do the honours in full dress, wearing their
chains and carrying their staves.
The private library is a spacious room lined with bookcases made of a
yellow wood from Brazil, some of which are curtained. Busts of several
former Popes stand upon marble columns.
To the Pope's bedroom, only his private valet and his secretaries have
access. It is of small dimensions, and contains only a bed, in an
alcove adorned with graceful marble columns, a writing-table, an
arm-chair and kneeling stool, and one wardrobe.
Besides these, there is his private study, in which the table and chair
stand upon a little carpeted platform, other tables being placed on each
side upon the floor, together with an extremely uncomfortable but
magnificent straight-backed arm-chair, which is one of the gifts offered
on the occasion of the episcopal jubilee. There is, moreover, a little
room containing only a lounge and an old-fashioned easy-chair with
'wings' and nothing else. It is here that the Holy Father retires to
take his afternoon nap, and the robust nature of his nerves is proved by
the fact that he lies down with his eyes facing the broad light of the
window.
The private apartment occupies the second floor, according to Italian
reckoning, though we Americans should call it the third; it is on a
level with Raphael's loggie. The floor above it is inhabited by Cardinal
Rampolla, the Secretary of State.
The 'pontifical court,' as it is called, consists (1898) of Cardinal
Rampolla, the Secretary of State; Cardinal Mario Mocenni, the
pro-prefect of the Holy Apostolic Palaces, a personage of the highest
importance, who has sole control of everything connected with the
Vatican palace and all the vast mass of adjoining buildings; the
Maggiordomo, who, besides many other functions, is the manager of the
museums, galleries and inhabited apartments; the Maestro di Camera, who
nearly corresponds to a master of ceremonies, and superintends all
audiences; the almoner and manager of the papal charities, assisted by a
distinguished priest, who is also a lawyer, formerly secretary to the
well-known Monsignor de Merode; a monk of the Dominican order, who
supervises the issuing of books printed at the Vatican; a chief steward;
four private secretaries, who take turns of service lasting a week for
each, and are always with the Pope, and finally the chief of the Vatican
police. Moreover, his Holiness has his private preacher, who delivers
sermons before him in Advent and Lent, and his confessor, both of whom
are always Capuchin monks, in accordance with a very ancient tradition.
It must not be supposed by the uninitiated that these few persons in any
way represent the central directive administration of the Catholic
Church. On the contrary, the only one of them who is occupied in that
larger field is Cardinal Rampolla, the Secretary of State. The others
are, strictly speaking, the chief personages of the pontifical
household, as we should say. But their offices are not sinecures. The
Pope's restless energy extracts work from the men about him as one
squeezes water from a sponge. In the days of Pius the Ninth, after the
fall of the temporal power, the Vatican was overrun and overcrowded with
useless but well-paid officials, officers and functionaries great and
small, who took refuge there against the advancing wave of change. When
Leo the Thirteenth had been on the throne only a few weeks, there was
sold everywhere a comic print representing the Pope, with a huge broom,
sweeping all the useless people pell-mell down the steps of the Vatican
into the Piazza of Saint Peter's. As often happens, the caricaturist saw
the truth. In a reign that has lasted twenty years, Leo the Thirteenth
has done away with much that was useless, worthless and old-fashioned,
and much that cumbered the narrow patch of earth on which so important a
part of the world's business is transacted. He is a great simplifier of
details, and a strong leveller of obstructions, so that his successor in
the pontificate will find it a comparatively easy thing to keep the
mechanism in order in its present state.
[Illustration: THE VATICAN FROM THE PIAZZA OF SAINT PETER'S]
The strictest economy, even to the minutest details, is practised in the
Vatican. It appears certain that the accounts of the vast household have
often been inspected by the Pope, whose prime object is to prevent any
waste of money where so much is needed for the maintenance of church
institutions in all parts of the world. In the midst of outward
magnificence the papal establishment is essentially frugal, for the
splendid objects in the Pope's apartments, even to many of the articles
of furniture, are gifts received from the faithful of all nations. But
the money which pours into the Vatican from the contributions of
Catholics all over Christendom is only held in trust, to be expended in
support of missions, of poor bishoprics, and of such devout and
charitable organizations as need help, wherever they may be. That
nothing may be lost which can possibly be applied to a good purpose is
one of Leo the Thirteenth's most constant occupations. He has that
marvellous memory for little things which many great leaders and
sovereigns have had; he remembers not only faces and names, but figures
and facts, with surprising and sometimes discomfiting accuracy.
In his private life, as distinguished from his public and political
career, what is most striking is the combination of shrewdness and
simplicity in the best sense of both words. Like Pius the Ninth, he has
most firmly set his face against doing anything which could be construed
as financially advantageous to his family, who are good gentlefolk, and
well to do in the world, but no more. All that he has as Pope he holds
in trust for the Church in the most literal acceptation of the term. The
contributions of Catholics, on being received, are immediately invested
in securities bearing interest, which securities are again sold as may
be necessary for current needs, and expended for the welfare of Catholic
Christianity. Every penny is most carefully accounted for. These moneys
are generally invested in Italian national bonds--a curious fact, and
indicative of considerable confidence in the existing state of things,
as well as a significant guarantee of the Vatican's good faith towards
the monarchy. It is commonly said in Rome among bankers that the Vatican
makes the market price of Italian bonds. Whether this be true or not, it
is an undeniable fact that the finances of the Vatican are under the
direct and exceedingly thrifty control of the Pope himself. To some
extent we may be surprised to find so much plain common sense surviving
in the character of one who has so long followed a spiritual career. We
should not have looked for such practical wisdom in Pius the Ninth. But
the times are changed since then, and are most changed in most recent
times. The head of the Catholic Church today must be a modern man, a
statesman, and an administrator; he must be able to cope with
difficulties as well as heresies; he must lead his men as well as guide
his flock; he must be the Church's steward as well as her consecrated
arch-head; he must be the reformer of manners as well as the preserver
of faith; he must be the understander of men's venial mistakes as well
as the censor of their mortal sins.
Battles for belief are no longer fought only with books and dogmas,
opinions and theories. Everything may serve nowadays, from money, which
is the fuel of nations, to wit, which is the weapon of the individual;
and the man who would lose no possible vantage must have both a heavy
hand and a light touch.
By his character and natural gifts, Leo the Thirteenth is essentially
active rather than contemplative, and it is not surprising that the
chief acts of his pontificate should have dealt rather with political
matters than with questions of dogma and ecclesiastical authority. It
has certainly been the object of the present Pope to impress upon the
world the necessity of Christianity in general, and of the Roman
Catholic Church in particular, as a means of social redemption and a
factor in political stability. This seems to be his inmost conviction,
as shown in all his actions and encyclical letters. One is impressed, at
every turn, by the strength of his belief in religion and in his own
mission to spread it abroad. In regard to forms of faith, the opinions
of mankind differ very widely, but the majority of intelligent men now
living seem to hold a more or less distinct faith of one sort or
another, and to require faith of some sort in their fellow-men. Common
atheism has had its little day, and is out of fashion. It is certainly
not possible to define that which has taken the place of the
pseudo-scientific materialism which plagued society twenty or thirty
years ago, and it is certainly beyond the province of this book to
examine into the current convictions with which we are to begin the
twentieth century.
Unprejudiced persons will not, however, withhold their admiration in
reviewing the life of a man who has devoted his energies, his
intelligence and his strength, not to mention the enormous power wielded
by him as the head of the Church, to the furtherance and accomplishment
of ends which so many of us believe to be good. For the pontificate of
Leo the Thirteenth has differed from that of his predecessor in that it
has been active rather than passive. While Pius the Ninth was the head
of the Church suffering, Leo the Thirteenth is the leader of the Church
militant. This seems to be the reason why he has more than once been
accused of inconsistency in his actions, notably in his instructions to
French Catholics, as compared with the position he has maintained
towards the Italian government. People seem to forget that, whereas the
question of temporal power is deeply involved in the latter case, it has
nothing whatever to do with the former, and as this question is the one
most often brought up against the papacy and discussed in connection
with it by people who seem to have very little idea of its real
meaning, it may be as well to state here at once the Pope's own view of
it.
'The temporary sovereignty is not absolutely requisite for the existence
of the papacy, since the Popes were deprived of it during several
centuries, but it is required in order that the pontiff's independence
may display itself freely, without obstacles, and be evident and
apparent in the eyes of the world. It is the social form, so to say, of
his guardianship, and of his manifestation. It is necessary--not to
existence, but to a right existence. The Pope who is not a sovereign is
necessarily a subject, because (in the social existence of a monarchy)
there is no mean term between subject and sovereign. A Pope who is a
subject of a given government is continually exposed to its influence
and pressure, or at least to influences connected with political aims
and interests.'
[Illustration: RAPHAEL'S "TRANSFIGURATION"]
The writer from whom these lines are quoted comes to the natural and
logical conclusion that this is not the normal position which should be
occupied by the head of the Church. I may remark here that the same view
is held in other countries besides Italy. The Emperor of Russia is the
undisputed head of the Russian Orthodox Church. Queen Victoria occupies,
by the British Constitution, almost exactly the same position towards
the Anglican Church. In practice, though certainly not in theory, it is
the evident purpose of the young German Emperor, constitutionally or
unconstitutionally, to create for himself the same dominant pontifical
position in regard to the Churches of the German Empire. It seems
somewhat unjust, therefore, that the Popes, whose right to the
sovereignty of Rome was for ages as undisputed as that of any King or
Emperor in Europe, though secondary in itself to their ecclesiastical
supremacy, should be blamed for protesting against what was undoubtedly
a usurpation so far as they were concerned, although others may look
upon it as a mere incident in the unification of a free people.
Moreover, since the unification was accomplished, the vanquished Popes
have acted with a fairness and openness which might well be imitated in
other countries. The Italians, as a nation, possess remarkable talent
and skill in conspiracy, and there is no organization in the world
better fitted than that of the Roman Catholic Church for secretly
organizing and carrying out a great political conspiracy, if any such
thing were ever attempted. The action of the Popes, on the contrary, has
been fair and above board.
Both Pius the Ninth and Leo the Thirteenth have stated their grievances
in the most public manner, and so far have they been from attempting to
exercise their vast influence in directing the politics of Italy that
they have enjoined upon Italian Catholics to abstain from political
contests altogether. Whether in so doing they have pursued a wise course
or not, history will decide, probably according to the taste of the
historian; but the fact itself sufficiently proves that they have given
their enemies more than a fair chance. This seems to have been the form
taken by their protests; and this is a fair answer to the principal
accusation brought by non-Catholics against the Pope, namely, that he is
ready to sacrifice everything in an unscrupulous attempt to regain
possession of temporal power. In other matters Leo the Thirteenth has
always shown himself to be a statesman, while Pius the Ninth was the
victim of his own meek and long-suffering character. To enter into the
consideration of the political action of the Pope during the last
fifteen years, would be to review the history of the world during that
time. To give an idea of the man's character, it would be sufficient to
recall three or four of the principal situations in which he has been
placed. A volume might be written, for instance, on his action in regard
to the German Army Bill, his position towards Ireland, his arbitration
in the question of the Caroline Islands, and his instructions to French
Catholics.
It is extremely hard to form a fair judgment from documents alone, and
especially from those documents which most generally come before the
public, namely, articles in such reviews as the _Contemporary Review_,
on the one hand, and the _Civiltà Cattolica_ on the other. Indeed, the
statements on either side, if accepted without hesitation, would render
all criticisms futile. Devout Roman Catholics would answer that matters
of faith are beyond criticism altogether; but the writers in the
_Contemporary_, for instance, will, with equal assurance, declare
themselves right because they believe that they cannot be wrong. It
would be better to consult events themselves rather than the current
opinions of opposite parties concerning them, to set aside the
consideration of the aims rightly or wrongly attributed to Leo the
Thirteenth, and to look only on the results brought about by his policy
in our time. In cases where actions have a merely negative result, it is
just to consider the motive alone, if any criticism is necessary, and
here there seems to be no particular reason for doubting the Pope's
statement of his own case. For instance, in connection with Ireland, the
Pope said, in the document known as 'The Circular Letter of the
Propaganda': 'It is just that the Irish should seek to alleviate their
afflicted condition; it is just that they should fight for their rights,
nor is it denied them to collect money to alleviate the condition of the
Irish.' In regard to the same matter, the 'Decree of the Holy Office'
reads as follows: 'The Holy See has frequently given opportune advice
and counsel to the Irish people (upon whom it has always bestowed
especial affection), whenever its affairs seem to require it, by which
counsel and advice they might be enabled to defend and vindicate their
rights without prejudice to justice, and without disturbing the public
peace.' A fairer statement of the rights of men, and a more express
injunction against public disturbance of any kind, could hardly be
expressed in two short sentences.
Outside of Italy the position of Leo the Thirteenth in Rome is not
generally understood. Most people suppose that the expression 'the
prisoner in the Vatican,' which he applies to himself, and which is very
generally applied to him by the more ardent of Italian Catholics, is a
mere empty phrase, and that his confinement within his small dominion is
purely a matter of choice. This is not the case. So far as the political
theory of the question is concerned, it is probable that the Pope would
not in any case be inclined to appear openly on Italian territory unless
he showed himself as the official guest of King Humbert, who would
naturally be expected to return the visit. To make such an official
visit and such an appearance would be in fact to accept the Italian
domination in Rome, a course which, as has already been noticed, would
be contrary to the accepted Catholic idea of the social basis necessary
for the papacy. It would not necessarily be an uncatholic act, however,
but it would certainly be an unpapal one. No one would expect the
ex-Empress of the French, for instance, to live openly in Paris, as
though the Parisians had never been her subjects, and as though she
accepted the Republic in a friendly and forgiving spirit. And the case
is to all intents and purposes exactly identical.
[Illustration: LOGGIE OF RAPHAEL IN THE VATICAN]
But this is not all. It is unfortunately true that there is another and
much better reason why Leo the Thirteenth cannot show himself in the
streets of Rome. It is quite certain that his life would not be safe.
The enthusiastic friends of Italy who read glowing accounts of the
development of the new kingdom and write eloquent articles in the same
strain will be utterly horrified at this statement, and will, moreover,
laugh to scorn the idea that the modern civilized Italian could conspire
to take the life of a harmless and unoffending old man. They will be
quite right. The modern civilized Italians would treat the Pope with the
greatest respect and consideration if he appeared amongst them. Most of
them would take off their hats and stand aside while he drove by, and a
great many of them would probably go down upon their knees in the
streets to receive his blessing. The King, who is a gentleman, and
tolerant of religious practices, would treat the head of the Church with
respect. The Queen, who is not only religious, but devout, would hail
the reappearance of the pontiff with enthusiasm. But unfortunately for
the realization of any such thing, Rome is not peopled only by modern
civilized Italians, nor Italy either. There is in the city a very large
body of social democrats, anarchists and the like, not to mention the
small nondescript rabble which everywhere does its best to bring
discredit upon socialistic principles--a mere handful, perhaps, but
largely composed of fanatics and madmen, people half hysterical from
failure, poverty, vice and an indigestion of so-called 'free thought.'
There have not been many sovereigns nowadays whose lives have not been
attempted by such men at one time or another. Within our own memory an
Emperor of Russia, a President of the French Republic and two Presidents
of the United States have been actually murdered by just such men. The
King of Italy, and the Emperor William the First, Napoleon the Third,
Queen Victoria and Alexander the Third have all been assailed by such
fanatics within our own recollection, and some of them have narrowly
escaped death. Not one of them, with the exception of Alexander the
Third, has been so hated by a small and desperate body of men as Leo the
Thirteenth is hated by the little band which undoubtedly exists in Italy
today. I will venture to say that it is a matter of continual
satisfaction to the royal family of Italy, and to the Italian
government, that the Pope should really continue to consider himself a
prisoner within the precincts of the Vatican, since it is quite certain
that if he were to appear openly in Rome the Italian authorities would
not, in the long run, be able to protect his life.
After all that has been said and preached upon the subject by the
friends of Italy, it would be a serious matter indeed if the Pope,
taking a practical advantage of his theoretic liberty, should be done to
death in the streets of Rome by a self-styled Italian patriot. No one
who thoroughly understands Rome at the present day is ignorant that such
danger really exists, though it will no doubt be promptly denied by
Italian ministers, newspaper correspondents or other intelligent but
enthusiastic persons. The hysterical anarchist is unfortunately to be
met with all over the world at the present day, side by side with the
scientific social democrat, and too often under his immediate
protection. Indeed, a great number of the acts of Leo the Thirteenth, if
not all of them, have been directed against the mass of social democracy
in all its forms, good, bad and indifferent; and to the zeal of his
partisans in endeavouring to carry out his suggestions must be
attributed some of the strong utterances of the Church's adherents upon
matters political.
The question of 'assent and obedience' to the Holy See in matters not
relating to dogma and faith is, perhaps, the most important of all those
in which the papacy is now involved. There appears to be a decided
tendency to believe that Catholics ascribe to the Holy See a certain
degree of infallibility in regard to national policy and local
elections. The Pope's own words do not inculcate a blind obedience as
necessary to the salvation of the voter, though it is expressly declared
a grave offence to favour the election of persons opposed to the Roman
Catholic Church and whose opinions may tend to endanger its position.
