Part 15

Sixtus V died in the Quirinal Palace. His pontificate had lasted but five years, and it remains to this day one of the most memorable periods in the development and power of Rome. Never had Pope done more for his people; yet, when he came to die, the Romans had already forgotten the benefits of his pontificate and remembered only the severities. They recalled the fact that this Sixtus who was dying as the head of Christendom had been born a poor gardener’s son. Such dramatic contrasts exercise great sway over the Roman mind--superstition and fancy played with the story, and strange rumors drifted about concerning an unholy bargain which Sixtus was said to have made for power. Here, before the palace which he had built, the silent crowds gathered to await his end; and when, as the old pontiff drew his last breath, that terrific thunderstorm broke over the Quirinal, men shuddered and fled, saying and believing that the Prince of Darkness had come in person for the soul of the monk whom he had made Pope. Kindly old Sixtus! It was well that he could not know how the poor whom he had always remembered would remember him!

Across the Monte Cavallo, to pause before the balcony of the Quirinal, came in 1840 that extraordinary funeral cortège which carried the body of Lady Gwendolin Talbot, Princess Borghese, to be laid in the Borghese chapel in S. Maria Maggiore. At seven in the evening of October 30, by torchlight, amid a silence so profound that the low prayers of the priests were distinctly audible, the procession moved slowly along the three-quarters of a league from the Borghese Palace to the church of S. Maria Maggiore. Soldiers with reversed arms, mounted dragoons, mourning carriages, religious societies, priests, prelates, and all the Roman poor, comprised the train. The funeral car was drawn, not by horses but by forty Romans dressed in deep mourning. Flowers were thrown upon the bier from the palaces along the Corso, and when the procession reached Monte Cavallo and paused before the Quirinal, from the balcony over the entrance Pope Gregory XVI gave his final blessing to the beautiful young princess, dead at twenty-two, and saint if ever there has been one. All the poor of Rome felt that they had lost a friend and benefactress, the like of whom would not come again. Later, when Prince Borghese wished to know the names of those who had drawn the funeral car, he was only told that they were Romans!

Up the slopes of Monte Cavallo in February, 1798, came with their tricolored cockades the soldiers of the French Revolutionary Army. They entered the Quirinal and called upon Pope Pius VI to renounce the temporal power. The eighteenth-century pontiff calmly refused to comply with this preposterous demand. That refusal lost him the tiara and brought about his death eighteen months later in a French fortress.

Rome was metamorphosed into a republic, but this obscuration of the papal power was only temporary. When Pius VI died, at Valence, in August, 1799, the cardinals held their Conclave at Venice, and on March 14, 1804, elected Pius VII (Chiaramonti, 1804–1823), who returned to Rome the following July. This was the Pope who, after many misgivings, consented to crown Napoleon. Five years later, when the Emperor proceeded to annex the Papal States to his empire, this was the Pope who excommunicated him.

Few of St. Peter’s successors have been called upon to suffer and to dare more than the good and gentle Pius VII. His Italian nature comprehended to an unusual degree the strange character of Napoleon, enduring with perfect composure the Emperor’s outbursts of histrionic rage, and daring to bring him back to business by the single word, “comedian.” He braved no less calmly Napoleon’s genuine anger at the bull of excommunication, and refused to cancel it. Consequently, on the night of July 5, 1809, the Emperor’s soldiers broke into the Quirinal and took the Pope prisoner. For a moment, standing under the stars which looked down upon Monte Cavallo, Pius VII blessed his sleeping city, and then was hurried away from Rome to that wandering exile, depicted in the frescoes of the Vatican Library, which was only brought to an end by Napoleon’s fall. Then the States of the Church were restored to the papacy, and the Quirinal Palace once more received the aged pontiff.

In the quiet sunset of his days, which outlasted by two years the life of the great conqueror, the Pope had time to erect the fountain of Monte Cavallo, and to begin or continue the architectural and archæological projects connected with his name.

