did not fear them. These men were Marcantonio Colonna and his kinsman
Giuliano Cesarini, and a Salviati, and a Torres and Gianbattista
Bernardi, who had all suffered much at the hands of the Pope and had
come swiftly to Rome when they heard that he was near death. And at the
sight of those calm knights, sitting there on their horses without
armour and with sheathed swords, the people drew back a moment, while
Colonna spoke. Presently, as he went on, they grew silent and
understood his words. And when they had understood, they saw that he
was right and their anger was quieted, and they went away to their
homes, satisfied with having set free those who had been long in prison.
So the great monastery was saved from fire and the monks from death. But
the Pope was not yet dead, and while he lived the people were restless
and angry by day and night, and ready for new deeds of violence; but
Marcantonio Colonna rode through the city continually, entreating them
to wait patiently for the end, and because he also had suffered much at
Paul's hands, they listened to him and did nothing more.
[Illustration: PIAZZA MINERVA]
The rest is a history which all men know: how the next Pope was just,
and put the Carafa to their trial for many deeds of bloodshed; how the
judgment was long delayed that it might be without flaw; how it took
eight hours at last to read the judges' summing up; and how Cardinal
Carafa was strangled by night in Sant' Angelo, while at the same hour
his brother and the two who had murdered his wife were beheaded in Tor
di Nona, just opposite the Castle, across the Tiber--a grim tragedy, but
the tragedy of justice.
Southward a few steps from the Church of the Minerva is the little
Piazza della Pigna, with a street of the same name leading out of it.
And at the corner of the place is a small church, dedicated to 'Saint
John of the Pine-cone,' that is, of the Region. Within lies one of the
noble Porcari in a curious tomb, and their stronghold was close by,
perhaps built in one block with the church itself.
The name Porcari calls up another tale of devotion, of betrayal, and of
death, with the last struggle for a Roman Republic at the end of the
Middle Age. It was a hopeless attempt, made by a brave man of simple and
true heart, a man better and nobler than Rienzi in every way, but who
judged the times ill and gave his soul and body for the dream of a
liberty which already existed in another shape, but which for its name's
sake he would not acknowledge. Stephen Porcari failed where Rienzi
partially succeeded, because the people were not with him; they were no
longer oppressed, and they desired no liberator; they had freedom in
fact and they cared nothing for the name of liberty; they had a ruler
with whom they were well pleased, and they did not long for one of whom
they knew nothing. But Stephen, brave, pure and devoted, was a man of
dreams, and he died for them, as many others have died for the name of
Rome and the phantom of an impossible Republic; for Rome has many times
been fatal to those who loved her best.
In the year 1447 Pope Eugenius the Fourth died, after a long and just
reign, disturbed far more by matters spiritual than by any worldly
troubles. And then, says the chronicler, a meeting of the Romans was
called at Aracoeli, to determine what should be asked of the Conclave
that was to elect a new Pope. And there, with many other citizens,
Stephen Porcari spoke to the Council, saying some things useful to the
Republic; and he declared that Rome should govern itself and pay a
feudal tribute to the Pope, as many others of the Papal States did. And
the Archbishop of Benevento forbade that he should say more; but the
Council and the citizens wished him to go on; and there was disorder,
and the meeting broke up, the Archbishop being gravely displeased, and
the people afraid to support Stephen against him, because the King of
Spain was at Tivoli, very near Rome.
Then the Cardinals elected Pope Nicholas the Fifth, a good man and a
great builder, and of gentle and merciful temper, and there was much
feasting and rejoicing in Rome. But Stephen Porcari pondered the
inspired verses of Petrarch and the strange history of Rienzi, and
waited for an opportunity to rouse the people, while his brother, or his
kinsman, was the Senator of Rome, appointed by the Pope. At last, after
a long time, when there was racing, with games in the Piazza Navona,
certain youths having fallen to quarrelling, and Stephen being there,
and a great concourse of people, he tried by eloquent words to stir the
quarrel to a riot, and a rebellion against the Pope. The people cared
nothing for Petrarch's verses nor Rienzi's memory, and Nicholas was kind
to them, so that Stephen Porcari failed again, and his failure was high
treason, for which he would have lost his head in any other state of
Europe. Yet the Pope was merciful, and when the case had been tried, the
rebel was sent to Bologna, to live there in peace, provided that he
should present himself daily before the Cardinal Legate of the City. But
still he dreamed, and would have made action of dreams, and he planned a
terrible conspiracy, and escaped from Bologna, and came back to Rome
secretly.
