with the Eastern Emperors was concluded, he was well informed of the
outrageous deeds of the Roman patricians. No sooner had he brought the
war on the Saxon frontier to a successful conclusion than he descended
again into Italy 'to purge the Roman bilge,' in the chronicler's strong
words. On his way, he found time to visit Venice secretly, with only six
companions, and we are told how the Doge entertained him in private as
Emperor, with sumptuous suppers, and allowed him to wander about Venice
all day as a simple unknown traveller, with his companions, 'visiting
the churches and the other rare things of the City,' whereby it is clear
that in the year 998, when Rome was a half-deserted, half-ruined city,
ruled by a handful of brigands living in the tomb of the Caesars, Venice,
under the good Doge Orseolo the Second, was already one of the beautiful
cities of the world, as well as mistress of the Adriatic, of all
Dalmatia, and of many lovely islands.
Otto took with him Pope Gregory, and with a very splendid army of
Germans and Italians marched down to Rome. Neither Crescenzio nor his
followers had believed that the young Emperor was in earnest; but when
it was clear that he meant to do justice, Antipope John was afraid, and
fled secretly by night, in disguise. Crescenzio, of sterner stuff,
heaped up a vast provision of food in Sant' Angelo, and resolved to
abide a siege. The stronghold was impregnable, so far as any one could
know, for it had never been stormed in war or riot, and on its
possession had depended the long impunity of Theodora's race. The
Emperor might lay siege to it, encamp before it, and hem it in for
months; in the end he must be called away by the more urgent wars of the
Empire in the north, and Crescenzio, secure in his stronghold, would
hold the power still. But when the Roman people knew that Otto was at
hand and that the antipope had fled, their courage rose against the
nobles, and they went out after John, and scoured the country till they
caught him in his disguise, for his face was known to many. Because the
Emperor was known to be kind of heart, and because it was remembered
also that this John of Calabria, who went by many names, had by strange
chance baptized both Otto and Pope Gregory, the Duke of Franconia's son,
therefore the Romans feared lest justice should be too gentle; and
having got the antipope into their hands, they dealt with him savagely,
put out his eyes, cut out his tongue and sliced off his nose, and drove
him to prison through the city, seated face backwards on an ass. And
when the Emperor and the Pope came, they left him in his dungeon.
Now at Gaeta there lived a very holy man, who was Saint Nilus, and who
afterwards founded the monastery of Grottaferrata, where there are
beautiful wall paintings to this day. He was a Greek, like John of
Calabria, and though he detested the antipope he had pity on the man
and felt compassion for his countryman. So he journeyed to Rome and came
before Otto and Gregory, who received him with perfect devotion, as a
saint, and he asked of them that they should give him the wretched John,
'who,' he said, 'held both of you in his arms at the Font of Baptism,'
though he was grievously fallen since that day by his great hypocrisy.
Then the Emperor was filled with pity, and answered that the saint might
have the antipope alive, if he himself would then remain in Rome and
direct the monastery of Saint Anastasia of the Greeks. The holy man was
willing to sacrifice his life of solitary meditation for the sake of his
wretched countryman, and he would have obtained the fulfilment of his
request from Otto; but Pope Gregory remembered how he himself had been
driven out penniless and scantily clothed, to make way for John of
Calabria, and his heart was hardened, and he would not let the prisoner
go. Wherefore Saint Nilus foretold that because neither the Pope nor the
Emperor would have mercy, the wrath of God should overtake them both.
And indeed they were both cut off in the flower of their youth--Gregory
within one year, and Otto not long afterwards.
Meanwhile they sent Nilus away and laid siege to the Castle of Sant'
Angelo, where Crescenzio and his men had shut themselves up with a good
store of food and arms. No one had ever taken that fortress, nor did
any one believe that it could be stormed. But Pope and Emperor were
young and brave and angry, and they had a great army, and the people of
Rome were with them, every man. They used such engines as they
had,--catapults, and battering-rams, and ladders; and yet Crescenzio
laughed, for the stone walls were harder than the stone missiles, and
higher than the tallest ladders, and so thick that fire could not heat
them from without, nor battering-ram loosen a single block in a single
course; and many assaults were repelled, and many a brave soldier fell
writhing and broken into the deep ditch with his ladder upon him.
