CHAPTER VI.

THE END OF THE TRAGEDY.

It was in the beginning of August 1354 that Rienzi returned to Rome.

Great preparations had been made for his reception. The municipal

guards, with all the cavalry that were in Rome, went out as far as

Monte Mario to meet him, with branches of olive in their hands, "in

sign of victory and peace. The people were as joyful as if he had been

Scipio Africanus," our biographer says. He came in by the gate of the

Castello, near St. Angelo, and went thence direct to the centre of the

city, through streets adorned with triumphal arches, hung with

tapestry, resounding with acclamations.

"Great was the delight and fervour of the people. With all

these honours they led him to the Palazzo of the Capitol.

There he made them a beautiful and eloquent speech, in

which he said that for seven years he had been absent from

his house, like Nebuchadnezzar; but by the power of God he

had returned to his seat and was Senator by the appointment

of the Pope. He added that he meant to rectify everything

and raise up the condition of Rome. The rejoicing of the

Romans was as great as was that of the Jews when Jesus

Christ entered Jerusalem riding upon an ass. They all

honoured him, hanging out draperies and olive branches, and

singing 'Blessed is he that cometh.' When all was over they

returned to their homes and left him alone with his

followers in the Piazza. No one offered him so much as a

poor repast. The following day Cola di Rienzi received

several ambassadors from the surrounding country. Deh! how

well he answered. He gave replies and promises on every

side. The barons remained on the watch, taking no part. The

tumult of the triumph was great. Never had there been so

much pomp. The infantry lined the streets. It seemed as if

he meant to govern in the way of the tyrants. Most of the

goods he had forfeited were restored to him. He sent out

letters to all the States to declare his happy return, and

he desired that every one should prepare for the Buono

Stato. This man was greatly changed from his former ways.

It had been his habit to be sober, temperate, abstinent.

Now he became an excessive drinker, and consumed much wine.

And he became large and gross in his person. He had a

paunch like a tun, triumphal, like an Abbate Asinico. He

was full of flesh, red, with a long beard. His countenance

was changed, his eyes were as if they were

inflamed--sometimes they were red as blood."

This uncompromising picture of a man whom adversity had not improved

but deteriorated, is very broad and coarse with those personalities

which the mob loves. Yet his biographer does not seem to have been

hostile to Rienzi. He goes on to describe how the new senator on the

fourth day after his arrival sent a summons to all the barons to

present themselves before him, and among others he summoned Stefanello

Colonna who had been a child at the time of the dreadful rout of San

Lorenzo, but was now head of the house, his noble old heart-broken

grandfather being by this time happily dead. It was scarcely likely

that the third Stefano should receive that summons in friendship. He

seized the two messengers and threw them into prison, then after a

time had the teeth of one drawn, an insulting infliction, and

despatched the other to Rome to demand a ransom for them: following

this up by a great raid upon the surrounding country, in which his

lightly armed and flying forces "lifted" the cattle of the Romans as

might have been done by the emissaries of a Highland chief. Rienzi

seems to have rushed to arms, collecting a great miscellaneous

gathering, "some armed, some without arms, according as time

permitted" to recover the cattle. But they were misled by an artifice

of the most transparent description, and stumbled on as far as Tivoli

without finding any opponent. Here he was stopped by the mercenaries

clamouring for their pay, which he adroitly obtained from the two

young commanders, Arimbaldo and Bettrom, by representing to them that

when such a difficulty arose in classical times it was met by the

chief citizens who immediately subscribed what was necessary. The

apparently simple-minded young men (Bettrom or Bertram having

apparently got over his ill-temper) gave him 500 florins each, and so

the trouble was got over for the moment, and the march towards

Palestrina was resumed. But the expedition was quite futile, neither

Rienzi nor the young men whom he had placed at the head of affairs

knowing much about the science of war. There were dissensions in the

camp, the men of Velletri having a feud with those of Tivoli; and the

picture which the biographer affords us of the leaders looking on,

seeing a train of cattle and provision waggons entering the town which

they were by way of besieging, and inquiring innocently what it was,

gives the most vivid impression of the ignorance and helplessness

which reigned in the attacking party: while Stefanello Colonna, to the

manner born, surrounded by old warriors and fighting for his life,

defended his old towers with skill as well as desperation.

While the Romans thus lost their chances of victory and occupied

themselves with that destruction of the surrounding country, which was

the first word of warfare in those days--the peasants and the

villages always suffering, whoever might escape--there was news

brought to Rienzi's camp of the arrival in Rome of the terrible Fra

Moreale himself, who had arrived in all confidence, with but a small

party in his train, in the city for which his brothers were fighting

and in which his money formed the only treasury of war. He was a bold

man and used to danger; but it did not seem that any idea of danger

had occurred to him. There had been whispers among the mercenaries

that the great Captain entertained no amiable feelings towards the

Senator who had beguiled his young brothers into this dubious warfare:

and this report would seem to have come to Rienzi's ears: but that Fra

Moreale stood in any danger from Rienzi does not seem to have occurred

to any spectator.

One pauses here with a wondering inquiry what were his motives at this

crisis of his life. Were they simply those of the ordinary and vulgar

villain, "Let us kill him that the inheritance may be ours"?--was he

terrified by the prospect of the inquiries which the experienced man

of war would certainly make as to the manner in which his brothers had

been treated by the leader who had attained such absolute power over

them? or is it possible that the patriotism, the enthusiasm for Italy,

the high regard for the common weal which had once existed in the

bosom of Cola di Rienzi flashed up now in his mind, in one last and

tremendous flame of righteous wrath? No one perhaps so dangerous to

the permanent freedom and well-being of Italy existed as this

Provençal with his great army, which held allegiance to no leader but

himself--without country, without creed or scruple--which he led about

at his pleasure, flinging it now into one, now into the other scale.

The Grande Compagnia was the terror of the whole Continent. Except

that it was certain to bring disaster wherever it went, its movements

were never to be calculated upon. Whatever fluctuations there might

be in state or city, this roving army was always on the side of evil;

it lived by fighting and disaster alone; and to drive it out of the

country, out of the world if possible, would have been the most true

and noble act of deliverance which could have been accomplished. Was

this the purpose that flashed into Rienzi's eyes when he heard that

the head of this terror, the great brigand chief and captain, had

trusted himself within the walls of Rome? With the philosophy of

compromise which rules among us, and which forbids us to allow an

uncomplicated motive in any man, we dare hardly say or even surmise

that this was so; but we may allow some room for the mingled motives

which are the pet theory of our age, and yet believe that something

perhaps of this nobler impulse was in the mind of the Roman Senator,

who, notwithstanding his decadence and his downfall, was still the

same man who by sheer enthusiasm and generous wrath, without a blow

struck, had once driven its petty tyrants out of the city. Whatever

may be the judgment of the reader in this respect, it is clear that

Rienzi dropped the siege of Palestrina when he heard of Fra Moreale's

arrival, as a dog drops a bone or an infant his toys, and hastened to

Rome; while his army melted away as was usual in such wars, each band

to its own country. Eight days had been passed before Palestrina, and

the country round was completely devastated: but no effectual

advantage had been gained when this sudden change of purpose took

place.

As soon as Rienzi arrived in Rome he caused Fra Moreale to be

arrested, and placed him with his brothers in the prison of the

Capitol, to the great astonishment of all; but especially to the

surprise of the great Captain, who thought it at first a mere

expedient for extorting money, and comforted by this explanation the

unfortunate brothers for whose sake he had placed himself in the

snare. "Do not trouble yourselves," he said, "let me manage this

affair. He shall have ten thousand, twenty thousand florins, money and

people as much as he pleases." Then answered the brothers, "Deh! do

so, in the name of God." They perhaps knew their Rienzi by this time,

young as they were, and foolish as they had been, better than their

elder and superior. And no doubt Rienzi might have made excellent

terms for himself, perhaps even for Rome; but he does not seem to have

entertained such an idea for a moment. When the Tribune set his foot

within the gates of the city the Condottiere's fate was sealed. The

biographer gives us a most curious picture of the agitation and

surprise of this man in face of his fate. When he was brought to the

torture (_menato a lo tormento_) he cried out in a consternation which

is wild with foregone conclusions. "I told you what your rustic

villain was," he exclaimed, as if still carrying on that discussion

with the foolish young brothers. "He is going to put me to the

torment! Does he not know that I am a knight? Was there ever such a

clown?" Thus storming, astonished, incredulous of such a possibility,

yet eager to say that he had foreseen it, the dismayed Captain was

_alzato_, pulled up presumably by his hands as was one manner of

torture, all the time murmuring and crying in his beard, half-mad and

incoherent in the unexpected catastrophe. "I am Captain of the Great

Company," he cried; "and being a knight I ought to be honoured. I have

put the cities of Tuscany to ransom. I have laid taxes on them. I have

overthrown principalities and taken the people captive." While he

babbled thus in his first agony of astonishment the shadow of death

closed upon Moreale, and the character of his utterances changed. He

began to perceive that it was all real, and that Rienzi had now gone

too far to be won by money or promises. When he was taken back to the

prison which his brothers shared he told them with more dignity, that

he knew he was about to die. "Gentle brothers, be not afraid," he

said. "You are young; you have not felt misfortune. You shall not

die, but I shall die. My life has always been full of trouble." (He

was a man of sentiment, and a poet in his way, as well as a soldier of

fortune.) "It was a trouble to me to live, of death I have no fear. I

am glad to die where died the blessed St. Peter and St. Paul. This

misadventure is thy fault, Arimbaldo; it is you who have led me into

this labyrinth; but do not blame yourself or mourn for me, for I die

willingly. I am a man: I have been betrayed like other men. By heaven,

I was deceived! But God will have mercy upon me, I have no doubt,

because I came here with a good intention." These piteous words, full

to the last of astonishment, form a sort of soliloquy which runs on,

broken, to the very foot of the Lion upon the great stairs, where he

was led to die, amid the stormy ringing of the great bell and rushing

of the people, half exultant and half terrified, who came from all

quarters to see this great and terrible act of that justice to which

the city in her first fervour had pledged herself. "Oh, Romans, are ye

consenting to my death?" he cried. "I never did you harm; but because

of your poverty and my wealth I must die." The chronicler goes on

reporting the last words with fascination, as if he could not refrain.

There is a wildness in them, of wonder and amazement, to the last

moment. "I am not well placed," he murmured, _non sto bene_, evidently

meaning, I am not properly placed for the blow: as he seems to have

changed his position several times, kneeling down and rising again. He

then kissed the knife and said, "God save thee, holy justice," and

making another round knelt down again. The narrative is full of life

and pity; the great soldier all bewildered, his brain failing,

overwhelmed with dolorous surprise, seeking the right spot to die in.

"This excellent man (_honestis probisque viris_, in the Latin

version), Fra Moreale, whose fame is in all Italy for strength and

glory, was buried in the Church of the Ara Coeli," says our

chronicler. His execution took place on the spot where the Lion still

stands on the left hand of the great stairs. There Fra Moreale

wandered in his distraction to find a comfortable place for the last

blow. The association is grim enough, and others yet more appalling

were soon to gather there.

This perhaps was the only step of his life in which Rienzi had the

approbation of all. The Pope displayed his approval in the most

practical way by confiscating all Fra Moreale's wealth, of which

60,000 gold florins were distributed among those who had suffered by

him. The funds which he had in various cities were also seized, though

we are told that of those in Rome Rienzi had but a small part, a

certain notary having managed, by what means we are not told, to

secure the larger sum. By the interposition of the Legate, the foolish

Arimbaldo, whom Rienzi's fair words had so bitterly deceived, was

discharged from his prison and permitted to leave Rome, but the

younger brother Bettrom, or Bertram, who, so far as we see, was never

a partisan of Rienzi, was left behind; and though his presence is

noted at another tragic moment, we do not hear what became of him

eventually. With the money he received Rienzi made haste to pay his

soldiers and to renew the war. He was so fortunate as to secure the

services of a noble and valiant captain, of whom the free lances

declared that they had never served under so brave a man: and whose

name is recorded as Riccardo Imprennante degli Annibaldi--Richard the

enterprising, perhaps--and the war was pursued with vigour under him.

Within Rome things did not go quite so well. Rienzi had to explain his

conduct in respect to Fra Moreale to his own councillors. "Sirs," he

said, "do not be disturbed by the death of this man; he was the worst

man in the world. He has robbed churches and towns; he has murdered

both men and women; two thousand depraved women followed him about. He

came to disturb our state, not to help it, meaning to make himself the

lord of it. And this is why we have condemned that false man. His

money, his horses, and his arms we shall take for our soldiers." We

scarcely see the eloquence for which Rienzi was famed in these

succinct and staccato sentences in which his biographer reports him;

but this was our chronicler's own style, and they are at least

vigorous and to the point.

"By these words the Romans were partly quieted," we are told, and the

course of the history went on. The siege of Palestrina went well, and

garrisons were placed in several of the surrounding towns, while

Rienzi held the control of everything in his hands. Some of his troops

withdrew from his service, probably because of Fra Moreale; but others

came--archers in great numbers, and three hundred horsemen.

"He maintained his place at the Capitol in order to provide

for everything. Many were the cares. He had to procure

money to pay the soldiers. He restricted himself in every

expense; every penny was for the army. Such a man was never

seen; alone he bore the cares of all the Romans. He stood

in the Capitol arranging that which the leaders in their

places afterwards carried out. He gave the orders and

settled everything, and it was done--the closing of the

roads, the times of attack, the taking of men and spies. It

was never ending. His officers were neither slow nor cold,

but no one did much except the hero Riccardo, who night and

day weakened the Colonnese. Stefanello and his Colonnas,

and Palestrina consumed away. The war was coming to a good

end."