The idea that the Pope's political utterances can ever be considered as
ex cathedrâ is too illogical to be presented seriously to the world by
thinking men. Leo the Thirteenth is undoubtedly a first-rate statesman,
and it might be to the advantage not only of all good Catholics but of
all humanity, and of the cause of peace itself, to follow his advice in
national and party politics whenever practicable. To bind oneself to
follow the political dictation of Leo the Thirteenth, and to consider
such obedience to the Pope as indispensable to salvation, would be to
create a precedent. Pius the Ninth was no statesman at all, and there
are plenty of instances in history of Popes whose political advice would
have been ruinous, if followed, though it was often formulated more
authoritatively and more dictatorially than the injunctions from time to
time imparted to Catholics by Leo the Thirteenth. An Alexander the Sixth
would be an impossibility in our day; but in theory, if another Rodrigo
Borgia should be elected to the Holy See, one should be as much bound to
obey his orders in voting for the election of the President of the
United States as one can possibly be to obey those of Leo the
Thirteenth, seeing that the divine right to direct the political
consciences of Catholics, if it existed at all, would be inherent in the
papacy as an institution, and not merely attributed by mistaken people
to the wise, learned and conscientious man who is now the head of the
Catholic Church. But the Pope's utterances have lately been interpreted
by his too zealous adherents to mean that every Catholic subject or
citizen throughout the world, who has the right to vote in his own
country, must give that vote in accordance with the dictates of the
Church as a whole, and of his bishop in particular, under pain of
committing a very grave offence against Catholic principles. A state in
which every action of man, public or private, should be guided solely
and entirely by his own religious convictions would no doubt be an ideal
one, and would approach the social perfection of a millennium. But in
the mean time a condition of society in which society itself should be
guided by such political opinions as any one man, human and limited, can
derive from his own conscience, pure and upright though it be, would be
neither logical nor desirable. There are points in the universal
struggle for life which do not turn upon questions of moral right and
wrong, and which every individual has a preëminent and inherent right to
decide for himself.
Anyone who undertakes to speak briefly of such a personage as Leo the
Thirteenth, and of such a question as the 'assent and obedience' of
Catholics in matters not connected with morals or belief, lays himself
open to the accusation of superficiality. We are all, however, obliged
to deal quickly and decisively, in these days, with practical matters of
which the discussion at length would fill many volumes. Most of us
cannot do more than form an opinion based upon the little knowledge we
have, express it as best we may, and pass on. The man who spends a
lifetime in the study of one point, the specialist in fact, is often too
ignorant of all other matters to form any general opinion worth
expressing. Humanity is too broad to be put under a microscope, too
strong to be treated like a little child. No one man, today, in this day
of many Cæsars, can say surely and exactly what should be rendered to
each of them.
Leo the Thirteenth is the leader of a great organization of Christian
men and women spreading all over the world; the leader of a vast body of
human thought; the leader of a conservative army which will play a large
part in any coming struggle between anarchy and order. He may not be
here to direct when the battle begins, but he will leave a strong
position for his successor to defend, and great weapons for him to
wield, since he has done more to simplify and strengthen the Church's
organization than a dozen Popes have done in the last two centuries. Men
of such character fight the campaigns of the future many times over in
their thoughts while all the world is at peace around them, and when the
time comes at last, though they themselves be gone, the spirit they
called up still lives to lead, the sword they forged lies ready for
other hands, the roads they built are broad and straight for the march
of other feet, and they themselves, in their graves, have their share in
the victories that save mankind from social ruin.
[Illustration]
THE VATICAN
The Mons Vaticanus is sometimes said to have received its name from
'vaticinium,' an oracle or prophecy; for tradition says that Numa chose
the Vatican hill as a sacred place from which to declare to the people
the messages he received from the gods. It is not, however, one of the
seven hills on which ancient Rome was built, but forms a part of a ridge
beginning with the Janiculum and ending with Monte Mario, all of which
was outside the ancient limits of the city. In our day the name is
applied only to the immense pontifical palace adjacent to, and connected
with, the basilica of Saint Peter's.
The present existence of this palace is principally due to Nicholas the
Fifth, the builder pope, whose gigantic scheme would startle a modern
architect. His plan was to build the Church of Saint Peter's as a
starting point, and then to construct one vast central 'habitat' for the
papal administration, covering the whole of what is called the Borgo,
from the Castle of Sant' Angelo to the cathedral. In ancient times a
portico, or covered way supported on columns, led from the bridge to the
church, and it was probably from this real structure that Nicholas began
his imaginary one, only a small part of which was ever completed. That
small portion alone comprises the basilica and the Vatican Palace, which
together form by far the greatest continuous mass of buildings in the
world. The Colosseum is 195 yards long by 156 broad, including the
thickness of the walls. Saint Peter's Church alone is 205 yards long and
156 broad, so that the whole Colosseum would easily stand upon the
ground-plan of the church, while the Vatican Palace is more than half as
long again.
Nicholas the Fifth died in 1455, and the oldest parts of the present
Vatican Palace are not older than his reign. They are generally known as
Torre Borgia, from having been inhabited by Alexander the Sixth, who
died of poison in the third of the rooms now occupied by the library,
counting from the library side. The windows of these rooms look upon the
large square court of the Belvedere, and that part of the palace is not
visible from without.
Portions of the substructure of the earlier building were no doubt
utilized by Nicholas, and the secret gallery which connects the Vatican
with the mausoleum of Hadrian is generally attributed to Pope John the
Twenty-third, who died in 1417; but on the whole it may be said that the
Vatican Palace is originally a building of the period of the Renascence,
to which all successive popes have made additions.
The ordinary tourist first sees the Vatican from the square as he
approaches from the bridge of Sant' Angelo. But his attention is from
the first drawn to the front of the church, and he but vaguely realizes
that a lofty, unsymmetrical building rises on his right. He pauses,
perhaps, and looks in that direction as he ascends the long, low steps
of the basilica, and wonders in what part of the palace the Pope's
apartments may be, while the itinerant vender of photographs shakes
yards of poor little views out of their gaudy red bindings, very much as
Leporello unrolls the list of Don Giovanni's conquests. If the picture
peddler sees that the stranger glances at the Vatican, he forthwith
points out the corner windows of the second story and informs his victim
that 'Sua Santità' inhabits those rooms, and promptly offers photographs
of any other interior part of the Vatican but that. The tourist looks up
curiously, and finally gets rid of the fellow by buying what he does not
want, with the charitable intention of giving it to some dear but
tiresome relative at home. And ever afterward, perhaps, he associates
with his first impression of the Vatican the eager, cunning, scapegrace
features of the man who sold him the photographs.
To fix a general scheme of the buildings in the mind one must climb to
the top of the dome of the church and look down from the balcony which
surrounds the lantern. The height is so great that even the great
dimensions of the biggest palace in the world are dwarfed in the deep
perspective, and the wide gardens look small and almost insignificant.
But the relative proportions of the buildings and grounds appear
correctly, and measure each other, as it were. Moreover, it is now so
hard to obtain access to the gardens at all that the usual way of seeing
them is from the top of Saint Peter's, from an elevation of four hundred
feet.
To the average stranger 'the Vatican' suggests only the museum of
sculpture, the picture-galleries and the Loggie. He remembers, besides
the works of art which he has seen, the fact of having walked a great
distance through straight corridors, up and down short flights of marble
steps, and through irregularly shaped and unsymmetrically disposed
halls. If he had any idea of the points of the compass when he entered,
he is completely confused in five minutes, and comes out at last with
the sensation of having been walking in a labyrinth. He will find it
hard to give anyone an impression of the sort of building in which he
has been, and certainly he cannot have any knowledge of the
topographical relations of its parts. Yet in his passage through the
museums and galleries he has seen but a very small part of the whole,
and, excepting when in the Loggie, he probably could not once have stood
still and pointed in the direction of the main part of the palace.
[Illustration: BELVEDERE COURT OF THE VATICAN GALLERY
From a print of the last century]
In order to speak even superficially of it all, it is indispensable to
classify its parts in some way. Vast and irregular it is at its two
ends, toward the colonnade and toward the bastions of the city, but the
intervening length consists of two perfectly parallel buildings, each
over three hundred and fifty yards long, about eighty yards apart, and
yoked in the middle by the Braccio Nuovo of the Museum and a part of
the library, so as to enclose two vast courts, the one known as
Belvedere,--not to be confused with the Belvedere in the Museum,--and
the other called the Garden of the Pigna, from the pine-cone which
stands at one end of it.
Across the ends of these parallel buildings, and toward the city, a huge
pile is erected, about two hundred yards long, very irregular, and
containing the papal residence and the apartments of several cardinals,
the Sixtine Chapel, the Pauline Chapel, the Borgia Tower, the Stanze and
Loggie of Raphael, and the Court of Saint Damasus. At the other end of
the parallelogram are grouped the equally irregular but more beautiful
buildings of the old Museum, of which the windows look out over the
walls of the city, and which originally bore the name of Belvedere, on
account of the lovely view. This is said to have been a sort of
summer-house of the Borgia, not then connected with the palace by the
long galleries.
It would be a hopeless and a weary task to attempt to trace the history
of the buildings. Some account of the Pope's private apartments has
already been given in these pages. They occupy the eastern wing of the
part built round the Court of Damasus; that is to say, they are at the
extreme end of the Vatican, nearest the city, and over the colonnade,
and the windows of the Pope's rooms are visible from the square. The
vast mass which rises above the columns to the right of Saint Peter's is
only a small part of the whole palace, but is not the most modern, by
any means. It contains, for instance, the Sixtine Chapel, which is
considerably older than the present church, having been built by Sixtus
the Fourth, whose beautiful bronze monument is in the Chapel of the
Sacrament, in Saint Peter's. It contains, too, Raphael's Stanze, or
halls, and Bramante's famous Loggie, the beautiful architecture of which
is a frame for some of Raphael's best work.
[Illustration: MICHELANGELO'S "LAST JUDGMENT"]
But any good guide book will furnish all such information, which it
would be fruitless to give in such a work as this. In the pages of
Murray the traveller will find, set down in order and accurately, the
ages, the dimensions, and the exact positions of all the parts of the
building, with the names of the famous artists who decorated each. He
will not find set down there, however, what one may call the atmosphere
of the place, which is something as peculiar and unforgettable, though
in a different way, as that of Saint Peter's. It is quite unlike
anything else, for it is part of the development of churchmen's
administration to an ultimate limit in the high centre of churchmanism.
No doubt there was much of that sort of thing in various parts of Europe
long ago, and in England before Henry the Eighth, and it is to be found
in a small degree in Vienna to this day, where the traditions of the
departed Holy Roman Empire are not quite dead. It is hard to define it,
but it is in everything; in the uniforms of the attendants, in their
old-fashioned faces, in the spotless cleanliness of all the
Vatican--though no one is ever to be seen handling a broom--in the
noiselessly methodical manner of doing everything that is to be done, in
the scholarly rather than scientific arrangement of the objects in the
museum and galleries--above all, in the visitor's own sensations. No one
talks loudly among the statues of the Vatican, and there is a feeling of
being in church, so that one is disagreeably shocked when a guide,
conducting a party of tourists, occasionally raises his voice in order
to be heard. It is all very hard to define, while it is quite impossible
to escape feeling it, and it must ultimately be due to the dominating
influence of the churchmen, who arrange the whole place as though it
were a church. An American lady, on hearing that the Vatican is said to
contain eleven thousand rooms, threw up her hands and laughingly
exclaimed, 'Think of the housemaids!' But there are no housemaids in the
Vatican, and perhaps the total absence of even the humblest feminine
influence has something to do with the austere impression which
everything produces.
On the whole, the Vatican may be divided into seven portions. These are
the pontifical residence, the Sixtine and Pauline chapels, the picture
galleries, the library, the museums of sculpture and archæology, the
outbuildings, including the barracks of the Swiss Guards, and, lastly,
the gardens with the Pope's Casino. Of these the Sixtine Chapel, the
galleries and museums, and the library, are incomparably the most
important.
The name Sixtine is derived from Sixtus the Fourth, as has been said,
and is usually, but not correctly, spelled 'Sistine.' The library was
founded by Nicholas the Fifth, whose love of books was almost equal to
his passion for building. The galleries are representative of Raphael's
work, which predominates to such an extent that the paintings of almost
all other artists are of secondary importance, precisely as Michelangelo
filled the Sixtine Chapel with himself. As for the museums, the objects
they contain have been accumulated by many popes, but their existence
ought, perhaps, to be chiefly attributed to Julius the Second and Leo
the Tenth, the principal representatives of the Rovere and Medici
families.
On the walls of the Sixtine Chapel there are paintings by such men as
Perugino, Luca Signorelli, Botticelli, and Ghirlandajo, as well as by a
number of others; but Michelangelo overshadows them all with his ceiling
and his 'Last Judgment.' There is something overpowering about him, and
there is no escaping from his influence. He not only covers great spaces
with his brush, but he fills them with his masterful drawing, and makes
them alive with a life at once profound and restless. One does not feel,
as with other painters, that a vision has been projected upon a flat
surface; one rather has the impression that a mysterious reality of life
has been called up out of senseless material. What we see is not
imaginary motion represented, but real motion arrested, as it were, in
its very act, and ready to move again. Many have said that the man's
work was monstrous. It was monstrously alive, monstrously vigorous; at
times over-strong and over-vital, exaggerative of nature, but never
really unnatural, and he never once overreached himself in an effort. No
matter how enormous the conception might be, he never lacked the means
of carrying it to the concrete. No giantism of limb and feature was
beyond the ability of his brush; no astounding foreshortening was too
much for his unerring point; no vast perspective was too deep for his
knowledge and strength. His production was limited only by the length of
his life. Great genius means before all things great and constant
creative power; it means wealth of resource and invention; it means
quantity as well as quality. No truly great genius, unless cut short by
early death, has left little of itself. Besides a man's one great
masterpiece, there are always a hundred works of the same hand, far
beyond the powers of ordinary men; and the men of Michelangelo's day
worked harder than we work. Perhaps they thought harder, too, being more
occupied with creation, at a time when there was little, than we are
with the difficult task of avoiding the unintentional reinvention of
things already invented, now that there is so much. The latter is a real
difficulty in our century, when almost every mine of thought has been
worked to a normal depth by minds of normal power, and it needs all the
ruthless strength of original genius to go deeper, and hew and blast a
way through the bedrock of men's limitations to new veins of treasure
below.
It has been said of Titian by a great French critic that 'he absorbed
his predecessors and ruined his successors.' Michelangelo absorbed no
one and ruined no one; for no painter, sculptor or architect ever
attempted what he accomplished, either before him or after him. No sane
person ever tried to produce anything like the 'Last Judgment,' the
marble 'Moses,' or the dome of Saint Peter's. Michelangelo stood alone
as a creator, as he lived a lonely man throughout the eighty-nine years
of his life. He had envy but not competition to deal with. There is no
rivalry between his paintings in the Sixtine Chapel and those of the
many great artists who have left their work beside his on the same
walls.
The chapel is a beautiful place in itself, by its simple and noble
proportions, as well as by the wonderful architectural decorations of
the ceiling, conceived by Michelangelo as a series of frames for his
paintings. Beautiful beyond description, too, is the exquisite marble
screen. No one can say certainly who made it; it was perhaps designed by
the architect of the chapel himself, Baccio Pintelli. There are a few
such marvels of unknown hands in the world, and a sort of romance clings
to them, with an element of mystery that stirs the imagination, in a
dreamy way, far more than the gilded oak tree in the arms of Sixtus the
Fourth, by which the name of Rovere is symbolized. Sixtus commanded,
and the chapel was built. But who knows where Baccio Pintelli lies? Or
who shall find the grave where the hand that carved the lovely marble
screen is laid at rest?
[Illustration: SIXTINE CHAPEL]
It is often dark in the Sixtine Chapel. The tourist can rarely choose
his day, and not often his hour, and, in the weary traveller's
hard-driven appreciation, Michelangelo may lose his effect by the
accident of a thunder shower. Yet of all sights in Rome, the Sixtine
Chapel most needs sunshine. If in any way possible, go there at noon on
a bright winter's day, when the sun is streaming in through the high
windows at the left of the 'Last Judgment.' Everyone has heard of the
picture before seeing it, and almost everybody is surprised or
disappointed on seeing it for the first time. Then, too, the world's
ideas about the terrific subject of the painting have changed since
Michelangelo's day. Religious belief can no more be judged by the
standard of realism. It is wiser to look at the fresco as a work of art
alone, as the most surprising masterpiece of a master draughtsman, and
as a marvellous piece of composition.
In the lower part of the picture, there is a woman rising from her grave
in a shroud. It has been suggested that Michelangelo meant to represent
by this figure the Renascence of Italy, still struggling with darkness.
The whole work brings the times before us. There is the Christian Heaven
above, and the heathen Styx below. Charon ferries the souls across the
dark stream; they are first judged by Minos, and Minos is a portrait of
a cardinal who had ventured to judge the rest of the picture before it
was finished. There is in the picture all the whirling confusion of
ideas which made that age terrible and beautiful by turns, devout and
unbelieving, strong and weak, scholarly upon a foundation of barbarism,
and most realistic when most religious. You may see the reflected
confusion in the puzzled faces of most tourists who look at the 'Last
Judgment' for the first time. A young American girl smiles vaguely at
it; an Englishman glares, expressionless, at it through an eyeglass,
with a sort of cold inquiry--'Oh! is that all?' he might say; a German
begins at Paradise at the upper left-hand corner, and works his way
through the details to hell below, at the right. But all are inwardly
disturbed, or puzzled, or profoundly interested, and when they go away
this is the great picture which, of all they have seen, they remember
with the most clearness.
And as Michelangelo set his great mark upon the Sixtine, so Raphael took
the Stanze and the Loggie for himself--and some of the halls of the
picture-galleries too. Raphael represented the feminine element in
contrast with Michelangelo's rude masculinity. There hangs the great
'Transfiguration,' which, all but finished, was set up by the young
painter's body when he lay in state--a picture too large for the
sentiment it should express, while far too small for the subject it
presents--yet, in its way, a masterpiece of composition. For in a
measure Raphael succeeded in detaching the transfigured Christ from the
crowded foreground, and in creating two distinct centres of interest.