In that brief halcyon period immediately following Pius IX’s election to the Holy See, in 1846, the Quirinal Palace and the Monte Cavallo were in a state of unwonted and constant activity. Pius played with all his heart the rôle of the liberal Pope, both he and the Romans mistaking his amiable disposition for liberal political convictions. Day after day the Romans thronged the space before the palace, waiting for their idol, who was sure to appear some time on the balcony over the entrance. Standing there in his white robe, his dark eyes glowing with sympathetic emotion, he would bless the people with uplifted hand and in the most moving and beautiful of voices. If the hour was late, he might add the injunction to go home to bed! The attitude of the Pope and people at this time is epitomized in the story of the ragged little boy who one day found himself in the Quirinal Gardens face to face with the Holy Father. Dazed and enraptured, he poured forth the pitiful tale of his hardships to the handsome and compassionate countenance bending over him, and the wonderful voice comforted him with promises of redress--promises which both pontiff and child believed in passionately.

There is about this period of Pius IX’s life, with its visits to the prisons, its charities and public appearances, a strange atmosphere of unreality. A factitious glamour blinded the popular mind, and the Pope lived upon pious and ideal illusions--as Marie Antoinette had played at simplicity and a return to Nature on the eve of the Revolution.

When the golden charm was broken by the outbreak of the Revolution in Palermo and the murder of Pellegrino Rossi in Rome, the frightened pontiff, turning from an angry people, whom in the nature of things he could not possibly satisfy, appealed to the most reactionary of all the Italian powers, the King of Naples, or “Bomba.” Then the Quirinal witnessed the last act which the papacy was to play within its precincts. The Pope and one attendant escaped from the palace by a small side door in the garden wall and fled across the frontier to Gaeta, on Neapolitan territory. He carried with him the pyx which Pius VII had carried when he also had quitted the Quirinal in haste thirty-nine years before; but, unlike Pius VII, Pius IX never returned thither. When he came back to Rome the Vatican received him.

The Quirinal, the third one of the papal palaces, has become a symbol of the actual sovereignty of Rome, and, in 1871, it passed with the temporal power from Pope Pius IX to Victor Emmanuel II, King of Italy.

The cardinals’ coaches no longer drive about the fountain of Pius VII. The consistories are held in the Vatican; and on the Monte Cavallo the Bersaglieri have superseded the papal Zouaves. Over the Quirinal the pontifical yellow and white has given way to the green and white and red of United Italy. “Old things are passed away. Behold, all things have become new”--once again in the city of eternal change.

[Illustration]

APPENDIX

INSCRIPTIONS IN PIAZZA DI SPAGNA ON THE SPANISH STEPS

I

D.      O.      M. MAGNIFICAM HANC SPECTATOR QVAM MIRARIS SCALAM VT COMMODAM AC ORNAMENTVM NON EXIGVVM REGIO COENOBIO IPSIQ. VRBI ALLATVRAM ANIMO CONCEPIT LEGATAQ. SVPREMIS IN TABVLIS PECVNIA VNDE SVMPTVS SVPPEDITARENTVR CONSTRVI MANDAVIT NOBILIS GALLVS STEPHANVS GVEFFIER QVI REGIO IN MINISTERIO DIV PLVRES APVD PONTIFICES ALIOSQVE SVBLIMES PRINCIPES EGREGIE VERSATVS ROMAE VIVERE DESIIT XXX. IVNII MDCLXI. OPVS AVTEM VARIO RERVM INTERVENTV PRIMVM SVB CLEMENTE XI CVM MVLTI PROPONERENTVR MODVLI ET FORMAE IN DELIBERATIONE POSITVM DEINDE SVB INNOCENTIO XIII. STABILITVM ET R. P. BERTRANDI MONSINAT TOLOSATIS ORD. MINIMORVM S. FRANCISCI DE PAVLA CORRECTORIS GENLIS FIDEI CVRAEQ. COMMISSVM AC INCHOATVM TANDEM BENEDICTO XIII FELICITER SEDENTE CONFECTVM ABSOLVTVMQVE EST ANNO JVBILEI MDCCXXV

II

D.      O.      M. SEDENTE BENEDICTO XIII PONT. MAX. LUDOVICO XV IN GALLIIS REGNANTE EIVSQ. APVD SANCTAM SEDEM NEGOTIIS PRÆPOSITO MELCHIORE S. R. ECCLESIÆ CARDINALI DE POLIGNAC ARCHIEPISCOPO AVSCITANO AD SACRÆ ÆDIS ALMÆQVE VRBIS ORNAMENTVM AC CIVIVM COMMODVM MARMOREA SCALA DIGNO TANTIS AVSPICIIS OPERE ABSOLVTA ANNO DOMINI MDCCXXV

TRANSLATION OF ABOVE

I

O spectator, this magnificent stairway which you gaze at in wonder, that it might afford convenience and no small ornament to the city, the noble Frenchman Etienne Guéffier conceived in his mind, and, money having been left in his will whence to defray expenses, ordered it to be built. He conducted himself with distinction in the service of the King at the courts of several pontiffs and other sublime princes, and died in Rome the thirtieth of June, 1661.