To do all this, however, the money of Moreale was not enough. Rienzi

had to impose a tax upon wine, and to raise that upon salt, which the

citizens resented. Everything was for the soldiers. His own expenses

were much restricted, and he seemed to expect that the citizens would

follow his example. One of them, a certain Pandolfuccio di Guido,

Rienzi seized and beheaded without any apparent reason. He was said to

have desired to make himself lord over the people, the chronicler

says. This arbitrary step seems to have caused great alarm. "The

Romans were like sheep, and they were afraid of the Tribune as of a

demon."

[Illustration: ANCIENT, MEDIÆVAL, AND MODERN ROME.

_To face page_ 502.]

By this time Rienzi once more began to show signs of that confusion of

mind which we call losing the head--a confusion of irritation and

changeableness, the resolution of to-day giving place to another

to-morrow--and the giddiness of approaching downfall seized upon every

faculty. As had happened on the former occasion, this dizziness of

doom caught him when all was going well. He displaced his Captain, who

was carrying on the siege of Palestrina with so much vigour and

success, for no apparent reason, and appointed other leaders whose

names even the biographer does not think it worth while to give. The

National Guard--if we may so call them--fifty for each Rione--who were

the sole guardians of Rome, were kept without pay, while every penny

that could be squeezed from the people was sent to the army. These

things raised each a new enemy to the Tribune, the Senator, once so

beloved, who now for the second time, and more completely than before,

had proved himself incapable of the task which he had taken upon him.

It was on the 1st of August, 1354, that he had entered Rome with a

rejoicing escort of all its cavalry and principal inhabitants--with

waving flags and olive branches, and a throng that filled all the

streets, the Popolo itself shouting and acclaiming--and had been led

to the Piazza of the Ara Coeli, at the foot of the great stairs of

the Capitol. On the last day of that month, a sinister and tragic

assembly, gathered together by the sound of the great bell, thronged

once more to the foot of these stairs, to see the great soldier, the

robber knight, the terror of Italy, executed. And it was still only

September, the _Vita_ says--though other accounts throw the

catastrophe a month later--when the last day of Rienzi himself came.

We know nothing of the immediate causes of the rising, nor who were

its leaders. But Rome was in so parlous a state, seething with so many

volcanic elements, that it must have been impossible to predict from

morning to morning what might happen. What did happen looks like a

sudden outburst, spontaneous and unpremeditated; but no doubt, from

various circumstances which followed, the Colonna had a hand in it,

who ever since the day of San Lorenzo had been Cola's bitterest

enemies. This is how his biographer tells the tale:

"It was the month of September, the eighth day. In the

morning Cola di Rienzi lay in his bed, having washed his

face with Greek wine (no doubt a reference to his supposed

habits). Suddenly voices were heard shouting _Viva lo

Popolo! Viva lo Popolo!_ At this sound the people in the

streets began to run here and there. The sound increased,

the crowd grew. At the cross in the market they were joined

by armed men who came from St. Angelo and the Ripa, and

from the Colonna quarter and the Trevi. As they joined,

their cry was changed into this, Death to the traitor, Cola

di Rienzi, death! Among them appeared the youths who had

been put in his lists for the conscription. They rushed

towards the palace of the Capitol with an innumerable

throng of men, women and children, throwing stones, making

a great clamour, encircling the palace on every side before

and behind, and shouting, 'Death to the traitor who has

inflicted the taxes! Death to him!' Terrible was the fury

of them. The Tribune made no defence against them. He did

not sound the tocsin. He said to himself, 'They cry _Viva

lo Popolo_, and so do we. We are here to exalt the people.

I have written to my soldiers. My letter of confirmation

has come from the Pope. All that is wanted is to publish it

in the Council.' But when he saw at the last that the thing

was turning badly he began to be alarmed, especially as he

perceived that he was abandoned by every living soul of

those who usually occupied the Capitol. Judges, notaries,

guards--all had fled to save their own skin. Only three

persons remained with him--one of whom was Locciolo

Pelliciaro, his kinsman."

This was the terrible awaking of the doomed man--without preparation,

without the sound of a bell, or any of the usual warnings, roused from

his day-dream of idle thoughts, his Greek wine, the indulgences to

which he had accustomed himself, in his vain self-confidence. He had

no home on the heights of that Capitol to which he had returned with

such triumph. If his son Lorenzo was dead or living we do not hear.

His wife had entered one of the convents of the Poor Clares, when he

was wandering in the Apennines, and was far from him. There is not a

word of any one who loved him, unless it might chance to be the poor

relation who stood by him, Locciolo, the furrier, perhaps kept about

him to look after his robes of minever, the royal fur. The cry that

now surged round the ill-secured and half-ruinous palace would seem to

have been indistinguishable to him, even when the hoarse roar came so

near, like the dashing of a horrible wave round the walls: _Viva lo

Popolo!_ that was one thing. With his _belle parole_ he could have

easily turned that to his advantage, shouting it too. What else was he

there for but to glorify the people? But the terrible thunder of sound

took another tone, a longer cry, requiring a deeper breath--_Death to

the traitor_:--these are not words a man can long mistake. Something

had to be done--he knew not what. In that equality of misery which

makes a man acquainted with such strange bedfellows, the Senator

turned to the three humble retainers who trembled round him, and asked

their advice. "By my faith, the thing cannot go like this," he said.

It would appear that some one advised him to face the crowd: for he

dressed himself in his costume as a knight, took the banner of the

people in his hand, and went out upon the balcony:

"He extended his hand, making a sign that all were to be

silent, and that he was about to speak. Without doubt if

they had listened to him he would have broken their will

and changed their opinion. But the Romans would not listen;

they were as swine; they threw stones and aimed arrows at

him, and some ran with fire to set light to the door. So

many were the arrows shot at him that he could not remain

on the balcony. Then he took the Gonfalone and spread out

the standard, and with both his hands pointed to the

letters of gold, the arms of the citizens of Rome--almost

as if he said 'You will not let me speak; but I am a

citizen and a man of the people like you. I love you; and

if you kill me, you will kill yourselves who are Romans.'

But he could not continue in this position, for the people,

without intellect, grew worse and worse. 'Death to the

traitor,' they cried."

A great confusion was in the mind of the unfortunate Tribune. He could

no longer keep his place in the balcony, and the rioters had set fire

to the great door below, which began to burn. If he escaped into the

room above, it was the prison of Bertram of Narbonne, the brother of

Moreale, who would have killed him. In this dreadful strait Rienzi

had himself let down by sheets knotted together into the court behind,

encircled by the walls of the prison. Even here treachery pursued him,

for Locciolo, his kinsman, ran out to the balcony, and with signs and

cries informed the crowd that he had gone away behind, and was

escaping by the other side. He it was, says the chronicler, who killed

Rienzi; for he first aided him in his descent and then betrayed him.

For one desperate moment of indecision the fallen Tribune held a last

discussion with himself in the court of the prison. Should he still go

forth in his knight's dress, armed and with his sword in his hand, and

die there with dignity, "like a magnificent person," in the sight of

all men? But life was still sweet. He threw off his surcoat, cut his

beard and begrimed his face--then going into the porter's lodge, he

found a peasant's coat which he put on, and seizing a covering from

the bed, threw it over him, as if the pillage of the Palazzo had

begun, and sallied forth. He struggled through the burning as best he

could, and came through it untouched by the fire, speaking like a

countryman, and crying "Up! Up! _a glui, traditore!_ As he passed the

last door one of the crowd accosted him roughly, and pushed back the

article on his head, which would seem to have been a _duvet_, or heavy

quilt: upon which the splendour of the bracelet he wore on his wrist

became visible, and he was recognised. He was immediately seized, not

with any violence at first, and taken down the great stair to the foot

of the Lion, where the sentences were usually read. When he reached

that spot, "a silence was made" (_fo fatto uno silentio_). "No man,"

says the chronicler, "showed any desire to touch him. He stood there

for about an hour, his beard cut, his face black like a furnace-man,

in a tunic of green silk, and yellow hose like a baron." In the

silence, as he stood there, during that awful hour, he turned his head

from side to side, "looking here and there." He does not seem to have

made any attempt to speak, but bewildered in the collapse of his

being, pitifully contemplated the horrible crowd, glaring at him, no

man daring to strike the first blow. At last a follower of his own,

one of the leaders of the mob, made a thrust with his sword--and

immediately a dozen others followed. He died at the first stroke, his

biographer tells us, and felt no pain. The whole dreadful scene passed

in silence--"not a word was said," the piteous, eager head, looking

here and there, fell, and all was over. And the roar of the dreadful

crowd burst forth again.

The still more horrible details that follow need not be here given.

The unfortunate had grown fat in the luxury of these latter days.

_Grasso era horriblimente. Bianco come latte ensanguinato_, says the

chronicler: and again he places before us, as at San Lorenzo seven

years before, the white figure lying on the pavement, the red of the

blood. It was dragged along the streets to the Colonna quarter; it was

hung up to a balcony; finally the headless body, after all these

dishonours, was taken to an open place before the Mausoleum of

Augustus, and burned by the Jews. Why the Jews took this share of the

carnival of blood we are not told. It had never been said that Rienzi

was hard upon them; but no doubt at a period so penniless they must

have had their full share of the taxes and payments exacted from all.

There is no moral even, to this tale, except the well-worn moral of

the fickleness of the populace who acclaim a leader one moment, and

kill him the next; but that is a commonplace and a worn-out one. If

there were ever many men likely to sin in that way, it might be a

lesson to the enthusiast thrusting an inexperienced hand into the web

of fate, to confuse the threads with which the destiny of a country is

wrought, without knowing either the pattern or the meaning of the

weaving. He began with what we have every reason for believing to have

been a noble and generous impulse to save his people. But his soul

was not capable of that high emprise. He had the greatest and most

immediate success ever given to a popular leader. The power to change,

to mend, to make over again, to vindicate and to carry out his ideal

was given him in the fullest measure. For a time it seemed that there

was nothing in the world that Cola di Rienzi, the son of the

wine-shop, the child of the people, might not do. But then he fell;

the promise faded into dead ashes, the impulse which was inspiration

breathed out and died away. Inspiration was all he had, neither

knowledge nor the noble sense and understanding which might have been

a substitute for it; and when the thin fire blazed up like the

crackling of thorns under a pot, it blazed away again and left nothing

behind. Had he perished at the end of his first reign, had he been

slain at the foot of the Capitol, as Petrarch would have had him, his

story would have been a perfect tragedy, and we might have been

permitted to make a hero of the young patriot, standing alone, in an

age to which patriotism was unknown. But the postscript of his second

effort destroys the epic. It is all miserable self-seeking, all

squalid, the story of any beggar on horseback, any vulgar adventurer.

Yet the silent hour when he stood at the foot of the great stairs, the

horrible mob silent before him, bridled by that mute and awful

despair, incapable of striking the final blow, is one of the most

intense moments of human tragedy. A large overgrown man, with

blackened face and the rough remnants of a beard, half dressed,

speechless, his head turning here and there--And yet no one dared to

take that step, to thrust that eager sword, for nearly an hour.

Perhaps it was only a minute, which would be less unaccountable,

feeling like an hour to every looker on who was there and stood by.

No one in all the course of modern Roman history has so illustrated

the streets and ways of Rome and set its excited throngs in evidence,

and made the great bell sound in our very ears, a _stuormo_, and

disclosed the noise of the rabble and the rule of the nobles, and the

finery of the gallants, with so real and tangible an effect. The

episode is a short one. The two periods of Rienzi's power put together

scarcely amount to eight months; but there are few chapters in that

history which is always so turbulent, yet lacks so much the charm of

personal story and adventure, so picturesque and complete.

[Illustration: LETTER WRITER.]

BOOK IV.

THE POPES WHO MADE THE CITY.

[Illustration: PIAZZA DEL POPOLO.]

BOOK IV.

THE POPES WHO MADE THE CITY.

CHAPTER I.

MARTIN V.--EUGENIUS IV.--NICOLAS V.

It is strange to leave the history of Rome at the climax to which the

ablest and strongest of its modern masters had brought it, when it was

the home of the highest ambition, and the loftiest claims in the

world, the acknowledged head of one of the two powers which divided

that world between them, and claiming a supreme visionary authority

over the other also; and to take up that story again (after such a

romantic episode as we have just discussed) when its rulers had become

but the first among the fighting principalities of Italy, men of a

hundred ambitions, not one of which was spiritual, carrying on their

visionary sway as heads of the Church as a matter of routine merely,

but reserving all their real life and energy for the perpetual

internecine warfare that had been going on for generations, and the

security of their personal possessions. From Innocent III. to such a

man as Eugenius IV., still and always fighting, mixed up with all the

struggles of the Continent, hiring Condottieri, marshalling troops,

with his whole soul in the warfare, so continuous, so petty, even so

bloodless so far as the actual armies were concerned--which never for

a moment ceased in Italy: is a change incalculable. Let us judge the

great Gregory and the great Innocent as we may, their aim and the

purpose of their lives were among the greatest that have ever been

conceived by man, perhaps the highest ideal ever formed, though like

all high ideals impossible, so long as men are as we know them, and

those who choose them are as helpless in the matter of selecting and

securing the best as their forefathers were. But to set up that

tribunal on earth--that shadow and representation of the great White

Throne hereafter to be established in the skies--in order to judge

righteous judgment, to redress wrongs, to neutralise the sway of might

over right--let it fail ever so completely, is at least a great

conception, the noblest plan at which human hands can work. We have

endeavoured to show how little it succeeded even in the strongest

hands; but the failure was a greater thing than any lesser

success--certainly a much greater thing than the desire to be first in

that shouting crowd of Italian princedoms and commonwealths, to pit

Piccinino and Carmagnola against each other, to set your honour on the

stake of an ironbound band of troopers deploying upon a harmless

field, in wars which would have been not much more important than

tournaments; if it had not been for the ruin and murder and

devastation of the helpless peasants and the smitten country on either

side.

