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[Illustration]
AVE ROMA IMMORTALIS
STUDIES FROM THE CHRONICLES OF ROME
BY
FRANCIS MARION CRAWFORD
IN TWO VOLUMES
VOL. II
London
MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED
NEW YORK: THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1899
_All rights reserved_
Copyright, 1898,
By The Macmillan Company.
Set up and electrotyped October, 1898. Reprinted November,
December, 1898; January, 1899.
_Norwood Press_
_J. S. Cushing & Co.--Berwick & Smith_
_Norwood, Mass., U.S.A._
TABLE OF CONTENTS
VOLUME II
PAGE
REGION VII REGOLA 1
REGION VIII SANT' EUSTACHIO 23
REGION IX PIGNA 44
REGION X CAMPITELLI 64
REGION XI SANT' ANGELO 101
REGION XII RIPA 119
REGION XIII TRASTEVERE 132
REGION XIV BORGO 202
LEO THE THIRTEENTH 218
THE VATICAN 268
SAINT PETER'S 289
LIST OF PHOTOGRAVURE PLATES
VOLUME II
Saint Peter's _Frontispiece_
FACING PAGE
Palazzo Farnese 18
The Pantheon 46
The Capitol 68
General View of the Roman Forum 94
Theatre of Marcellus 110
Porta San Sebastiano 130
The Roman Forum, looking west 154
The Palatine 186
Castle of Sant' Angelo 204
Pope Leo the Thirteenth 228
Raphael's "Transfiguration" 256
Michelangelo's "Last Judgment" 274
Panorama of Rome, from the Orti Farnesiani 298
ILLUSTRATIONS IN THE TEXT
VOLUME II
PAGE
Region VII Regola, Device of 1
Portico of Octavia 3
San Giorgio in Velabro 11
Region VIII Sant' Eustachio, Device of 23
Site of Excavations on the Palatine 31
Church of Sant' Eustachio 39
Region IX Pigna, Device of 44
Interior of the Pantheon 49
The Ripetta 53
Piazza Minerva 55
Region X Campitelli, Device of 64
Church of Aracoeli 70
Arch of Septimius Severus 83
Column of Phocas 92
Region XI Sant' Angelo, Device of 101
Piazza Montanara and the Theatre of Marcellus 106
Site of the Ancient Ghetto 114
Region XII Ripa, Device of 119
Church of Saint Nereus and Saint Achilleus 125
The Ripa Grande and Site of the Sublician Bridge 128
Region XIII Trastevere, Device of 132
Ponte Garibaldi 137
Palazzo Mattei 140
House built for Raphael by Bramante, now torn down 145
Monastery of Sant' Onofrio 147
Equestrian Statue of Marcus Aurelius 159
Interior of Santa Maria degli Angeli 175
Palazzo dei Conservatori 189
Region XIV Borgo, Device of 202
Hospital of Santo Spirito 214
The Papal Crest 218
Library of the Vatican 235
Fountain of Acqua Felice 242
Vatican from the Piazza of St. Peter's 251
Loggie of Raphael in the Vatican 259
Biga in the Vatican Museum 268
Belvedere Court of the Vatican 272
Sixtine Chapel 279
Saint Peter's 289
Mamertine Prison 294
Interior of St. Peter's 305
Pieta of Michelangelo 318
Tomb of Clement the Thirteenth 321
Ave atque Vale. Vignette 327
[Illustration]
Ave Roma Immortalis
REGION VII REGOLA
'Arenula'--'fine sand'--'Renula,' 'Regola'--such is the derivation of
the name of the Seventh Region, which was bounded on one side by the
sandy bank of the Tiber from Ponte Sisto to the island of Saint
Bartholomew, and which Gibbon designates as a 'quarter of the city
inhabited only by mechanics and Jews.' The mechanics were chiefly
tanners, who have always been unquiet and revolutionary folk, but at
least one exception to the general statement must be made, since it was
here that the Cenci had built themselves a fortified palace on the
foundations of a part of the Theatre of Balbus, between the greater
Theatre of Marcellus, then held by the Savelli, and the often mentioned
Theatre of Pompey. There Francesco Cenci dwelt, there the childhood of
Beatrice was passed, and there she lived for many months after the
murder of her father, before the accusation was first brought against
her. It is a gloomy place now, with its low black archway, its mouldy
walls, its half rotten windows, and its ghostly court of balconies; one
might guess that a dead man's curse hangs over it, without knowing how
Francesco died. And he, who cursed his sons and his daughters and
laughed for joy when two of them were murdered, rebuilt the little
church just opposite, as a burial-place for himself and them; but
neither he nor they were laid there. The palace used to face the Ghetto,
but that is gone, swept away to the very last stone by the municipality
in a fine hygienic frenzy, though, in truth, neither plague nor cholera
had ever taken hold there in the pestilences of old days, when the
Christian city was choked with the dead it could not bury. There is a
great open space there now, where thousands of Jews once lived huddled
together, crowding and running over each other like ants in an anthill,
in a state that would have killed any other people, persecuted
occasionally, but on the whole, fairly well treated; indispensable then
as now to the spendthrift Christian; confined within their own quarter,
as formerly in many other cities, by gates closed at dusk and opened at
sunrise, altogether a busy, filthy, believing, untiring folk that
laughed at the short descent and high pretensions of a Roman baron, but
cringed and crawled aside as the great robber strode by in steel. And
close by the Ghetto, in all that remains of the vast Portico of Octavia,
is the little Church of Sant' Angelo in Pescheria where the Jews were
once compelled to hear Christian sermons on Saturdays.