When the time of fate was fulfilled, the end came on a fair April
morning; one ladder held its place till desperate armed hands had
reached the rampart, and swift feet had sprung upon the edge, and one
brave arm beat back the twenty that were there to defend; and then there
were two, and three, and ten, and a score, and a hundred, and the great
castle was taken at last. Nor do we know surely that it was ever taken
again by force, even long afterwards in the days of artillery. But
Crescenzio's hour had come, and the Emperor took him and the twelve
chief nobles who were with him, and cut off their heads, one by one, in
quick justice and without torture, and the heads were set up on spikes,
and the headless bodies were hung out from the high crenellations of the
ramparts. Thus ended Crescenzio, but not his house, nor the line of
Theodora, nor died he unavenged.
[Illustration: CHURCH OF SANT' EUSTACHIO
From a print of the last century]
It is said and believed that Pope Gregory perished by the hands of the
Crescenzi, who lived in the little street behind the Church of Saint
Eustace. As for Otto, he came to a worse end, though he was of a pious
house, and laboured for the peace of his soul against the temptations of
this evil world. For he was young, and the wife of Crescenzio was
wonderfully fair, and her name was Stefania. She came weeping before him
and mourning her lord, and was beautiful in her grief, and knew it, as
many women do. And the young Emperor saw her, and pitied her, and loved
her, and took her to his heart in sin, and though he repented daily, he
daily fell again, while the woman offered up her body and her soul to be
revenged for the fierce man she had loved. So it came to pass, at last,
that she found her opportunity against him, and poured poison into his
cup, and kissed him, and gave it to him with a very loving word. And he
drank it and died, and the prophecy of the holy man, Nilus, was
fulfilled upon him.
The story is told in many ways, but that is the main truth of it,
according to Muratori, whom Gibbon calls his guide and master in the
history of Italy, but whom he did not follow altogether in his brief
sketch of Crescenzio's life and death, and their consequences. The
Crescenzi lived on, in power and great state. They buried the terrible
tribune in Santa Sabina, on the Aventine, where his epitaph may be read
today, but whither he did not retire in life, as some guide-books say,
to end his days in prayer and meditation. And for some reason, perhaps
because they no longer held the great Castle, they seem to have left the
Region of Saint Eustace; for Nicholas, the tribune's son, built the
small palace by the Tiber, over against the Temple of Hercules, though
it has often been called the house of Rienzi, whose name was also
Nicholas, which caused the confusion. And later they built themselves
other fortresses, but the end of their history is not known.
In the troubles which succeeded the death of Crescentius, a curious
point arises in the chronicle, with regard to the titles of the bishops
depending from the Holy See. It is certainly not generally known that,
as late as the tenth century, the bishops of the great cities called
themselves Popes--the 'Pope of Milan,' the 'Pope of Naples,' and the
like--and that Gregory the Seventh, the famous Hildebrand, was the first
to decree that the title should be confined to the Roman Pontiffs, with
that of 'Servus Servorum Dei'--'servant of the servants of God.' And
indeed, in those changing times such a confusion of titles must have
caused trouble, as it did when Gregory the Fifth, driven out by
Crescentius, and taking refuge in Pavia, found himself, the Pope of
Rome, confronted with Arnulf, the 'Pope' of Milan, and complained of his
position to the council he had summoned.
The making and unmaking of Popes, and the election of successors to
those that died, brings up memories of what Rome was during the vacancy
of the See, and of the general delight at the death of any reigning
Pontiff, good or bad. A certain monk is reported to have answered Paul
the Third, that the finest festival in Rome took place while one Pope
lay dead and another was being elected. During that period, not always
brief, law and order were suspended. According to the testimony of
Dionigi Atanagi, quoted by Baracconi, the first thing that happened was
that the prisons were broken open and all condemned persons set free,
while all men in authority hid themselves in their homes, and the
officers of justice fled in terror from the dangerous humour of the
people. For every man who could lay hands on a weapon seized it, and
carried it about with him. It was the time for settling private quarrels
of long standing, in short and decisive fights, without fear of
disturbance or interference from the frightened Bargello and the
terrorized watchmen of the city. And as soon as the accumulated private
spite of years had spent itself in a certain amount of free fighting,
the city became perfectly safe again, and gave itself up to laying
wagers on the election of the next Pope. The betting was high, and there
were regular bookmakers, especially in all the Regions from Saint
Eustace to the Ponte Sant' Angelo, where the banks had established
themselves under the protection of the Pope and the Guelph Orsini, and
where the most reliable and latest news was sure to be obtained fresh
from the Vatican. Instead of the Piazza di Spagna and the Villa Medici,
the narrow streets and gloomy squares of Ponte, Parione and Sant'
Eustachio became the gathering-place of society, high, low and
indiscriminate; and far from exhibiting the slightest signs of mourning
for its late ruler, the city gave itself up to a sort of Carnival
season, all the more delightful, because it was necessarily unexpected.