But the pettier rôle was one of which men tired, as much as they did

of that perpetual strain of the greater which required an amount of

strength and concentration of mind not given to many, such as could

not (and this was the great defect of the plan) be secured for a line

of Popes any more than for any other line of men. The Popes who would

have ruled the world failed, and gave up that forlorn hope; they were

opposed by all the powers of earth, they were worn out by fictions of

anti-Popes, and by real and continual personal sufferings for their

ideal:--and they did not even secure at any time the sympathy of the

world. But when among the vain line of Pontiffs who not for infamy and

not for glory, but _per se_ lived, and flitted, a wavering file of

figures meaning little, across the surface of the world--there arose a

Pope here and there, forming into a short succession as the purpose

grew, who took up consciously the aim of making Rome--not Rome

Imperial nor yet Rome Papal, which were each a natural power on the

earth and Head of nations, but Rome the City--the home of art, the

shrine of letters, in another way and with a smaller meaning, yet

still meaning something, the centre of the world--their work and

position have always attracted a great deal of sympathy, and gained at

once the admiration of all men. English literature has not done much

justice to the greater Popes. Mr. Bowden's life of Gregory VII. is the

only work of any importance specially devoted to that great ruler.

Gregory the Great to whom England owes so much, and Innocent III., who

was also, though in no very favourable way, mixed up in her affairs,

have tempted no English historian to the labours of a biography. But

Leo X. has had a very different fate: and even the Borgias, the worst

of Papal houses, have a complete literature of their own. The

difference is curious. It is perhaps by this survival of the

unfittest, so general in literature, that English distrust and

prejudice have been so crystallised, and that to the humbler reader

the word Pope remains the synonym of a proud and despotic priest,

sometimes Inquisitor and sometimes Indulger--often corrupt, luxurious,

or tyrannical--a ruler whose government is inevitably weak yet cruel.

The reason of this strange preference must be that the love of art is

more general and strong than the love of history; or rather that a

decorative and tangible external object, something to see and to

admire, is more than all theories of government or morals. The period

of the Renaissance is full of horror and impurity, perhaps the least

desirable of all ages on which to dwell. But art has given it an

importance to which it has no other right.

Curious it is also to find that of all the cities of Italy, Rome has

the least native right to be considered in the history of art. No

great painter or sculptor, architect or even decorator, has arisen

among the Roman people. Ancient Rome took her art from Greece. Modern

Rome has sought hers over all Italy--from Florence, from the hills and

valleys of Umbria, everywhere but in her own bosom. She has crowned

poets, but, since the days of Virgil and Horace, neither of whom were

Romans born, though more hers than any since, has produced none. All

her glories have been imported. This of course is often the case with

her Popes also. Pope Martin V., to whom may be given the first credit

of the policy of rebuilding the city, was a native-born Roman; but

Pope Eugenius IV., who took up its embellishment still more seriously,

was a Venetian, bringing with him from the sea-margin the love of

glowing colour and that "labour of an age in pilëd stones" which was

so dear to those who built their palaces upon the waters. Nicolas was

a Pisan, Pope Leo, who advanced the work so greatly, was a Florentine.

But their common ambition was to make Rome a wonder and a glory that

all men might flock to see. The tombs of the Apostles interested them

less perhaps than most of their predecessors: but they were as

strongly bent as any upon drawing pilgrims from the ends of the earth

to see what art could do to make those tombs gorgeous: and built their

own to be glories too, admired of all the world. These men have had a

fuller reward than their great predecessors. Insomuch as the aim was

smaller, it was more perfectly carried out; for though it is a great

work to hang a dome like that of St. Peter's in the air, it is easier

than to hold the hearts of kings in your hand, and decide the destiny

of nations. The Popes who made the city have had better luck in every

way than those who made the Papacy. Neither of them secured either the

gratitude or even the consent of Rome herself to what was done for

her. But nevertheless almost all that has kept up her fame in the

world for, let us say, the last four hundred years, was their work.

This period of the history of the great city began when Pope Martin V.

concluded what has been called the schism of the West, and brought

back the seat of the Papacy from Avignon, where it had been exiled, to

Rome. We have seen something of the moral and economical state of the

city during that interregnum. Its physical condition was yet more

desolate and terrible. The city itself was little more than a heap of

ruins. The little cluster of the inhabited town was as a nest of life

in the centre of a vast ancient mass of building, all fallen into

confusion and decay. No one cared for the old Forums, the palaces

ravaged by many an invasion, burned and beaten down, and quarried out,

by generations of men to whom the meaning and the memory of their

founders was as nothing, and themselves only so many waste places, or

so much available material for the uses of the vulgar day. Some one

suggests that the early Church took pleasure in showing how entirely

shattered was the ancient framework, and how little the ancient gods

had been able to do for the preservation of their temples; and with

that intention gave them over to desolation and the careless hands of

the spoiler. We think that men are much more often swayed by immediate

necessities than by any elaborate motive of this description. The

ruins were exceedingly handy--every nation in its turn has found such

ruins to be so. To get the material for your wall, without paying

anything for it, already at your hand, hewn and prepared as nobody

then working could do it--what a wonderful simplification of labour!

Everybody took advantage of it, small and great. Then, when you wanted

to build a strong tower or fortress to intimidate your neighbours,

what an admirable foundation were those old buildings, founded as on

the very kernel and central rock of the earth! For many centuries no

one attempted to fill up those great gaps within the city walls, in

which vines flourished and gardens grew, none the worse for the

underlying stones that covered themselves thickly with weeds and

flowers by Nature's lavish assistance. Buildings of various kinds,

adapted to the necessities of the moment, grew up by nature in all

kinds of places, a church sometimes placed in the very lap of an

ancient temple. Indeed the churches were everywhere, some of them

humble enough, many of great antique dignity and beauty, almost all

preserving the form of the basilica, the place of meeting where

everything was open and clear for the holding of assemblies and

delivery of addresses, not dim and mysterious as for sacrifices of

faith.

[Illustration: MODERN ROME: SHELLEY'S TOMB.

_To face page_ 518.]

So entirely was this state of affairs accepted, that there is more

talk of repairing than of building in the chronicles; at all times of

the Church, each pious Pope undertook some work of the kind, mending a

decaying chapel or building up a broken wall; but we hear of few

buildings of any importance, even when the era of the builders first

began. Works of reparation must have been necessary to some extent

after every burning or fight. Probably the scuffles in the streets did

little harm, but when such a terrible inundation took place as that of

the Normans, and still worse the Saracens, who followed Robert

Guiscard in the time of Gregory VII., it must have been the work of a

generation to patch up the remnants of the place so as to make it in

the rudest way habitable again. It was no doubt in one of these great

emergencies that the ancient palaces, most durable of all buildings,

were seized by the people, and converted each into a species of

rabbit-warren, foul and swarming. It does not appear however that any

plan of restoring the city to its original grandeur, or indeed to any

satisfactory reconstruction at all, was thought of for centuries. In

the extreme commotion of affairs, and the long struggle of the Popes

with the Emperors, there was neither leisure nor means for any great

scheme of this kind, nor much thought of the material framework of the

city, while every mind was bent upon establishing its moral position

and lofty standing ground among the nations. As much as was

indispensable would be done: but in these days the requirements of the

people in respect to their lodging were few: as indeed they still are

to an extraordinary extent in Italy, where life is so much carried on

out of doors.

It is evident, however, that Rome the city had never yet become the

object of any man's life or ambition, or that a thought of anything

beyond what was needful for actual use, for shelter or defence, had

entered into the thoughts of its masters when the Papal Court returned

from Avignon. The churches alone were cared for now and then, and

decorated whenever possible with rich hangings, with marbles and

ancient columns generally taken from classical buildings, sometimes

even from churches of an older date; but even so late as the time of

Petrarch so important a building as St. John Lateran, the Papal church

_par excellence_, lay roofless and half ruined, in such a state that

it was impossible to say mass in it. The poet describes Rome itself,

when, after a long walk amid all the relics of the classical ages, his

friend and he sat down to rest upon the ruined arches of the Baths of

Diocletian, and gazed upon the city at their feet--"the spectacle of

these grand ruins." "If she once began to recognise of herself the low

estate in which she lies, Rome would make her own resurrection," he

says with a confidence but poorly merited by the factious and restless

city. But Rome, torn asunder by the feuds of Colonna and Orsini,

seizing every occasion to do battle with her Pope, only faithful to

him in his absence, of which she complained to heaven and earth--was

little likely to exert herself to any such end.

This was the unfortunate plight in which Rome lay when Martin V., a

Roman of the house of Colonna, came back in the year 1421, with all

the treasures of art acquired by the Popes during their stay in

France, to the shrine of the Apostles. The historian Platina, whose

records are so full of life when they approach the period of which he

had the knowledge of a contemporary, gives a wonderful description of

her. "He found Rome," says the biographer of the Popes, "in such ruin

that it bore no longer the aspect of a city but rather of a desert.

Everything was on the way to complete destruction. The churches were

in ruins, the country abandoned, the streets in evil state, and an

extreme penury reigned everywhere. In fact it had no appearance of a

city or a sign of civilisation. The good Pontiff, moved by the sight

of such calamity, gave his mind to the work of adorning and

embellishing the city, and reforming the corrupt ways into which it

had fallen, which in a short time were so improved by his care that

not only Supreme Pontiff but father of his country he was called by

all. He rebuilt the portico of St. Peter's which had been falling into

ruins, and completed the mosaic work of the pavement of the Lateran

which he covered with fine works, and began that beautiful picture

which was made by Gentile, the excellent painter." He also repaired

the palace of the twelve Apostles, so that it became habitable. The

Cardinals in imitation of him executed similar works in the churches

from which each took his title, and by this means the city began to

recover decency and possible comfort at least, if as yet little of its

ancient splendour.

"As soon as Pope Martin arrived in Rome," says the chronicle, _Diarium

Romanum_, of Infessura, "he began to administer justice, for Rome was

very corrupt and full of thieves. He took thought for everything, and

especially to those robbers who were outside the walls, and who robbed

the poor pilgrims who came for the pardon of their sins to Rome." The

painter above mentioned, and who suggests to us the name of a greater

than he, would appear to have been Gentile da Fabriano, who seems to

have been employed by the Pope at a regular yearly salary. These good

deeds of Pope Martin are a little neutralised by the fact that he gave

a formal permission to certain other of his workmen to take whatever

marbles and stones might be wanted for the pavement of the Lateran,

virtually wherever they happened to find them, but especially from

ruined churches both within and outside of the city.

Eugenius IV., who succeeded Pope Martin in the year 1431, was a man

who loved above all things to "guerrare e murare"--to make war and to

build--a splendid and noble Venetian, whose fine and commanding person

fills one of his biographers, a certain Florentine bookseller and

book-collector, called Vespasiano, with a rapture of admiration which

becomes almost lyrical, in the midst of his simple and garrulous

story.

"He was tall in person, beautiful of countenance, slender

and serious, and so venerable to behold that there was no

one, by reason of the great authority that was in him, who

could look him in the face. It happened one evening that an

important personage went to speak with him, who stood with

his head bowed, never raising his eyes, in such a way that

the Pope perceived it and asked him why he so bowed his

head. He answered quickly that the Pope had such an aspect

by nature that none dared meet his eye. I myself recollect

often to have seen the Pope with his Cardinals upon a

balcony near the door of the cloisters of Sta Maria

Novella (in Florence) when the Piazza de Sta Maria

Novella was full of people, and not only the Piazza, but

all the streets that led into it. And such was the devotion

of the people that they stood entranced (_stupefatti_) to

see him, not hearing any one who spoke, but turning every

one towards the Pontiff: and when he began according to the

custom of the Pope to say the _Adjutorium nostrum in nomine

Domini_ the Piazza was full of weeping and cries, appealing

to the mercy of God for the great devotion they bore

towards his Holiness. It appeared indeed that this people

saw in him not only the vicar of Christ on earth, but the

reflection of His true Divinity. His Holiness showed such

great devotion, and also all his Cardinals round him, who

were all men of great authority, that veritably at that

moment he appeared that which he represented."

There is much refreshment to the soul in the biographies of

Vespasiano, who was no more than a Florentine bookseller as we have

said, greatly employed in collecting ancient manuscripts, which was

the special taste of the time, with a hand in the formation of all the

libraries then being established, and in consequence a considerable

acquaintance with great personages, those at least who were patrons of

the arts and had a literary turn. Pope Eugenius is not in ordinary

history a highly attractive character, and the general records of the

Papacy are not such as to allure the mind as with ready discovery of

unknown friends. But the two Popes whom the old bookman chronicles,

rise before us in the freshest colours, the first in stately serenity

and austerity of mien, dazzling in his _aspetto di natura_, as Moses

when he came from the presence of God--moving all hearts when he

raised his voice in the prayers of the Church, every listener hanging

on his breath, the crowd gazing at him overwhelmed as if upon Him whom

the Pope represented, though no man dared face his penetrating eyes.