His plan was this. On the feast of the Epiphany he and his kinsmen and
retainers would seize upon the Pope and the Cardinals as prisoners, when
they were on their way to High Mass at Saint Peter's, and then by
threatening to murder them the conspirators would force the keepers of
Sant'Angelo to give up the Castle, which meant the power to hold Rome in
subjection. Once there, they would call upon the people to acclaim the
return of the ancient Republic, the Pope should be set free to fulfil
the offices of religion, while deprived of all temporal power, and the
vision of freedom would become a glorious reality.
But Rome was not with Porcari, and he paid the terrible price of
unpopular fanaticism and useless conspiracy. He was betrayed by the
folly of his nephew, who, with a few followers, killed the Pope's
equerry in a street brawl, and then, perhaps to save himself, fired the
train too soon. Stephen shut the great gates of his house and defended
himself as well as he could against the men-at-arms who were sent to
take him. The doors were closed, says the chronicler, and within there
were many armed men, and they fought at the gate, while those in the
upper story threw the tables from the windows upon the heads of the
besiegers. Seeing that they were lost, Stephen's men went out by the
postern behind the house, and his nephew, Battista Sciarra, with four
companions, fought his way through, only one of them being taken,
because the points of his hose were cut through, so that the hose
slipped down and he could not move freely. Those who had not cut their
way out were taken within by the governor's men, and Stephen was dragged
with ignominy from a chest in which he had taken refuge.
The trial was short and sure, for even the Pope's patience was
exhausted. Three days later, Stephen Infessura, the chronicler, saw the
body of Stephen Porcari hanging by the neck from the crenellations of
the tower that used to stand on the right-hand side of Sant' Angelo, as
you go towards the Castle from the bridge; and it was dressed in a black
doublet and black hose--the body of that 'honourable man who loved the
right and the liberty of Rome, who, because he looked upon his
banishment as without good cause, meant to give his life, and gave his
body, to free his country from slavery.'
Infessura was a retainer of the Colonna and no friend of any Pope's, of
course; yet he does not call the execution of Porcari an act of
injustice. He speaks, rather, with a sort of gentle pity of the man who
gave so much so freely, and paid bodily death and shame for his belief
in a lofty vision. Rienzi dreamed as high, rose far higher, and fell to
the depths of his miserable end by his vanity and his weaknesses.
Stephen Porcari accomplished nothing in his life, nor by his death; had
he succeeded, no one can tell how his nature might have changed; but in
failure he left after him the clean memory of an honest purpose, which
was perhaps mistaken, but was honourable, patriotic and unselfish.
It is strange, unless it be an accident, that the great opponents, the
Dominicans and the Jesuits, should have established themselves on
opposite sides of the same street, and it is characteristic that the
latter should have occupied more land and built more showy buildings
than the former, extending their possessions in more than one direction
and in a tentative way, while the rigid Dominicans remained rooted to
the spot they had chosen, throughout many centuries. Both are gone, in
an official and literal sense. The Dominican Monastery is filled with
public offices, and though the magnificent library is still kept in
order by Dominican friars, it is theirs no longer, but confiscated to
the State, and connected with the Victor Emmanuel Library, in what was
the Jesuit Roman College, by a bridge that crosses the street of Saint
Ignatius. And the Jesuit College, on its side, is the property of the
State and a public school; the Jesuits' library is taken from them
altogether, and their dwelling is occupied by other public offices. But
the vitality which had survived ages was not to be destroyed by such a
trifle as confiscation. Officially both are gone; in actual fact both
are more alive than ever. When the Jesuits were finally expelled from
their College, they merely moved to the other side of the Dominican
Monastery, across the Via del Seminario, and established themselves in
the Borromeo palace, still within sight of their rivals' walls, and they
called their college the Gregorian University. The Dominicans, driven
from the ancient stronghold at last, after occupying it exactly five
hundred years, have taken refuge in other parts of Rome under the
security of title-deeds held by foreigners, and consequently beyond the
reach of Italian confiscation. Yet still, in fact, the two great orders
face each other.