[Illustration: PORTICO OF OCTAVIA
From a print of the last century]
Close by that church Rienzi was born, and it is for ever associated with
his memory. His name calls up a story often told, yet never clear, of a
man who seemed to possess several distinct and contradictory
personalities, all strong but by no means all noble, which by a freak of
fate were united in one man under one name, to make him by turns a hero,
a fool, a Christian knight, a drunken despot and a philosophic Pagan.
The Buddhist monks of the far East believe today that a man's individual
self is often beset, possessed and dominated by all kinds of fragmentary
personalities that altogether hide his real nature, which may in reality
be better or worse than they are. The Eastern belief may serve at least
as an illustration to explain the sort of mixed character with which
Rienzi came into the world, by which he imposed upon it for a certain
length of time, and which has always taken such strong hold upon the
imagination of poets, and writers of fiction, and historians.
Rienzi, as we call him, was in reality named 'Nicholas Gabrini, the son
of Lawrence'; and 'Lawrence,' being in Italian abbreviated to 'Rienzo'
and preceded by the possessive particle 'of,' formed the patronymic by
which the man is best known in our language. Lawrence Gabrini kept a
wine-shop somewhere in the neighbourhood of the Cenci palace; he seems
to have belonged to Anagni, he was therefore by birth a retainer of the
Colonna, and his wife was a washer-woman. Between them, moreover, they
made a business of selling water from the Tiber, through the city, at a
time when there were no aqueducts. Nicholas Rienzi's mother was
handsome, and from her he inherited the beauty of form and feature for
which he was famous in his youth. His gifts of mind were many, varied
and full of that exuberant vitality which noble lineage rarely
transmits; if he was a man of genius, his genius belonged to that order
which is never far removed from madness and always akin to folly. The
greatest of his talents was his eloquence, the least of his qualities
was judgment, and while he possessed the courage to face danger
unflinchingly, and the means of persuading vast multitudes to follow him
in the realization of an exalted dream, he had neither the wit to trace
a cause to its consequence, nor the common sense to rest when he had
done enough. He had no mental perspective, nor sense of proportion, and
in the words of Madame de Stael he 'mistook memories for hopes.'
He was born in the year 1313, in the turbulent year that followed the
coronation of Henry the Seventh of Luxemburg; and when his vanity had
come upon him like a blight, he insulted the memory of his beautiful
mother by claiming to be the Emperor's son. In his childhood he was sent
to Anagni. There it must be supposed that he acquired his knowledge of
Latin from a country priest, and there he lived that early life of
solitude and retirement which, with ardent natures, is generally the
preparation for an outburst of activity that is to dazzle, or delight,
or terrify the world. Thence he came back, a stripling of twenty years,
dazed with dreaming and surfeited with classic lore, to begin the
struggle for existence in his native Rome as an obscure notary.
It seems impossible to convey an adequate idea of the confusion and
lawlessness of those times, and it is hard to understand how any city
could exist at all in such absence of all authority and government. The
powers were nominally the Pope and the Emperor, but the Pope had obeyed
the commands of Philip the Fair and had retired to Avignon, and no
Emperor could even approach Rome without an army at his back and the
alliance of the Ghibelline Colonna to uphold him if he succeeded in
entering the city. The maintenance of order and the execution of such
laws as existed, were confided to a mis-called Senator and a so-called
Prefect. The Senatorship was the property of the Barons, and when Rienzi
was born the Orsini and Colonna had just agreed to hold it jointly to
the exclusion of every one else. The prefecture was hereditary in the
ancient house of Di Vico, from whose office the Via de' Prefetti in the
Region of Campo Marzo is named to this day; the head of the house was at
first required to swear allegiance to the Pope, to the Emperor, and to
the Roman People, and as the three were almost perpetually at swords
drawn with one another, the oath was a perjury when it was not a farce.
The Prefects' principal duty appears to have been the administration of
the Patrimony of Saint Peter, in which they exercised an almost
unlimited power after Innocent the Third had formally dispensed them
from allegiance to the Emperor, and the long line of petty tyrants did
not come to an end until Pope Eugenius the Fourth beheaded the last of
the race for his misdeeds in the fifteenth century; after him the office
was seized upon by the Barons and finally drifted into the hands of the
Barberini, a mere sinecure bringing rich endowments to its fortunate
possessor.
In Rienzi's time there were practically three castes in Rome,--priests,
nobles, and beggars,--for there was nothing which in any degree
corresponded to a citizen class; such business as there was consisted
chiefly in usury, and was altogether in the hands of the Jews. Rome was
the lonely and ruined capital of a pestilential desert, and its
population was composed of marauders in various degrees.