It is a great thing for the most magnificent potentate to have such a

biographer as our bookseller. Eugenius was as kind as he was splendid,

according to Vespasiano. One day a poor gentleman reduced to want went

to the Pope, appealing for charity "being in exile, poor, and _fuori

della patria_," words which are more touching than their English

synonyms, out of his country, banished from all his belongings: an

evil which went to the very hearts of those who were themselves at any

moment subject to that fate, and to whom _la patria_ meant an

ungrateful fierce native city--never certain in its temper from one

moment to another. The Pope sent for a purse full of florins, and bade

the exile take from it as much as he wanted. "Felice, abashed, put in

his hand timidly, when the Pope turned to him laughing and said, 'Put

in your hand freely, I give it to you willingly.'" This being his

disposition we need not wonder that Vespasian adds:--"He never had

much supply of money in the house; according as he had it, quickly he

expended it." Remembering what lies before us in history (but not in

this broken record of men), soon to be filled with Borgias and such

like, the reader would do well to sweeten his thoughts on the edge of

the horrors of the Renaissance, with Vespasian's kind and humane

tales. Platina takes up the story in a different tone.

"Among other things Eugenius, in order that it might not

seem that he thought of nothing but fighting (his wars were

perpetual, _guerrare_ winning the day over _murare_; he

built like Nehemiah with the sword in his other hand),

canonized S. Nicola di Tolentino of the order of S.

Augustine, who did many miracles. He built the portico

which leads from the Church of the Lateran to the Sancta

Sanctorum, and remade and enlarged the cloister inhabited

by the priests, and completed the picture of the Church

begun under Martin by Gentile. He was not easily moved by

wrath, or personal offence, and never spoke evil of any

man, neither by word of mouth nor hand of write. He was

gracious to all the schools, specially to those of Rome,

where he desired to see every kind of literature and

doctrine flourish. He himself had little literature, but

much knowledge, especially of history. He had a great love

for monks, and was very generous to them, and was also a

great lover of war, a thing which seems marvellous in a

Pope. He was very faithful to the engagements he

made--unless when he saw that it was more expedient to

revoke a promise than to fulfil it."

Martin and Eugenius were both busy and warlike men. They were involved

in all the countless internal conflicts of Italy; they were confronted

by many troubles in the Church, by the argumentative and persistent

Council of Bâle, and an anti-Pope or two to increase their cares. The

reign of Eugenius began by a flight from Rome with one attendant, from

the mob who threatened his life. Nevertheless it was in these agitated

days that the first thought of Rome rebuilt, as glorious as a bride,

more beautiful than in her climax of classic splendour, began to enter

into men's thoughts.

[Illustration: FOUNTAIN OF TREVI.

_To face page 526._]

The reign of their immediate successor, the learned and magnificent

Nicolas V., who was created Pope in 1447, was, however, the actual era

of this new conception. It is not necessary, we are thankful to think,

to enter here into any description of the Renaissance, that age so

splendid in art, so horrible in history--when every vice seemed let

loose on the earth, yet the evil demons so draped themselves in

everything beautiful, that they often attained their most dangerous

and terrible aspect, that of angels of light. The Renaissance has had

more than its share in history; it has flooded the world with scandals

of every kind, and such examples of depravity as are scarcely to be

found in any other age; or perhaps it is that no other age has

commanded the same contrasts and incongruities, the same picturesque

accessories, the splendour and external grace, the swing of careless

force and franchise, without restraint and without shame. To many

minds these things themselves are enough to attract and to dazzle, and

they have captivated many writers to whom the brilliant society, the

triumphs of art, the ever shifting, ever glittering panorama with its

startling succession of scenes, spectacles, splendours, and tragedies,

have made the more serious and more worthy records of life appear

sombre, and its nobler motives dull in comparison. When Thomas of

Sarzana was born in Pisa--in a humble house of peasants who had no

surname nor other distinction, but who managed to secure for him the

education which was sufficiently easy in those days for boys destined

to the priesthood--the age of the Renaissance was coming into full

flower. Literature and learning, the pursuit of ancient

manuscripts, the worship of Greece and the overwhelming influence of

its language and masterpieces, were the inspiration of the age, so far

as matters intellectual were concerned. To read and collate and copy

was the special occupation of the literary class. If they attempted

any original work, it was a commentary: and a Latin couplet, an

epigram, was the highest effort of imagination which they permitted

themselves. The day of Dante and Petrarch was over. No one cared to be

_volgarizzato_--brought down in plain Italian to the knowledge of

common men. The language of their literary traffic was Latin, the

object of their adoration Greek. To read, and yet to read, and again

to go on reading, was the occupation of every man who desired to make

himself known in the narrow circles of literature; and a small

attendant world of scribes was maintained in every learned household,

and accompanied the path of every scholar. The world so far as its

books went had gone back to a period in which gods and men were alike

different from those of the existing generation; and the living age,

disgusted with its own unsatisfactory conditions, attempted to gain

dignity and beauty by pranking itself in the ill-adapted robes of a

life totally different from its own.

Between the classical ages and the Christian there must always be the

great gulf fixed of this complete difference of sentiment and of

atmosphere. And the wonderful contradiction was more marked than usual

in Rome of a world devoted outside to the rites and ceremonies of

religion, while dwelling in its intellectual sphere in the air of a

region to which Christianity was unknown. The routine of devotion

never relaxing--planned out for every hour of every day, calling for

constant attention, constant performance, avowedly addressing itself

not to the learned or wise, avowedly restricting itself in all those

enjoyments of life which were the first and greatest of objects in the

order of the ancient ages--yet carried on by votaries of the Muses,

to whom Jove and Apollo were more attractive than any Christian

ideal--must have made an unceasing and bewildering conflict in the

minds of men. No doubt that conflict, and the evident certainty that

one or the other must be wrong, along with the strong setting of that

tide of fashion which is so hard to be resisted, towards the less

exacting creed, had much to do with the fever of the time. Yet the

curious equalising touch of common life, the established order

whatever it may be, against which only one here and there ever

successfully rebels, made the strange conjunction possible; and the

final conflict abided its time. Such a man as Nicolas V. might indeed

fill his palace with scholars and scribes, and put his greatest pride

in his manuscripts: but the affairs of life around were too urgent to

affect his own constitution as Pope and priest and man of his time. He

bandied epigrams with his learned convives in his moments of leisure:

but he had himself too much to do to fall into dilettante heathenism.

Perhaps the manuscripts themselves, the glory of possessing them, the

busy scribes all labouring for that high end of instructing the world:

while courtiers never slow to catch the tone that pleased, celebrated

their sovereign as the head of humane and liberal study as well as of

the Church--may have been more to Nicolas than all his MSS. contained.

He remained quite sincere in his mass, quite simple in his life,

notwithstanding the influx of the heathen element: and most likely

took no note in his much occupied career of the great distance that

lay between.

Nicolas V. was the first of those Pontiffs who are the pride of modern

Rome--the men who, by a strange provision, or as it almost seems

neglect of Providence, appear in the foremost places of the Church

pre-occupied with secondary matters, when they ought to have been

preparing for that great Revolution which, it was once fondly hoped,

was to lay spiritual Rome in ruins, at the very moment when material

Rome rose most gloriously from her ashes. But, notwithstanding that he

was still troubled by that long-drawn-out Council of Bâle, it does not

seem that any such shadow was in the mind of Nicolas. He stood calm in

human unconsciousness between heathendom at his back, and the

Reformation in front of him, going about his daily work thinking of

nothing, as the majority of men even on the eve of the greatest of

revolutions so constantly do. Nicolas was, like so many of the great

Popes, a poor man's son, without a surname, Thomas of Sarzana taking

his name from the village in which he was brought up. He had the good

fortune, which in those days was so possible to a scholar, recommended

originally by his learning alone, to rise from post to post in the

household of bishop and Cardinal until he arrived at that of the Pope,

where a man of real value was highly estimated, and where it was above

all things important to have a steadfast and faithful envoy, one who

could be trusted with the often delicate negotiations of the Holy See,

and who would neither be daunted nor led astray by imperial caresses

or the frowns of power.

"He was very learned, _dottissimo_, in philosophy, and master of all

the arts. There were few writers in Greek or in Latin of any kind that

he had not read their works, and he had the whole of the Bible in his

memory, and quoted from it continually. This intimate knowledge of the

Holy Scriptures gave the greatest honour to his pontificate and the

answers he was called upon to make." There were great hopes in those

days of the reunion of the Greek Church with the Latin, an object much

in the mind of all the greater Popes: to promote which happy

possibility Pope Eugenius called a Council in Ferrara in 1438, which

was also intended to confound the rebellious and heretical Council of

Bâle, as well as to bring about, if possible, the desired union. The

Emperor of the East was there in person, along with the patriarch and

a large following; and it was in this assembly that Thomas of Sarzana,

then secretary and counsellor of the Cardinal di Santa Croce--who had

accompanied his Cardinal over _i monti_ on a mission to the King of

France from which he had just returned--made himself known to

Christendom as a fine debater and accomplished student. The question

chiefly discussed in the Council of Ferrara was that which is formally

called the Procession of the Holy Spirit, the doctrine which has

always stood between the two Churches, and prevented mutual

understanding.

"In this council before the Pope, the Cardinals, and all

the court of Rome, the Latins disputed daily with the

Greeks against their error, which is that the Holy Spirit

proceeds from the Father only not from the Son: the Latins,

according to the true doctrine of the faith, maintaining

that He proceeds from the Father and the Son. Every morning

and every evening the most learned men in Italy took part

in this discussion as well as many out of Italy, whom Pope

Eugenius had called together. One in particular, from

Negroponte, whose name was Niccolo Secondino: wonderful was

it to hear what the said Niccolo did; for when the Greeks

spoke and brought together arguments to prove their

opinion, Niccolo Secondino explained everything in Latin

_de verbo ad verbum_, so that it was a thing admirable to

hear: and when the Latins spoke he expounded in Greek all

that they answered to the arguments of the Greeks. In all

these disputations Messer Tommaso held the part of the

Latins, and was admired above all for his universal

knowledge of the Holy Scriptures, and also of the doctors,

ancient and modern, both Greek and Latin."

[Illustration: ON THE PINCIO.]

Messer Tommaso distinguished himself so much in this controversy that

he was appointed by the Pope to confer with certain ambassadors from

the unknown, Ethiopians, Indians, and "Jacobiti,"--were these the

envoys of Prester John, that mysterious potentate? or were they

Nestorians as some suggest? At all events they were Christians and

persons of singularly austere life. The conference was carried on by

means of an interpreter, "a certain Venetian who knew twenty

languages." These three nations were so convinced by Tommaso, that

they placed themselves under the authority of the Church, an incident

which does not make any appearance in more dignified history. Even

while these important matters of ecclesiastical business were going

on, however, this rising churchman kept his eyes open as to every

chance of a new, that is an old book, and would on various occasions

turn away from his most distinguished visitors to talk apart with

Messer Vespasiano, who once more is our best guide, about their mutual

researches and good luck in the way of finding rare examples or making

fine copies. "He never went out of Italy with his Cardinal on any

mission that he did not bring back with him some new work not to be

found in Italy." Indeed Messer Tommaso's knowledge was so well

understood that there was no library formed on which his advice was

not asked, and specially by Cosimo dei Medici, who begged his help as

to what ought to be done for the formation of the Library of S. Marco

in Florence--to which Tommaso responded by sending such instructions

as never had been given before, how to make a library, and to keep it

in the highest order, the regulations all written in his own hand.

"Everything that he had," says Vespasian in the ardour of his

admiration, "he spent on books. He used to say that if he had it in

his power, the two things on which he would like to spend money would

be in buying books and in building (_murare_); which things he did in

his pontificate, both the one and the other." Alas! Messer Tommaso had

not always money, which is a condition common to collectors; in which

case Vespasian tells us (who approved of this mode of procedure as a

bookseller, though perhaps it was a bad example to be set by the Head

of the Church) he had "to buy books on credit and to borrow money in

order to pay the scribes and miniaturists." The books, the reader will

perceive, were curious manuscripts, illustrated by those schools of

painters in little, whose undying pigments, fresh as when laid upon

the vellum, smile almost as exquisitely to-day from the ancient page

as in Messer Tommaso's time.

There is an enthusiasm of the seller for the buyer in Vespasian's

description of the dignified book-hunter which is very characteristic,

but at the same time so natural that it places the very man before us,

as he lived, a man full of humour, _facetissimo_, saying pleasant

things to everybody, and making every one to whom he talked his

partisan.

"He was a man open, large and liberal, not knowing how to

feign or dissimulate, and the enemy of all who feigned. He

was also hostile to ceremony and adulation, treating all

with the greatest friendliness. Great though he was as a

bishop, as an ambassador, he honoured all who came to see

him, and desired that whoever would speak with him should

do so seated by his side, and with his head covered; and

when one would not do so (out of modesty) he would take one

by the arm and make one sit down, whether one liked or

not."

A delightful recollection of that flattering compulsion, the great

man's touch upon his arm, the seat by his side, upon which Vespasian

would scarcely be able to sit for pleasure, is in the bookseller's

tone; and he has another pleasant story to tell of Giannozzo Manetti,

who went to see their common patron when he was Cardinal and

ambassador to France, and tried hard, in his sense of too much honour

done him, to prevent the great man from accompanying him, not only to

the door of the reception room, but down stairs. "He stood firm on the

staircase to prevent him from coming further down: but Giannozzo was

obliged to have patience, being in the Osteria del Lione, for not only

would Messer Tommaso accompany him down stairs, but to the very door

of the hotel, ambassador of Pope Eugenius as he was."

We must not, however, allow ourselves to be seduced into prolixity by

the old bookseller, whose account of his patron is so full of

gratitude and feeling. As became a scholar and lover of the arts,

Nicolas V. was a man of peace. Immediately after his elevation to the

papacy, he declared his sentiments to Vespasian in the prettiest

scene, which shines like one of the miniatures they loved, out of the

sober page.