The work, however, was interrupted by a variety of things, and first in the reign of Clement XI there were placed before a council many plans and designs. It was decided upon under Clement XI, and, being intrusted to the faithful care of the Reverend Father Bertrand Monsinat of Toulouse, corrector generalis of the lesser order of St. Francis de Paul, was begun, and finally, Benedict XIII blessedly seated upon the papal chair, was brought to an end in the year of jubilee, 1725.

II

Benedict XIII sitting in the papal chair as Pontifex Maximus; Louis XV reigning in France; Melchior de Polignac, Cardinal of the Holy Roman Church, and Archbishop of Aquitaine, being his minister at the sacred see; these marble steps, in a manner worthy of such auspices, for the ornamentation of the sacred temple (the church above) and the beloved city, and for the convenience of the citizens, were completed in the year of our Lord, 1725.

FOOTNOTES

[A] The Queen’s palace was in the rear of Raphael’s house and faced the Borgo Vecchio. Opposite to it was the palace of Cesare Borgia.

[B] Sixtus V was severely criticised for substituting his own arms for those of his predecessor, Gregory XIII, in the Quirinal Palace, and after Sixtus’s death the Boncompagni arms were restored to their original place.

[C] “Ounce” was a mediæval measurement of running water, of which there were once as many varieties in Italy as there were provinces. Some of these are still in use. The Roman _oncia d’acqua_, or ounce of water, was practically equivalent to four times the quantity of water known as the California “miner’s inch.” This “miner’s inch” amounts to something like sixteen thousand gallons in twenty-four hours, and therefore the grant of two Roman “ounces” gave the Colonna the right to draw from the Fountain of Trevi eight times that amount, or one hundred and twenty-eight thousand gallons every twenty-four hours.

[D] One of Vignola’s early plans for the Villa Giulia has lately come to light. It shows the main structure much as it is, but with a large wing to left and right, and a long garden running down either side of the central court behind each wing. There are also other differentiations, and it is evident the plan must have entailed a larger and more expensive building than that which was finally erected. The plan measures four by five feet and is beautifully prepared. It is now in the possession of Mr. Lawrence Grant White, of New York.

[E] This cardinal became Pope Marcellus, for whom Palestrina is said to have written the Mass of Pope Marcellus.

[F] A curious story related by Wraxall (“Memoirs,” vol. I, p. 183) shows that the Villa Giulia in its eighteenth century period of isolation and decay proved a convenient shelter for secret crimes committed by persons of exalted rank.

[G] The ornamental detail of the “Sixtine lion” looks as if this fountain, like the Tartarughe, had been finished in the pontificate following Gregory XIII’s--that is, in the pontificate of Sixtus V.