It was the prayer of Ignatius Loyola that his order should be
persecuted, and his desire has been most literally fulfilled, for the
Jesuits have suffered almost uninterrupted persecution, not at the hands
of Protestants only, but of the Roman Catholic Church itself in
successive ages. Popes have condemned them, and Papal edicts have
expelled their order from Rome; Catholic countries, with Catholic Spain
at their head, have driven them out and hunted them down with a
determination hardly equalled, and certainly not surpassed at any time,
by Protestant Prussia or Puritan England. Non-Catholics are very apt to
associate Catholics and Jesuits in their disapproval, dislike, or
hatred, as the case may be; but neither Englishman nor German could
speak of the order of Ignatius more bitterly than many a most devout
Catholic.
To give an idea of the feeling which has always been common in Rome
against the Jesuits, it is enough to quote the often told popular legend
about the windy Piazza del Gesu, where their principal church stands,
adjoining what was once their convent, or monastery, as people say
nowadays, though Doctor Johnson admits no distinction between the words,
and Dryden called a nunnery by the latter name. The story is this. One
day the Devil and the Wind were walking together in the streets of Rome,
conversing pleasantly according to their habit. When they came to the
Piazza del Gesu, the Devil stopped. 'I have an errand in there,' he
said, pointing to the Jesuits' house. 'Would you kindly wait for me a
moment?' 'Certainly,' answered the Wind. The Devil went in, but never
came out again, and the Wind is waiting for him still.
When one considers what the Jesuits have done for mankind, as educators,
missionaries and civilizers, it seems amazing that they should be so
judged by the Romans themselves. Their devotion to the cause of
Christianity against paganism has led many of them to martyrdom in past
centuries, and may again so long as Asia and Africa are non-Christian.
Their marvellous insight into the nature and requirements of education
in the highest sense has earned them the gratitude of thousands of
living laymen. They have taught all over the world. Their courage, their
tenacity, their wonderful organization, deserve the admiration of
mankind. Neither their faults nor their mistakes seem adequate to
explain the deadly hatred which they have so often roused against
themselves among Christians of all denominations. All organized bodies
make mistakes, all have faults; few indeed can boast of such a catalogue
of truly good deeds as the followers of Saint Ignatius; yet none have
been so despised, so hated, so persecuted, not only by men who might be
suspected of partisan prejudice, but by the wise, the just and the
good.
[Illustration]
REGION X CAMPITELLI
Rome tends to diminutives in names as in facts. The first emperor was
Augustus, the last was Augustulus; with the Popes, the Roman Senate
dwindled to a mere office, held by one man, and respected by none; the
ascent to the Capitol, the path of triumphs that marked the subjugation
of the world, became in the twelfth century 'Fabatosta,' or 'Roast Beans
Lane'; and, in the vulgar tongue, 'Capitolium' was vulgarized to
'Campitelli,' and the word gave a name to a Region of the city. Within
that Region are included the Capitol, the Forum, the Colosseum and the
Palatine, with the palaces of the Caesars. It takes in, roughly, the land
covered by the earliest city; and, throughout the greater part of Roman
history, it was the centre of political and military life. It merited
something better than a diminutive for a name; yet, in the latest
revolution of things, it has fared better, and has been more respected,
than many other quarters, and still the memories of great times and
deeds cling to the stones that are left.