"Not long after he was made Pope, I went to see him on

Friday evening, when he gave audience publicly, as he did

once every week. When I went into the hall in which he gave

audience it was about one hour of the night (seven o'clock

in the evening); he saw me at once, and called to me that I

was welcome, and that if I would have patience a little he

would talk to me alone. Not long after I was told to go to

his Holiness. I went, and according to custom kissed his

feet; afterwards he bade me rise, and rising himself from

his seat, dismissed the court, saying that the audience was

over. He then went to a private room where twenty candles

were burning, near a door which opened into an orchard. He

made a sign that they should be taken away, and when we

were alone began to laugh, and to say 'Do the Florentines

believe, Vespasiano, that it is for the confusion of the

proud, that a priest only fit to ring the bell should have

been made Supreme Pontiff?' I answered that the Florentines

believed that his Holiness had attained that dignity by his

worth, and that they rejoiced much, believing that he would

give Italy peace. To this he answered and said: 'I pray God

that He will give me grace to fulfil that which I desire to

do, and to use no arms in my pontificate except that which

God has given me for my defence, which is His cross, and

which I shall employ as long as my day lasts.'"

The cool darkness of the little chamber, near the door into the

orchard, the blazing candles all sent away, the grateful freshness of

the Roman night--come before us like a picture, with the Pope's

splendid robes glimmering white, and the sober-suited citizen little

seen in the quick-falling twilight. It must have been in the spring or

early summer, the sweetest time in Rome. Pope Eugenius had died in the

month of February, and it was on the 16th of March, 1447, that Nicolas

was elected to the Holy See.

A few years after came the jubilee, in the year 1450, as had now

become the habit, and the influx of pilgrims was very great. It was a

time of great profit not only to the Romans who turned the city into

one vast inn to receive the visitors, but also to the Pope. "The

people were like ants on the roads which led from Florence to Rome,"

we are told. The crowd was so immense crossing the bridge of St.

Angelo, that there were some terrible accidents, and as many as two

hundred people were killed on their way to the shrine of the Apostles.

"There was not a great lord in all Christendom who did not come to

this jubilee." "Much money came to the Apostolical See," continues the

biographer, "and the Pope began to build in many places, and to send

everywhere for Greek and Latin books wherever he could find them,

without regard to the price.

"He also had many scribes from every quarter to whom he

gave constant employment; also many learned men both to

compose new works, and to translate those which had not

been translated, making great provision for them, both

ordinary and extraordinary; and to those who translated

books, when they were brought to him, he gave much money

that they might go on willingly with that which they had to

do. He collected a very great number of books on every

subject, both in Greek and Latin, to the number of five

thousand volumes. These at the end of his life were found

in the catalogue which did not include the half of the

copies of books he had on every subject; for if there was a

book which could not be found, or which he could not have

in any other way, he had it copied. The intention of Pope

Nicolas was to make a library in St. Peter's for the use of

the Court of Rome, which would have been a marvellous thing

had it been carried out; but it was interrupted by death."

Vespasian adds for his own part a list of these books, which occupies

a whole column in one of Muratori's gigantic pages.

Another anecdote we must add to show our Pope's quaint ways with his

little court of literary men.

"Pope Nicolas was the light and the ornament of literature,

and of men of letters. If there had arisen another Pontiff

after him who would have followed up his work, the state of

letters would have been elevated to a worthy degree. But

after him things went from bad to worse, and there were no

prizes for virtue. The liberality of Pope Nicolas was such

that many turned to him who would not otherwise have done

so. In every place where he could do honour to men of

letters, he did so, and left nobody out. When Messer

Francesco Filelfo passed through Rome on his way to Naples

without paying him a visit, the Pope, hearing of it, sent

for him. Those who went to call him said to him, 'Messer

Francesco, we are astonished that you should have passed

through Rome without going to see him.' Messer Francesco

replied that he was carrying some of his books to King

Alfonso, but meant to see the Pope on his return. The Pope

had a scarsella at his side in which were five hundred

florins which he emptied out, saying to him, 'Take this

money for your expenses on the way.' This is what one calls

liberal! He had always a scarsella (pouch) at his side

where were several hundreds of florins and gave them away

for God's sake, and to worthy persons. He took them out of

the scarsella by handfuls and gave to them. Liberality is

natural to men, and does not come by nobility nor by

gentry: for in every generation we see some who are very

liberal and some who are equally avaricious."

But the literary aspect of Pope Nicolas's character, however

delightful, is not that with which we are chiefly concerned. He was

the first Pope to conceive a systematic plan for the reconstruction

and permanent restoration of Rome, a plan which it is needless to say

his life was not long enough to carry out, but which yet formed the

basis of all after-plans, and was eventually more or less accomplished

by different hands.

It was to the centre of ecclesiastical Rome, the shrine of the

Apostles, the chief church of Christendom and its adjacent buildings

that the care of the Builder-Pope was first directed. The Leonine

city, or Borgo as it is more familiarly called, is that portion of

Rome which lies on the left side of the Tiber, and which extends from

the castle of St. Angelo to the boundary of the Vatican

gardens--enclosing the church of St. Peter, the Vatican Palace with

all its wealth, and the great Hospital of Santo Spirito, surrounded

and intersected by many little streets, and joined to the other

portions of the city by the bridge of St. Angelo. Behind the mass of

picture galleries, museums, and collections of all kinds, which now

fill up the endless halls and corridors of the Papal palace, comes a

sweep of noble gardens full of shade and shelter from the Roman sun,

such a resort for the

"learnèd leisure

Which in trim gardens takes its pleasure"

as it would be difficult to surpass. In this fine extent of wood and

verdure the Pope's villa or casino, now the only summer palace which

the existing Pontiff chooses to permit himself, stands as in a domain,

small yet perfect. Almost everything within these walls has been built

or completely transformed since the days of Nicolas. But then as now,

here was the heart and centre of Christendom, the supreme shrine of

the Catholic faith, the home of the spiritual ruler whose sway reached

over the whole earth. When Nicolas began his reign, the old church of

St. Peter was the church of the Western world, then as now, classical

in form, a stately basilica without the picturesqueness and romantic

variety, and also, as we think, without the majesty and grandeur of a

Gothic cathedral, yet more picturesque if less stupendous in size and

construction than the present great edifice, so majestic in its own

grave and splendid way, with which through all the agitations of the

recent centuries, the name of St. Peter's has been identified. The

earlier church was full of riches, and of great associations, to which

the wonderful St. Peter's we all know can lay claim only as its

successor and supplanter. With its flight of broad steps, its portico

and colonnaded façade crowned with a great tower, it dominated the

square, open and glowing in the sun without the shelter of the great

existing colonnades or the sparkle of the fountains. Behind was the

little palace begun by Innocent III. to afford a shelter for the Popes

in dangerous times, or on occasion to receive the foreign guests whose

object was to visit the Shrine of the Apostles. Almost all the

buildings then standing have been replaced by greater, yet the

position is the same, the shrine unchanged, though everything else

then existing has faded away, except some portion of the old wall

which enclosed this sacred place in a special sanctity and security,

which was not, however, always respected. The Borgo was the holiest

portion of all the sacred city. It was there that the blood of the

martyrs had been shed, and where from the earliest age of Christianity

their memory and tradition had been preserved. It is not necessary for

us to enter into the question whether St. Peter ever was in Rome,

which many writers have laboriously contested. So far as the record of

the Acts of the Apostles is concerned, there is no evidence at all for

or against, but tradition is all on the side of those who assert it.

The position taken by Signor Lanciani on this point seems to us a very

sensible one. "I write about the monuments of ancient Rome," he says,

"from a strictly archæological point of view, avoiding questions which

pertain, or are supposed to pertain, to religious controversy."

"For the archæologist the presence and execution of SS.

Peter and Paul in Rome are facts established beyond a

shadow of doubt by purely monumental evidence. There was a

time when persons belonging to different creeds made it

almost a case of conscience to affirm or deny _a priori_

those facts, according to their acceptance or rejection of

the tradition of any particular Church. This state of

feeling is a matter of the past at least for those who have

followed the progress of recent discoveries and of critical

literature. There is no event of the Imperial age and of

Imperial Rome which is attested by so many noble

structures, all of which point to the same conclusion--the

presence and execution of the Apostles in the capital of

the empire. When Constantine raised the monumental

basilicas over their tombs on the Via Cornelia and the Via

Ostiensis: when Eudoxia built the Church ad Vincula: when

Damasus put a memorial tablet in the Platonia ad

Catacombos: when the houses of Pudens and Aquila and Prisca

were turned into oratories: when the name of Nymphæ Sancti

Petri was given to the springs in the catacombs of the Via

Nomentana: when the 29th June was accepted as the

anniversary of St. Peter's execution: when sculptors,

painters, medallists, goldsmiths, workers in glass and

enamel, and engravers of precious stones, all began to

reproduce in Rome the likeness of the apostle at the

beginning of the second century, and continued to do so

till the fall of the Empire: must we consider them as

labouring under a delusion, or conspiring in the commission

of a gigantic fraud? Why were such proceedings accepted

without protest from whatever city, whatever community--if

there were any other--which claimed to own the genuine

tombs of SS. Peter and Paul? These arguments gain more

value from the fact that the evidence on the other side is

purely negative."

This is one of those practical arguments which are always more

interesting than those which depend upon theories and opinions.

However, there are many books on both sides of the question which may

be consulted. We are content to follow Signor Lanciani. The special

sanctity and importance of Il Borgo originated in this belief. The

shrine of the Apostle was its centre and its glory. It was this that

brought pilgrims from the far corners of the earth before there was

any masterpiece of art to visit, or any of those priceless collections

which now form the glory of the Vatican. The spot of the Apostle's

execution was indicated "by immemorial tradition" as between the two

goals (_inter duas metas_) of Nero's circus, which spot Signor

Lanciani tells us is exactly the site of the obelisk now standing in

the piazza of St. Peter. A little chapel, called the Chapel of the

Crucifixion, stood there in the early ages, before any great basilica

or splendid shrine was possible.

This sacred spot, and the church built to commemorate it, were

naturally the centre of all those religious traditions which separate

Rome from every other city. It was to preserve them from assault, "in

order that it should be less easy for the enemy to make depredations

and burn the church of St. Peter, as they have heretofore done," that

Leo IV., the first Pope, whom we find engaged in any real work of

construction built a wall round the mount of the Vatican, the "Colle

Vaticano"--little hill, not so high as the seven hills of Rome--where

against the strong wall of Nero's circus Constantine had built his

great basilica. At that period--in the middle of the ninth

century--there was nothing but the church and shrine--no palace and no

hospital. The existing houses were given to the Corsi, a family which

had been driven out of their island, according to Platina, by the

Saracens, who shortly before had made an incursion up to the very

walls of Rome, whither the peoples of the coast (_luoghi maritimi del

Mar Terreno_) from Naples northward had apparently pursued the

Corsairs, and helped the Romans to beat them back. One other humble

building of some sort, "called Burgus Saxonum, Vicus Saxonum, Schola

Saxonum, and simply Saxia or Sassia," it is interesting to know,

existed close to the sacred centre of the place, a lodging built for

himself by Ina, King of Wessex, in 727. Thus we have a national

association of our own with the central shrine of Christianity. "There

was also a Schola Francorum in the Borgo." The pilgrims must have

built their huts and set up some sort of little oratory--favoured, as

was the case even in Pope Nicolas's day, by the excellent quarry of

the circus close at hand--as near as possible to the great shrine and

basilica which they had come so far to say their prayers in; and

attracted too, no doubt, by the freedom of the lonely suburb between

the green hill and the flowing river. Leo IV. built his wall round

this little city, and fortified it by towers. "In every part he put

sculptures of marble and wrote a prayer," says Platina. One of these

gates led to St. Pellegrino, another was close to the castle of St.

Angelo, and was "the gate by which one goes forth to the open

country." The third led to the School of the Saxons; and over each was

a prayer inscribed. These three prayers were all to the same

effect--"that God would defend this new city which the Pope had

enclosed with walls and called by his own name, the Leonine City, from

all assaults of the enemy, either by fraud or by force."

[Illustration: IN THE CORSO: CHURCH DOORS.]

This was then from the beginning the citadel and innermost sanctuary

of Rome. It was not till much later, under the reign of Innocent III.,

that the idea of building a house for the Pope within that enclosure

originated. The same great Pope founded the vast hospital of the Santo

Spirito--on the site of a previous hospice for the poor either within

or close to its walls. Thus it came to be the lodging of the Sovereign

Pontiff, and of the scarcely less sacred sick and suffering, as well

as the most holy and chiefest of all Christian sanctuaries. Were we to

be very minute, it might be easily proved that almost every Pope

contributed something to the existence and decoration of the Leonine

city, the _imperium in imperio_; and specially, as was natural, to the

great basilica.

The little Palazzo di San Pietro being close to St. Angelo, the

stronghold and most safe resort in danger, was occupied by the court

on its return from Avignon, and probably then became the official home

of the Popes; though for some time there seems to have been a

considerable latitude in that respect. Pope Martin afterwards removed

to the Palace of the Apostles. Another of the Popes preferred to all

others the great Palazzo Venezia, which he had built: but the name of

the Vatican was henceforth received as the title of the Papal court.

The enlargement and embellishment of this palace thus became naturally

the great object of the Popes, and nothing was spared upon it. It is

put first in every record of achievement even when there is other

important work to describe. "Nicolas," says Platina, "builded

magnificently both in the Vatican, and in the city. He rebuilt the

churches of St. Stefano Rotondo and of St. Teodoro," the former most

interesting church being built upon the foundations of a round

building of classical times, supposed, Mr. Hare tells us, to have

belonged to the ancient Fleshmarket, as we should say, the Macellum

Magnum. S. Teodoro is also a _rotondo_. It would seem that there were

different opinions as to the success of these restorations in the

fifteenth century such as arise among ourselves in respect to almost

every work of the same kind. A certain "celebrated architect,"

Francesco di Giorgio di Martino, of Sienna, was then about the world,

a man who spoke his mind. "_Hedifitio ruinato_," he says of St.