The frescoes in the Stanze represent subjects of less artistic
impossibility, and in painting them Raphael expended in beauty of design
the genius which, in the 'Transfiguration,' he squandered in attempting
to overcome insuperable difficulties. Watch the faces of your
fellow-tourists now, and you will see that the puzzled expression is
gone. They are less interested than they were before the 'Last
Judgment,' but they are infinitely better pleased.
Follow them on, to the library. They will enter with a look of
expectation, and presently you will see disappointment and weariness in
their eyes. Libraries are for the learned, and there are but a handful
of scholars in a million. Besides, the most interesting rooms, the
Borgia apartments, have been closed for many years and have only
recently been opened again after being wisely and well restored under
the direction of Leo the Thirteenth.
Two or three bad men are responsible for almost all the evil that has
been said and written against the characters of the Popes in the Middle
Age. John the Twelfth, of the race of Theodora Senatrix, Farnese of
Naples and Rodrigo Borgia, a Spaniard, who was Alexander the Sixth, are
the chief instances. There were, indeed, many popes who were not
perfect, who were more or less ambitious, avaricious, warlike, timid,
headstrong, weak, according to their several characters; but it can
hardly be said that any of them were, like those I have mentioned,
really bad men through and through, vicious, unscrupulous and daringly
criminal.
According to Guicciardini, Alexander the Sixth knew nothing of Cæsar
Borgia's intention of poisoning their rich friend, the Cardinal of
Corneto, with whom they were both to sup in a villa on August 17, 1503.
The Pope arrived at the place first, was thirsty, asked for drink, and
by a mistake was given wine from a flask prepared and sent by Cæsar for
the Cardinal. Cæsar himself came in next, and drank likewise. The Pope
died the next day, but Cæsar recovered, though badly poisoned, to find
himself a ruined man and ultimately a fugitive. The Cardinal did not
touch the wine. This event ended an epoch and a reign of terror, and it
pilloried the name of Borgia for ever. Alexander expired in the third
room of the Borgia apartments, in the raving of a terrible delirium,
during which the superstitious bystanders believed that he was
conversing with Satan, to whom he had sold his soul for the papacy, and
some were ready to swear that they actually saw seven devils in the room
when he was dying. The fact that these witnesses were able to count the
fiends speaks well for their coolness, and for the credibility of their
testimony.
It has been much the fashion of late years to cry down the Vatican
collection of statues, and to say that, with the exception of the
'Torso' it does not contain a single one of the few great masterpieces
known to exist, such as the 'Hermes of Olympia,' the 'Venus of Medici,'
the 'Borghese Gladiator,' the 'Dying Gaul.' We are told that the
'Apollo' of the Belvedere is a bad copy, and that the 'Laocoön' is no
better, in spite of the signatures of the three Greek artists, one on
each of the figures; that the 'Antinous' is a bad Hermes; and so on to
the end of the collection, it being an easy matter to demolish the more
insignificant statues after proving the worthlessness of the principal
ones. Much of this criticism comes to us from Germany. But a German can
criticise and yet admire, whereas an Anglo-Saxon usually despises what
he criticises at all. Isaac D'Israeli says somewhere that certain
opinions, like certain statues, require to be regarded from a proper
distance. Probably none of the statues in the Vatican is placed as the
sculptor would have placed it to be seen to advantage. Michelangelo
believed in the 'Laocoön,' and he was at least as good a judge as most
modern critics, and he roughed out the arm that was missing,--his sketch
lies on the floor in the corner,--and devoted much time to studying the
group. It is true that he is said to have preferred the torso of the
'Hercules,' but he did not withhold his admiration of the other good
things. Of the 'Apollo' it is argued that it is insufficiently modelled.
Possibly it stood in a very high place and did not need much modelling,
for the ancients never wasted work, nor bestowed it where it could not
be seen. However that may be, it is a far better statue, excepting the
bad restorations, than it is now generally admitted to be, though it is
not so good as people used to believe that it was. Apparently there are
two ways of looking at objects of art. The one way is to look for the
faults; the other way is to look for the beauties. It is plain that it
must be the discovery of the beauty which gives pleasure, while the
criticism of shortcomings can only flatter the individual's vanity.
There cannot be much doubt but that Alcibiades got more enjoyment out of
life than Diogenes.
The oldest decorated walls in the palace are those by Fra Angelico in
the Chapel of Nicholas. For some reason or other this chapel at one time
ceased to be used, the door was walled up and the very existence of the
place was forgotten. In the last century Bottari, having read about it
in Vasari, set to work to find it, and at last got into it through the
window which looks upon the roof of the Sixtine Chapel. The story, which
is undoubtedly true, gives an idea of the vastness of the palace, and
certainly suggests the probability of more forgotten treasures of art
shut up in forgotten rooms.
One other such at least there is. High up in the Borgia Tower, above the
Stanze of Raphael, is a suite of rooms once inhabited by Cardinal
Bibbiena, of the Chigi family, and used since then by more than one
Assistant Secretary of State. There is a small chapel there, with a
window looking upon an inner court. This was once the luxurious
cardinal's bath-room, and was beautifully painted by Raphael in fresco,
with mythological subjects. In 1835, according to Crowe and
Cavalcaselle, Passavant saw it as it had originally been, with frescoes
still beautiful, though much damaged, and the marble bath still in its
place in a niche painted with river gods. In one of the Vatican's
periodical fits of prudery the frescoes were completely hidden with a
wooden wainscot, the bath-tub was taken away and the room was turned
into a chapel. It is believed, however, that the paintings still exist
behind their present covering.
The walk through the Museum is certainly one of the most wonderful in
the world. There are more masterpieces, perhaps, in Florence; possibly
objects of greater value may be accumulated in the British Museum; but
nowhere in the world are statues and antiquities so well arranged as in
the Vatican, and perhaps the orderly beauty of arrangement has as much
to do as anything else with the charm which pervades the whole. One is
brought into direct communication with Rome at its best, brilliant with
the last reflections of Hellenic light; and again one is brought into
contact with Rome at its worst, and beyond its worst, in its decay and
destruction. Amid the ruin, too, there is the visible sign of a new
growth in the beginnings of Christianity, from which a new power, a new
history, a new literature and a new art were to spring up and blossom,
and in the rude sculpture of the Shepherd, the Lamb and the Fishes lies
the origin of Michelangelo's 'Moses' and 'Pietà.' There, too, one may
read, as in a book, the whole history of death in Rome, graven in the
long lines of ancient inscriptions, the tale of death when there was no
hope, and its story when hope had begun in the belief in the
resurrection of the dead. There the sadness of the sorrowing Roman
contrasts with the gentle hopefulness of the bereaved Christian, and the
sentiment and sentimentality of mankind during the greatest of the
world's developments are told in the very words which men and women
dictated to the stone-cutter. To those who can read the inscriptions the
impression of direct communication with antiquity is very strong. For
those who cannot there is still a special charm in the long succession
of corridors, in the occasional glimpses of the gardens, in the
magnificence of the decorations, as well as in the statues and fragments
which line the endless straight walls. One returns at last to the outer
chambers, one lingers here and there, to look again at something one has
liked, and in the end one goes out remembering the place rather than the
objects it contains, and desiring to return again for the sake of the
whole sensation one has had rather than for any defined purpose.
At the last, opposite the iron turnstile by which visitors are counted,
there is the closed gate of the garden. It is very hard to get admission
to it now, for the Pope himself is often there when the weather is fine.
In the Italian manner of gardening, the grounds are well laid out, and
produce the effect of being much larger than they really are. They are
not, perhaps, very remarkable, and Leo the Thirteenth must sometimes
long for the hills of Carpineto and the freer air of the mountains, as
he drives round and round in the narrow limits of his small domain, or
walks a little under the shade of the ilex trees, conversing with his
gardener or his architect. Yet those who love Italy love its
old-fashioned gardens, the shady walks, the deep box-hedges, the stiff
little summer-houses, the fragments of old statues at the corners, and
even the 'scherzi d'acqua,' which are little surprises of fine
water-jets that unexpectedly send a shower of spray into the face of the
unwary. There was always an element of childishness in the practical
jesting of the last century.
When all is seen, the tourist gets into his cab and drives down the
empty paved way by the wall of the library, along the basilica, and out
once more to the great square before the church. Or, if he be too strong
to be tired, he will get out at the steps and go in for a few minutes to
breathe the quiet air before going home, to get the impression of unity,
after the impressions of variety which he has received in the Vatican,
and to take away with him something of the peace which fills the
cathedral of Christendom.
[Illustration]
SAINT PETER'S
We have an involuntary reverence for all witnesses of history, be they
animate or inanimate, men, animals, or stones. The desire to leave a
work behind is in every man and man-child, from the strong leader who
plants his fame in a nation's marrow, and teaches unborn generations to
call him glorious, to the boy who carves his initials upon his desk at
school. Few women have it. Perhaps the wish to be remembered is what
fills that one ounce or so of matter by which modern statisticians
assert that the average man's brain is heavier than the average woman's.
The wish in ourselves makes us respect the satisfaction of it which the
few obtain. Probably few men have not secretly longed to see their names
set up for ages, like the 'Paulus V. Borghesius' over the middle of the
portico of Saint Peter's, high above the entrance to the most vast
monument of human hands in existence. Modesty commands the respect of a
few, but it is open success that appeals to almost all mankind. Pasquin
laughed:--
'Angulus est Petri, Pauli frons tota. Quid inde?
Non Petri, Paulo stat fabricata domus.'
Which means:--
'The corner is Peter's, but the whole front Paul's.
Not being Peter's, the house is built for Paul.'
The thing itself, the central cathedral of Christendom, is so enormous
that many who gaze on it for the first time do not even notice that
hugely lettered papal name. The building is so far beyond any familiar
proportions that at first sight all details are lost upon its broad
front. The mind and judgment are dazed and staggered. The earth should
not be able to bear such weight upon its crust without cracking and
bending like an overloaded table. On each side the colonnades run
curving out like giant arms, always open to receive the nations that go
up there to worship. The dome broods over all, like a giant's head
motionless in meditation. The vastness of the structure takes hold of a
man as he issues from the street by which he has come from Sant' Angelo.
In the open space, in the square and in the ellipse between the
colonnades and on the steps, two hundred thousand men could be drawn up
in rank and file, horse and foot and guns. Excepting it be on some
special occasion, there are rarely more than two or three hundred
persons in sight. The paved emptiness makes one draw a breath of
surprise, and human eyes seem too small to take in all the flatness
below, all the breadth before, and all the height above. Taken together,
the picture is too big for convenient sight. The impression itself moves
unwieldily in the cramped brain. A building almost five hundred feet
high produces a monstrous effect upon the mind. Set down in words, a
description of it conveys no clear conception; seen for the first time,
the impression produced by it cannot be put into language. It is
something like a shock to the intelligence, perhaps, and not altogether
a pleasant one. Carried beyond the limits of a mere mistake,
exaggeration becomes caricature; but when it is magnified beyond
humanity's common measures, it may acquire an element approaching to
terror. The awe-striking giants of mythology were but magnified men. The
first sight of Saint Peter's affects one as though, in the everyday
streets, walking among one's fellows, one should meet with a man forty
feet high.
Involuntarily we conceive that Saint Peter's has always stood where it
stands, and it becomes at once, in our imaginations, the witness of much
which it really never saw. Its calm seems meant to outlast history; one
thinks that, while the Republic built Rome, and Augustus adorned it, and
Nero burned it on the other side of the Tiber, the cathedral of the
world was here, looking on across the yellow water, conscious of its own
eternity, and solemnly indifferent to the ventures and adventures of
mankind.
It is hard to reduce the great building in imagination to the little
basilica built by Constantine the sentimentalist, on the site of Nero's
circus; built by some other man perhaps, for no one knows surely; but a
little church, at best, compared with many of those which Saint Peter's
dwarfs to insignificance now. To remind men of him the effigy of that
same Constantine sits on a marble charger there, on the left, beneath
the portico, behind the great iron gate, with head thrown back, and
lifted hand, and marble eyes gazing ever on the Cross. Some say that he
really embraced Christianity only when dying. The names of the churches
founded by him in Constantinople are all sentimentally ambiguous, from
Sophia, 'wisdom,' to Anastasia, 'resurrection,' or revival, and hence
'spring.' It is strange that the places of worship built by him in Rome,
if they were really his work, should bear such exceedingly definite
designations and direct dedications as Saint Peter's, Saint John's,
Saint Paul's and the Church of the Holy Cross. At all events, whether he
believed much or little, Christianity owes him much, and romance is
indebted to him for almost as much more. But for Constantine there might
have been no Charlemagne, no Holy Roman Empire.
In old times criminals of low degree used to be executed on the
Esquiline, and were buried there, unburned, unless their bodies were
left to wither upon the cross in wind and sun, as generally happened.
The place was the hideous feeding ground of wild dogs and carrion birds,
and witches went there by night to perform their horrid rites. It was
there that Canidia and her companion buried a living boy up to the neck
that they might make philters of his vitals. Everyone must remember the
end of Horace's imprecation:--
"... insepulta membra different lupi,
Et Esquilinæ alites."
Then came Mæcenas and redeemed all that land; turned it into a garden,
and beautified it; uprooted the mouldering crosses, whereon still hung
the bones of dead slaves, and set out trees in their stead; piled thirty
feet of clean earth upon the shallow graves of executed murderers and of
generations of thieves, and planted shrubbery and flowers, and made
walks and paths and shady places.
Therefore it happened that the southern spur of the Janiculum became
after that time a place of execution and cruel death. The city had never
grown much on that side of the Tiber,--that is to say, on the right
bank,--and the southern end of the long hill was a wilderness of sand
and brushwood.
[Illustration: MAMERTINE PRISON]
In the deep Mamertine prison, behind the Tabulary of the Forum, it was
customary to put to death only political misdoers, and their bodies were
then thrown down the Gemonian steps. 'Vixerunt,' said Cicero, grimly,
when Catiline's fellow conspirators lay there dead; and perhaps the
sword that was to fall upon his own neck was even then forged. The
prison is still intact. The blood of Vercingetorix and of Sejanus is on
the rocky floor. Men say that Saint Peter was imprisoned here. But
because he was not of high degree Nero's executioners led him out across
the Forum and over the Sublician bridge, up to the heights of Janiculum.
He was then very old and weak, so that he could not carry his cross, as
condemned men were made to do. When they had climbed more than half-way
up the height, seeing that he could not walk much farther, they
crucified him. He said that he was not worthy to suffer as the Lord had
suffered, and begged them to plant his cross with the head downward in
the deep yellow sand. The executioners did so. The Christians who had
followed were not many, and they stood apart weeping.
When he was dead, after much torment, and the sentinel soldier had gone
away, they took the holy body, and carried it along the hillside, and
buried it at night close against the long wall of Nero's circus, on the
north side, near the place where they buried the martyrs killed daily by
Nero's wild beasts and in other cruel ways. They marked the spot, and
went there often to pray. Lately certain learned men have said that he
was crucified in the circus itself, but the evidence is slight compared
with the undoubted weight of a very ancient tradition, and turns upon
the translation of a single word.
Within two years Nero fell and perished miserably, scarcely able to take
his own life to escape being beaten to death in the Forum. In a little
more than a year there were four emperors in Rome; Galba, Otho and
Vitellius followed one another quickly; then came Vespasian, and then
Titus, with his wars in Palestine, and then Domitian. At last, nearly
thirty years after the apostle had died on the Janiculum, there was a
bishop called Anacletus, who had been ordained priest by Saint Peter
himself. The times being quieter then, this Anacletus built a little
oratory, a very small chapel, in which three or four persons could kneel
and pray over the grave. And that was the beginning of Saint Peter's
Church. But Anacletus died a martyr too, and the bishops after him all
perished in the same way up to Eutichianus, whose name means something
like 'the fortunate one' in barbarous Greek-Latin, and who was indeed
fortunate, for he died a natural death. But in the mean time certain
Greeks had tried to steal the holy body, so that the Roman Christians
carried it away for nineteen months to the Catacombs of Saint Sebastian,
after which they brought it back again and laid it in its place. And
again after that, when the new circus was built by Elagabalus, they took
it once more to the same catacombs, where it remained in safety for a
long time.
Now came Constantine, in love with religion and inclined to think
Christianity best, and made a famous edict in Milan, and it is said that
he laid the deep foundations of the old Church of Saint Peter's, which
afterward stood more than eleven hundred years. He built it over the
little oratory of Anacletus, whose chapel stood where the saint's body
had lain, under the nearest left-hand pillar of the canopy that covers
the high altar, as you go up from the door. Constantine's church was
founded, on the south side, within the lines of Nero's circus, outside
of it on the north side, and parallel with its length. Most churches are
built with the apse to the east, but Constantine's, like the present
basilica, looked west, because from time immemorial the bishop of Rome,
when consecrating, stood on the farther side of the altar from the
people, facing them over it. And the church was consecrated by Pope
Sylvester the First, in the year 326.
Constantine built his church as a memorial and not as a tomb, because at
that time Saint Peter's body lay in the catacombs, where it had been
taken in the year 219, under Elagabalus. But at last, in the days of
Honorius, disestablisher of heathen worship, the body was brought back
for the last time, with great concourse and ceremony, and laid where it
or its dust still lies, in a brazen sarcophagus.
Then came Alaric and the Vandals and the Goths. But they respected the
church and the Saint's body, though they respected Rome very little. And
Odoacer extinguished the flickering light of the Western Empire, and
Dietrich of Bern, as the Goths called Theodoric of Verona, founded the
Gothic kingdom, and left his name in the Nibelungenlied and elsewhere.