Moreover, the poor people had the delight of speculating upon the wealth
of the cardinal who might be elected; for, as soon as the choice of the
Conclave was announced, and the cry, 'A pope, a pope!' rang through the
streets, it was the time-honoured privilege of the rabble to sack and
plunder the late residence of the chosen cardinal, till, literally,
nothing was left but the bare walls and floors. This was so much a
matter of course, that the election of a poor Pope was a source of the
bitterest disappointment to the people, and was one of their principal
causes of discontent when Sixtus the Fifth was raised to the
Pontificate, it having been given out as certain, but a few hours
earlier, that the rich Farnese was to be the fortunate man.
[Illustration]
REGION IX PIGNA
There used to be a tradition, wholly unfounded, but deeply rooted in the
Roman mind, to the effect that the great bronze pine-cone, eleven feet
high, which stands in one of the courts of the Vatican, giving it the
name 'Garden of the Pine-cone,' was originally a sort of stopper which
closed the round aperture in the roof of the Pantheon. The Pantheon
stands at one corner of the Region of Pigna, and a connection between
the Region, the Pantheon and the Pine-cone seems vaguely possible,
though altogether unsatisfactory. The truth about the Pine-cone is
perfectly well known; it was part of a fountain in Agrippa's artificial
lake in the Campus Martius, of which Pigna was a part, and it was set up
in the cloistered garden of Saint Peter's by Pope Symmachus about
fourteen hundred years ago. The lake may have been near the Pantheon.
No one, so far as I am aware,--not even the excellent Baracconi,--offers
any explanation of the name and device of the Ninth Region.
Topographically it is nearly a square, of which the angles are the
Pantheon, the corner of Via di Caravita and the Corso, the Palazzo di
Venezia, and the corner of the new Via Arenula and Via Florida. Besides
the Pantheon it contains some of the most notable buildings erected
since the Renascence. Here are the palaces of the Doria, of the Altieri,
and the 'Palace of Venice' built by Paul the Second, that Venetian
Barbo, whose name may have nicknamed the racing horses of the Carnival.
Here were the strongholds of the two great rival orders, the Dominicans
and the Jesuits, the former in the Piazza della Minerva, the latter in
the Piazza del Gesu, and in the Collegio Romano; and here at the present
day, in the buildings of the old rivals, significantly connected by an
arched passage, are collected the greatest libraries of the city. That
of the Dominicans, wisely left in their care, has been opened to the
public; the other, called after Victor Emmanuel, is a vast collection of
books gathered together by plundering the monastic institutions of Italy
at the time of the disestablishment. The booty--for it was nothing
else--was brought in carts, mostly in a state of the utmost confusion,
and the books and manuscripts were roughly stacked in vacant rooms on
the ground floor of the Collegio Romano, in charge of a porter. Not
until a poor scholar, having bought himself two ounces of butter in the
Piazza Navona, found the greasy stuff wrapped in an autograph letter of
Christopher Columbus, did it dawn upon the authorities that the porter
was deliberately selling priceless books and manuscripts as waste paper,
by the hundredweight, to provide himself with the means of getting
drunk. That was about the year 1880. The scandal was enormous, a strict
inquiry was made, justice was done as far as possible, and an official
account of the affair was published in a 'Green Book'; but the amount of
the loss was unknown, it may have been incalculable, and it was
undeniably great.
The names visibly recorded in the Region have vast suggestions in
them,--Ignatius Loyola, the Dominicans, Venice, Doria, Agrippa, and the
buildings themselves, which are the record, will last for ages; the
opposition of Jesuit and Inquisitor, under one name or another, and of
both by the people, will live as long as humanity itself.