The priests preyed upon the Church, the nobles upon the Church and upon
each other, the beggars picked the pockets of both, and such men as were
bodily fit for the work of killing were enlisted as retainers in the
service of the Barons, whose steady revenues from their lands, whose
strong fortresses within the city, and whose possession of the coat and
mail armour which was then so enormously valuable, made them masters of
all men except one another. They themselves sold the produce of their
estates and the few articles of consumption which reached Rome from
abroad, in shops adjoining their palaces; they owned the land upon which
the corn and wine and oil were grown; they owned the peasants who
ploughed and sowed and reaped and gathered; and they preserved the
privilege of disposing of their own wares as they saw fit. They feared
nothing but an ambush of their enemies, or the solemn excommunication of
the Pope, who cared little enough for their doings. The cardinals and
prelates who lived in the city were chiefly of the Barons' own order and
under their immediate protection. The Barons possessed everything and
ruled everything for their own profit; they defended their privileges
with their lives, and they avenged the slightest infringement on their
powers by the merciless shedding of blood. They were ignorant, but they
were keen; they were brave, but they were faithless; they were
passionate, licentious and unimaginably cruel.
Such was the city, and such the government, to which Rienzi returned at
the age of twenty, to follow the profession of a notary, probably under
the protection of the Colonna. That the business afforded occupation to
many is proved by the vast number of notarial deeds of that time still
extant; but it is also sufficiently clear that Rienzi spent much of his
time in dreaming, if not in idleness, and much in the study of the
ancient monuments and inscriptions upon which no one had bestowed a
glance for generations. It was during that period of early manhood that
he acquired the learning and collected the materials which earned him
the title, 'Father of Archaeology.' He seems to have been about thirty
years old when he first began to speak in public places, to such
audience as he could gather, expanding with ready though untried
eloquence the soaring thoughts bred in years of solitary study.
Clement the Sixth, a Frenchman, was elected Pope at Avignon, a man who,
according to the chronicler, contrasted favourably by his wisdom,
breadth of view, and liberality, with a weak and vacillating
predecessor. Seeing that they had to do with a man at last, the Romans
sent an embassy to him to urge his return to Rome. The hope had long
been at the root of Rienzi's life, and he must have already attained to
a considerable reputation of learning and eloquence, since he was chosen
to be one of the ambassadors. Petrarch conceived the highest opinion of
him at their first meeting, and never withdrew his friendship from him
to the end; the great poet joined his prayers with those of the Roman
envoys, and supported Rienzi's eloquence with his own genius in a Latin
poem. But nothing could avail to move the Pope. Avignon was the Capua of
the Pontificate,--a vast papal palace was in course of construction, and
the cardinals had already begun to erect sumptuous dwellings for
themselves. The Pope listened, smiled, and promised everything except
return; the unsuccessful embassy was left without means of subsistence;
and Rienzi, disappointed in soul, ill in body, and almost starving, was
forced to seek the refuge of a hospital, whither he retired in the
single garment which remained unsold from his ambassadorial outfit. But
he did not languish long in this miserable condition, for the Pope heard
of his misfortunes, remembered his eloquence, and sent him back to Rome,
invested with the office of Apostolic Notary, and endowed with a salary
of five golden florins daily, a stipend which at that time amounted
almost to wealth. The office was an important one, but Rienzi exercised
it by deputy, continued his studies, propagated his doctrines, and by
quick degrees acquired unbounded influence with the people. His hatred
of the Barons was as profound as his love of his native city was noble;
and if the unavenged murder of a brother, and the unanswered buffet of a
Colonna rankled in his heart, and stimulated his patriotism with the
sting of personal wrong, neither the one nor the other were the prime
causes of his actions. The evils of the city were enormous, his courage
was heroic, and after profound reflection he resolved upon the step
which determined his tragic career.
To the door of the Church of Saint George in Velabro he affixed a
proclamation, or a prophecy, which set forth that Rome should soon be
restored to the 'Good Estate'; he collected a hundred of his friends in
a meeting by night, on the Aventine, to decide upon a course of action,
and he summoned all citizens to appear before the church of Sant' Angelo
in Pescheria, towards evening, peacefully and without arms, to provide
for the restoration of that 'Good Estate' which he himself had
announced.
[Illustration: SAN GIORGIO IN VELABRO]
That night was the turning-point in Rienzi's life, and he made it a
Vigil of Arms and Prayer. In the mysterious nature of the destined man,
the pure spirit of the Christian knight suddenly stood forth in
domination of his soul, and he consecrated himself to the liberation of
his country by the solemn office of the Holy Ghost. All night he kneeled
in the little church, in full armour, with bare head, before the altar.
The people came and went, and others came after them and saw him
kneeling there, while one priest succeeded another in celebrating the
Thirty Masses of the Holy Spirit from midnight to early morning. The sun
was high when the champion of freedom came forth, bareheaded still, to
face the clear light of day. Around him marched the chosen hundred; at
his right hand went the Pope's vicar; and before him three great
standards displayed allegories of liberty, justice, and peace.
