Volume 6 Part 41 (1/2)
[Footnote 32: Yet Charlemagne washed and swam at Aix la Chapelle with a hundred of his courtiers, (Eginhart, c. 22, p. 108, 109,) and Muratori describes, as late as the year 814, the public baths which were built at Spoleto in Italy, (Annali, tom. vi. p. 416.)]
[Footnote 33: See the Annals of Italy, A.D. 988. For this and the preceding fact, Muratori himself is indebted to the Benedictine history of Pere Mabillon.]
[Footnote 34: Vita di Sisto Quinto, da Gregorio Leti, tom. iii. p. 50.]
[Footnote 341: From the quotations in Bunsen's Dissertation, it may be suspected that this slow but continual process of destruction was the most fatal. Ancient Rome eas considered a quarry from which the church, the castle of the baron, or even the hovel of the peasant, might be repaired.--M.]
[Footnote 35: Porticus aedis Concordiae, quam c.u.m primum ad urbem accessi vidi fere integram opere marmoreo admodum specioso: Romani postmodum ad calcem aedem totam et porticus partem disjectis columnis sunt demoliti, (p. 12.) The temple of Concord was therefore _not_ destroyed by a sedition in the xiiith century, as I have read in a MS. treatise del'
Governo civile di Rome, lent me formerly at Rome, and ascribed (I believe falsely) to the celebrated Gravina. Poggius likewise affirms that the sepulchre of Caecilia Metella was burnt for lime, (p. 19, 20.)]
[Footnote 36: Composed by aeneas Sylvius, afterwards Pope Pius II., and published by Mabillon, from a MS. of the queen of Sweden, (Musaeum Italic.u.m, tom. i. p. 97.)
Oblectat me, Roma, tuas spectare ruinas: Ex cujus lapsu gloria prisca patet.
Sed tuus hic populus muris defossa vetustis Calcis in obsequium marmora dura coquit.
Impia tercentum si sic gens egerit annos Nullum hinc indicium n.o.bilitatis erit.]
[Footnote 37: Vagabamur pariter in illa urbe tam magna; quae, c.u.m propter spatium vacua videretur, populum habet immensum, (Opp p. 605 Epist.
Familiares, ii. 14.)]
[Footnote 38: These states of the population of Rome at different periods are derived from an ingenious treatise of the physician Lancisi, de Romani Cli Qualitatibus, (p. 122.)]
IV. I have reserved for the last, the most potent and forcible cause of destruction, the domestic hostilities of the Romans themselves. Under the dominion of the Greek and French emperors, the peace of the city was disturbed by accidental, though frequent, seditions: it is from the decline of the latter, from the beginning of the tenth century, that we may date the licentiousness of private war, which violated with impunity the laws of the Code and the Gospel, without respecting the majesty of the absent sovereign, or the presence and person of the vicar of Christ.
In a dark period of five hundred years, Rome was perpetually afflicted by the sanguinary quarrels of the n.o.bles and the people, the Guelphs and Ghibelines, the Colonna and Ursini; and if much has escaped the knowledge, and much is unworthy of the notice, of history, I have exposed in the two preceding chapters the causes and effects of the public disorders. At such a time, when every quarrel was decided by the sword, and none could trust their lives or properties to the impotence of law, the powerful citizens were armed for safety, or offence, against the domestic enemies whom they feared or hated. Except Venice alone, the same dangers and designs were common to all the free republics of Italy; and the n.o.bles usurped the prerogative of fortifying their houses, and erecting strong towers, [39] that were capable of resisting a sudden attack. The cities were filled with these hostile edifices; and the example of Lucca, which contained three hundred towers; her law, which confined their height to the measure of fourscore feet, may be extended with suitable lat.i.tude to the more opulent and populous states. The first step of the senator Brancaleone in the establishment of peace and justice, was to demolish (as we have already seen) one hundred and forty of the towers of Rome; and, in the last days of anarchy and discord, as late as the reign of Martin the Fifth, forty-four still stood in one of the thirteen or fourteen regions of the city. To this mischievous purpose the remains of antiquity were most readily adapted: the temples and arches afforded a broad and solid basis for the new structures of brick and stone; and we can name the modern turrets that were raised on the triumphal monuments of Julius Caesar, t.i.tus, and the Antonines. [40]
With some slight alterations, a theatre, an amphitheatre, a mausoleum, was transformed into a strong and s.p.a.cious citadel. I need not repeat, that the mole of Adrian has a.s.sumed the t.i.tle and form of the castle of St. Angelo; [41] the Septizonium of Severus was capable of standing against a royal army; [42] the sepulchre of Metella has sunk under its outworks; [43] [431] the theatres of Pompey and Marcellus were occupied by the Savelli and Ursini families; [44] and the rough fortress has been gradually softened to the splendor and elegance of an Italian palace.