Stefano, with equal disregard to spelling and to manners. "Rebuilt,"

he adds, "by Pope Nichola; but much more spoilt:" which is such a

thing as we now hear said of the once much-vaunted restorations of Sir

Gilbert Scott. Our Pope also "made a leaden roof for Sta. Maria

Rotonda in the middle of the city, built by M. Agrippa as a temple for

all the gods and called the Pantheon." He must have been fond of this

unusual form; but whether it was a mere whim of personal liking, or if

there was any meaning in his construction of these round temples, we

have no information. Perhaps Nicolas had a special admiration of the

solemn and beautiful Pantheon, in which we completely sympathise. The

question is too insignificant to be inquired into. Yet it is curious

in its way.

These were however, though specially distinguished by Platina, but a

drop in the ocean to the numberless undertakings of Pope Nicolas

throughout the city; and all these again were inferior in importance

to the great works in St. Peter's and the Vatican, to which his

predecessors had each put a hand so long as their time lasted. "In the

Vatican," says Platina, "he built those apartments of the Pontiff,

which are to be seen to this day: and he began the wall of the

Vatican, great and high, with its incredible depth of foundation, and

high towers, to hold the enemy at a distance, so that neither the

church of St. Peter (as had already happened several times) nor the

palace of the Pope should ever be sacked. He began also the tribune of

the church of St. Peter, that the church might hold more people, and

might be more magnificent. He also rebuilt the Ponte Molle, and

erected near the baths of Viterbo a great palace. Having the aid of

much money, he built many parts of the city, and cleansed all the

streets." Great also in other ways were his gifts to his beloved

church and city--"vases of gold and silver, crosses ornamented with

gems, rich vestments and precious tapestry, woven with gold and

silver, and the mitre of the Pontificate, which demonstrated his

liberality." It was he who first placed a second crown on the mitre,

which up to this time had borne one circlet alone. The complete tiara

with the three crowns was adopted in a later reign.

The two previous Popes, his predecessors, had been magnificent also in

their acquisitions for the Church in this kind; both of them being

curious in goldsmiths' work, then entering upon its most splendid

development, and in their collections of precious stones. The valuable

work of M. Muntz, _Les Arts à la cour des papes_, abounds in details

of these splendid jewels. Indeed his sober records of daily work and

its payment seem to transport us out of one busy scene into another as

by the touch of a magician's wand, as if Rome the turbulent and idle,

full of aimless popular rushes to and fro, had suddenly become a

beehive full of energetic workers and the noise of cheerful labour,

both out of doors in the sun, where the masons were loudly at work,

and in many a workshop, where the most delicate and ingenious arts

were being carried on. Roman artists at length began to appear amid

the host of Florentines and the whole world seems to have turned into

one great _bottega_ full of everything rich and rare.

The greatest, however, of all the conceptions of Pope Nicolas, the

very centre of his great plan, was the library of the Vatican, which

he began to build and to which he left all the collections of his

life. Vespasian gives us a list of the principal among those 5,000

volumes, the things which he prized most, which the Pope bequeathed to

the Church and to Rome. These cherished rolls of parchment, many of

them translations made under his own eyes, were enclosed in elaborate

bindings ornamented with gold and silver. We are not, however,

informed whether any of the great treasures of the Vatican library

came from his hands--the good Vespasian taking more interest in the

work of his scribes than in Codexes. He tells us of 500 scudi given to

Lorenzo Valle with a pretty speech that the price was below his

merits, but that eventually he should have more liberal pay; of 1,500

scudi given to Guerroni for a translation of the Iliad, and so forth.

It is like a bookseller of the present day vaunting his new editions

to a collector in search of the earliest known. But Pope Nicolas, like

most other patrons of his time, knew no Greek, nor probably ever

expected that it would become a usual subject of study, so that his

translations were precious to him, the chief way of making his

treasures of any practical use.

[Illustration: SANTA MARIA DEL POPOLO.

_To face page 546._]

The greater part, alas! of all this splendour has passed away. One

pure and perfect glory, the little chapel of San Lorenzo, painted by

the tender hand of Fra Angelico, remains unharmed, the only work of

that grand painter to be found in Rome. If one could have chosen a

monument for the good Pope, the patron and friend of art in every

form, there could not have been a better than this. Fra Angelico seems

to have been brought to Rome by Pope Eugenius, but it was under

Nicolas, in two or three years of gentle labour, that the work was

done. It is, however, impossible to enumerate all the undertakings of

Pope Nicolas. He did something to re-establish or decorate almost all

of the great basilicas. It is feared--but here our later historians

speak with bated breath, not liking to bring such an accusation

against the kind Pope, who loved men of letters--that the destruction

of St. Peter's, afterwards ruthlessly carried out by succeeding Popes

was in his plan: on the pretext, so constantly employed, and possibly

believed in, of the instability of the ancient building. But there is

no absolute certainty of evidence, and at all events he might have

repented, for he certainly did not do that deed. He began the tribune,

however, in the ancient church, which may have been a preparation for

the entire renewal of the edifice; and he did much towards the

decoration of another round church, that of the Madonna delle Febbre,

an ill-omened name, attached to the Vatican. He also built the

Belvedere in the gardens, and surrounded the whole with strong walls

and towers (round), one of which according to Nibby still remained

fifty years ago; which very little of Nicolas's building has done. His

great sin was one which he shared with all his brother-Popes, that he

boldly treated the antique ruins of the city as quarries for his new

buildings, not without protest and remonstrance from many, yet with

the calm of a mind preoccupied and seeing nothing so great and

important as the work upon which his own heart was set.

This excellent Pope died in 1455, soon after having received the news

of the downfall of Constantinople, which is said to have broken his

heart. He had many ailments, and was always a small and spare man of

little strength of constitution; but "nothing transfixed his heart so

much as to hear that the Turk had taken Constantinople and killed the

Europeans, with many thousands of Christians," among them that same

"Imperadore de Gostantinopli" whom he had seen seated in state at the

Council of Ferrara, listening to his own and other arguments, only a

few years before--as well as the greater part, no doubt, of his own

clerical opponents there. When he was dying "being not the less of a

strong spirit," he called the Cardinals round his bed, and many

prelates with them, and made them a last address. His pontificate had

lasted a little more than eight years, and to have carried out so

little of his great plan must have been heavy on his heart; but his

dying words are those of one to whom the holiness and unity of the

Church came before all. No doubt the fear that the victorious Turks

might spread ruin over the whole of Christendom was first in his mind

at that solemn hour.

"'Knowing, my dearest brethren, that I am approaching the

hour of my death, I would, for the greater dignity and

authority of the Apostolic See, make a serious and

important testament before you, not committed to the memory

of letters, not written, neither on a tablet nor on

parchment, but given by my living voice that it may have

more authority. Listen, I pray you, while your little Pope

Nicolas (papa Niccolajo) in the very instant of dying makes

his last will before you. In the first place I render

thanks to the Highest God for the measureless benefits

which, beginning from the day of my birth until the present

day, I have received of His infinite mercy. And now I

recommend to you this beautiful spouse of Christ, whom, so

far as I was able, I have exalted and magnified, as each of

you is well aware; knowing this to be to the honour of God,

for the great dignity that is in her, and the great

privileges that she possesses, and so worthy, and formed by

so worthy an Author, who is the Creator of the Universe.

Being of sane mind and intellect, and having done that

which every Christian is called to do, and specially the

Pastor of the Church, I have received the most sacred body

of Christ with penitence, taking from His table with my two

hands, and praying the Omnipotent God that he would pardon

my sins. Having had these sacraments I have also received

the extreme unction which is the last sacrament for the

redeeming of my soul. Again I recommend to you, as long as

I am able, the Roman Church, notwithstanding that I have

already done so; for this is the most important duty you

have to fulfil in the sight of God and men. This is that

true Spouse of Christ which He bought with his blood. This

is that robe without seam, which the impious Jews would

have torn but could not. This is that ship of St. Peter,

Prince of the Apostles, agitated and tossed by varied

fortunes of the winds, but sustained by the Omnipotent God,

so that she can never be submerged or shipwrecked. With all

the strength of your souls sustain her and rule her: she

has need of your good works, and you should show a good

example by your lives. If you with all your strength care

for her and love her, God will reward you, both in this

present life and in the future with life eternal; and to do

this with all the strength we have, we pray you: do it

diligently, dearest brethren.'

"Having said this he raised his hands to heaven and said,

'Omnipotent God, grant to the Holy Church, and to these

fathers, a pastor who will preserve her and increase her;

give to them a good pastor who will rule and govern thy

flock the most maturely that one can rule and govern. And I

pray for you and comfort you as much as I know and can.

Pray for me to God in your prayers.' When he had ended

these words, he raised his right arm and, with a generous

soul, gave the benediction--Benedicat vos Deus, Pater et

Filius et Spiritus Sanctus--speaking with a raised voice

and solemnly, _in modo Pontificale_."

These tremulous words, broken and confused by the weakness of his last

hours, were taken down by the favourite scribe, Giannozzo Manetti, in

the chamber of the dying Pope: with much more of the most serious

matter to the Church and to Rome. His eager desire to soften all

possible controversies and produce in the minds of the conclave about

his bed, so full of ambition and the force of life, the softened heart

which would dispose them to a peaceful and conscientious election of

his successor, is very touching, coming out of the fogs and mists of

approaching death.

In the very age that produced the Borgias, and himself the head of

that band of elegant scholars and connoisseurs, everything but

Christian, to whom Rome owes so much of her external beauty and

splendour, it is pathetic to stand by this kind and gentle spirit as

he pauses on the threshold of a higher life, subduing the astute and

worldly minded Churchmen round him with the tender appeal of the dying

father, their Papa Niccolajo, familiar and persuasive--beseeching them

to be of one accord without so much as saying it, turning his own

weakness to account to touch their hearts, for the honour of the

Church and the welfare of the flock.

[Illustration: MODERN DEGRADATION OF A PALACE.]

CHAPTER II.

CALIXTUS III.--PIUS II.--PAUL II.--SIXTUS IV.

It is not unusual even in the strictest of hereditary monarchies to

find the policy of one ruler entirely contradicted and upset by his

successor; and it is still more natural that such a thing should

happen in a succession of men, unlike and unconnected with each other

as were the Popes; but the difference was more than usually great

between Nicolas and Calixtus III., the next occupant of the Holy See,

elected 1455, died 1458, who was an old man and a Spaniard, and loved

neither books nor pictures, nor any of the new arts which had

bewitched (as many people believed) Pope Nicolas and seduced him into

squandering the treasure of the Papacy upon unnecessary buildings,

and still more unnecessary decorations. Calixtus was a Borgia, the

first to introduce the horror of that name: but he was not in himself

a harmful personage. "He spent little in building," says Platina, "for

he lived but a short time, and saved all his money for the undertaking

against the Turks," an enterprise which had become a very real and

necessary one, now that Constantinople had fallen; but which had no

longer the romance and sentiment of the Crusades to inspire it, though

successive Pontiffs did their best to rouse Christendom on the

subject. The aged Spanish Cardinal threw himself into it with all the

fervour of his nature, which better than many others knew the mettle

of the Moor. His short term of power was entirely occupied with this.

A little building went on, which could not be helped: the walls had

always to be looked to; but Pope Nicolas's army of scribes were all

turned off summarily; the studios were closed, the artist people

turned away about their business; all the great works put a stop to.

Worse even than that--for Calixtus was a short-lived interruption, and

perhaps might only have stopped the progress of events for some three

years or so--Pope Nicolas's great plan, which was so complete, went

out of sight, and was lost in the limbo of good intentions. His

workmen were dispersed, and the fashion to which he had accustomed the

world, changed. It was only resumed with earnestness after several

generations, and never quite in the great lines which he had laid out.

Neither did the new Pope get his Crusade, which might have been a

better thing. Yet Calixtus was a person _assai generoso_, Platina

tells us; in any case he occupied his great post for a very short

time.

His successor, Pius II., 1458, on the other hand, was such a man as

might well have inherited the highest purpose. He is almost better

known as Eneas Silvius, a famous traveller and writer--not the usual

peasant monk without a surname as so many had been, but one of the

Piccolomini of Sienna, a great house, though ruined or partially

ruined in his day. He was a man who had travelled much, and was known

at all the courts; at one time young, heretical, adventurous, and

ready to pull down all authorities, the life and soul of that famous

Council of Bâle which took upon itself to depose Pope Eugenius; but

not long after that outburst of independent youthfulness and energy

was over, we find him filling the highest offices, the Legate of

Eugenius and a very rising yet always much-opposed Cardinal. He it was

who travelled to a remote and obscure little country called Scotland,

in the Pope's name, to arrange matters there; and found the people

very savage, digging stones out of the earth to make fires of them:

but having plenty of fish and flesh, and surprisingly comfortable on

the whole. He was one of the ablest men who ever sat on the Papal

throne, but too reasonable, too moderate, too natural for the

position. He loved literature, or at least he loved books, which is

not always the same thing, and himself wrote a great many on various

subjects; and he was so fortunate as to have the historian of the

Popes, Platina--our guide, who we would have wished might live for

ever--for his librarian, who was worth all the marble tombs in the

world and all the epitaphs to a man whom he liked, and worse than any

heathen conqueror to the man who was unkind to him.