A vast concourse of people followed him, for the news had spread from
mouth to mouth, and there were few in Rome who had not heard his voice
and longed for the 'Good Estate' which he so well described. The nobles
heard of the assembly with indifference, for they were well used to
disturbances of every kind and dreaded no unarmed rabble. Colonna and
Orsini, joint senators, had quarrelled, and the Capitol was vacant;
thither Rienzi went, and thence from a balcony he spoke to the people of
freedom, of peace, of prosperity. The eloquence that had moved Clement
and delighted Petrarch stirred ten thousand Roman hearts at once; a
dissatisfied Roman count read in clear tones the laws Rienzi proposed to
establish, and the appearance of a bishop and a nobleman by the
plebeian's side gave the people hope and encouragement. The laws were
simple and direct, and there was to be but one interpretation of them,
while all public revenues were to be applied to public ends. Each Region
of the city was to furnish a contingent of men-at-arms, and if any man
were killed in the service of his country, Rome was to provide for his
wife and children. The fortresses, the bridges, the gates, were to pass
from the custody of the Barons to that of the Roman people, and the
Barons themselves were to retire forthwith from the city. So the Romans
made Rienzi Dictator.
The nobles refused to believe in a change which meant ruin to
themselves. Old Stephen Colonna laughed and said he would throw the
madman from the window as soon as he should be at leisure. It was near
noon when he spoke; the sun was barely setting when he rode for his life
towards Palestrina. The great bell of the Capitol called the people to
arms, the liberator was already the despot, and the Barons were already
exiles. Rienzi assumed the title of Tribune with the authority of
Dictator, and with ten thousand swords at his back exacted a humiliating
oath of allegiance from the representatives of the great houses. Upon
the Body and Blood of Christ they swore to the 'Good Estate,' they bound
themselves to yield up their fortresses within the city, to harbour
neither outlaws nor malefactors in their mountain castles, and to serve
the Republic loyally in arms whenever they should be called upon to do
so. The oath was taken by all, the power that could enforce it was
visible to all men's eyes, and Rienzi was supreme.
Had he been the philosopher that he had once persuaded himself he was;
had he been the pure-hearted Christian Knight of the Holy Spirit he had
believed himself when he knelt through the long Office in the little
church; had he been the simple Roman Tribune of the People that he
proclaimed himself, when he had seized the dictatorship, history might
have followed a different course, and the virtues he imposed upon Rome
might have borne fruit throughout all Italy. But with Rienzi, each new
phase was the possession of a new spirit of good or evil, and with each
successive change, only the man's great eloquence remained. While he was
a hero, he was a hero indeed; while he was a philosopher, his thoughts
were lofty and wise; so long as he was a knight, his life was pure and
blameless. But the vanity which inspired him, not to follow an ideal,
but to represent that ideal outwardly, and which inflamed him with a
great actor's self-persuading fire, required, like all vanity, the
perpetual stimulus of applause and admiration. He could have leapt into
the gulf with Curtius before the eyes of ten thousand grateful citizens;
but he could not have gone back with Cincinnatus to the plough, a
simple, true-hearted man. The display of justice followed the assumption
of power, it is true; but when justice was established, the unquiet
spirit was assailed by the thirst for a new emotion which no boasting
proclamation could satisfy, and no adulation could quench. The changes
he wrought in a few weeks were marvellous, and the spirit in which they
were made was worthy of a great reformer; Italy saw and admired,
received his ambassadors and entertained them with respect, read his
eloquent letters and answered them with approbation; and Rienzi's court
was the tribunal to which the King of Hungary appealed the cause of a
murdered brother. Yet his vanity demanded more. It was not long before
he assumed the dress, the habits, and the behaviour of a sovereign and
appeared in public with the emblems of empire. He felt that he was no
longer in spirit the Knight of the Holy Ghost, and he required for
self-persuasion the conference of the outward honours of knighthood. He
purified himself according to the rites of chivalry in the font of the
Lateran Baptistry, consecrated by the tradition of Constantine's
miraculous recovery from leprosy, he watched his arms throughout the
dark hours, and received the order from the sword of an honourable
nobleman. The days of the philosopher, the hero, and the liberator were
over, and the reign of the public fool was inaugurated by the most
extravagant boasts, and celebrated by a feast of boundless luxury and
abundance, to which the citizens of Rome were bidden with their wives
and daughters. Still unsatisfied, he demanded and obtained the ceremony
of a solemn coronation, and seven crowns were placed successively upon
his head as emblems of the seven spiritual gifts. Before him stood the
great Barons in attitudes of humility and dejection; for a moment the
great actor had forgotten himself in the excitement of his part, and
Rienzi again enjoyed the emotion of undisputed sovereignty.
But Colonna, Orsini and Savelli were not men to submit tamely in fact,
though the presence of an overwhelming power had forced them to outward
submission, and in his calmer moments the extravagant tribune was
haunted by the dream of vengeance. A ruffian asserted under torture that
the nobles were already conspiring against their victor, and Rienzi
enticed three of the Colonna and five of the Orsini to the Capitol,
where he had taken up his abode. He seized them, held them prisoners all
night, and led them out in the morning to be the principal actors in a
farce which he dared not turn to tragedy. Condemned to death, their sins
confessed, they heard the tolling of the great bell, and stood
bareheaded before the executioner. The scene was prepared with the art
of a consummate playwright, and the spectators were delighted by a
speech of rare eloquence and amazed by the sudden exhibition of a
clemency that was born of fear. Magnanimously pardoning those whom he
dared not destroy, Rienzi received a new oath of allegiance from his
captives and dismissed them to their homes.