The crisis in the history of the Inquisition in Rome followed closely
upon the first institution of the Tribunal, and seventeen years after
Paul the Fourth had created the Court, by a Papal Bull of July
twenty-first, 1542, the people burned the Palace of the Inquisition and
threatened to destroy the Dominicans and their monastery.
[Illustration: THE PANTHEON]
So far as it is possible to judge the character of the famous Carafa
Pope, he was ardent under a melancholic exterior, rigid but ambitious,
utterly blind to everything except the matter he had in hand, proud to
folly, and severe to cruelty. A chronicler says of him, that his head
'might be compared to the Vesuvius of his native city, since he was
ardent in all his actions, wrathful, hard and inflexible, undoubtedly
moved by an incredible zeal for religion, but a zeal often lacking in
prudence, and breaking out in eruptions of excessive severity.' On the
other hand, his lack of perception was such that he remained in complete
ignorance of the outrageous deeds done in his name by his two nephews,
the one a cardinal, the other a layman, and it was not until the last
year of his life that their doings came to his knowledge.
This was the man to whom Queen Elizabeth sent an embassy, in the hope of
obtaining the Papal sanction for her succession to the throne. Henry the
Second of France had openly espoused the cause of Mary Queen of Scots,
whom Philip the Second of Spain was also inclined to support, after the
failure of his attempt to obtain the hand of Elizabeth for the Duke of
Savoy. With France and Spain against her, the Queen appealed to Rome,
and to Paul the Fourth. In the eyes of Catholics her mother had never
been the lawful wife of Henry the Eighth, and she herself was
illegitimate. If the Pope would overlook this unfortunate fact and
confirm her crown in the eyes of Catholic Europe, she would make an act
of obedience by her ambassador. She had been brought up as a Catholic,
she had been crowned by a Roman Catholic bishop, and on first ascending
the throne she had shown herself favourable to the Catholic party; the
request and proposition were reasonable, if nothing more. Muratori
points out that if a more prudent, discreet and gentle Pope had reigned
at that time, and if he had received Elizabeth's offer kindly, according
to the dictates of religion, which he should have considered to the
exclusion of everything else, and without entering into other people's
quarrels, nor into the question of his own earthly rights, England might
have remained a Catholic country. Paul the Fourth's answer, instead, was
short, cold and senseless. 'England,' he said, 'is under the feudal
dominion of the Roman Church. Elizabeth is born out of wedlock; there
are other legitimate heirs, and she should never have assumed the crown
without the consent of the Apostolic See.' This is the generally
accepted account of what took place, as given by Muratori and other
historians. Lingard, however, whose authority is undeniable, argues
against the truth of the story on the ground that the English Ambassador
in Rome at the time of Queen Mary's death never had an audience of the
Pope. It seems probable, nevertheless, that Elizabeth actually appealed
to the Holy See, though secretly and with the intention of concealing
the step in case of failure.
A child might have foreseen the consequences of the Pope's political
folly. Elizabeth saw her extreme danger, turned her back upon Rome
forever, and threw herself into the arms of the Protestant party as her
only chance of safety. At the same time heresy assumed alarming
proportions throughout Europe, and the Pope called upon the Inquisition
to put it down in Rome. Measures of grim severity were employed, and the
Roman people, overburdened with the taxes laid upon them by the Pope's
nephews, were exasperated beyond endurance by the religious zeal of the
Dominicans, in whose hands the inquisitorial power was placed.
[Illustration: INTERIOR OF THE PANTHEON]
Nor were they appeased by the fall of the two Carafa, which was
ultimately brought about by the ambassador of Tuscany. The Pope enquired
of him one day why he so rarely asked an audience, and he frankly
replied that the Carafa would not admit him to the Pope's presence
unless he would previously give a full account of his intentions, and
reveal all the secrets of the Grand Duke's policy. Then some one wrote
out an account of the Carafa's misdeeds and laid it in the Pope's own
Breviary. The result was sudden and violent, like most of Paul's
decisions and actions. He called a Consistory of cardinals, made open
apology for his nephews' doings, deprived them publicly of all their
offices and honours, and exiled them, in opposite directions and with
their families, beyond the confines of the Papal States.