Even the churches were encompa.s.sed with arms and bulwarks, and the military engines on the roof of St. Peter's were the terror of the Vatican and the scandal of the Christian world. Whatever is fortified will be attacked; and whatever is attacked may be destroyed. Could the Romans have wrested from the popes the castle of St. Angelo, they had resolved by a public decree to annihilate that monument of servitude.
Every building of defence was exposed to a siege; and in every siege the arts and engines of destruction were laboriously employed. After the death of Nicholas the Fourth, Rome, without a sovereign or a senate, was abandoned six months to the fury of civil war. ”The houses,” says a cardinal and poet of the times, [45] ”were crushed by the weight and velocity of enormous stones; [46] the walls were perforated by the strokes of the battering-ram; the towers were involved in fire and smoke; and the a.s.sailants were stimulated by rapine and revenge.” The work was consummated by the tyranny of the laws; and the factions of Italy alternately exercised a blind and thoughtless vengeance on their adversaries, whose houses and castles they razed to the ground. [47] In comparing the _days_ of foreign, with the _ages_ of domestic, hostility, we must p.r.o.nounce, that the latter have been far more ruinous to the city; and our opinion is confirmed by the evidence of Petrarch.
”Behold,” says the laureate, ”the relics of Rome, the image of her pristine greatness! neither time nor the Barbarian can boast the merit of this stupendous destruction: it was perpetrated by her own citizens, by the most ill.u.s.trious of her sons; and your ancestors (he writes to a n.o.ble Annabaldi) have done with the battering-ram what the Punic hero could not accomplish with the sword.” [48] The influence of the two last principles of decay must in some degree be multiplied by each other; since the houses and towers, which were subverted by civil war, required by a new and perpetual supply from the monuments of antiquity. [481]
[Footnote 39: All the facts that relate to the towers at Rome, and in other free cities of Italy, may be found in the laborious and entertaining compilation of Muratori, Antiquitates Italiae Medii aevi, dissertat. xxvi., (tom. ii. p. 493--496, of the Latin, tom.. p. 446, of the Italian work.)]
[Footnote 40: As for instance, templum Jani nunc dicitur, turris Centii Frangipanis; et sane Jano impositae turris lateritiae conspicua hodieque vestigia supersunt, (Montfaucon Diarium Italic.u.m, p. 186.) The anonymous writer (p. 285) enumerates, arcus t.i.ti, turris Cartularia; arcus Julii Caesaris et Senatorum, turres de Bratis; arcus Antonini, turris de Cosectis, &c.]
[Footnote 41: Hadriani molem.... magna ex parte Romanorum injuria....
disturbavit; quod certe funditus evertissent, si eorum manibus pervia, absumptis grandibus saxis, reliqua moles exstisset, (Poggius de Varietate Fortunae, p. 12.)]
[Footnote 42: Against the emperor Henry IV., (Muratori, Annali d'
Italia, tom. ix. p. 147.)]
[Footnote 43: I must copy an important pa.s.sage of Montfaucon: Turris ingens rotunda.... Caeciliae Metellae.... sepulchrum erat, cujus muri tam solidi, ut spatium perquam minimum intus vacuum supersit; et _Torre di Bove_ dicitur, a boum capitibus muro inscriptis. Huic sequiori aevo, tempore intestinorum bellorum, ceu urbecula adjuncta fuit, cujus mnia et turres etiamnum visuntur; ita ut sepulchrum Metellae quasi arx oppiduli fuerit. Ferventibus in urbe partibus, c.u.m Ursini atque Columnenses mutuis cladibus perniciem inferrent civitati, in utriusve partis ditionem cederet magni momenti erat, (p. 142.)]
[Footnote 431: This is inaccurately expressed. The sepulchre is still standing See Hobhouse, p. 204.--M.]
[Footnote 44: See the testimonies of Donatus, Nardini, and Montfaucon.
In the Savelli palace, the remains of the theatre of Marcellus are still great and conspicuous.]
[Footnote 45: James, cardinal of St. George, ad velum aureum, in his metrical life of Pope Celestin V., (Muratori, Script. Ital. tom. i. P.
iii. p. 621, l. i. c. l. ver. 132, &c.)