In the dark ages, when a ferocious faith had destroyed the remnants of
Latin learning and culture, together with the last rites of the old
religion, the people invented legend as a substitute for the folklore of
all the little gods condemned by the Church; so that the fairy tale is
in all Europe the link between Christianity and paganism, and to the
weakness of vanquished Rome her departed empire seemed only explicable
as the result of magic. The Capitol, in the imagination of such tales,
became a tower of wizards. High above all, a golden sphere reflected the
sun's rays far out across the distant sea by day, and at night a huge
lamp took its place as a beacon for the sailors of the Mediterranean,
even to Spain and Africa. In the tower, too, was preserved the mystic
mirror of the world, which instantly reflected all that passed in the
empire, even to its furthest limits. Below the towers, also, and
surmounting the golden palace, there were as many statues as Rome had
provinces, and each statue wore a bell at its neck, that rang of itself
in warning whenever there was trouble in the part of the world to which
it belonged, while the figure itself turned on its base to look in the
direction of the danger. Such tales Irving tells of the Alhambra, not
more wonderful than those believed of Rome, and far less numerous.
There were stories of hidden treasure, too, without end. For, in those
days of plundering, men laid their hands on what they saw, and hid what
they took as best they might; and later, when the men of the Middle Age
and of the Renascence believed that Rome had been destroyed by the
Goths, they told strange stories of Gothmen who appeared suddenly in
disguise from the north, bringing with them ancient parchments in which
were preserved sure instructions for unearthing the gold hastily hidden
by their ancestors, because there had been too much of it to carry away.
Even in our own time such things have been done. In the latter days of
the reign of Pius the Ninth, some one discovered an old book or
manuscript, wherein it was pointed out that a vast treasure lay buried
on the northward side of the Colosseum within a few feet of the walls,
and it was told that if any man would dig there he should find, as he
dug deeper, certain signs, fragments of statues, and hewn tablets, and a
spring of water. So the Pope gave his permission, and the work began.
Every one who lived in Rome thirty years ago can remember it, and the
excited curiosity of the whole city while the digging went on. And,
strange to say, though the earth had evidently not been disturbed for
centuries, each object was found in succession, exactly as described, to
a great depth; but not the treasure, though the well was sunk down to
the primeval soil. It was all filled in again, and the mystery has never
been solved. Yet the mere fact that everything was found except the
gold, lends some possibility to the other stories of hidden wealth, told
and repeated from generation to generation.
The legend of the Capitol is too vast, too varied, too full of
tremendous contrasts to be briefly told or carelessly sketched.
Archaeologists have reconstructed it on paper, scholars have written out
its history, poets have said great things of it; yet if one goes up the
steps today and stands by the bronze statue in the middle of the square,
seeing nothing but a paved space enclosed on three sides by palaces of
the late Renascence, it is utterly impossible to call up the past.
Perhaps no point of ancient Rome seems less Roman and less individual
than that spot where Rienzi stood, silent and terrified, for a whole
hour before the old stone lion, waiting for the curious, pitiless rabble
to kill him. The big buildings shut out history, hide the Forum, the
Gemonian steps, and the Tarpeian rock, and in the very inmost centre of
the old city's heart they surround a man with the artificialities of an
uninteresting architecture. For though Michelangelo planned the
reconstruction he did not live to see his designs carried out, and they
fell into the hands of little men who tried to improve upon what they
could not understand, and ruined it.
The truth is that half a dozen capitols have been built on the hill,
destroyed, forgotten, and replaced, each one in turn, during successive
ages. It is said that certain Indian jugglers allow themselves to be
buried alive in a state of trance, and are taken from the tomb after
many months not dead; and it is said that the body, before it is brought
to life again, is quite cold, as though the man were dead, excepting
that there is a very little warmth just where the back of the skull
joins the neck. Yet there is enough left to reanimate the whole being in
a little time, so that life goes on as before. So in Rome's darkest and
most dead days, the Capitol has always held within it a spark of
vitality, ready to break out with little warning and violent effect.