The humiliation rankled. Laying aside their hereditary feud, Colonna and
Orsini made a desperate effort to regain their power. By a
misunderstanding they were defeated, and the third part of their force,
entering the city without the rest, was overwhelmed and massacred, and
six of the Colonna were slain. The low-born Rienzi refused burial for
their bodies, knighted his son on the spot where they had fallen, and
washed his hands in water that was mingled with their blood. It was his
last triumph and his basest.
His power was already declining, and though the people had assembled in
arms to beat off their former masters, they had lost faith in a leader
who had turned out a madman, a knave, and a drunkard. They refused to
pay the taxes he would have laid upon them, and resisted the measures he
proposed. Clement the Sixth, who had approved his wisdom, punished his
folly, and the so-called tribune was deposed, condemned for heresy, and
excommunicated. A Neapolitan soldier of fortune, an adventurer and a
criminal, took possession of Rome with only one hundred and fifty men,
in the name of the Pope, without striking a blow, and the people would
not raise a hand to help their late idol as he was led away weeping to
the Castle of Sant' Angelo, while the nobles looked on in scornful
silence. Rienzi was allowed to depart in peace after a short captivity
and became a wanderer and an outcast in Europe.
In many disguises he went from place to place, and did not fear to
return to Rome in the travesty of a pilgrim. The story of his adventures
would fill many pages, but Rome is not concerned with them. In vain he
appealed to adventurers, to enthusiasts, and to fanatics to help in
regaining what he had lost. None would listen to him, no man would draw
the sword. He came to Prague at last, obtained an audience of the
Emperor Charles the Fourth, appealed to the whole court, with
impassioned eloquence, and declared himself to be Rienzi. The attempt
cost him his freedom, for the prudent emperor forthwith sent him a
captive to the Pope at Avignon, where he was at first loaded with chains
and thrown into prison. But Clement hesitated to bring him to trial, his
friend Petrarch spoke earnestly in his favour, and he was ultimately
relegated to an easy confinement, during which he once more gave himself
up to the study of his favourite classics in peaceful resignation.
Meanwhile in Rome his enactments had been abolished with sweeping
indifference to their character and importance, and the old misrule was
reestablished in its pristine barbarity. The feud between Orsini and
Colonna broke out again in the absence of a common danger. The plague
appeared in Europe and decimated a city already distracted by internal
discord. Rome was again a wilderness of injustice, as the chronicle
says; every one doing what seemed good in his own eyes, the Papal and
the public revenues devoured by marauders, the streets full of thieves,
and the country infested by outlaws. Clement died, and Innocent the
Sixth, another Frenchman, was elected in his stead, 'a personage of
great science, zeal, and justice,' who set about to reform abuses as
well as he could, but who saw that he could not hope to return to Rome
without long and careful preparation. He selected as his agent in the
attempt to regain possession of the States of the Church the Cardinal
Albornoz, a Spaniard of courage and experience.
[Illustration: PALAZZO FARNESE]
Meanwhile Rienzi enjoyed greater freedom, and assumed the character of
an inspired poet; than which none commanded greater respect and
influence in the early years of the Renascence. That he ever produced
any verses of merit there is not the slightest evidence to prove, but
his undoubted learning and the friendship of Petrarch helped him to
sustain the character. He never lacked talent to act any part which his
vanity suggested as a means of flattering his insatiable soul. He put on
the humility of a penitent and the simplicity of a true scholar; he
spoke quietly and wisely of Italy's future and he obtained the
confidence of the new Pope.
It was in this way that by an almost incredible turn of fortune, the
outcast and all but condemned heretic was once more chosen as a means of
restoring order in Rome, and accompanied Cardinal Albornoz on his
mission to Italy. Had he been a changed man as he pretended to be, he
might have succeeded, for few understood the character of the Romans
better, and there was no name in the country of which the memories
appealed so profoundly to the hearts of the people.
The catalogue of his deeds during the second period of power is long and
confused, but the history of his fall is short and tragic. Not without a
keen appreciation of the difference between his former position as the
freely chosen champion of the people, and his present mission as a
reformer supported by pontifical authority, he requested the Legate to
invest him with the dignity of a senator, and the Cardinal readily
assented to what was an assertion of the temporal power. Then Albornoz
left him to himself. He entered Rome in triumph, and his eloquence did
not desert him. But he was no longer the young and inspired knight,
self-convinced and convincing, who had issued from the little church
long ago. In person he was bloated with drink and repulsive to all who
saw him; and the vanity which had so often been the temporary basis of
his changing character had grown monstrous under the long repression of
circumstances. With the first moment of success it broke out and
dictated his actions, his assumed humility was forgotten in an instant,
as well as the well-worded counsels of wisdom by which he had won the
Pope's confidence; and he plunged into a civil war with the still
powerful Colonna. One act of folly succeeded another; he had neither
money nor credit, and the stern Albornoz, seeing the direction he was
taking, refused to send him assistance. In his extremity he attempted to
raise funds for his soldiers and money for his own unbounded luxury by
imposing taxes which the people could not bear. The result was certain
and fatal. The Romans rose against him in a body, and an infuriated
rabble besieged him at the Capitol.