[H] The fate of the Roman obelisks presents one of the most baffling and fascinating problems of archæology. As no satisfactory explanation of their overthrow and mutilation has ever been given, possibly the theory that they were destroyed by the Romans of the Dark Ages, in search of bronze, is as good a working hypothesis as any other. The idea that they were wrecked by barbarians, and the assumption that they were thrown down by earthquakes are equally untenable. Much curious evidence goes to show that some of the principal obelisks were standing in the sixth and seventh centuries. One stood erect on its pedestal in Charlemagne’s time, while the fall of another can be placed as late as the tenth or eleventh century. Three of the principal obelisks show holes drilled in the shaft for the insertion of levers or crowbars, and have unmistakable marks of fire about the pedestal. Now, the Romans generally re-erected the obelisk, not directly upon its pedestal, but upon bronze crabs (as in the obelisk of the Vatican) or upon brass “dice” (as in the larger of the two obelisks in Constantinople). The Egyptians sheathed the pyramidion of the obelisk with “bright metal” to reflect the rays of the sun, and the Romans crowned the apex, sometimes if not always, with metal ornaments, like the ball upon the Vatican obelisk, which, until it was removed by Sixtus V, was supposed to contain the ashes of Julius Cæsar. The obelisk now in Central Park had been re-erected by the Romans at Alexandria, in this fashion, and one of the bronze crabs was brought to New York with the obelisk, and is now in the Metropolitan Museum. These bronze supports were firmly attached to the obelisk by heavy bronze dowels, one dowel running upward into each corner of the shaft, the other going down into each corner of the pedestal. Between the shaft and the pedestal there was therefore a space, perhaps some four inches in height, through which light was visible. This was seen in the Vatican obelisk, which was still _in situ_ when Fontana drew his plans for changing its location, and in the Central Park obelisk, as described by an eye-witness of its removal. Three historians of Rome’s destruction--Fea, Dyer, and Gibbon--describe the almost incredible ingenuity, labor, and patience exerted by the Romans of the Dark Ages in their search for bronze and other metals. Wherever bronze could be obtained, it was stolen, stripped, or melted, on account of its value and the ease with which it could be transported. During the same historic period, all pagan monuments were deprived of whatever protection they had had as objects of religious veneration. The obelisks standing in spacious and lonely surroundings would have proved an easy prey to bands of clandestine or open marauders. The Roman method of blasting consisted in building a fire against the rock and pouring vinegar, or even water, upon the red-hot stone which then disintegrated. It would have been an easy matter to kindle great fires at every corner of the pedestal which, by the time this kind of destruction became popular, had already lost much of their original height through the gradual rise of the ground level. This method of blasting by fire would account for the all but universal gnawing away, or rough rounding off of the lower corners of the shaft, in which the bronze dowels were so firmly embedded. After the disintegration of the granite the partially melted bronze could be extracted from both shaft and pedestal, but not before the shaft had been thrown over, and this was evidently helped along by the use of levers. When the shaft was prone, it became possible to remove any bronze which had been attached to its summit. With perhaps only one exception, the fallen shafts were always found broken in three pieces, but there seems to be no record of any bronze found in Rome, near the original sites of the obelisks. What bronze there is was on the one Roman obelisk that had not been thrown down (the Vatican obelisk). The original site of this obelisk, in the centre of the old circus of Caligula and Nero, was close to the old Church of St. Peter, and it was furthermore protected, according to Lanciani, by the chapel at its base, called the Chapel of the Crucifixion. When, in 1586, Fontana removed this obelisk to its present position in the centre of the modern Piazza of modern St. Peter’s, he re-erected it upon its original classic Roman crabs, hiding them by the purely decorative Sixtine lions of Prospero Bresciano, as they had been hidden in earlier times by the bronze lions mentioned by Plutarch, and gone since the sack of Rome in 1527. The obelisk in Constantinople, referred to above, is still standing on its four brass “dice.”

[I] This story is told in another form. In it Cardinal Farnese employs the same ruse to save the life of the young Duke of Parma.

[J] Suetonius, Bk. I. “And he (Cæsar) mounted the Capitol by torchlight with forty elephants bearing lamps on his right and on his left.”

[K] The “Memoirs of Madame d’Arblay” relate a touching incident in the life of this exiled Stuart.

Daddy Crump, Fanny Burney’s old gossip, while sojourning in Rome attended a carnival ball at a certain palace, where he saw many notables, among them King James III, as he was always called in Rome, and his two young sons--Prince Charles Edward and Henry, Duke of York. There were numbers of English among the guests, and, characteristically, they did not mingle with the other nationalities, but grouped themselves together in a solid mass at one end of the ballroom. Suddenly, while all were watching the dancers, King James, taking advantage of his mask and official incognito, crossed the room and placed himself in the front rank of his fellow countrymen. The moment was psychic, but the “loyal subjects of the House of Hanover” “took not the slightest notice of him” while he stood as his forebears had stood--an English king among his own people. Daddy Crump relates with smug satisfaction that the “English never moved an eyelid” during those few minutes when their hereditary sovereign assuaged the passionate homesickness of his exile heart with a brief and tragic make-believe.

[L] See Appendix.

[M] Compare the sensations produced by this fountain and those given by the “Rhapsodie Hongroise.”