At last arose Charles, who was called the 'Great' first on account of
his size, and afterwards on account of his conquests, which exceeded
those of Julius Cæsar in extent; and this Charlemagne came to Rome, and
marched up into the Church of Constantine, and bowed his enormous height
for Leo the Third to set upon it the crown of the new empire, which was
ever afterwards called the Holy Roman Empire, until Napoleon wiped out
its name in Vienna, having girt on Charlemagne's sword, and founded an
empire of his own, which lasted a dozen years instead of a thousand.
So the ages slipped along till the church was in bad repair and in
danger of falling, when Nicholas the Fifth was Pope, in 1450. He called
Alberti and Rossellini, who made the first plan; but it was the great
Julius the Second who laid the first stone of the present basilica,
according to Bramante's plan, under the northeast pillar of the dome,
where the statue of Saint Veronica now stands. The plan was changed many
times, and it was not until 1626, on the thirteen hundredth anniversary
of Saint Sylvester's consecration, that Urban the Eighth consecrated
what we now call the Church of Saint Peter.
We who have known Saint Peter's since the old days cannot go in under
the portico without recalling vividly the splendid pageants we have seen
pass in and out by the same gate. Even before reaching it we glance up
from the vast square to the high balcony, remembering how from there
Pius the Ninth used to chant out the Pontifical benediction to the city
and the world, while in the silence below one could hear the breathing
of a hundred thousand human beings.
[Illustration: PANORAMA
From the Orti Farnesiani]
That is all in ghostland now, and will soon be beyond the reach of
memory. In the coachhouses behind the Vatican, the old state coaches are
mouldering; and the Pope, in his great sedia gestatoria, the bearers,
the fan-men, the princes, the cardinals, the guards and the people will
not in our time be again seen together under the Roman sky.
Old-fashioned persons sigh for the pageantry of those days when they go
up the steps into the church.
The heavy leathern curtain falls by its own weight, and the air is
suddenly changed. A hushed, half-rhythmic sound, as of a world breathing
in its sleep, makes the silence alive. The light is not dim or
ineffectual, but very soft and high, and it is as rich as floating gold
dust in the far distance, and in the apse, an eighth of a mile from the
door. There is a blue and hazy atmospheric distance, as painters call
it, up in the lantern of the cupola, a twelfth of a mile above the
pavement.
It is all very big. The longest ship that crosses the ocean could lie in
the nave between the door and the apse, and her masts from deck to truck
would scarcely top the canopy of the high altar, which looks so small
under the super-possible vastness of the immense dome. We unconsciously
measure dwellings made with hands by our bodily stature. But there is a
limit to that. No man standing for the first time upon the pavement of
Saint Peter's can make even a wide guess at the size of what he sees
unless he knows the dimensions of some one object.
Close to Filarete's central bronze door a round disk of porphyry is
sunk in the pavement. That is the spot where the emperors of the Holy
Roman Empire were crowned in the old church; Charlemagne, Frederick
Barbarossa and many others received the crown, the Chrism and the
blessing here, before Constantine's ancient basilica was torn down lest
it should fall of itself. For he did not build as Titus built--if,
indeed, the old church was built by him at all.
A man may well cast detail of history to the winds and let his mind
stand free to the tremendous traditions of the place, since so much of
them is truth beyond all question. Standing where Charles the Great was
crowned eleven hundred years ago, he stands not a hundred yards from the
grave where the Chief Apostle was first buried. There he has lain now
for fifteen hundred years, since the 'religion of the fathers' was
'disestablished,' as we should say, by Honorius, and since the Popes
became Pontifices Maximi of the new faith. This was the place of Nero's
circus long before the Colosseum was dreamed of, and the foundations of
Christendom's cathedral are laid in earth wet with blood of many
thousand martyrs. During two hundred and fifty years every bishop of
Rome died a martyr, to the number of thirty consecutive Popes. It is
really and truly holy ground, and it is meet that the air, once rent by
the death cries of Christ's innocent folk, should be enclosed in the
world's most sacred place, and be ever musical with holy song, and
sweet with incense. It needs fifty thousand persons to fill the nave
and transepts in Saint Peter's. It is known that at least that number
have been present in the church several times within modern memory; but
it is thought that the building would hold eighty thousand--as many as
could be seated on the tiers in the Colosseum. Such a concourse was
there at the opening of the Oecumenical Council in December, 1869, and
at the jubilees celebrated by Leo the Thirteenth; and on all those
occasions there was plenty of room in the aisles, besides the broad
spaces which were required for the functions themselves.
To feel one's smallness and realize it, one need only go and stand
beside the marble cherubs that support the holy-water basins against the
first pillar. They look small, if not graceful; but they are of heroic
size, and the bowls are as big as baths. Everything in the place is
vast; all the statues are colossal, all the pictures enormous; the
smallest detail of the ornamentation would dwarf any other building in
the world, and anywhere else even the chapels would be churches. The eye
strains at everything, and at first the mind is shocked out of its power
of comparison.
But the strangest, most extravagant, most incomprehensible, most
disturbing sight of all is to be seen from the upper gallery in the
cupola looking down to the church below. Hanging in mid-air, with
nothing under one's feet, one sees the church projected in perspective
within a huge circle. It is as though one saw it upside down and inside
out. Few men could bear to stand there without that bit of iron railing
between them and the hideous fall; and the inevitable slight dizziness
which the strongest head feels may make one doubt for a moment whether
what is really the floor below may not be in reality a ceiling above,
and whether one's sense of gravitation be not inverted in an
extraordinary dream. At that distance human beings look no bigger than
flies, and the canopy of the high altar might be an ordinary table.
And thence, climbing up between the double domes, one may emerge from
the almost terrible perspective to the open air, and suddenly see all
Rome at one's feet, and all the Roman mountains stretched out to south
and east, in perfect grace of restful outline, shoulder to shoulder,
like shadowy women lying side by side and holding hands.
And the broken symmetry of the streets and squares ranges below, cut by
the winding ribbon of the yellow Tiber; to the right the low Aventine,
with the dark cypresses of the Protestant cemetery beyond, and the
Palatine, crested with trees and ruins; the Pincian on the left, with
its high gardens, and the mass of foliage of the Villa Medici behind it;
the lofty tower of the Capitol in the midst of the city; and the sun
clasping all to its heart of gold, the new and the old alike, past and
present, youth, age and decay,--generous as only the sun can be in this
sordid and miserly world, where bread is but another name for blood, and
a rood of growing corn means a pound of human flesh. The sun is the only
good thing in nature that always gives itself to man for nothing but the
mere trouble of sitting in the sunshine; and Rome without sunshine is a
very grim and gloomy town today.
It is worth the effort of climbing so high. Four hundred feet in the
air, you look down on what ruled half the world by force for ages, and
on what rules the other half today by faith--the greatest centre of
conquest and of discord and of religion which the world has ever seen. A
thousand volumes have been written about it by a thousand wise men. A
word will tell what it has been--the heart of the world. Hither was
drawn the world's blood by all the roads that lead to Rome, and hence it
was forced out again along the mighty arteries of the Cæsars'
marches--to redden the world with the Roman name. Blood, blood and more
blood,--that was the history of old Rome,--the blood of brothers, the
blood of foes, the blood of martyrs without end. It flowed and ebbed in
varying tide at the will of the just and the unjust, but there was
always more to shed, and there were always more hands to shed it. And so
it may be again hereafter; for the name of Rome has a heart-stirring
ring, and there has always been as much blood spilled for the names of
things as for the things themselves.
It is wonderful to stand there and realize what every foot means,
beneath that narrow standing room on the gallery outside the lantern,
counting from the top downward as one counts the years of certain trees
by the branches. For every division there is a pope and an architect:
Sixtus the Fifth and Giacomo della Porta, Paul the Third and
Michelangelo, Baldassare Peruzzi and Leo the Tenth, Julius the Second
and Bramante, Nicholas the Fifth and Alberti. Then the old church of
Constantine, and then the little oratory built over Saint Peter's grave
by Saint Anacletus, the third or, according to some, the fourth bishop
of Rome; then, even before that, Nero's circus, which was either
altogether destroyed or had gone to ruins before Anacletus built his
chapel.
And far below all are buried the great of the earth, deep down in the
crypt. There lies the chief Apostle, and there lie many martyred bishops
side by side; men who came from far lands to die the holy death in
Rome,--from Athens, from Bethlehem, from Syria, from Africa. There lie
the last of the Stuarts, with their pitiful kingly names, James the
Third, Charles the Third, and Henry the Ninth; the Emperor Otho the
Second has lain there a thousand years; Pope Boniface the Eighth of the
Caetani, whom Sciarra Colonna took prisoner at Anagni, is there, and
Rodrigo Borgia, Alexander the Sixth, lay there awhile, and Agnes
Colonna, and Queen Christina of Sweden, and the Great Countess, and
many more besides, both good and bad--even to Catharine Cornaro, Queen
of Cyprus, of romantic memory. In the high clear air above, it chills
one to think of the death silence down there in the crypt; but when you
enter the church again after the long descent, and feel once more the
quick change of atmosphere by which a blind man could tell that he was
in Saint Peter's, you feel also the spell of the place and its ancient
enchantment; you do not regret the high view you left above, and the
dead under your feet seem all at once near and friendly.
[Illustration: INTERIOR OF SAINT PETER'S]
It is not an exaggeration or the misuse of a word to call it magic.
Magic is supposed to be a means of communication with beings of another
world. It is scarcely a metaphor to say that Saint Peter's is that. It
is the mere truth and no more, and you can feel that it is if you will
stand, with half-closed eyes, against one of the great pillars, just
within hearing of the voices that sing solemn music in the chapel of the
choir, and make yourself a day-dream of the people that go up the nave
by seeing them a little indistinctly. If you will but remember how much
humanity is like humanity in all ages, you can see the old life again as
it was a hundred years--two, three, five, ten hundred years before that.
If you are fortunate, just then, a score of German seminary students may
pass you, in their scarlet cloth gowns, marching two and two in order,
till they wheel by the right and go down upon their knees with military
precision before the gate of the Chapel of the Sacrament. Or if it be
the day and hour, a procession crosses the church, with lights and song
and rich vestments, and a canopy over the Sacred Host, which the
Cardinal Archpriest himself is carrying reverently before him with
upraised hands hidden under the cope, while the censers swing high to
right and left. Or the singers from the choir go by, in violet silk and
lace, hurrying along the inner south aisle to the door of the sacristy,
where heavy yellow cherubs support marble draperies under the monument
of Pius the Eighth. If you stand by your pillar a little while,
something will surely happen to help your dream, and sweep you back a
century or two.
And if not, and if you have a little imagination of your own which can
stir itself without help from outside, you can call up the figures of
those that lie dead below, and of those who in ages gone have walked the
dim aisles of the ancient church. Up the long nave comes Pelagius,
Justinian's pope, with Narses by his side, to swear by holy cross and
sacred gospel that he has not slain Vigilius, Pope before him: and this
Narses, smooth-faced, passionless, thoughtful, is the conqueror of the
Goths, and having conquered them, he would not suffer that a hair of the
remnant of them should be hurt, because he had given his word.
High-handed Henry the Fifth, claiming power over the Church, being
refused full coronation by Pope Paschal till he yields, seizes Pope and
College of Cardinals then and there, and imprisons them till he has
starved them to submission, and half requites the Church for Gregory's
humiliation of the father whom he himself thrust from the throne--of
that Henry whom the strong Hildebrand made to do penance barefoot on the
snow in the courtyard of Matilda's Castle at Canossa. And Matilda
herself, the Great Countess, the once all beautiful, betrayed in love,
the half sainted, the all romantic, rises before you from her tomb
below, in straight, rich robes and flowing golden hair, and once more
makes gift of all her vast possessions to the Church of Rome. Nicholas
Rienzi strides by, strange compound of heroism, vanity and high poetry,
calling himself in one breath the people's tribune, and Augustus, and an
emperor's son. There is a rush of armed men shouting furiously in
Spanish, 'Carne! Sangre! Bourbon!' There is a clanging of steel, a
breaking down of gates, and the Constable of Bourbon's horde pours in,
irresistible, ravaging all, while he himself lies stark and stiff
outside, pierced by Bernardino Passeri's short bolt, and Clement
trembles in Sant' Angelo. Christina of Sweden, Monaldeschi's murder red
upon her soul, comes next, fawning for forgiveness, to die in due time
over there in the Corsini palace by the Tiber.
A man may call up half the world's history in half an hour in such a
place, toward evening, when the golden light streams through the Holy
Dove in the apse. And, in imagination, to those who have seen the great
pageants within our memory, the individual figures grow smaller as the
magnificence of the display increases out of all proportion, until the
church fills again with the vast throngs that witnessed the jubilees of
Leo the Thirteenth in recent years, and fifty thousand voices send up a
rending cheer while the most splendid procession of these late days goes
by.
It was in the Chapel of the Sacrament that the body of the good Pope
Pius the Ninth was laid in state for several days. That was a strange
and solemn sight, too. The gates of the church were all shut but one,
and that was only a little opened, so that the people passed in one by
one from the great wedge-shaped crowd outside--a crowd that began at the
foot of the broad steps in the Piazza, and struggled upward all the
afternoon, closer and closer toward the single entrance. For in the
morning only the Roman nobles and the prelates and high ecclesiastics
were admitted, by another way. Within the church the thin stream of men
and women passed quickly between a double file of Italian soldiers. That
was the first and last time since 1870 that Italian troops were under
arms within the consecrated precincts. It was still winter, and the
afternoon light was dim, and it seemed a long way to the chapel. The
good man lay low, with his slippered feet between the bars of the closed
gate. The people paused as they passed, and most of them kissed the
embroidered cross, and looked at the still features, before they went
on. It was dim, but the six tall waxen torches threw a warm light on the
quiet face, and the white robes reflected it around. There were three
torches on each side, too, and there were three Noble Guards in full
dress, motionless, with drawn swords, as though on parade. But no one
looked at them. Only the marble face, with its kind, far-away smile,
fixed itself in each man's eyes, and its memory remained with each when
he had gone away. It was very solemn and simple, and there were no other
lights in the church save the little lamps about the Confession and
before the altars. The long, thin stream of people went on swiftly and
out by the sacristy all the short afternoon till it was night, and the
rest of the unsatisfied crowd was left outside as the single gate was
closed.
Few saw the scene which followed, when the good Pope's body had lain
four days in state, and was then placed in its coffin at night, to be
hoisted high and swung noiselessly into the temporary tomb above the
small door on the east side--that is, to the left--of the Chapel of the
Choir. It was for a long time the custom that each pope should lie there
until his successor died, when his body was removed to the monument
prepared for it in the mean time, and the Pope just dead was laid in the
same place.
The church was almost dark, and only in the Chapel of the Choir and in
that of the Holy Sacrament, which are opposite each other, a number of
big wax candles shed a yellow light. In the niche over the door a mason
was still at work, with a tallow dip, clearly visible below. The triple
coffin stood before the altar in the Chapel of the Choir. Opposite,
where the body still lay, the Noble Guards and the Swiss Guards, in
their breastplates, kept watch with drawn swords and halberds.
The Noble Guards carried the bier on their shoulders in solemn
procession, with chanting choir, robed bishop, and tramping soldiers,
round by the Confession and across the church, and lifted the body into
the coffin. The Pope had been very much beloved by all who were near
him, and more than one grey-haired prelate shed tears of genuine grief
that night.
In the coffin, in accordance with an ancient custom, a bag was placed
containing ninety-three medals, one of gold, one of silver and one of
bronze, for each of the thirty-one years which Pope Pius had reigned;
and a history of the pontificate, written on parchment, was also
deposited at the feet of the body.
When the leaden coffin was soldered, six seals were placed upon it, five
by cardinals, and one by the archivist. During the ceremony the
Protonotary Apostolic, the Chancellor of the Apostolic Chamber and the
Notary of the Chapter of Saint Peter's were busy, pen in hand, writing
down the detailed protocol of the proceedings.
The last absolution was pronounced, and the coffin in its outer case of
elm was slowly moved out and raised in slings, and gently swung into the
niche. The masons bricked up the opening in the presence of cardinals
and guards, and long before midnight the marble slab, carved to
represent the side of a sarcophagus, was in its place, with its simple
inscription, 'Pius IX, P.M.'
From time immemorial the well containing the marble staircase which
leads down to the tomb of Saint Peter has been called the 'Confession.'
The word, I believe, is properly applied to the altar-rail, from the
ancient practice of repeating there the general confession immediately
before receiving the Communion, a custom now slightly modified. But I
may be wrong in giving this derivation. At all events, a marble
balustrade follows the horseshoe shape of the well, and upon it are
placed ninety-five gilded lamps, which burn perpetually. There is said
to be no special significance in the number, and they produce very
little effect by daylight.
But on the eve of Saint Peter's Day, and perhaps at some other seasons,
the Pope has been known to come down to the church by the secret
staircase leading into the Chapel of the Sacrament, to pray at the
Apostle's tomb. On such occasions a few great candlesticks with wax
torches were placed on the floor of the church, two and two, between the
Chapel and the Confession. The Pope, attended only by a few chamberlains
and Noble Guards, and dressed in his customary white cassock, passed
swiftly along in the dim light, and descended the steps to the gilded
gate beneath the high altar. A marble pope kneels there too, Pius the
Sixth, of the Braschi family, his stone draperies less white than Pope
Leo's cassock, his marble face scarcely whiter than the living Pontiff's
alabaster features.