[Illustration: THE CAPITOL]
For the Capitol, not yet the Capitol, but already the sacred fortress of
Rome, was made strong in the days of Romulus, and it was in his time,
when he and his men had carried off the Sabine girls and were at war
with their fathers and brothers, that Tarpeia came down the narrow path,
her earthen jar balanced on her graceful head, to fetch spring water for
a household sacrifice. Her father kept the castle. She came down, a
straight brown girl with eager eyes and red lips, clad in the grey
woollen tunic that left her strong round arms bare to the shoulder.
Often she had seen the golden bracelets which the Sabine men wore on
their left wrists, and some of them had a jewel or two set in the gold;
but the Roman men wore none, and the Roman women had none to wear, and
Tarpeia's eyes were eager. Because she came to get water for holy things
she was safe, and she went down to the spring, and there was Tatius, of
the Sabines, drinking. When he saw how her eyes were gold-struck by his
bracelet, he asked her if she should like to wear it, and the blood came
to her brown face, as she looked back quickly to the castle where her
father was. 'If you Sabines will give me what you wear on your left
arms,' she said--for she did not know the name of gold--'you shall have
the fortress tonight, for I will open the gate for you.' The Sabine
looked at her, and then he smiled quickly, and promised for himself and
all his companions. So that night they went up stealthily, for there was
no moon, and the gate was open, and Tarpeia was standing there. Tatius
could see her greedy eyes in the starlight; but instead of his bracelet,
he took his shield from his left arm and struck her down with it for a
betrayer, and all the Sabine men threw their shields upon her as they
passed. So she died, but her name remains to the rock, to this day.
It was long before the temple planned by the first Tarquin was solemnly
dedicated by the first consuls of the Republic, and the earthen image of
Jupiter, splendidly dressed and painted red, was set up between Juno and
Minerva. Many hundred years later, in the terrible times of Marius and
Sylla, the ancient sanctuary took fire and was burned, and Sylla rebuilt
it. That temple was destroyed also, and another, built by Vespasian,
was burned too, and from the last building Genseric stole the gilt
bronze tiles in the year 455, when Christianity was the fact and Jupiter
the myth, one and twenty years before the final end of Rome's empire;
and the last of what remained was perhaps burned by Robert Guiscard
after serving as a fortress for the enemies of Gregory the Seventh.
[Illustration: CHURCH OF ARACOELI]
But we know, at last, that the fortress of the old city stood where the
Church of Aracoeli stands, and that the temple was on the other side,
over against the Palatine, and standing back a little from the Tarpeian
rock, so that the open square of today is just between the places of the
two. And when one goes up the steps on the right, behind the right-hand
building, one comes to a quiet lane, where German students of archaeology
live in a little colony by themselves and have their Institute at the
end of it, and a hospital of their own; and there, in a wall, is a small
green door leading into a quiet garden, with a pretty view. Along the
outer edge runs a low stone wall, and there are seats where one may rest
and dream under the trees, a place where one might fancy lovers meeting
in the moonlight, or old men sunning themselves of an autumn afternoon,
or children playing among the flowers on a spring morning.
But it is a place of fear and dread, ever since Tarpeia died there for
her betrayal, and one may dream other dreams there than those of peace
and love. The vision of a pale, strong man rises at the edge, bound and
helpless, lifted from the ground by savage hands and hurled from the
brink to the death below,--Manlius, who saved the Capitol and loved the
people, and was murdered by the nobles,--and many others after him, just
and unjust, whirled through the clear air to violent destruction for
their bad or their good deeds, as justice or injustice chanced to be in
the ascendant of the hour. And then, in the Middle Age, the
sweet-scented garden was the place of terrible executions, and the
gallows stood there permanently for many years, and men were hanged and
drawn and quartered there, week by week, month by month, all the year
round, the chief magistrate of Rome looking on from the window of the
Senator's palace, as a duty; till one of them sickened at the sight of
blood, and ordained that justice should be done at the Bridge of Sant'
Angelo, and at Tor di Nona, and in the castle itself, and the summit of
the fatal rock was left to the birds, the wild flowers, and the merciful
purity of nature. And that happened four hundred years ago.