Platina gives us a beautiful character of Pope Pius. He is very

lenient to the faults of his youth, as indeed most historians are in

respect to personages afterwards great, finding in their peccadilloes,

we presume, a welcome and picturesque relief to the perfections that

become a Pope. Yet Pius II. was never too perfect. He was a man who

disliked the narrowness of a court, and loved the fresh air, and to

give audience in his garden, and to eat his modest meal beside the

tinkling of a fountain or under the shade of trees. He loved wit and a

joke, and even gave ear to ridiculous things and to the excellent

mimicry of a certain Florentine, who "took off" the courtiers and

other absurd persons, and made his Holiness laugh. And he was hasty in

temper, but bore no malice, and paid no attention to evil reports

raised about himself. "He never punished those who spoke ill of him,

saying that in a free city like Rome, every one should speak freely

what he thought." He hated lying and story-tellers, and never made war

unless he was forced to it. Whenever he was freed from the trials of

business he took his pleasure in reading or in writing. "Books were

more dear to him than sapphires or emeralds," says Platina, with a

shrewd prick by the way at his successor, Paul, as we shall afterwards

see, "and he was used to say that his chrysolites and other jewels

were all enclosed in them." He never took a meal alone if he could

help it, but loved a lively companion, and to make his little feasts

in his garden as we have said, shocking much the scandalised

courtiers, who declared that no other Pope had ever done such a thing;

for which Pope Pius cared nothing at all. He wrote upon all kinds of

subjects; from a grammar which he made for the little King of Hungary,

to histories of various kingdoms, and philosophical disquisitions.

Indeed the list of his subjects is like that of a series of popular

lectures in our own day. "He wrote many books in dialogue--upon the

power of the Council of Bâle, upon the sources of the Nile, upon

hunting, upon Fate, upon the presence of God." If he had been a

University Extension lecturer, he could scarcely have been more

many-sided. And he wrote largely upon peace, no less than thirty-two

orations "upon the peace of kings, the concord of princes, the

tranquillity of nations, the defence of religion, and the quiet of the

world." There was neither peace among kings, concord among princes,

nor tranquillity among nations when Pope Pius delivered and collected

his orations. They ought to have had all the greater effect; but we

fear he was too wise a man to put much faith in any immediate result.

His greatest work, however, was his _Commentaries_, an enlarged and

philosophical study of his own times, which he did not live long

enough to finish.

This Pontiff carried on the work of his predecessor more or less, but

without any great zeal for it. "He collected manuscripts, but with

discretion; he built, but it was in moderation," Bishop Creighton

says. Platina, with more warmth, tells us that "he took great delight

in building," but he seems to have confined himself to his own

immediate surroundings, working at the improvement of St. Peter's,

building a chapel, putting up a statue, restoring the great flight of

stairs which then as now led up to the portico which previous Popes

had adorned; and adding a little to the defences and decoration of the

Vatican. He is suspected of having had a guilty liking for the Gothic

style in architecture which greatly shocked the Roman _dilettanti_;

and certainly expressed his admiration for some of the great churches

in Germany with enthusiasm. One great piece of architectural work he

did, but it was not at Rome. It was in the headquarters of his family

at Sienna, and specially in the little adjacent town of Corsignano,

where he was born, one of those little fortified villages which add so

much to the beauty of Italy. This little place he made glorious with

beautiful buildings, forgetting his native wisdom and discretion in

the foolishness of that narrow but intense patriotism which bound the

Italian to his native town, and made it the joy of the whole earth to

his eyes. It gives a charm the more to his interesting character that

he should have been capable of such a folly; though not perhaps that

he should have changed its name to Pienza, a reflection of his own

pontifical name.

With this, however, we have nothing to do, and not very much

altogether with the great Piccolomini, though he is one of the most

interesting and sympathetic figures which has ever sat upon the papal

throne. His death was a strange and painful conclusion to a life full

of work, full of admirable sense and intelligence without exaggeration

or pretence. He followed the policy of his predecessors in desiring to

institute a Crusade, one more strenuously called for perhaps than any

which preceded it, since Constantinople had now fallen into the hands

of the Turks, and Christendom was believed to be in danger. It is

scarcely possible to imagine that his full and active life should have

been much occupied by this endeavour: nor can we think that this great

spectator and observer of human affairs was consumed with anxiety in

respect to a danger about which the civilised world was so careless:

but in the end of his life he seems to have taken it up with tragical

earnestness, perhaps out of compunction for previous indifference. The

impulse which once moved whole nations to take the cross had died out;

and not even the sight of the beautiful metropolis of Eastern

Christianity fallen into the hands of the infidel, and so splendid a

Christian temple as St. Sophia turned into a mosque had power to rouse

Europe. The King of Hungary was the only monarch who showed any real

energy in the matter, feeling his own safety imperilled, and Venice,

also for the same reason, was the only great city; and except in these

quarters the remonstrances and entreaties of Pius had no success. In

these circumstances the Pope called his court about him and announced

to them the plan he had formed, a most unlikely plan for such a man,

yet possible enough if there was any remorseful sense of carelessness

in the past. The Duke of Burgundy had promised to go if another prince

would join him. The Pope determined that in the absence of any other

he himself would be that prince. Old as he was, and sick, and no

warrior, and perhaps with but little of the zeal which makes such a

self-devotion possible, he would himself go forth to repel the

infidel. "We do not go to fight," he said, with faltering voice. "We

will imitate those who, when Israel fought against Amalek, prayed on

the mountain. We will stand on the prow of our ship or upon some hill,

and with the holy Eucharist before our eyes, we will ask from our Lord

victory for our soldiers." After a pause of alarm and astonishment the

Cardinals consented, and such preparations as were possible were made.

It was published throughout all Christendom that the Pope was to sail

from Ancona at a certain date, and that every one who could provide

for the expenses of the journey should meet him there. He invited the

old Doge of Venice to join with himself and the Duke of Burgundy, also

an old man. "We shall be three old men," he said, "and our trinity

will be aided by the Trinity of Heaven." A kind of sublimity was in

the suggestion, a sublimity almost trembling on the borders of the

ridiculous; for the enterprise was no longer one which accorded with

the spirit of the time, and all was hesitation and difficulty. A

miscellaneous host crowded to Ancona, where the Pope, much suffering,

was carried in his litter, quite unfit for a long journey; but the

most of them had no money and had to be sent back; and the Venetian

galleys engaged to transport those who were left did not arrive till

the pilgrims had waited long, and were worn out with delay and

confusion. They arrived at last a day or two before Pope Pius died,

when he was no longer capable of moving--and with his death the

ill-fated Crusade fell to pieces and was heard of no more. It was the

most curious end, in an enthusiasm founded upon anxious calculation,

of a man who was never an enthusiast, whose eyes were always too

clear-sighted to permit him to be led away by feeling, a man of

letters and of thought, rather than of romantic-solemn enterprises or

the zeal of a martyr. That he was a kind of martyr to the strong

conviction of a danger which threatened Christendom, and the forlorn

hope of repelling it, there can be no doubt.

Pius II. was succeeded in 1464 by Paul II., also in his way a man of

more than usual ability and note. He was a Venetian, the nephew of

the last Venetian Pope, Eugenius; and it was he who built, to begin

with, the fine palace still called the Palazzo Venezia, with which

all visitors to Rome are so well acquainted. It was built for his own

residence during his Cardinalate, and remained his favourite dwelling,

a habitation still very much more in the centre of everything, as we

say, than the remote and stately Vatican. The reader will easily

recall the imposing appearance of this fine building, placed at the

end of the straight street--the chief in Rome--in which were run the

many races which formed part of the carnival festivities, a recent

institution in Pope Paul's day. The street was called the Corso in

consequence; and it is not long since the last of these races, one

of horses without riders, was abolished. The Palazzo Venezia

commanded the long straight street from its windows, and all the

humours and wonders of the town, in which the Pope took pleasure. It

was Paul's fate to make himself an implacable enemy in the often

contemned, but--as regards the place in history of either pope or

king--all-important class of writers, which it must have seemed

ridiculous indeed for a Sovereign Pontiff to have kept terms with, on

account of any power in their hands. But this was a shortsighted

conclusion, unworthy the wisdom of a Pope. And the result of the

Pontiff's ill-treatment of the historian Platina, to whom we are so

much indebted, especially for the lives of those Popes who were his

contemporaries, has been a lasting stigma upon his character, which

the researches of the impartial critics of a later age have shown to

be partly without foundation, but which until quite recently was

accepted by everybody. In this way a writer has a power which is

almost absolute. We have seen in our own days a conspicuous instance

of this in the treatment by Mr. Froude of the life of Thomas Carlyle.

Numbers of Carlyle's friends made instant protest against the view

taken by his biographer; but they did so in evanescent methods--in

periodical literature, the nature of which is to die after it has had

its day--while a book remains. Very likely many of Pope Paul's friends

protested against the coolly ferocious account of his life given by

the aggrieved and revengeful author; but it is only quite recently, in

the calm of great distance, that people have come to think--charitably

in respect to Pope Paul II.--that perhaps Platina's strictures might

not be true.

Platina, however, had great provocation. He was one of the disciples

of the famous school of Humanists, the then new school of learning,

literature, and criticism, which had arisen under the papacy and

patronage of Pope Nicolas V., and had continued to exist, though with

less encouragement, under his successors. Pius II. had not been their

patron as Nicolas was, but he had not been hostile to them, and his

tastes were all of a kind congenial to their work. But Paul looked

coldly upon the group of contemptuous scholars who had made themselves

into an academy, and vapoured much about classical examples and the

superiority of ancient times. He had no quarrel with literature, but

he persuaded himself to believe that the academy which talked and

masqueraded under classic names, and played with dangerous theories of

liberty, and criticism of public proceedings, was a nest of

conspirators and heretics scheming against himself. There was no

foundation whatever for his fears, but that mattered little in those

arbitrary days. This is Platina's own account of the matter:

"When Pius was dead and Paul created in his place, he had

no sooner grasped the keys of Peter, than he

proceeded--whether in consequence of a promise to do so, or

because the decrees and proceedings of Pius were odious to

him--to dismiss all the officials elected by Pius, on the

ground that they were useless and ignorant (as he said):

and deprived them of their dignity and revenues without

permitting them to say a word in their own defence, though

they were men who for their erudition and doctrine had been

gathered together from all the ends of the world, and

attracted to the court of Rome by the promise of great

reward. The College was full of men of letters and virtuous

persons learned in the law both divine and human. Among

them were poets and orators who gave no less ornament to

the court than they received from it. Paul sent them all

away as incapable and as strangers, and deprived them of

everything, although those who had bought their offices

were allowed to retain them. Those who suffered most

attempted to dissuade him from this intention, and I, who

was one of them, begged earnestly that our cause might be

committed to the judge of the Rota. Then he fixed on me his

angry eyes. 'So,' he said, 'thou wouldst appeal to other

judges against the decision we have made! Know ye not that

all justice and law are in the casket of our bosom? Thus I

will it to be. Begone, all of you! for, whatever you may

wish I am Pope, and according to my pleasure can make and

unmake.'"

After hearing this determined assertion of right, the displaced

scholars withdrew, but continued to plead their cause by urgent

letters, which ended at last in an unwise threat to make the

continental princes aware how they were treated, and to bring about

the Pope's ears a Council, to which he would be obliged to give

account. The word Council was to a Pope what the red flag is to a

bull, and in a transport of rage Paul II. threw Platina into prison.

He never in his life did a more foolish thing. The historian was kept

in confinement for two years, and passed one long winter without fire,

subjected to every hardship; but finally was set free by the

intercession of Cardinal Gonzaga, and remained, by order of the Pope,

under observation in Rome, where watching with a vigilant eye all that

went on, he laid up his materials for that brief but scathing

biography of Paul II. which forms one of the keenest effects in his

work, and from which the Pope's memory has never recovered. It is a

dangerous thing to provoke a man of letters who has a keen tongue and

a gift of recollection, especially in those days when such men were

not so many as now.

Nevertheless Platina did a certain justice to his persecutor. "He

built magnificently," he says, "splendidly in St. Marco, and in the

Vatican." The Church of St. Marco is close to the Palazzo Venezia

where Paul chiefly lived; he had taken his title as Cardinal from his

native saint. Both in St. Peter's and in the Vatican he carried on

the works begun by his predecessors, and though he was unkind to the

scholars, he was not so in every case. "He expended his money

liberally enough," says Platina, "giving freely to poor Cardinals and

bishops, and to princes and persons of noble houses when cast out of

their homes, and especially to poor women and widows, and the sick who

had no one else to think of them. And he also took great trouble to

secure that corn and other things necessary to life should be

furnished in abundance, and at lower prices than had been known ever

before." These were good and noble qualities which his enemy did not

attempt to disguise.

The special service done by Pope Paul to the city would seem, however,

to have been the restoration of some of those ancient monuments which

belonged to imperial Rome, of which none of his predecessors had made

much account. If he still helped himself freely, like them, from the

great reservoir of the Colosseum, he bestowed an attention and care,

which they had not dreamed of, upon some of the great works of classic

art, the arches of Titus and of Septimus Severus in particular, and

the famous statue of Marcus Aurelius. M. Muntz comments with much

spirit on the reason why this Pope's works of restoration have been so

little celebrated. His taste was toward sculpture rather than

painting. "To the eyes of the world," says the historian of the arts,

"the smallest fresco is of more account than the finest monuments of

architecture, or of sculpture. Nicolas V. did better for his fame in

engaging Fra Angelico than in undertaking the reconstruction of St.

Peter's. Pius II. owes a sort of posthumous celebrity to the paintings

in the library of the cathedral of Sienna."