Those are sights which few have been privileged to see. There is a sort
of centralization of mystery, if one may couple such words, in the
private pilgrimage of the head of the Church to the tomb of the chief
Apostle by night, on the eve of the day which tradition has kept from
the earliest times as the anniversary of Saint Peter's martyrdom. The
whole Catholic world, if it might, would follow Leo the Thirteenth down
those marble steps, and two hundred million voices would repeat the
prayer he says alone.
Many and solemn scenes have been acted out by night in the vast gloom of
the enormous church, and if events do not actually leave an essence of
themselves in places, as some have believed, yet the knowledge that they
have happened where we stand and recall them has a mysterious power to
thrill the heart.
Opposite the Chapel of the Sacrament is the Chapel of the Choir. Saint
Peter's is a cathedral, and is managed by a chapter of Canons, each of
whom has his seat in the choir, and his vote in the disposal of the
cathedral's income, which is considerable. The chapter maintains the
Choir of Saint Peter's, a body of musicians quite independent of the
so-called 'Pope's Choir,' which is properly termed the 'Choir of the
Sixtine Chapel,' and which is paid by the Pope. There are some radical
differences between the two. By a very ancient and inviolable
regulation, the so-called 'musico,' or artificial soprano, is never
allowed to sing in the Chapel of the Choir, where the soprano singers
are without exception men who sing in falsetto, though they speak in a
deep voice. On great occasions the Choir of the Sixtine joins in the
music in the body of the church, but never in the Chapel, and always
behind a lattice.
Secondly, no musical instruments are ever used in the Sixtine. In the
Chapel of the Choir, on the contrary, there are two large organs. The
one on the west side is employed on all ordinary occasions; it is over
two hundred years old, and is tuned about two tones below the modern
pitch. It is so worn out that an organ-builder is in attendance during
every service, to make repairs at a moment's notice. The bellows leak,
the stops stick, some notes have a chronic tendency to cipher, and the
pedal trackers unhook themselves unexpectedly. But the Canons would
certainly not think of building a new organ.
Should they ever do so, and tune the instrument to the modern pitch, the
consternation of the singers would be great; for the music is all
written for the existing organ, and could not be performed two notes
higher, not to mention the confusion that would arise where all the
music is sung at sight by singers accustomed to an unusual pitch. This
is a fact not generally known, but worthy of notice. The music sung in
Saint Peter's, and, indeed, in most Roman churches, is never rehearsed
nor practised. The music itself is entirely in manuscript, and is the
property of the choir master, or, as is the case in Saint Peter's, of
the Chapter, and there is no copyright in it beyond this fact of actual
possession, protected by the simple plan of never allowing any musician
to have his part in his hands except while he is actually performing it.
In the course of a year the same piece may be sung several times, and
the old choristers may become acquainted with a good deal of music in
this way, but never otherwise. Mozart is reported to have learned
Allegri's Miserere by ear, and to have written it down from memory. The
other famous Misereres, which are now published, were pirated in a
similar way. The choir master of that day was very unpopular. Some of
the leading singers who had sung the Misereres during many years in
succession, and had thus learned their several parts, met and put
together what they knew into a whole, which was at once published, to
the no small annoyance and discomfiture of their enemy. But much good
music is quite beyond the reach of the public--Palestrina's best
motetts, airs by Alessandro Stradella, the famous hymn of Raimondi, in
short a great musical library, an 'archivio' as the Romans call such a
collection, all of which is practically lost to the world.
It is wonderful that under such circumstances the choir of Saint Peter's
should obtain even such creditable results. At a moment's notice an
organist and about a hundred singers are called upon to execute a florid
piece of music which many have never seen nor heard; the accompaniment
is played at sight from a mere figured bass, on a tumble-down instrument
two hundred years old, and the singers, both the soloists and the
chorus, sing from thumbed bits of manuscript parts written in
old-fashioned characters on paper often green with age. No one has ever
denied the extraordinary musical facility of Italians, but if the
outside world knew how Italian church music is performed it would be
very much astonished.
It is no wonder that such music is sometimes bad. But sometimes it is
very good; for there are splendid voices among the singers, and the
Maestro Renzi, the chief organist, is a man of real talent as well as of
amazing facility. His modernizing influence is counter-balanced by that
of the old choir master, Maestro Meluzzi, a first-rate musician, who
would not for his life change a hair of the old-fashioned traditions.
Yet there are moments, on certain days, when the effect of the great old
organ, with the rich voices blending in some good harmony, is very
solemn and stirring. The outward persuasive force of religion lies
largely in its music, and the religions that have no songs make few
proselytes.
Nothing, perhaps, is more striking, as one becomes better acquainted
with Saint Peter's, than the constant variety of detail. The vast
building produces at first sight an impression of harmony, and there
appears to be a remarkable uniformity of style in all the objects one
sees. There are no oil-paintings to speak of in the church, and but few
frescoes. The great altar-pieces are almost exclusively fine mosaic
copies of famous pictures which are preserved elsewhere. Of these
reproductions the best is generally considered to be that of Guercino's
'Saint Petronilla,' at the end of the right aisle of the tribune.
Debrosses praises these mosaic altar-pieces extravagantly, and even
expresses the opinion that they are probably superior in point of colour
to the originals from which they are copied. In execution they are
certainly wonderful, and many a stranger looks at them and passes on,
believing them to be oil-paintings. They possess the quality of being
imperishable and beyond all influence of climate or dampness, and they
are masterpieces of mechanical workmanship. But many will think them
hard and unsympathetic in outline, and decidedly crude in colour. Much
wit has been manufactured by the critics at the expense of Guido Reni's
'Michael,' for instance, and as many sharp things could be said about a
good many other works of the same kind in the church. Yet, on the whole,
they do not destroy the general harmony. Big as they are, when they are
seen from a little distance they sink into mere insignificant patches of
colour, all but lost in the deep richness of the whole.
As for the statues and monuments, between the 'Pietà' of Michelangelo
and Bracci's horrible tomb of Benedict the Fourteenth, there is the step
which, according to Tom Paine, separates the sublime from the
ridiculous. That very witty saying has in it only just the small
ingredient of truth without which wit remains mere humour. Between the
ridiculous and the sublime there may sometimes be, indeed, but one step
in the execution; but there is always the enormous moral distance which
separates real feeling from affectation--the gulf which divides, for
instance, Bracci's group from Michelangelo's.
[Illustration: PIETÀ OF MICHELANGELO]
The 'Pietà' is one of the great sculptor's early works. It is badly
placed. It is dwarfed by the heavy architecture above and around it. It
is insulted by a pair of hideous bronze cherubs. There is a manifest
improbability in the relative size of the figure of Christ and that of
the Blessed Virgin. Yet in spite of all, it is one of the most beautiful
and touching groups in the whole world, and by many degrees the best
work of art in the great church. Michelangelo was a man of the strongest
dramatic instinct even in early youth, and when he laid his hand to the
marble and cut his 'Pietà' he was in deep sympathy with the supreme
drama of man's history. He found in the stone, once and for all time,
the grief of the human mother for her son, not comforted by
foreknowledge of resurrection, nor lightened by prescience of near
glory. He discovered in the marble, by one effort, the divinity of
death's rest after torture, and taught the eye to see that the
dissolution of this dying body is the birth of the soul that cannot die.
In the dead Christ there are two men manifest to sight. 'The first man
is of earth, earthy; the second man is the Lord from heaven.'
In the small chapel stands a strangely wrought column, enclosed in an
iron cage. The Romans now call it the Colonna Santa, the holy pillar,
and it is said to be the one against which Christ leaned when teaching
in the temple at Jerusalem. A great modern authority believes it to be
of Roman workmanship, and of the third century; but those who have lived
in the East will see much that is oriental in the fantastic ornamented
carving. It matters little. In actual fact, whatever be its origin, this
is the column known in the Middle Age as the 'Colonna degli Spiritati,'
or column of those possessed by evil spirits, and it was customary to
bind to it such unlucky individuals as fell under the suspicion of
'possession' in order to exorcise the spirit with prayers and holy
water. Aretino has made a witty scene about this in the 'Cortegiana,'
where one of the Vatican servants cheats a poor fisherman, and then
hands him over to the sacristan of Saint Peter's to be cured of an
imaginary possession by a ceremonious exorcism. Such proceedings must
have been common enough in those days when witchcraft and demonology
were elements with which rulers and lawgivers had to count at every
turn.
Leave the column and its legend in the lonely chapel, with the exquisite
'Pietà'; wander hither and thither, and note the enormous contrasts
between good and bad work which meet you at every turn. Up in the right
aisle of the tribune you will come upon what is known as Canova's
masterpiece, the tomb of Clement the Thirteenth, the Rezzonico pope, as
strange a mixture of styles and ideas as any in the world, and yet a
genuine expression of the artistic feeling of that day. The grave Pope
prays solemnly above; on the right a lovely heathen genius of Death
leans on a torch; on the left rises a female figure of Religion, one of
the most abominably bad statues in the world; below, a brace of
improbable lions, extravagantly praised by people who do not understand
leonine anatomy, recall Canova's humble origin and his first attempt at
modelling. For the sculptor began life as a waiter in a 'canova di
vino,' or wine shop, whence his name; and it was when a high dignitary
stopped to breakfast at the little wayside inn that the lad modelled a
lion in butter to grace the primitive table. The thing attracted the
rich traveller's attention, and the boy's fortune was made. The Pope is
impressive, the Death is gentle and tender, the Religion, with her crown
of gilded spikes for rays, and her clumsy cross, is a vision of bad
taste, and the sleepy lions, when separated from what has been written
about them, excite no interest. Yet somehow, from a distance, the
monument gets harmony out of its surroundings.
[Illustration: TOMB OF CLEMENT THE THIRTEENTH]
One of the best tombs in the basilica is that of Sixtus the Fourth, the
first pope of the Rovere family, in the Chapel of the Sacrament. The
bronze figure, lying low on a sarcophagus placed out on upon the floor,
has a quiet manly dignity about it which one cannot forget. But in the
same tomb lies a greater man of the same name, Julius the Second, for
whom Michelangelo made his 'Moses' in the Church of San Pietro in
Vincoli--a man who did more than any other, perhaps, to make the great
basilica what it is, and who, by a chain of mistakes, got no tomb of his
own. He who solemnly laid the foundations of the present church, and
lived to see the four main piers completed, with their arches, has only
a little slab in the pavement to recall his memory. The protector and
friend of Bramante, of Michelangelo and of Raphael,--of the great
architect, the great sculptor and the great painter,--has not so much as
the least work of any of the three to mark his place of rest. Perhaps he
needed nothing but his name.
After all, his bones have been allowed to rest in peace, which is more
than can be said of all that have been buried within the area of the
church. Urban the Sixth had no such good fortune. He so much surprised
the cardinals, as soon as they had elected him, by his vigorous moral
reforms that they hastily retired to Anagni and elected an antipope of
milder manners and less sensitive conscience. He lived to triumph over
his enemies. In Piacenza he was besieged by King Charles of Naples. He
excommunicated him, tortured seven cardinals whom he caught in the
conspiracy and put five of them to death; overcame and slew Charles,
refused him burial and had his body exposed to the derision of the
crowd. The chronicler says that 'Italy, Germany, England, Hungary,
Bohemia, Poland, Sicily and Portugal were obedient to the Lord Pope
Urban the Sixth.' He died peacefully, and was buried in Saint Peter's in
a marble sarcophagus.
But when Sixtus the Fifth, who also surprised the cardinals greatly, was
in a fit of haste to finish the dome, the masons, wanting a receptacle
for water, laid hands on Urban's stone coffin, pitched his bones into a
corner, and used the sarcophagus as they pleased, leaving it to serve as
a water-tank for many years afterwards.
In extending the foundations of the church, Paul the Third came upon the
bodies of Maria and Hermania, the two wives of Honorius, the Emperor who
'disestablished' paganism in favour of Christianity. They were sisters,
daughters of Stilicho, and had been buried in their imperial robes, with
many rich objects and feminine trinkets; and they were found intact, as
they had been buried, in the month of February, 1543. Forty pounds of
fine gold were taken from their robes alone, says Baracconi, without
counting all the jewels and trinkets, among which was a very beautiful
lamp, besides a great number of precious stones. The Pope melted down
the gold for the expenses of the building, and set the gems in a tiara,
where, if they could be identified, they certainly exist today--the very
stones worn by empresses of ancient Rome.
Then, as if in retribution, the Pope's own tomb was moved from its
place. Despoiled of two of the four statues which adorned it, the
monument is now in the tribune, and is still one of the best in the
church. A strange and tragic tale is told of it. A Spanish student, it
is said, fell madly in love with the splendid statue of Paul's
sister-in-law, Julia Farnese. He succeeded in hiding himself in the
basilica when it was closed at night, threw himself in a frenzy upon the
marble and was found stone dead beside it in the morning. The ugly
draperies of painted metal which now hide much of the statue owe their
origin to this circumstance. Classical scholars will remember that a
somewhat similar tale is told by Pliny of the Venus of Praxiteles in
Cnidus.
In spite of many assertions to the effect that the bronze statue of
Saint Peter which is venerated in the church was originally an image of
Jupiter Capitolinus, the weight of modern authority and artistic
judgment is to the contrary. The work cannot really be earlier than the
fifth century, and is therefore of a time after Honorius and the
disestablishment. Anyone who will take the trouble to examine the lives
of the early popes in Muratori may read the detailed accounts of what
each one did for the churches. It is not by any means impossible that
this may be one of the statues made under Saint Innocent the First, a
contemporary of Honorius, in whose time a Roman lady called Vestina
made gift to the church of vast possessions, the proceeds of which were
used in building and richly adorning numerous places of worship. In any
case, since it is practically certain that the statue was originally
intended for a portrait of Saint Peter, and has been regarded as such
for nearly fifteen hundred years, it commands our respect, if not our
veneration.
The Roman custom of kissing the foot, then bending and placing one's
head under it, signifies submission to the commands of the Church, and
is not, as many suppose, an act of devotion to the statue.
The practice of dressing it in magnificent robes on the feast of Saint
Peter is connected with the ancient Roman custom, which required
censors, when entering upon office, to paint the earthen statue of
Jupiter Capitolinus a bright red. But the connection lies in the Italian
mind and character, which cling desperately to external practices for
their hold upon inward principles. It is certainly not an inheritance of
uninterrupted tradition, as Roman church music, on the contrary, most
certainly is; for there is every reason to believe that the recitations
now noted in the Roman missal were very like those used by the ancient
Romans on solemn occasions.
The church is not only a real landmark. Astronomers say that if there
were a building of the same dimensions on the moon we could easily see
it with our modern telescopes. It is also, in a manner, one of Time's
great mile-stones, of which some trace will probably remain till the
very end of the world's life. Its mere mass will insure to it the
permanence of the great pyramid of Cheops. Its mere name associates it
for ever with the existence of Christianity from the earliest time. It
has stamped itself upon the minds of millions of men as the most vast
monument of the ages. Its very defects are destined to be as lasting as
its beauties, and its mighty faults are more imposing than the small
perfections of the Greeks. Between it and the Parthenon, as between the
Roman empire and the Athenian commonwealth, one may choose, but one
dares not make comparison. The genius of the Greeks absorbed the world's
beauty into itself, distilled its perfection, and gave humanity its most
subtle quintessence; but the Latin arm ruled the world itself, and the
imperial Latin intelligence could never find any expression fitted to
its enormous measure. That is the secret of the monstrous element in all
the Romans built. And that supernormal giantism showed itself almost for
the last time in the building of Saint Peter's, when the Latin race had
reached its last great development, and the power of the Latin popes
overshadowed the whole world, and was itself about to be humbled. Before
Michelangelo was dead Charles the Fifth had been Emperor forty years,
Doctor Martin Luther had denied the doctrine of salvation by works, the
nations had broken loose from the Popes, and the world was at war.
[Illustration]
Let us part here, at the threshold of Saint Peter's, not saying farewell
to Rome, nor taking leave without hope of meeting on this consecrated
ground again; but since the city lies behind us, region beyond region,
memory over memory, legend within legend, and because we have passed
through it by steps and by stations, very quickly, yet not thoughtlessly
nor irreverently, let us now go each our way for a time, remembering
some of those things which we have seen and of which we have talked,
that we may know them better if we see them again.
For a man can no more say a last farewell to Rome than he can take leave
of eternity. The years move on, but she waits; the cities fall, but she
stands; the old races of men lie dead in the track wherein mankind
wanders always between two darknesses; yet Rome lives, and her changes
are not from life to death, as ours are, but from one life to another.
A man may live with Rome, laugh with her, dream with her, weep with her,
die at her feet; but for him who knows her there is no good-bye, for she
has taken the high seat of his heart, and whither he goes, she is with
him, in joy or sorrow, with wonder, longing or regret, as the chords of
his heart were tuned by his angel in heaven.
But she is as a well-loved woman, whose dear face is drawn upon a man's
heart by the sharp memory of a cruel parting, line for line, shadow for
shadow, look for look, as she was when he saw her last; and line for
line he remembers her and longs for her smile and her tender word. Yet
be the lines ever so deep-graven, and the image ever so sweet and true,
when the time of parting is over, when he comes back and she stands
where she stood, with eyes that lighten to his eyes, then she is better
loved than he knew and dearer than he had guessed. Then the heart that
has steadily beaten time to months of parting, leaps like a child at the
instant of meeting again; then eyes that have so long fed on memory's
vision widen and deepen with joy of the living truth; then the soul that
has hungered and starved through an endless waiting, is suddenly filled
with life and satisfied of its faith.