It has been said that the vainest men make the best soldiers. Rienzi was
brave for a moment at the last. Seeing himself surrounded, and deserted
by his servants, he went out upon a balcony and faced the mob alone,
bearing in his hand the great standard of the Republic, and for the last
time he attempted to avert with words the tempest which his deeds had
called forth. But his hour had come, and as he stood there alone he was
stoned and shot at, and an arrow pierced his hand. Broken in nerve by
long intemperance and fanatic excitement, he burst into tears and fled,
refusing the hero's death in which he might still have saved his name
from scorn. He attempted to escape from the other side of the Capitol
towards the Forum, and in the disguise of a street porter he had
descended through a window and had almost escaped notice while the
multitude was breaking down the doors of the main entrance. Then he was
seen and taken, and they brought him in his filthy dress to the great
platform of the Capitol, not knowing what they should do with him and
almost frightened to find their tyrant in their power.
They thronged round him, looked at him, spoke to him, but he answered
nothing; for his hour was come, the star of his nativity was in the
house of death. In that respite, had he been a man, courage might have
awed them, eloquence might have touched them, and he might yet have
dreamed of power. But he was utterly speechless, utterly broken, utterly
afraid. A whole hour passed, and no hand was lifted against him; yet he
spoke not. Then one man, tired of his pale and bloated face, silently
struck a knife into his heart, and as he fell dead, the rabble rushed
upon him and stabbed him to pieces, and a long yell of murderous rage
told all Rome that Rienzi was dead.
They left his body to the dogs and went away to their homes, for it was
evening, and they were spent with madness. Then the Jews came, who hated
him also; and they dragged the miserable corpse through the streets; and
made a bonfire of thistles in a remote place and burned it; and what was
left of the bones and ashes they threw into the Tiber. So perished
Rienzi, a being who was not a man, but a strangely responsive
instrument, upon which virtue, heroism, courage, cowardice, faith,
falsehood and knavery played the grandest harmonies and the wildest
discords in mad succession, till humanity was weary of listening, and
silenced the harsh music forever. However we may think of him, he was
great for a moment, yet however great we may think him, he was little in
all but his first dream. Let him have some honour for that, and much
merciful oblivion for the rest.
[Illustration]
REGION VIII SANT' EUSTACHIO
The Eighth region is almost symmetrical in shape, extending nearly north
and south with a tolerably even breadth from the haunted palace of the
Santacroce, where the marble statue of the dead Cardinal comes down from
its pedestal to pace the shadowy halls all night, to Santa Maria in
Campo Marzo, and cutting off, as it were, the three Regions so long held
by the Orsini from the rest of the city. Taking Rome as a whole, it was
a very central quarter until the development of the newly inhabited
portions. It was here, near the churches of Saint Eustace and Saint
Ives, that the English who came to Rome for business established
themselves, like other foreigners, in a distinct colony during the
Renascence. Upon the chapel of Saint Ives, unconsecrated now and turned
into a lecture room of the University, a strange spiral tower shows the
talents of Borromini, Bernini's rival, at their lowest ebb. So far as
one can judge, the architect intended to represent realistically the
arduous path of learning; but whatever he meant, the result is as bad a
piece of Barocco as is to be found in Rome.
As for the Church of Saint Eustace, it commemorates a vision which
tradition attributes alike to Saint Julian the Hospitaller, to Saint
Felix, and to Saint Hubert. The genius of Flaubert, who was certainly
one of the greatest prose writers of this century, has told the story of
the first of these in very beautiful language, and the legend of Saint
Hubert is familiar to every one. Saint Eustace is perhaps less known,
for he was a Roman saint of early days, a soldier and a lover of the
chase, as many Romans were. We do not commonly associate with them the
idea of boar hunting or deer stalking, but they were enthusiastic
sportsmen. Virgil's short and brilliant description of AEneas shooting
the seven stags on the Carthaginian shore is the work of a man who had
seen what he described, and Pliny's letters are full of allusions to
hunting. Saint Eustace was a contemporary of the latter, and perhaps
outlived him, for he is said to have been martyred under Hadrian, when a
long career of arms had raised him to the rank of a general. It is an
often-told story--how he was stalking the deer in the Ciminian forest
one day, alone and on foot, when a royal stag, milk-white and without
blemish, crashed through the meeting boughs before him; how he followed
the glorious creature fast and far, and shot and missed and shot again,
and how at last the stag sprang up a steep and jutting rock and faced
him, and he saw Christ's cross between the branching antlers, and upon
the Cross the Crucified, and heard a still far voice that bade him be
Christian and suffer and be saved; and so, alone in the greenwood, he
knelt down and bowed himself to the world's Redeemer, and rose up again,
and the vision had departed. And having converted his wife and his two
sons, they suffered together with him; for they were thrust into the
great brazen bull by the Colosseum, and it was made red hot, and they
perished, praising God. But their ashes lie under the high altar in the
church to this day.
The small square of Saint Eustace is not far from Piazza Navona,
communicating with it by gloomy little streets, and on the great night
of the Befana, the fair spreads through the narrow ways and overflows
with more booths, more toys, more screaming whistles, into the space
between the University and the church. And here at the southeast corner
used to stand the famous Falcone, the ancient eating-house which to the
last kept up the Roman traditions, and where in old days, many a famous
artist and man of letters supped on dishes now as extinct as the dodo.