But the people were not satisfied; they accused the Pope of treating his
nephews as scapegoats for his own sins, and the immediate repeal of many
taxes was no compensation for the terrors of the Inquisition. There were
spies everywhere. No one was safe from secret accusers. The decisions of
the tribunal were slow, mysterious and deadly. The Romans became the
victims of a secret reign of terror such as the less brave Neapolitans
had more bravely fought against and had actually destroyed a dozen years
earlier, when Paul the Fourth, then only a cardinal, had persuaded their
Viceroy to try his favourite method of reducing heresy. Yet such was the
fear of the Dominicans and of the Pope himself that no one dared to
raise his voice against the 'monks of the Minerva.'
The general dissatisfaction was fomented by the nobles, and principally
by the Colonna, who had been at open war with the Pope during his whole
reign. Moreover, the severities of his government had produced between
Colonna and Orsini one of those occasional alliances for their common
safety, which vary their history without adorning it. The Pope seized
the Colonna estates and conferred them upon his nephews, but was in turn
often repulsed as the fighting ebbed and flowed during the four years of
his Pontificate, for the Colonna as usual had powerful allies in the
Emperor and in his kingdom of Naples. Changeable as the Roman people
always were, they had more often espoused the cause of Colonna than that
of the Pope and Orsini. Paul the Fourth fell ill in the summer, when the
heat makes a southern rabble dangerous, and the certain news of his
approaching end was a message of near deliverance. He lingered and died
hard, though he was eighty-four years old and afflicted with dropsy. But
the exasperated Romans were impatient for the end, and the nobles were
willing to take vengeance upon their oppressor before he breathed his
last. As the news that the Pope was dying ran through the city, the
spell of terror was broken, secret murmuring turned to open complaint,
complaint to clamour, clamour to riot. A vast and angry multitude
gathered together in the streets and open places, and hour by hour, as
the eager hope for news of death was ever disappointed, and the hard
old man lived on, the great concourse gathered strength within itself,
seething, waiting, listening for the solemn tolling of the great bell in
the Capitol to tell them that Paul the Fourth had passed away. Still it
came not. And in the streets and everywhere there were retainers and
men-at-arms of the great houses, ready of tongue and hand, but friendly
with the people, listening to tales of suffering and telling of their
lords' angry temper against the dying Pope. A word here, a word there,
like sparks amid sun-dried stubble, till the hot stuff was touched with
fire and all broke out in flame.
Then words were no longer exchanged between man and man, but a great cry
of rage went up from all the throng, and the people began to move, some
knowing what they meant to do and some not knowing, nor caring, but
moving with the rest, faster and faster, till many were trampled down in
the press, and they came to the prisons, to Corte Savella and Tor di
Nona, and even to Sant' Angelo, and as they battered at the great doors
from without, the prisoners shouted for freedom from within, and their
gaolers began to loose their chains, fearing for their own lives, and
drew back the bolts to let the stream of riot in. So on that day four
hundred condemned men were taken out and let loose, before the Pope was
dead.
[Illustration: THE RIPETTA
From a print of the last century]
Yet the people had not enough, and they surged and roared in the
streets, quivering with rage not yet half spent. And again words ran
along, as fire through dry grass, and suddenly all men thought of the
Inquisition, down by the Tiber at the Ripetta. Thought was motion,
motion was action, action was to set men free and burn the hated prison
to the ground. The prisoners of the Holy Roman Office were seventy-two,
and many had lain there long unheard, for the trial of unbelief was
cumbrous in argument and slow of issue, and though the Pope could
believe no one innocent who was in prison, and though he was violent in
his judgments, the saintly Ghislieri was wise and cautious, and would
condemn no man hastily to please his master. When he in turn was Pope,
the people loved him, though at first they feared him for Pope Paul's
sake.
When they had burned the Inquisition on that day and set free the
accused persons, and it was not yet night, they turned back from the
Tiber, still unsatisfied, for they had shed little blood, or none at
all, perhaps, and the people of Rome always thirsted for that when their
anger was hot. Through the winding streets they went, dividing where the
ways were narrow and meeting again where there was room, always towards
Pigna, and the Minerva, and the dwelling of the learned black and white
robed fathers into whose hands the Inquisition had been given and from
whose monastery the good Ghislieri had been chosen to be cardinal. For
the rabble knew no difference of thought or act between him and the
dying Pope. They bore torches and weapons, and beams for battering down
the doors, and they reached the place, a raging horde of madmen.