So he who loves Rome, and leaves her, remembers her long and well,
telling himself that he knows how every stone of her walls and her
streets would look again; but he comes back at last, and sees her as
she is, and he stands amazed at the grandeur of all that has been, and
is touched to the heart by the sad loveliness of much that is. Together,
the thoughts of love and reverence rise in words, and with them comes
the deep wonder at something very great and high. For he himself is
grown grey and war-worn in the strife of a few poor years, while through
five and twenty centuries Rome has faced war and the world; and he, a
gladiator of life, bows his head before her, wondering how his own fight
shall end at last, while his lips pronounce the submission of his own
mortality to her abiding endurance--
AVE ROMA IMMORTALIS, MORITURUS TE SALUTAT
Index
A
Abruzzi, i. 159; ii. 230
Accoramboni, Flaminio, i. 296
Vittoria, i. 135, 148, 289-296, 297
Agrarian Law, i. 23
Agrippa, i. 90, 271; ii. 102
the Younger, ii. 103
Alaric, i. 252; ii. 297
Alba Longa, i. 3, 78, 130
Albergo dell' Orso, i. 288
Alberic, ii. 29
Albornoz, ii. 19, 20, 74
Aldobrandini, i. 209; ii. 149
Olimpia, i. 209
Alfonso, i. 185
Aliturius, ii. 103
Altieri, i. 226; ii. 45
Ammianus Marcellinus, i. 132, 133, 138
Amphitheatre, Flavian, i. 91, 179
Amulius, i. 3
Anacletus, ii. 295, 296, 304
Anagni, i. 161, 165, 307; ii. 4, 5
Ancus Martius, i. 4
Angelico, Beato, ii. 158, 169, 190-192, 195, 285
Anguillara, i. 278; ii. 138
Titta della, ii. 138, 139
Anio, the, i. 93
Novus, i. 144
Vetus, i. 144
Annibaleschi, Riccardo degli, i. 278
Antiochus, ii. 120
Antipope--
Anacletus, ii. 84
Boniface, ii. 28
Clement, i. 126
Gilbert, i. 127
John of Calabria, ii. 33-37
Antonelli, Cardinal, ii. 217, 223, 224
Antonina, i. 266
Antonines, the, i. 113, 191, 271
Antoninus, Marcus Aurelius, i. 46, 96, 113, 114, 190, 191
Appian Way, i. 22, 94
Appius Claudius, i. 14, 29
Apulia, Duke of, i. 126, 127; ii. 77
Aqua Virgo, i. 155
Aqueduct of Claudius, i. 144
Arbiter, Petronius, i. 85
Arch of--
Arcadius, i. 192
Claudius, i. 155
Domitian, i. 191, 205
Gratian, i. 191
Marcus Aurelius, i. 96, 191, 205
Portugal, i. 205
Septimius Severus, ii. 93
Valens, i. 191
Archive House, ii. 75
Argiletum, the, i. 72
Ariosto, ii. 149, 174
Aristius, i. 70, 71
Arnold of Brescia, ii. 73, 76-89
Arnulf, ii. 41
Art, i. 87; ii. 152
and morality, i. 260, 261; ii. 178, 179
religion, i. 260, 261
Barocco, i. 303, 316
Byzantine in Italy, ii. 155, 184, 185
development of taste in, ii. 198
factors in the progress of art, ii. 181
engraving, ii. 186
improved tools, ii. 181
individuality, i. 262; ii. 175-177
Greek influence on, i. 57-63
modes of expression of, ii. 181
fresco, ii. 181-183
oil painting, ii. 184-186
of the Renascence, i. 231, 262; ii. 154
phases of, in Italy, ii. 188
progress of, during the Middle Age, ii. 166, 180
transition from handicraft to, ii. 153
Artois, Count of, i. 161
Augustan Age, i. 57-77
Augustulus, i. 30, 47, 53; ii. 64
Augustus, i. 30, 43-48, 69, 82, 89, 90, 184, 219, 251, 252,
254, 270; ii. 64, 75, 95, 102, 291
Aurelian, i. 177, 179, 180; ii. 150
Avalos, Francesco, d', i. 174, 175
Aventine, the, i. 23, 76; ii. 10, 40, 85, 119-121, 124, 125,
126, 127, 129, 132, 302
Avignon, i. 167, 273, 277; ii. 6, 9
B
Bacchanalia, ii. 122
Bacchic worship, i. 76; ii. 120
Bajazet the Second, Sultan, i. 276
Baracconi, i. 104, 141, 178, 188, 252, 264, 274, 304; ii. 41, 45,
128, 130, 138, 323
Barberi, i. 202
Barberini, the, i. 157, 187, 226, 268, 301; ii. 7
Barbo, i. 202; ii. 45
Barcelona, i. 308
Bargello, the, i. 129, 293, 296; ii. 42
Basil and Constantine, ii. 33
Basilica (Pagan)--
Julia, i. 66, 71, 106; ii. 92
Basilicas (Christian) of--
Constantine, i. 90; ii. 292, 297
Liberius, i. 138
Philip and Saint James, i. 170
Saint John Lateran, i. 107, 112, 117, 278, 281
Santa Maria Maggiore, i. 107, 135, 139, 147, 148, 166, 208, 278; ii. 118
Santi Apostoli, i. 157, 170-172, 205, 241, 242; ii. 213
Sicininus, i. 134, 138
Baths, i. 91
of Agrippa, i. 271
of Caracalla, ii. 119
of Constantine, i. 144, 188
of Diocletian, i. 107, 129, 145-147, 149, 289, 292
of Novatus, i. 145
of Philippus, i. 145
of public, i. 144
of Severus Alexander, ii. 28
of Titus, i. 55, 107, 152
Befana, the, i. 298, 299, 300; ii. 25
Belisarius, i. 266, 267, 269
Benediction of 1846, the, i. 183
Benevento, Cola da, i. 219, 220
Bernard, ii. 77-80
Bernardi, Gianbattista, ii. 54
Bernini, i. 147, 301, 302, 303; ii. 24
Bibbiena, Cardinal, ii. 146, 285
Maria, ii. 146
Bismarck, ii. 224, 232, 236, 237
Boccaccio, i. 211, 213
Vineyard, the, i. 189
Bologna, i. 259; ii. 58
Borghese, the, i. 206, 226
Scipio, i. 187
Borgia, the, i. 209
Cæsar, i. 149, 151, 169, 213, 287; ii. 150, 171, 282, 283
Gandia, i. 149, 150, 151, 287
Lucrezia, i. 149, 177, 185, 287; ii. 129, 151, 174
Rodrigo, i. 287; ii. 242, 265, 282
Vanozza, i. 149, 151, 287
Borgo, the Region, i. 101, 127; ii. 132, 147, 202-214, 269
Borromini, i. 301, 302; ii. 24
Botticelli, ii. 188, 190, 195, 200, 276
Bracci, ii. 318
Bracciano, i. 282, 291, 292, 294
Duke of, i. 289
Bramante, i. 305; ii. 144, 145, 274, 298, 322
Brescia, i. 286
Bridge. See _Ponte_
Ælian, the, i. 274
Cestian, ii. 105
Fabrician, ii. 105
Sublician, i. 6, 23, 67; ii. 127, 294
Brotherhood of Saint John Beheaded, ii. 129, 131
Brothers of Prayer and Death, i. 123, 204, 242
Brunelli, ii. 244
Brutus, i. 6, 12, 18, 41, 58, 80; ii. 96
Buffalmacco, ii. 196
Bull-fights, i. 252
Burgundians, i. 251
C
Cæsar, Julius, i. 29-33, 35-41, 250; ii. 102, 224, 297
Cæsars, the, i. 44-46, 125, 249, 252, 253; ii. 224
Julian, i. 252
Palaces of, i. 4, 191; ii. 95
Caetani, i. 51, 115, 159, 161, 163, 206, 277
Benedict, i. 160
Caligula, i. 46, 252; ii. 96
Campagna, the, i. 92, 94, 158, 237, 243, 253, 282, 312; ii. 88, 107, 120
Campitelli, the Region, i. 101; ii. 64
Campo--
dei Fiori, i. 297
Marzo (Campus Martius), i. 65, 112, 271
the Region, i. 101, 248, 250, 275; ii. 6, 44
Vaccino, i. 128-131, 173
Canale, Carle, i. 287
Cancelleria, i, 102, 305, 312, 315, 316; ii. 223
Canidia, i. 64; ii. 293
Canossa, i. 126; ii. 307
Canova, ii. 320
Capet, Hugh, ii. 29
Capitol, the, i. 8, 14, 24, 29, 72, 107, 112, 167, 190, 204, 278, 282;
ii. 12, 13, 21, 22, 52, 64, 65, 67-75, 84, 121, 148, 302
Capitoline hill, i. 106, 194
Captains of the Regions, i. 110, 112, 114
Election of, i. 112
Caracci, the, i. 264
Carafa, the, ii. 46, 49, 50, 56, 111
Cardinal, i. 186, 188; ii. 56, 204
Carnival, i. 107, 193-203, 241, 298; ii. 113
of Saturn, i. 194
Carpineto, ii. 229, 230, 232, 239, 287
Carthage, i. 20, 26, 88
Castagno, Andrea, ii. 89, 185
Castle of--
Grottaferrata, i. 314
Petrella, i. 286
the Piccolomini, i. 268
Sant' Angelo, i. 114, 116, 120, 126, 127, 128, 129, 259, 278, 284, 308,
314; ii. 17, 28, 37, 40, 56, 59, 60, 109, 152, 202-214, 216, 269
Castracane, Castruccio, i. 165, 166, 170
Catacombs, the, i. 139
of Saint Petronilla, ii. 125
Sebastian, ii. 296
Catanei, Vanossa de, i. 287
Catharine, Queen of Cyprus, ii. 305
Cathedral of Siena, i. 232
Catiline, i. 27; ii. 96, 294
Cato, ii. 121
Catullus, i. 86
Cavour, Count, ii. 90, 224, 228, 237
Cellini, Benvenuto, i. 311, 315; ii. 157, 195
Cenci, the, ii. 1
Beatrice, i. 147, 285-287; ii. 2, 129, 151
Francesco, i. 285; ii. 2
Centra Pio, ii. 238, 239
Ceri, Renzo da, i. 310
Cesarini, Giuliano, i. 174; ii. 54, 89
Chapel, Sixtine. See under _Vatican_
Charlemagne, i. 32, 49, 51, 53, 76, 109; ii. 297
Charles of Anjou, i. ii. 160
Albert of Sardinia, ii. 221
the Fifth, i. 131, 174, 206, 220, 305, 306; ii. 138
Chiesa. See _Church_
Nuova, i. 275
Chigi, the, i. 258
Agostino, ii. 144, 146
Fabio, ii. 146
Christianity in Rome, i. 176
Christina, Queen of Sweden, ii. 150, 151, 304, 308
Chrysostom, ii. 104, 105
Churches of,--
the Apostles, i. 157, 170-172, 205, 241, 242; ii. 213
Aracoeli, i. 52, 112, 167; ii. 57, 70, 75
Cardinal Mazarin, i. 186
the Gallows, i. 284
Holy Guardian Angel, i. 122
the Minerva, ii. 55
the Penitentiaries, ii. 216
the Portuguese, i. 250
Saint Adrian, i. 71
Agnes, i. 301, 304
Augustine, ii. 207
Bernard, i. 291
Callixtus, ii. 125
Charles, i. 251
Eustace, ii. 23, 24, 26, 39
George in Velabro, i. 195; ii. 10
Gregory on the Aventine, ii. 129
Ives, i. 251; ii. 23, 24
John of the Florentines, i. 273
Pine Cone, ii. 56
Peter's on the Janiculum, ii. 129
Sylvester, i. 176
Saints Nereus and Achillæus, ii. 125
Vincent and Anastasius, i. 186
San Clemente, i. 143
Giovanni in Laterano, i. 113
Lorenzo in Lucina, i. 192
Miranda, i. 71
Marcello, i. 165, 192
Pietro in Montorio, ii. 151
Vincoli, i. 118, 283; ii. 322
Salvatore in Cacaberis, i. 112
Stefano Rotondo, i. 106
Sant' Angelo in Pescheria, i. 102; ii. 3, 10, 110
Santa Francesca Romana, i. 111
Maria de Crociferi, i. 267
degli Angeli, i. 146, 258, 259
dei Monti, i. 118
del Pianto, i. 113
di Grotto Pinta, i. 294
in Campo Marzo, ii. 23
in Via Lata, i. 142
Nuova, i. 111, 273
Transpontina, ii. 212
della Vittoria, i. 302
Prisca, ii. 124
Sabina, i. 278; ii. 40
Trinità dei Pellegrini, ii. 110
Cicero, i. 45, 73; ii. 96, 294
Cimabue, ii. 156, 157, 162, 163, 169, 188, 189
Cinna, i. 25, 27
Circolo, ii. 245
Circus, the, i. 64, 253
Maximus, i. 64, 66; ii. 84, 119
City of Augustus, i. 57-77
Making of the, i. 1-21
of Rienzi, i. 93; ii. 6-8
of the Empire, i. 22-56
of the Middle Age, i. 47, 78-99, 92
of the Republic, i. 47
today, i. 55, 92
Civilization, ii. 177
and bloodshed, ii. 218
morality, ii. 178
progress, ii. 177-180
Claudius, i. 46, 255, 256; ii. 102
Cloelia, i. 13
Coelian hill, i. 106
Collegio Romano, i. 102; ii. 45, 61
Colonna, the, i. 51, 94, 104, 135, 153, 157-170, 172, 176, 187, 206, 217,
251, 252, 271, 272, 275-283, 306-315; ii. 2, 6, 8, 10, 16, 20, 37, 51,
54, 60, 106, 107, 126, 204
Giovanni, i. 104
Jacopo, i. 159, 165, 192
Lorenzo, ii. 126, 204-213
Marcantonio, i. 182; ii. 54
Pietro, i. 159
Pompeo, i. 305, 310-317; ii. 205
Prospero, ii. 205
Sciarra, i. 162-166, 192, 206, 213, 229, 275,279, 281, 307
Stephen, i. 161, 165; ii. 13, 16
the Younger, i. 168
Vittoria, i. 157, 173-177; ii. 174
the Region, i. 101, 190-192; ii. 209
War between Orsini and, i. 51, 104, 159, 168, 182, 275-283, 306-315;
ii. 12, 18, 126, 204-211
Colosseum, i. 56, 86, 90, 96, 106, 107, 111, 125, 152, 153, 187, 191, 209,
278; ii. 25, 64, 66, 84, 97, 202, 203, 301
Column of Piazza Colonna, i. 190, 192
Comitium, i. 112, 257, 268
Commodus, i. 46, 55; ii. 97, 285
Confraternities, i. 108, 204
Conscript Fathers, i. 78, 112
Constable of Bourbon, i. 52, 259, 273, 304, 309-311; ii. 308
Constans, i, 135, 136
Constantine, i. 90, 113, 163
Constantinople, i. 95, 119
Contests in the Forum, i. 27, 130
Convent of Saint Catharine, i. 176
Convent of Saint Sylvester, i. 176
Corneto, Cardinal of, ii. 282, 283
Cornomania, i. 141
Cornutis, i. 87
Coromania, i. 141, 144
Corsini, the, ii. 150
Corso, i. 96, 106, 108, 192, 196, 205, 206, 229, 251
Vittorio Emanuele, i. 275
Corte Savella, i. 284; ii. 52
Cosmas, the, ii. 156, 157
Costa, Giovanni da, i. 205
Court House, i. 71
Crassus, i. 27, 31; ii. 128
Crawford, Thomas, i. 147
Crescentius, ii. 40, 41
Crescenzi, i. 114; ii. 27, 40, 209
Crescenzio, ii. 28-40
Stefana, ii. 39
Crispi, i. 116, 187
Crusade, the Second, ii. 86, 105
Crusades, the, i. 76
Curatii, i. 3, 131
Customs of early Rome, i. 9, 48
in dress, i. 48
religion, i. 48
D
Dante, i. 110; ii. 164, 175, 244
Decameron, i. 239
Decemvirs, i. 14; ii. 120
Decrees, Semiamiran, i. 178
Democracy, i. 108
Development of Rome, i. 7, 18
some results of, i. 154
under Barons, i. 51
Decemvirs, i. 14
the Empire, i. 29, 30
Gallic invasion, i. 15-18
Kings, i. 2-7, 14-45
Middle Age, i. 47, 92, 210-247
Papal rule, i. 46-50
Republic, i. 7-14
Tribunes, i. 14
Dictator of Rome, i. 29, 79
Dietrich of Bern, ii. 297
Dionysus, ii. 121
Dolabella, i. 34
Domenichino, ii. 147
Domestic life in Rome, i. 9
Dominicans, i. 158; ii. 45, 46, 49, 50, 60, 61
Domitian, i. 45, 152, 205; ii. 104, 114, 124, 295
Doria, the, i. 206; ii. 45
Albert, i. 207
Andrea, i. 207
Conrad, i. 207
Gian Andrea, i. 207
Lamba, i. 207
Paganino, i. 207
Doria-Pamfili, i. 206-209
Dress in early Rome, i. 48
Drusus, ii. 102
Duca, Antonio del, i. 146, 147
Giacomo del, i. 146
Dürer, Albert, ii. 198
E
Education, ii. 179
Egnatia, i. 75
Elagabalus, i. 77, 177, 179; ii. 296, 297
Election of the Pope, ii. 41, 42, 277
Electoral Wards, i. 107
Elizabeth, Queen of England, ii. 47
Emperors, Roman, i. 46
of the East, i. 95, 126
Empire of Constantinople, i. 46
of Rome, i. 15, 17, 22-28, 31, 45, 47, 53, 60, 72, 99
Encyclicals, ii. 244
Erasmus, ii. 151
Esquiline, the, i. 26, 106, 139, 186; ii. 95, 131, 193
Este, Ippolito d', i. 185
Etruria, i. 12, 15
Euodus, i. 255, 256
Eustace, Saint, ii. 24, 25
square of, ii. 25, 42
Eustachio. See _Sant' Eustachio_
Eutichianus, ii. 296
Eve of Saint John, i. 140
the Epiphany, 299
F
Fabius, i. 20
Fabatosta, ii. 64, 84
Farnese, the, ii. 151
Julia, ii. 324
Farnesina, the, ii. 144, 149, 151
Fathers, Roman, i. 13, 78, 79-84
Ferdinand, ii. 205
Ferrara, Duke of, i. 185
Festivals, i. 193, 298
Aryan in origin, i. 173
Befana, i. 299-301
Carnival, i. 193-203
Church of the Apostle, i. 172, 173
Coromania, i. 141
Epifania, i. 298-301
Floralia, i. 141
Lupercalia, i. 194
May-day in the Campo Vaccino, i. 173
Saturnalia, i. 194
Saint John's Eve, i. 140
Festus, ii. 128
Feuds, family, i. 168
Field of Mars. See _Campo Marzo_
Finiguerra, Maso, ii. 186-188
Flamen Dialis, i. 34
Floralia. See _Festivals_
Florence, i. 160
Forli, Melozzo da, i. 171
Fornarina, the, ii. 144, 146
Forum, i, 8, 9, 11, 14, 15, 17, 26, 27, 64, 72, 111, 126, 129, 194;
ii. 64, 92-94, 97, 102, 294, 295
of Augustus, i. 119
Trajan, i. 155, 171, 172, 191
Fountains (Fontane) of--
Egeria, ii. 124
Trevi, i. 155, 156, 186, 267
Tullianum, i. 8
Franconia, Duke of, ii. 36, 53
Francis the First, i. 131, 174, 206, 219, 304
Frangipani, i. 50, 94, 153; ii. 77, 79, 84, 85
Frederick, Barbarossa, ii. 34, 85, 87
of Naples, i. 151
the Second, ii. 34
Fulvius, ii. 121
G
Gabrini, Lawrence, ii. 4
Nicholas, i. 23, 93, 103, 168, 211, 281; ii. 3-23, 308
Gaeta, ii. 36
Galba, ii. 295
Galen, i. 55
Galera, i. 282, 291
Galileo, i. 268
Gardens, i. 93
Cæsar's, i. 66, 68
of Lucullus, i. 254, 270
of the Pigna, ii. 273
Pincian, i. 255
the Vatican, ii. 243, 271, 287
Gargonius, i. 65
Garibaldi, ii. 90, 219, 220, 228, 237
Gastaldi, Cardinal, i. 259
Gate. See _Porta_
the Colline, i. 250
Lateran, i. 126, 154
Septimian, ii. 144, 147
Gebhardt, Émile, i. 213
Gemonian Steps, ii. 67, 294
Genseric, i. 96; ii. 70
George of Franzburg, i. 310
Gherardesca, Ugolino della, ii. 160
Ghetto, i. 102; ii. 2, 101, 110-118
Ghibellines, the, i. 129, 153, 158; ii. 6
Ghiberti, ii. 157.