The house has been torn down to make way for a modern building. Famous
it was for wild boar, in the winter, dressed with sweet sauce and pine
nuts, and for baked porcupine and strange messes of tomatoes and cheese,
and famous, too, for its good old wines in the days when wine was not
mixed with chemicals and sold as 'Chianti,' though grown about Olevano,
Paliano and Segni. It was a strange place, occupying the whole of two
houses which must have been built in the sixteenth century, after the
sack of Rome. It was full of small rooms of unexpected shapes,
scrupulously neat and clean, with little white and red curtains, tiled
floors, and rush bottomed chairs, and the regular guests had their own
places, corners in which they had made themselves comfortable for life,
as it were, and were to be found without fail at dinner and at supper
time. It was one of those genial bits of old Rome which survived till a
few years ago, and was more deeply regretted than many better things
when it disappeared.
Behind the Church of Saint Eustace runs a narrow street straight up from
the Square of the Pantheon to the Via della Dogana Vecchia. It used to
be chiefly occupied at the lower end by poulterers' shops, but towards
its upper extremity--for the land rises a little--it has always had a
peculiarly dismal and gloomy look. It bears a name about which are
associated some of the darkest deeds in Rome's darkest age; it is called
the Via de' Crescenzi, the street and the abode of that great and evil
house which filled the end of the tenth century with its bloody deeds.
There is no more unfathomable mystery in the history of mediaeval Rome
than the origin and power of Theodora, whose name first appears in the
year 914, as Lady Senatress and absolute mistress of the city. The
chronicler Luitprand, who is almost the only authority for this period,
heaps abuse upon Theodora and her eldest daughter, hints that they were
of low origin, and brands them with a disgrace more foul than their
crimes. No one can read their history and believe that they were
anything but patrician women, of execrable character but of high
descent. From Theodora, in little more than a hundred years, descended
five Popes and a line of sovereign Counts, ending in Peter, the first
ancestor of the Colonna who took the name; and, from her also, by the
marriage of her second daughter, called Theodora like herself, the
Crescenzi traced their descent. Yet no historian can say who that first
Theodora was, nor whence she came, nor how she rose to power, nor can
any one name the father of her children. Her terrible eldest child,
Marozia, married three sovereigns, the Lord of Tusculum, the Lord of
Tuscany, and at last Hugh, King of Burgundy, and left a history that is
an evil dream of terror and bloodshed. But the story of those fearful
women belongs to their stronghold, the great castle of Sant' Angelo. To
the Region of Saint Eustace belongs the history of Crescenzio, consul,
tribune and despot of Rome. In the street that bears the name of his
family, the huge walls of Severus Alexander's bath afforded the
materials for a fortress, and there Crescenzio dwelt when his kinswoman
Marozia held Hadrian's tomb, and after she was dead. Those were the
times when the Emperors defended the Popes against the Roman people. Not
many years had passed since Otto the First had done justice upon Peter
the Prefect, far away at the Lateran palace; Otto the Second reigned in
his stead, and Benedict the Sixth was Pope. The race of Theodora hated
the domination of the Emperor, and despised a youthful sovereign whom
they had never seen. They dreamed of restoring Rome to the Eastern
Empire, and of renewing the ancient office of Exarch for themselves.
Benedict stood in their way and was doomed. They chose their antipope, a
Roman Cardinal, one Boniface, a man with neither scruple nor conscience,
and set him up in the Pontificate; and, when they had done that,
Crescenzio seized Benedict and dragged him through the low black
entrance of Sant' Angelo, and presently strangled him in his dungeon.
But neither did Boniface please those who had made him Pope; and,
within the month, lest he should die like him he had supplanted, he
stealthily escaped from Rome to the sea, and it is recorded that he
stole and carried away the sacred vessels and treasures of the Vatican,
and took them to Constantinople.
So Crescenzio first appears in the wild and confused history of that
century of dread, when men looked forward with certainty and horror to
the ending of the world in the year one thousand. And during a dozen
years after Benedict was murdered, the cauldron of faction boiled and
seethed in Rome. Then, in the year 987, when Hugh Capet took France for
himself and for his descendants through eight centuries, and when John
the Fifteenth was Pope in Rome, 'a new tyrant arose in the city which
had hitherto been trampled down and held under by the violence of the
race of Alberic,'--that is, the race of Theodora,--'and that tyrant was
Crescentius.' And Crescenzio was the kinsman of Alberic's children.
The second Otto was dead, and Otto the Third was a mere boy, when
Crescenzio, fortified in Sant' Angelo, suddenly declared himself Consul,
seized all power, and drove the Pope from Rome. This time he had no
antipope; he would have no Pope at all, and there was no Emperor either,
since the young Otto had not yet been crowned. So Crescenzio reigned
alone for awhile, with what he called a Senate at his back, and the
terror of his name to awe the Roman people. But Pope John was wiser than
the unfortunate Benedict, and a better man than Boniface, the antipope
and thief; and having escaped to the north, he won the graces of
Crescenzio's distant kinsman by marriage and hereditary foe, Duke Hugh
of Tuscany, grandson of Hugh of Burgundy the usurper; and from that
strong situation he proceeded to offer the boy Otto inducements for
coming to be crowned in Rome.