CHRONOLOGICAL INDEX OF AQUEDUCTS MENTIONED, ANCIENT AND MODERN

ANCIENT

DATE OF AQUEDUCT CONSTRUCTION PAGE Appia 312 B. C. 38, 270. Anio Vetus 272–269 B. C. 38. Marcia 144–140 B. C. 38, 125, 266. Alsietina (Under the 270, 273. Emperor Augustus) Virgo 19 B. C. 38, 86, 109, 148, 216, 229–232, 235, 237, 270, 271. Claudia 38–52 A. D. x, 231. Anio Novus 38–52 A. D. x. Traiana 109 A. D. 14, 22, 231, 270, 271. Alexandrina 226 A. D. 149, 216.

MODERN

Acqua Damasiana (Under Pope Damasus) 8. Acqua Vergine di Trevi 1570 A. D. 14, 38, 90, 97, 98, 107, 109, 128, 141, 199, 200, 216, 219, 230, 232, 236, 242, 276. Acqua Felice 1587 A. D. 22, 38, 39, 44, 124, 125, 128, 147, 149, 152, 158, 169, 172, 178, 259, 271, 272, 289, 290. Acqua Paola 1611 A. D. 5, 6, 21, 22, 36, 37, 38, 78, 141, 271, 272, 276. Acqua Marcia Pia 1870 A. D. 38–40, 200, 266.

CHRONOLOGICAL INDEX OF POPES MENTIONED

POPE DATE PAGE Damasus 366–384 7, 8. Symmachus 498–514 11–14. Hadrian I 772–795 39, 57. Celestine II 1143–1144 13. Honorius III 1216–1227 13. Eugenius IV 1431–1447 198. Nicholas V 1447–1455 231, 232. Sixtus IV 1471–1484 14, 23, 24, 28, 31, 57, 84, 232, 252. Innocent VIII 1484–1492 14, 15, 271. Alexander VI 1492–1503 14, 16, 24, 27, 29–32, 53, 77, 173, 253. Julius II 1503–1513 23, 29, 32, 69, 253, 263. Leo X 1513–1522 24, 32, 69, 139, 151. Adrian VI 1522–1523 69. Clement VII 1523–1534 69, 70, 75, 110. Paul III 1534–1550 32, 45, 46, 52, 58, 63–79, 109–112, 188, 198, 211, 271. Julius III 1550–1555 83–104, 109, 145, 148, 278. Marcellus II 1555 102. Paul IV 1555–1559 112. Pius IV 1559–1566 86, 88, 89, 102, 109, 111, 112, 120, 124, 146, 216. Pius V 1566–1572 86, 102, 109, 120, 126, 132, 232. Gregory XIII 1572–1585 14, 52, 86, 89, 102, 108, 109, 112–114, 126, 129, 131, 139, 216, 288. Sixtus V 1585–1590 17, 22, 23, 28, 37, 39, 44, 52, 89, 102, 103, 108, 109, 113, 119–132, 139, 146–152, 155–165, 174, 224, 232, 242, 251, 271, 272, 274, 275, 281, 288–296. Urban VII 1590 156. Gregory XIV 1590–1591 156. Innocent IX 1591–1592 156. Clement VIII 1592–1605 103, 156, 163, 278, 281, 282, 290. Leo XI 1605 103, 172, 278, 281. Paul V 1605–1621 3–18, 22–32, 66, 103, 145, 146, 148, 157, 187–189, 211, 222, 232, 270–284. Urban VIII 1623–1644 24, 66, 172, 176, 199–201, 211, 222, 224, 235, 262, 283. Innocent X 1644–1655 52, 219–222, 224. Alexander VII 1655–1667 202. Clement X 1670–1676 4. Alexander VIII 1689–1691 273–275. Clement XII 1730–1740 52, 55, 235, 237. Benedict XIV 1740–1758 90, 235. Clement XIII 1758–1769 225, 235. Clement XIV 1769–1775 103, 104. Pius VI 1775–1800 103, 104, 241, 262, 264, 289, 293, 297, 298. Pius VII 1800–1823 241, 262, 264, 265, 289, 290, 293, 298–300. Leo XII 1823–1829 109, 115. Gregory XVI 1831–1846 147, 297. Pius IX 1846–1878 35–40, 225, 299, 300.

ALPHABETICAL INDEX OF ARCHITECTS, SCULPTORS, PAINTERS, AND ENGRAVERS MENTIONED