Ghirlandajo, ii. 157, 172, 276
Giantism, i. 90-92, 210, 302
Gibbon, i. 160
Giotto, ii. 157, 160-165, 169, 188, 189, 200
Gladstone, ii. 231, 232
Golden Milestone, i. 72, 92, 194
Goldoni, i. 265
Goldsmithing, ii. 156, 157, 186, 187
"Good Estate" of Rienzi, ii. 10-12
Gordian, i. 91
Goths, ii. 297, 307.
Gozzoli, Benozzo, ii. 190, 195
Gracchi, the, i. 22, 28
Caius, i. 23; ii. 84
Cornelia, i. 22, 24
Tiberius, i. 23; ii. 102
Gratidianus, i. 27
Guards, Noble, ii. 241, 243, 247, 248, 309, 310, 312
Palatine, ii. 247, 248
Swiss, ii. 246, 247, 310
Guelphs, i. 159; ii. 42, 126, 138
and Ghibellines, i. 129, 153, 275; ii. 160, 162, 173
Guiscard, Robert, i. 95, 126, 127, 129, 144, 252; ii. 70
H
Hadrian, i. 90, 180; ii. 25, 202, 203
Hannibal, i. 20
Hasdrubal, i. 21
Henry the Second, ii. 47
Fourth, i. 126, 127; ii. 307
Fifth, ii. 307
Seventh of Luxemburg, i. 273, 276-279; ii. 5
Eighth, i. 219; ii. 47, 274
Hermann, i. 46
Hermes of Olympia, i. 86
Hermogenes, i. 67
Hilda's Tower, i. 250
Hildebrand, i. 52, 126-129; ii.
Honorius, ii. 323, 324
Horace, i. 44, 57-75, 85, 87; ii. 293
and the Bore, i. 65-71
Camen Seculare of, i. 75
the Satires of, i. 73, 74
Horatii, i. 3, 131
Horatius, i. 5, 6, 13, 23; ii. 127
Horses of Monte Cavallo, i. 181
Hospice of San Claudio, i. 251
Hospital of--
Santo Spirito, i. 274; ii. 214, 215
House of Parliament, i. 271
Hugh of Burgundy, ii. 30
of Tuscany, ii. 30
Huns' invasion, i. 15, 49, 132
Huxley, ii. 225, 226
I
Imperia, ii. 144
Infessura, Stephen, ii. 59, 60, 204-213
Inn of--
The Bear, i. 288
Falcone, ii. 26
Lion, i. 287
Vanossa, i. 288
Inquisition, i. 286; ii. 46, 49, 52, 53, 54
Interminelli, Castruccio degli, i. 165.
Irene, Empress, i. 109
Ischia, i. 175
Island of Saint Bartholomew, i. 272; ii. 1
Isola Sacra, i. 93
Italian life during the Middle Age, i. 210, 247
from 17th to 18th centuries, i. 260, 263, 264
J
Janiculum, the, i. 15, 253, 270; ii. 268, 293, 294, 295
Jesuit College, ii. 61
Jesuits, ii. 45, 46, 61-63
Jews, i. 96; ii. 101-119
John of Cappadocia, i. 267, 268
Josephus, ii. 103
Juba, i. 40
Jugurtha, i. 25
Jupiter Capitolinus, ii. 324, 325
priest of, i. 80, 133
Justinian, i. 267
Juvenal, i. 112; ii. 105, 107, 124
K
Kings of Rome, i. 2-7
L
Lampridius, Ælius, i. 178
Lanciani, i. 79, 177
Lateran, the, i. 106, 112-114, 129, 140-142
Count of, i. 166
Latin language, i. 47
Latini Brunetto, ii. 163
Laurentum, i. 55, 93
Lazaret of Saint Martha, ii. 245
League, Holy, i. 305, 306, 313, 314
Lentulus, ii. 128
Lepida, Domitia, i. 255, 256
Letus, Pomponius, i. 139; ii. 210
Lewis of Bavaria, i. 165, 167, 192, 275
the Seventh, ii. 86, 105
Eleventh, i. 104, 151
Fourteenth, i. 253
Library of--
Collegio Romano, ii. 45
Vatican, ii. 275, 276, 282
Victor Emmanuel, ii. 45, 61
Lieges, Bishop of, i. 280
Lincoln, Abraham, ii. 231, 236
Lippi, Filippo, ii. 190, 191, 192-195, 200
Liszt, i. 185, 203; ii. 176
Livia, i. 220, 252
Livy, i. 44, 47
Lombards, the, i. 251
Lombardy, i. 309
Lorrain, i. 264
Loyola, Ignatius, ii. 46, 62
Lucilius, i. 74
Lucretia, i. 5, 12, 13
Lucullus, i. 257, 270
Lupercalia, i. 194
Lupercus, i. 194
M
Macchiavelli, ii. 174
Mæcenas, i. 62, 69, 74, 140; ii. 293
Mænads, ii. 122
Maldachini, Olimpia, i. 304, 305
Mamertine Prison, i. 25, ii. 72, 293
Mancini, Maria, i. 170, 187
Mancino, Paul, ii. 210
Manlius, Cnæus, ii. 121
Marcus, i. 29; ii. 71, 84
Titus, i. 80
Mantegna, Andrea, ii. 157, 169, 188, 196-198
Marcomanni, i. 190
Marforio, i. 305
Marino, i. 174
Marius, Caius, i. 25, 29
Marius and Sylla, i. 25, 29, 36, 45, 53; ii. 69
Mark Antony, i. 30, 93, 195, 254
Marozia, ii. 27, 28
Marriage Laws, i. 79, 80
Mary, Queen of Scots, ii. 47
Masaccio, ii. 190
Massimi, Pietro de', i. 317
Massimo, i. 102, 317
Mattei, the, ii. 137, 139, 140, 143
Alessandro, ii. 140-143
Curzio, ii. 140-143
Girolamo, ii. 141-143
Marcantonio, ii. 140, 141
Olimpia, ii. 141, 142
Piero, ii. 140, 141
Matilda, Countess, ii. 307
Mausoleum of--
Augustus, i. 158, 169, 205, 251, 252, 270, 271
Hadrian, i. 102, 252; ii. 28, 202, 270.
See _Castle of Sant' Angelo_
Maximilian, i. 151
Mazarin, i. 170, 187
Mazzini, ii. 219, 220
Mediævalism, death of, ii. 225
Medici, the, i. 110; ii. 276
Cosimo de', i. 289; ii. 194
Isabella de', i. 290, 291
John de', i. 313
Messalina, i. 254, 272; ii. 255, 256, 257
Michelangelo, i. 90, 146, 147, 173, 175, 177, 302, 303, 315;
ii. 129, 130, 157, 159, 166, 169, 171, 172, 175, 188, 200, 276-281, 284,
317-319, 322
"Last Judgment" by, i. 173; ii. 171, 276, 280, 315
"Moses" by, ii. 278, 286
"Pietà" by, ii. 286
Middle Age, the, i. 47, 92, 210-247, 274; ii. 163, 166, 172-175, 180, 196
Migliorati, Ludovico, i. 103
Milan, i. 175
Duke of, i. 306
Milestone, golden, i. 72
Mithræum, i. 271
Mithras, i. 76
Mithridates, i. 26, 30, 37, 358
Mocenni, Mario, ii. 249
Monaldeschi, ii. 308
Monastery of--
the Apostles, i. 182
Dominicans, ii. 45, 61
Grottaferrata, ii. 37
Saint Anastasia, ii. 38
Gregory, ii. 85
Sant' Onofrio, ii. 147
Moncada, Ugo de, i. 307, 308
Mons Vaticanus, ii. 268
Montaigne, i. 288
Montalto. See _Felice Peretti_
Monte Briano, i. 274
Cavallo, i. 181, 188, 292, 293; ii. 205, 209
Citorio, i. 193, 252, 271
Giordano, i. 274, 281, 282, 288; ii. 206
Mario, i. 313; ii. 268
Montefeltro, Guido da, ii. 160
Monti--
the Region, i. 101, 106, 107, 111, 112, 125, 133, 134, 144, 150, 185,
305; ii. 133, 209
and Trastevere, i. 129, 145, 153; ii. 133, 209
by moonlight, i. 117
Morrone, Pietro da, i. 159
Muratori, i. 85, 132, 159, 277; ii. 40, 48, 76, 126, 324
Museums of Rome, i. 66
Vatican, ii. 272, 273, 283, 286, 287
Villa Borghese, i. 301
Mustafa, ii. 247
N
Naples, i. 175, 182, 307, 308
Napoleon, i. 32, 34, 53, 88, 109, 258; ii. 218, 221, 298
Louis, ii. 221, 223, 237
Narcissus, i. 255
Navicella, i. 106
Nelson, i. 253
Neri, Saint Philip, i. 318
Nero, i. 46, 56, 188, 254, 257, 285; ii. 163, 211, 291
Nilus, Saint, ii. 36, 37, 40
Nogaret, i. 162, 164
Northmen, i. 46, 49
Numa, i. 3; ii. 268
Nunnery of the Sacred Heart, i. 256
O
Octavius, i. 27, 30, 43, 89; ii. 291
Odoacer, i. 47; ii. 297
Olanda, Francesco d', i. 176
Oliviero, Cardinal Carafa, i. 186, 188
Olympius, i. 136, 137, 138
Opimius, i. 24
Orgies of Bacchus, i. 76; ii. 120
Orgies of the Mænads, ii. 121
on the Aventine, i. 76; ii. 121
Orsini, the, i. 94, 149, 153, 159, 167-169, 183, 216, 217, 271, 274,
306-314; ii. 16, 126, 138, 204
Bertoldo, i. 168
Camillo, i. 311
Isabella, i. 291
Ludovico, i. 295
Matteo, i. 281
Napoleon, i. 161
Orsino, i. 166
Paolo Giordano, i. 283, 290-295
Porzia, i. 187
Troilo, i. 290, 291
Virginio, i. 295
war between Colonna and, i. 51, 104, 159, 168, 182, 275-283, 306-315;
ii. 18, 126, 204
Orsino, Deacon, i. 134, 135
Orvieto, i. 314
Otho, ii. 295
the Second, ii. 304
Otto, the Great, i. 114; ii. 28, 30
Second, ii. 28
Third, ii. 29-37
Ovid, i. 44, 63
P
Painting, ii. 181
in fresco, ii. 181-183
oil, ii. 184-186
Palace (Palazzo)--
Annii, i. 113
Barberini, i. 106, 187
Borromeo, ii. 61
Braschi, i. 305
Cæsars, i. 4, 191; ii. 64
Colonna, i. 169, 189; ii. 205
Consulta, i. 181
Corsini, ii. 149, 308
Doria, i. 207, 226
Pamfili, i. 206, 208
Farnese, i. 102
Fiano, i. 205
della Finanze, i. 91
Gabrielli, i. 216
the Lateran, i. 127; ii. 30
Massimo alle Colonna, i. 316, 317
Mattei, ii. 140
Mazarini, i. 187
of Nero, i. 152
della Pilotta, i. 158
Priori, i. 160
Quirinale, i. 139, 181, 185, 186, 188, 189, 304
of the Renascence, i. 205
Rospigliosi, i. 181, 187, 188, 189
Ruspoli, i. 206
Santacroce, i. 237; ii. 23
of the Senator, i. 114
Serristori, ii. 214, 216
Theodoli, i. 169
di Venezia, i. 102, 192, 202
Palatine, the, i. 2, 13, 67, 69, 194, 195; ii. 64, 119
Palermo, i. 146
Palestrina, i. 156, 157, 158, 161, 165, 166, 243, 282; ii. 13, 315
Paliano, i. 282
Duke of, i. 157, 189
Palladium, i. 77
Pallavicini, i. 206, 258
Palmaria, i. 267
Pamfili, the, i. 206
Pannartz, i. 317
Pantheon, i. 90, 102, 195, 271, 278; ii. 44, 45, 146
Parione, the Region, i. 101, 297, 312, 317; ii. 42
Square of, ii. 42
Pasquino, the, i. 186, 305, 317
Passavant, ii. 285
Passeri, Bernardino, i. 313; ii. 308
Patarina, i. 107, 202
Patriarchal System, i. 223-228
Pavia, i. 175
Pecci, the, ii. 229
Joachim Vincent, ii. 229, 230.
Peretti, the, i. 205
Felice, i. 149, 289-295
Francesco, i. 149, 289, 292
Vittoria. See _Accoramboni_
Perugia, i. 159, 276, 277
Perugino, ii. 157, 260, 276
Pescara, i. 174
Peter the Prefect, i. 114; ii. 230.