He wisely judged from what he had seen during his lifetime that the most
effectual means of opposing the boundless license of the Roman
patricians was to make an Emperor, even of a child, and he knew that the
name of Otto the Great was not forgotten, and that the terrible
execution of Peter the Prefect was remembered with a lively dread.
Crescenzio was not ready to oppose the force of the Empire; he was
surrounded by jealous factions at home, which any sudden revolution
might turn against himself, he weighed his strength against the danger
and he resolved to yield. The 'Senate,' which consisted of patricians as
greedy as himself, but less daring or less strong, had altogether
recovered the temporal power in Rome, and Crescenzio easily persuaded
them that it would be both futile and dangerous to quarrel with the
Emperor about spiritual matters. The 'Consul' and the 'Senate'--which
meant a tyrant and his courtiers--accordingly requested the Pope to
return in peace and exercise his episcopal functions in the Holy See.
Pope John must have been as bold as he was wise, for he did not
hesitate, but came back at once. He reaped the fruit of his wisdom and
his courage. Crescenzio and the nobles met him with reverence and
implored his forgiveness for their ill-considered deeds; the Pope
granted them a free pardon, wisely abstaining from any assertion of
temporal power, and sometimes apparently submitting with patience to the
Consul's tyranny. For it is recorded that some years later, when the
Bishops of France sent certain ambassadors to the Pope, they were not
received, but were treated with indignity, kept waiting outside the
palace three days, and finally sent home without audience or answer
because they had omitted to bribe Crescenzio.
[Illustration: SITE OF EXCAVATIONS ON THE PALATINE]
If Pope John had persuaded Otto to be crowned at once, such things might
not have taken place. It was many years before the young Emperor came to
Rome at last, and he had not reached the city when he was met by the
news that Pope John was dead. He lost no time, designated his private
chaplain, the son of the Duke of Franconia, 'a young man of letters, but
somewhat fiery on account of his youth,' to be Pope, and sent him
forward to Rome at once with a train of bishops, to be installed in the
Holy See. In so youthful a sovereign, such action lacked neither energy
nor wisdom. The young Pontiff assumed the name of Gregory the Fifth,
espoused the cause of the poor citizens against the tyranny of the
nobles, crowned his late master Emperor, and forthwith made a determined
effort to crush Crescenzio and regain the temporal power.
But he had met his match at the outset. The blood of Theodora was not
easily put down. The Consul laughed to scorn the pretensions of the
young Pope; the nobles were in arms, the city was his, and in the second
year of his Pontificate, Gregory the Fifth was driven ignominiously from
the gates in a state of absolute destitution. He was the third Pope whom
Crescenzio had driven out. Gregory made his way to Pavia, summoned a
council of Bishops, and launched the Major Excommunication at his
adversary. But the Consul, secure in Sant' Angelo, laughed again, more
grimly, and did as he pleased.
At this time Basil and Constantine, joint Emperors in Constantinople,
sent ambassadors to Rome to Otto the Third, and with them came a certain
John, a Calabrian of Greek race, a man of pliant conscience, tortuous
mind, and extraordinary astuteness, at that time Archbishop of Piacenza,
and formerly employed by Otto upon a mission to Constantinople.
Crescenzio, as though to show that his enmity was altogether against the
Pope, and not in the least against the Emperor, received these envoys
with great honour, and during their stay persuaded them to enter into a
scheme which had suddenly presented itself to his ambitious
intelligence. The old dream of restoring Rome to the Eastern Empire was
revived, the conspirators resolved to bring it to realization, and John
of Calabria was a convenient tool for their hands. He was to be Pope;
Crescenzio was to be despot, under the nominal protection and
sovereignty of the Greek Emperors, and the ambassadors were to conclude
the treaty with the latter. Otto was on the German frontier waging war
against the Slavs, and Gregory was definitely exiled from Rome. Nothing
stood in the way of the plot, and it was forthwith put into execution.
Certain ambassadors of Otto's were passing through Rome on their return
from the East and on their way to the Emperor's presence; they were
promptly seized and thrown into prison, in order to interrupt
communication between the two Empires. John of Calabria was consecrated
Pope, or rather antipope, Crescenzio took possession of all power, and
certain legates of Pope Gregory having ventured to enter Rome were at
once imprisoned with the Emperor's ambassadors. It was a daring stroke,
and if it had succeeded, the history of Europe would have been different
from that time forward. Crescenzio was bold, unscrupulous, pertinacious
and keen. He had the Roman nobles at his back and he controlled such
scanty revenues as could still be collected. He had violently expelled
three Popes, he had created two antipopes, and his name was terror in
the ears of the Church. Yet it would have taken more than all that to
overset the Catholic Church at a time when the world was ripe for the
first crusade; and though the Empire had fallen low since the days of
Charles the Great, it was fast climbing again to the supremacy of power
in which it culminated under Barbarossa and whence it fell with
Frederick the Second. A handful of high-born murderers and marauders
might work havoc in Rome for a time, but they could neither destroy that
deep-rooted belief nor check the growth of that imperial law by which
Europe emerged from the confusion of the dark age--to lose both law and
belief again amid the intellectual excitements of the Renascence.