The same classical tastes of which he thus gave token made Pope Paul a

great collector of bronzes, cameos, medals, intaglios, the smaller

precious objects of ancient art; the love of which he was the first to

bring back as a special study and pursuit. His collection of these

was wonderful for his time, and great for any time. All the other

adornments of ancient art were dear to him, and his palace, which,

after all, is his most complete memorial in Rome, was adorned like a

bride with every kind of glory in carved and inlaid work, in vessels

of gold and silver, embroideries and tapestries. He had the still more

personal and individual characteristic of a love for fine clothes,

which the gorgeous costumes of the popedom permitted him to indulge in

to a large extent: and jewels, which he not only wore like an Eastern

prince, but kept about him unset in drawers and cabinets for his

private delight, playing with them, as Platina tells us, in the silent

hours of the night. Some part at least of these magnificent tastes

arose no doubt from the fact that he was himself a magnificent

specimen of manhood, so distinguished in personal appearance that he

had the naïve vanity of suggesting the name of Formosus for himself

when elected Pope, though he yielded the point to the scandalised

remonstrances of the Cardinals. This simplicity of self-admiration, so

undoubting as to be almost a moral quality, no doubt gave meaning to

the glorious mitres and tiara encrusted with the richest jewels, which

it gave him so much pleasure to wear, and which take rank with the

other great embellishments of Rome, though their object was more

personal than official. The habits of his life were strange, for he

slept during the day, and performed the duties of life during the

night, the reason assigned for this being that he was tormented by a

cough which prevented him from sleeping at the usual hours. "It was

difficult to come to speech of him," Platina says, for this reason.

"And when, after long waiting, he opened the door, you were obliged

rather to listen than to speak; for he was very copious and long in

speaking. In everything he desired to be thought astute, and therefore

his conversation was in very intricate and ambiguous language He

liked many sorts of viands on his table, all of the worst taste; and

took much pleasure in eating melons, crawfish, pastry, fish, and salt

pork, from which, I believe, came the apoplexy from which he died."

Thus the prejudices of his enemy penetrated the most private details

of the Pope's life. The venom of hatred defeats itself and becomes

ridiculous when carried so far.

His fine collection was seized by his successor and broken up, as is

the fate of such treasures; and his works in St. Peter's, as we shall

see, had much the same fate, along with the great works of his

predecessor for the embellishment of the same building, all of which

perished or were set aside in the fever of rebuilding which ensued.

But there is still a sufficient memorial of him in the sombre

magnificence of his Venetian palace, to recall to us the image of a

true Renaissance Pope, mingling the most exquisite tastes with the

rudest, the perfection of personal vanity--for he loved to see himself

in a procession, head and shoulders over all the people--with the

likings of a gondolier. Thus we see him in the records of his

contemporaries, watching from his windows the strange sports in the

long street newly named the Corso, races of men and of horses, and

carnival processions accompanied by all the cumbrous and coarse humour

of the period; or a stranger sight still, seated by night in his

cabinet turning over his wealth of sparkling stones, enjoying the glow

of light in them and twinkle of many colours, while the big candles

flared, or a milder light shone from the beaks of the silver lamps.

Notwithstanding which strange humours, tastes, and vanities, he

remains in all these records a striking and remarkable figure, no

intellectualist, but an effective and notable man.

[Illustration: PIAZZA COLONNA.

_To face page 564._]

It is not the intention of these chapters to enter at all into the

political life of the Popes of this period. They were still a power in

Christendom, perhaps no less so that the Papacy had ceased to maintain

those great pretensions of being the final arbiter in all disputes

among the nations. But the papal negotiations, as always, came to very

little when not aided by the events which are in no man's hand.

Matthias of Hungary, though supported by all the influence and

counsels of Pope Paul, made little head against the heretical George

Podiebrad of Bohemia, until death suddenly overtook that prince, and

left a troubled kingdom without a head, at the mercy of the invaders,

an event such as constantly occurred to overturn all combinations and

form the crises of history under a larger providence than that of

human effort. And Paul no more than Pius could move Christendom

against the Turk, or form again, when all its elements had crumbled,

and the inspiration of enthusiasm was entirely gone, a new crusade. So

far as our purpose goes, however, the Venetian Palace, the Church of

St. Marco attached to it, and certain portions of the Vatican, better

represent the life of this Pope, to whom the picturesque circumstances

of his life and the rancour of a disappointed man of letters have

given a special place of his own in the long line, than any summary we

could give of the agitated sea of continental politics. The history of

Rome was working up to that climax, odious, dazzling, and terrible, to

which the age of the Renaissance, with all its luxury, its splendour,

and its vice, brought the great city, and even the Church so

irrevocably bound to it. Nicolas, Pius, and Paul at the beginning of

that period, yet but little affected by its worst features, give us a

pause of satisfaction before we get further. They were very different

men. Pope Nicolas, with his crowd of copyists forming a ragged

regiment after him, and the noise of all the workshops in his ears;

and Paul, alone in his chamber pouring from one hand to another the

stream of glowing and sparkling jewels which threw out radiance like

the waterways of his own Venice under the light, afford images as

unlike as it is possible to conceive; while the wise and thoughtful

Pius, with those eyes "which had kept watch o'er man's mortality,"

stands over both, the perennial spectator and commentator of the

world. They were all of one mind to glorify Rome, to make her a wonder

in the whole earth, as Jerusalem had been, if not to pave her streets

with gold, yet to line them with noble edifices more costly than gold,

and to build and adorn the first of Christian churches, the shrine to

which every Christian came. Alas! by that time it was beginning to be

visible that all Christians would not long continue to come to the one

shrine, that the pictorial age of symbols and representations was

dying away, and that Rome had not learned at all how to meet that

great revolution. It was not likely to be met by even the most

splendid restoration of the fated city, any more than the necessities

of the people were to be met by those other resurrections of

institutions dead and gone, attempted by Rienzi, and his still less

successful copyist Porcaro; but how were these men to know? They did

their best, the worst of them not without some noble meaning, at least

at the beginning of their several careers; but they are all reduced to

their place, so much less important than they believed, by the large

sweep of history, and the guidance of a higher hand.

Paul II. died in August 1471. Another order of man now succeeded these

remarkable personages, the first of the line of purely secular

princes, men of the world, splendid, unprincipled, and more or less

vicious, although in this case it is once more a peasant, without so

much as a surname, Sixtus IV., who takes his place in the scene, and

who has left his name more conspicuously than any of his predecessors

upon the later records of Rome. So far as the reader is concerned, the

inscription at the end of the life of Pope Paul is a more melancholy

one than anything that concerns that Pope. "Fin qui, scrisse il

Platina," says the legend. We miss in the after-records his individual

touch, the hand of the contemporary, in which the frankness of the

chronicler is modified by the experience and knowledge of an educated

mind. The work of Panvinio, _scriba del Senato e popolo Romano_, who

completes the record, is without the same charm.

We have said that Pope Sixtus IV. was a man without a surname,

Francesco of Savona, his native place furnishing his only patronymic:

but there was soon found for him--probably for the satisfaction of the

nephews who took so large a place in his life--a name which bore some

credit, that of a family of gentry in which it is said the young monk

had fulfilled the duties of tutor in the beginning of his career. By

what imaginary pedigree this was brought about we are not told; but it

is unlikely that the real della Roveres would reject the engrafting of

a great Pope into their stock, and it soon became a name to conjure

with throughout Italy. Although he also vaguely made proposals about a

Crusade, and languidly desired to drive back the Turk, he was a man

much more interested in the internal squabbles of Italy, and in his

plans for endowing and establishing his nephews, than in any larger

purpose. But he was also a man of boundless energy and power, cooped

up for the greater part of his life, but now bursting forth like the

strong current of a river. Whether it was from a natural inclination

towards beauty and splendour, or because he saw it to be the best way

in which to distinguish himself and make his own name as well as that

of his city glorious, matters little to the result. He was, in the

fullest sense of the words, one of the chiefest of the Popes who made

the modern city of Rome, as still existing and glorious in the sight

of all the world.

It was still a confused and disorderly place, in which narrow streets

and tortuous ways, full of irregularities and projections of all

kinds, threaded through the large and pathetic desert of the ancient

city, leaving a rim of ruin round the too-closely clustered centre of

life where men crowded together for security and warmth after the

custom of the mediæval age--when Sixtus began to reign; and this it

was which specially impressed King Ferdinand of Naples when he paid

his visit to the Pope in the year 1475, and had to be led about by

Cardinals and other high officials, sometimes, it would appear, by his

Holiness himself, to see the sights. The remarks he made upon the town

were very useful if not quite civil to the seat of Roman influence and

authority. Infessura gives this little incident vividly, so that we

almost see the streets with their outer stairs crowded with

bystanders, their balconies laden with bright tapestries and fair

women, and every projecting gable and pillared doorway pushing out

into the pavement at its own unfettered will. The course of

sightseeing followed by the King, conducted by the Pope and Cardinals,

is fully set forth in these quaint pages. King Ferrante came to make

his devotions _allo perdono_, probably the Jubilee of 1475, and

offered to each of the three churches of St. Peter, St. John Lateran,

and St. Paul, a pallium of gold for each, besides many other gifts.

"He went over all Rome to see the great buildings, and to

Santa Maria Rotonda, and the columns of Antonius and of

Trajan; and every man did him great honour. And when he had

seen all these things he turned back to the palace, and

talking to Pope Sixtus said that he (the Pope) could never

be the lord of the place, nor ever truly reign over it,

because of the porticoes and balconies which were in the

streets; and that if it were ever necessary to put men at

arms in possession of Rome the women in the balconies, with

small bombs, could make them fly; and that nothing could be

more easy than to make barricades in the narrow streets;

and he advised him to clear away the balconies and the

porticoes and to widen the streets, under pretence of

improving and embellishing the city. The Pope took this

advice, and as soon as it was possible cast down all those

porticoes, and balconies, and widened the ways under

pretence of improving them. And the said King remained

there three days, and then went away."

This story and the spirit in which the suggestion was made recall

Napoleon's grim whiff of grapeshot, and the policy which has made the

present Paris a city of straight lines which a battery of artillery

could clear in a moment, instead of all the elbows and corners of the

old picturesque streets. Pope Sixtus appreciated the suggestion,

knowing how undisciplined a city he had to deal with, and what a good

thing it might be to fill up those hornets' nests, with all their

capabilities of offence. Probably a great many picturesque dwellings

perished in the destruction of those centres of rebellion, which

recall to us so vividly the scenes in which Rienzi the tribune

fluttered through his little day, and which were continually filled

with the rustle and tumult of an abounding populace. We cannot be so

grateful to King Ferdinand, or so full of praise for this portion of

the work of Pope Sixtus, as were his contemporaries, though no doubt

it gave to us almost all the leading thoroughfares we know. It was

reserved for his kinsman-Pope to strike Rome the severest stroke that

was possible, and commit the worst of iconoclasms; but we do not doubt

that the destruction of the porches, and stairheads, and balconies

must have greatly diminished the old-world attraction of a city--in

which, however, it was the mediæval with all its irregularities that

was the intruder, while what was new in the hand of Sixtus and his

architects linked itself in sympathy with the most ancient, the

originator yet survivor of all.

It was with the same purpose and intentions that the Pope built in

place of the Ponte Rotto--which had lain long in ruins--a bridge over

the Tiber, which he called by his own name, and which still remains,

affording a second means of reaching the Borgo and the Sanctuaries, as

a relief to the bridge of St. Angelo, upon which serious accidents

were apt to happen by reason of the crowd. Both the chroniclers,

Infessura and Panvinio, the continuator of Platina, describe the

bridge as being a rebuilding of the actual Ponte Rotto itself. "It was

his intention to mend this bridge," says the former authority, and he

takes the opportunity to point out the presumptuous and proud attempt

of Sixtus to preserve his own name and memory by it, a fault already

committed by several of his predecessors; "he accordingly descended to

the river and placed in the foundations by the said bridge a square

stone on which was written: _Sixtus Quartus Pontifex Maximus fecit

fieri sub Anno Domini 1473_. Behind this stone the Pope placed certain

gold medals bearing his head, and afterwards built that bridge, which

after this was no longer called _Ponte Rotto_, but _Ponte Sisto_, as

is written on it." It is a wonderful point of view, commanding as it

does both sides of the river, St. Peter's on one hand and the Palatine

on the other, with all the mass of buildings which are Rome. The

_Scritte_ on the Ponte Sisto begs the prayers of the passer-by for its

founder, who certainly had need of them both for his achievements in

life and in architecture. There is still, however, a Ponte Rotto

further up the stream.

Besides the work of widening the streets, which necessitated much

pulling down and rebuilding of houses, and frequent encounters with

the inhabitants, who naturally objected to proceedings so summary--and

removing the excrescences, balconies, and porticoes, "which occupied,

obscured, and made them ugly (_brutte_) and disorderly:" Pope Sixtus

rebuilt the great Hospital of the Santo Spirito, which had fallen into

disrepair, providing shelter in the meantime for the patients who had

to be removed from it, and arranging for the future in the most

grandfatherly way. This great infirmary is also a foundling hospital,

and there was a large number of children to provide for. "Seeing that

many children both male and female along with their nurses were thrown

out on the world, he assigned them a place where they could live, and

ordained that the marriageable girls should be portioned and honestly

married, and that the others who would not marry should become the

nurses of the sick. He also arranged that there should be (in the new

hospital) more honourable rooms and better furnished for sick

gentle-folks, so that they might be kept separate from the common

people": an arrangement which is one of the things (like so many

ancient expedients) on which we now pride ourselves as an invention of

our own age, though the poor gentle-folks of Pope Sisto were not

apparently made to pay for their privileges. This hospital in some of

its details is considered the most meritorious of the Pope's

architectural work.