Petrarch, i. 161
Petrella, i. 286
Philip the Fair, i. 160, 276, 278
Second of Spain, ii. 47
Phocas, column of, ii. 93
Piazza--
Barberini, i. 155
della Berlina Vecchia, i. 283
Chiesa Nuova, i. 155
del Colonna, i. 119, 190
Gesù, ii. 45
della Minerva, ii. 45
Moroni, i. 250
Navona, i. 102, 297, 298, 302, 303, 305; ii. 25, 46, 57
Pigna, ii. 55
of the Pantheon, i. 193; ii. 26
Pilotta, i. 158
del Popolo, i. 144, 206, 259, 273
Quirinale, i. 181
Romana, ii. 136
Sant' Eustachio, ii. 25
San Lorenzo in Lucina, i. 192, 205, 250
Saint Peter's, ii. 251, 309
di Sciarra, i. 192
Spagna, i. 251; ii. 42
delle Terme, i. 144
di Termini, i. 144
Venezia, i. 206
Pierleoni, the, ii. 77, 79, 82, 101, 105, 106, 109, 114
Pigna, ii. 45
the Region, i. 101, 102; ii. 44
Pilgrimages, ii. 245
Pincian (hill), i. 119, 270, 272
Pincio, the, i. 121, 189, 223, 253, 255, 256, 259, 264, 272
Pintelli, Baccio, ii. 278, 279
Pinturicchio, ii. 147
Pliny, the Younger, i. 85, 87
Pompey, i. 30
Pons Æmilius, i. 67
Cestius, ii. 102, 105
Fabricius, ii. 105
Triumphalis, i. 102, 274
Ponte. See also _Bridge_
Garibaldi, ii. 138
Rotto, i. 67
Sant' Angelo, i. 274, 283, 284, 287; ii. 42, 55, 270
Sisto, i. 307, 311; ii. 136
the Region, i. 274, 275
Pontifex Maximus, i. 39, 48
Pontiff, origin of title, ii. 127
Pope--
Adrian the Fourth, ii. 87
Alexander the Sixth, i. 258; ii. 269, 282
Seventh, i. 259
Anastasius, ii. 88
Benedict the Sixth, ii. 28-30
Fourteenth, i. 186
Boniface the Eighth, i. 159, 160, 167, 213, 280, 306; ii. 304
Celestin the First, i. 164
Second, ii. 83
Clement the Fifth, i. 275, 276
Sixth, ii. 9, 17-19
Seventh, i. 306, 307, 310, 313, 314; ii. 308
Eighth, i. 286
Ninth, i. 187; ii. 110
Eleventh, i. 171
Thirteenth, ii. 320
Damascus, i. 133, 135, 136
Eugenius the Third, ii. 85
Fourth, ii. 7, 56
Ghisleri, ii. 52, 53
Gregory the Fifth, ii. 32-37
Seventh, i. 52, 126; ii. 307
Thirteenth, i. 183, 293
Sixteenth, i. 305; ii. 221, 223
Honorius the Third, ii. 126
Fourth, ii. 126
Innocent the Second, ii. 77, 79, 82, 105
Third, i. 153; ii. 6
Sixth, ii. 19
Eighth, i. 275
Tenth, i. 206, 209, 302, 303
Joan, i. 143
John the Twelfth, ii. 282
Thirteenth, i. 113
Fifteenth, ii. 29
Twenty-third, ii. 269
Julius the Second, i. 208, 258; ii. 276, 298, 304
Leo the Third, i. 109; ii. 146, 297
Fourth, ii. 242
Tenth, i. 304; ii. 276, 304
Twelfth, i. 202; ii. 111
Thirteenth, i. 77; ii. 218-267, 282, 287, 308, 312, 313
Liberius, i. 138
Lucius the Second, ii. 84, 85
Martin the First, i. 136
Nicholas the Fourth, i. 159, 274
Fifth, i. 52; ii. 58, 268, 269, 298, 304
Paschal the Second, i. 258; ii. 307
Paul the Second, i. 202, 205
Third, i. 219; ii. 41, 130, 304, 323, 324
Fourth, ii. 46, 47, 48-51, 111, 112
Fifth, ii. 289
Pelagius the First, i. 170, 171; ii. 307
Pius the Fourth, i. 147, 305
Sixth, i. 181, 182
Seventh, i. 53; ii. 221
Ninth, i. 76, 183, 315; ii. 66, 110, 111, 216, 221-225, 252, 253, 255,
257, 258, 265, 298, 308, 311
Silverius, i. 266
Sixtus the Fourth, i. 258, 275; ii. 127, 204-213, 274, 278, 321
Fifth, i. 52, 139, 149, 181, 184, 186, 205, 283;
ii. 43, 157, 241, 304, 323
Sylvester, i. 113; ii. 297, 298
Symmachus, ii. 44
Urban the Second, i. 52
Sixth, ii. 322, 323
Eighth, i. 181, 187, 268, 301; ii. 132, 203, 298
Vigilius, ii. 307
Popes, the, i. 125, 142, 273
at Avignon, i. 167, 273, 277; ii. 9
among sovereigns, ii. 228
election of, ii. 41, 42
hatred for, ii. 262-264
temporal power of, i. 168; ii. 255-259
Poppæa, i. 103
Porcari, the, ii. 56
Stephen, ii. 56-60, 204
Porsena of Clusium, i. 5, 6, 12
Porta. See also _Gate_--
Angelica, i. 120
Maggiore, i. 107
Metronia, i. 106
Mugonia, i. 10
Pia, i. 107, 147, 152; ii. 224
Pinciana, i. 193, 250, 264, 266, 269
del Popolo, i. 272, 299
Portese, ii. 132
Salaria, i, 106, 107, 193
San Giovanni, i. 107, 120
Lorenzo, i. 107
Sebastiano, ii. 119, 125
Spirito, i. 311; ii. 132, 152
Tiburtina, i. 107
Portico of Neptune, i. 271
Octavia, ii. 3, 105
Poussin, Nicholas, i. 264
Præneste, i. 156
Prætextatus, i. 134
Prefect of Rome, i. 103, 114, 134
Presepi, ii. 139
Prince of Wales, i. 203
Prior of the Regions, i. 112, 114
Processions of--
the Brotherhood of Saint John, ii. 130
Captains of Regions, i. 112
Coromania, i. 141
Coronation of Lewis of Bavaria, i. 166, 167
Ides of May, ii. 127-129
the Triumph of Aurelian, i. 179
Progress and civilization, i. 262; ii. 177-180
romance, i. 154
Prosper of Cicigliano, ii. 213
Q
Quæstor, i. 58
Quirinal, the (hill), i. 106, 119, 158, 182, 184, 186, 187; ii. 205
R
Rabble, Roman, i. 115, 128, 132, 153, 281; ii. 131
Race course of Domitian, i. 270, 297
Races, Carnival, i. 108, 202, 203
Raimondi, ii. 315
Rampolla, ii. 239, 249, 250
Raphael, i. 260, 315; ii. 159, 169, 175, 188, 200, 281, 285, 322
in Trastevere, ii. 144-147
the "Transfiguration" by, ii. 146, 281
Ravenna, i. 175
Regions (Rioni), i. 100-105, 110-114, 166
Captains of, i. 110
devices of, i. 100
fighting ground of, i. 129
Prior, i. 112, 114
rivalry of, i. 108, 110, 125
Regola, the Region, i. 101, 168; ii. 1-3
Regulus, i. 20
Religion, i. 48, 50, 75
Religious epochs in Roman history, i. 76
Renascence in Italy, i. 52, 77, 84, 98, 99, 188, 237, 240, 250, 258, 261,
262, 303; ii. 152-201, 280
art of, i. 231
frescoes of, i. 232
highest development of, i. 303, 315
leaders of, ii. 152, 157-159
manifestation of, ii. 197
palaces of, i. 205, 216
represented in "The Last Judgment," ii. 280
results of development of, ii. 199
Reni, Guido, i. 264; ii. 317
Republic, the, i. 6, 12, 15, 53, 110; ii. 291
and Arnold of Brescia, ii. 86
Porcari, ii. 56-60
Rienzi, i. 93; ii. 6-8
modern ideas of, ii. 219
Revolts in Rome--
against the nobles, ii. 73
of the army, i. 25
of Arnold of Brescia, ii. 73-89
Marius and Sylla, i. 25
Porcari, ii. 56-60
Rienzi, i. 93; ii. 6-8, 73
slaves, i. 24
Stefaneschi, i. 281-283; ii. 219-222
Revolutionary idea, the, ii. 219-222
Riario, the, ii. 149, 150, 151
Jerome, ii. 205
Rienzi, Nicholas, i. 23, 93, 103, 168, 211, 281; ii. 3-23, 308
Rioni. See _Regions_
Ripa, the Region, i. 101; ii. 118
Ripa Grande, ii. 127
Ripetta, ii. 52
Ristori, Mme., i. 169
Robert of Naples, i. 278
Rotfredo, Count, i. 114, 115
Rome--
a day in mediæval, i. 241-247
Bishop of, i. 133
charm of, i. 54, 98, 318
ecclesiastic, i. 124
lay, i. 124
a modern Capital, i. 123, 124
foundation of, i. 2
of the Augustan Age, i. 60-62
Barons, i. 50, 84, 104, 229-247; ii. 75
Cæsars, i. 84
Empire, i. 15, 17, 28, 31, 45, 47, 53. 60, 99
Kings, i. 2-7, 10, 11
Middle Age, i. 110, 210-247, 274; ii. 172-175
Napoleonic era, i. 229
Popes, i. 50, 77, 84, 104
Republic, i. 6, 12, 16, 53, 110
Rienzi, i. 93; ii. 6-8
today, i. 55
sack of, by Constable of Bourbon, i. 259, 273, 309-315
sack of, by Gauls, i. 15, 49, 252
Guiscard, i. 95, 126-129, 252
seen from dome of Saint Peter's, ii. 302
under Tribunes, i. 14
Decemvirs, i. 14
Dictator, i. 28
Romulus, i. 2, 5, 30, 78, 228
Rospigliosi, i. 206
Rossi, Pellegrino, i. 316
Count, ii. 223
Rostra, i. 27; ii. 93
Julia, i. 68; ii. 93
Rota, ii. 215
Rovere, the, i. 258; ii. 276, 279, 321
Rudini, i. 187
Rudolph of Hapsburg, i. 161
Rufillus, i. 65
S
Sacchi, Bartolommeo, i. 139, 147
Saint Peter's Church, i. 166, 278; ii. 202, 212, 243, 246, 268, 289, 294,
295, 326
altar of, i. 96
architects of, ii. 304
bronze doors of, ii. 299, 300
builders of, ii. 304
Chapel of the Choir, ii. 310, 313, 314
Chapel of the Sacrament, ii. 274, 306, 308, 310, 312, 313
Choir of, ii. 313-316
Colonna Santa, ii. 319
dome of, i. 96; ii. 302
Piazza of, ii. 251
Sacristy of, i. 171
Salvini, i. 169, 252
Giorgio, i. 313
Santacroce Paolo, i. 286
Sant' Angelo the Region, i. 101; ii. 101
Santorio, Cardinal, i. 208
San Vito, i. 282
Saracens, i. 128, 144
Sarto, Andrea del, ii. 157, 169
Saturnalia, i. 125, 194, 195
Saturninus, i. 25
Satyricon, the, i. 85
Savelli, the, i. 284; ii. 1, 16, 126, 206
John Philip, ii. 207-210
Savonarola, i. 110
Savoy, house of, i. 110; ii. 219, 220, 224
Scævola, i. 13
Schweinheim, i. 317
Scipio, Cornelius, i. 20
of Africa, i. 20, 22, 29, 59, 76; ii. 121
Asia, i. 21; ii. 120
Scotus, i. 182
See, Holy, i. 159, 168; ii. 264-267, 277, 294
Segni, Monseignor, i. 304
Sejanuo, ii. 294
Semiamira, i. 178
Senate, Roman, i. 167, 168, 257
the Little, i. 177, 180
Senators, i. 78, 112, 167
Servius, i. 5, 15
Severus--
Arch of, ii. 92
Septizonium of, i. 96, 127
Sforza, i. 13; ii. 89
Catharine, i. 177; ii. 150
Francesco, i. 306
Siena, i. 232, 268; ii. 229
Signorelli, ii. 277
Slaves, i. 81, 24
Sosii Brothers, i. 72, 73
Spencer, Herbert, ii. 225, 226
Stefaneschi, Giovanni degli, i. 103, 282
Stilicho, ii. 323
Stradella, Alessandro, ii. 315
Streets. See _Via_
Subiaco, i. 282
Suburra, i. 39; ii. 95
Suetonius, i. 43
Sylla, ii. 25-29, 36-42
T
Tacitus, i. 46, 254; ii. 103
Tarentum, i. 18, 19
Tarpeia, i. 29; ii. 68, 69
Tarpeian Rock, ii. 67
Tarquins, the, i. 6, 11, 12, 80, 248, 249, 269; ii. 69
Sextus, i. 5, 11
Tasso, i. 188, 189; ii. 147-149
Bernardo, i. 188
Tatius, i. 68, 69
Tempietto, the, i. 264
Temple of--
Castor, i. 27
Castor and Pollux, i. 68; ii. 92, 94
Ceres, ii. 119
Concord, i. 24; ii. 92
Flora, i. 155
Hercules, ii. 40
Isis and Serapis, i. 271
Julius Cæsar, i. 72
Minerva, i. 96
Saturn, i. 194, 201; ii. 94
the Sun, i. 177, 179, 180, 271
Venus and Rome, i. 110
Venus Victorius, i. 270
Vesta, i. 68
Tenebræ, i. 117
Tetricius, i. 179
Theatre of--
Apollo, i. 286
Balbus, ii. 1
Marcellus, ii. 1, 101, 105, 106, 119
Pompey, i. 103, 153
Thedoric of Verona, ii. 297
Theodoli, the, i. 258
Theodora Senatrix, i. 158, 266, 267; ii. 27-29, 203, 282
Tiber, i. 23, 27, 66, 93, 94, 151, 158, 168, 189, 237, 248, 249, 254,
269, 272, 288
Tiberius, i. 254, 287; ii. 102
Titian, i. 315; ii. 165, 166, 175, 188, 278
Titus, i. 56, 86; ii. 102, 295
Tivoli, i. 180, 185; ii. 76, 85
Torre (Tower)--
Anguillara, ii. 138, 139, 140
Borgia, ii. 269, 285
dei Conti, i. 118, 153
Milizie, i. 277
Millina, i. 274
di Nona, i. 274, 284, 287; ii. 52, 54, 72
Sanguigna, i. 274
Torrione, ii. 241, 242
Trajan, i. 85, 192; ii. 206
Trastevere, the Region, i. 101, 127, 129, 278, 307, 311;
ii. 132, 133, 134, 135, 136, 143, 151
Trevi, the Fountain, i. 155, 186
the Region, i. 155, 187; ii. 209
Tribunes, i. 14
Trinità de' Monti, i. 256, 264
dei Pellegrini, ii. 110
Triumph, the, of Aurelian, i. 179
Triumphal Road, i. 66, 69, 70, 71
Tullianum, i. 8
Tullus, i. 3
Domitius, i. 90
Tuscany, Duke of, ii. 30
Tusculum, i. 158
U
Unity, of Italy, i. 53, 77, 123, 184; ii. 224
under Augustus, i. 184
Victor Emmanuel, i. 184
University, Gregorian, the, ii. 61
of the Sapienza, i. 251; ii. 24, 25
Urbino, Duke of, i. 208, 217
V
Valens, i. 133
Valentinian, i. 133
Varus, i. 46
Vatican, the, i. 127, 128, 147, 165, 189, 278, 281, 307;
ii. 44, 202, 207, 228, 243, 245, 249, 250, 252, 253, 269, 271
barracks of Swiss Guard, ii. 275
chapels in,
Pauline, ii.
Nicholas, ii. 285
Sixtine, ii. 246, 274, 275, 276, 278-281, 285
fields, i. 274
Court of the Belvedere, ii. 269
Saint Damasus, ii. 273
finances of, ii. 253
gardens of, ii. 243, 271, 287
of the Pigna, ii. 273
library, ii. 275, 276, 282
Borgia apartments of, ii. 282
Loggia of the Beatification, ii. 245
Raphael, ii. 273, 274, 276, 285
Maestro di Camera, ii. 239, 248, 250
museums of, ii. 272, 273, 283, 286, 287
picture galleries, ii. 273-284
Pontifical residence, ii. 249
private apartments, ii. 249
Sala Clementina, ii. 248
del Concistoro, ii. 246
Ducale, ii. 245, 247
Regia, ii. 246
throne room, ii. 247
Torre Borgia, ii. 269, 285
Veii, i. 16, 17
Velabrum, i. 67
Veneziano, Domenico, ii. 185
Venice, i. 193, 296, 306; ii. 35, 205
Vercingetorix, ii. 294
Vespasian, i. 46, 56; ii. 295
Vespignani, ii. 241, 242
Vesta, i. 57
temple of, i. 71, 77
Vestals, i. 77, 80, 133, 152; ii. 99
house of, i. 69
Via--
della Angelo Custode, i. 122
Appia, i. 22, 94
Arenula, ii. 45
Borgognona, i. 251
Campo Marzo, i. 150
di Caravita, ii. 45
del Corso, i. 155, 158, 192, 193, 251; ii. 45
della Dateria, i. 183
Dogana Vecchia, ii. 26
Flaminia, i. 193
Florida, ii. 45
Frattina, i. 250
de' Greci, i. 251
Lata, i. 193
Lungara, i. 274; ii. 144, 145, 147
Lungaretta, ii. 140
della Maestro, i. 283
Marforio, i. 106
di Monserrato, i. 283
Montebello, i. 107
Nazionale, i. 277
Nova, i. 69
di Parione, i. 297
de' Poli, i. 267
de Pontefici, i. 158
de Prefetti, ii. 6
Quattro Fontane, i. 155, 187
Sacra, i. 65, 71, 180
San Gregorio, i. 71
San Teodoro, i. 195
de' Schiavoni, i. 158
Sistina, i. 260
della Stelleta, i. 250
della Tritone, i. 106, 119-122, 155
Triumphalis, i. 66, 70, 71
Venti Settembre, i. 186
Vittorio Emanuele, i. 275
Viale Castro Pretorio, i. 107
Vicolo della Corda, i. 283
Victor Emmanuel, i. 53, 166, 184; ii. 90, 221, 224, 225, 238
monument to, ii. 90
Victoria, Queen of England, ii. 263
Vigiles, cohort of the, i. 158, 170
Villa Borghese, i. 223
Colonna, i. 181, 189
d'Este, i. 185
of Hadrian, i. 180
Ludovisi, i. 106, 193
Medici, i. 259, 262, 264, 265, 269, 313
Negroni, i. 148, 149, 289, 292
Publica, i. 250
Villani, i. 160, 277; ii. 164
Villas, in the Region of Monti, i. 149, 150
Vinci, Lionardo da, i. 260, 315; ii. 147, 159, 169, 171, 175, 184,
188, 195, 200
"The Last Supper," by, ii. 171, 184
Virgil, i. 44, 56, 63
Virginia, i. 14
Virginius, i. 15
Volscians, ii. 230
W
Walls--
Aurelian, i. 93, 106, 110, 193, 271; ii. 119, 144
Servian, i. 5, 7, 15, 250, 270
of Urban the Eighth, ii. 132
Water supply, i. 145
William the Silent, ii. 263
Witches on the Æsquiline, i. 140
Women's life in Rome, i. 9
Z
Zama, i. 21, 59
Zenobia of Palmyra, i. 179; ii. 150.
Zouaves, the, ii. 216
End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 2, by
Francis Marion Crawford
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