easy navi LXXI. Sicily, Robert, the wisest and most liberal sovereign of the CHAP. age, was supplied with the same materials by the gation of the Tyber and the sea; and Petrarch sighs an indignant complaint, that the ancient capital of the world should adorn from her own bowels the slothful luxury of Naples." But these examples of plunder or purchase were rare in the darker ages; and the Romans, alone and unenvied, might have applied to their private or public use the remaining structures of antiquity, if in their present form and situation they had not been useless in a great measure to the city and its inhabitants. The walls still described the old circumference, but the city had descended from the seven hills into the campus Martius; and some of the noblest monuments which had braved the injuries of time were left in a desart, far remote from the habitations of mankind. The palaces of the senators were no longer adapted to the manners or fortunes of their indigent successors: the use of baths 32 and porticoes was forgotten; in the sixth century, the games of the theatre, amphitheatre, and circus, had been interrupted: some temples were devoted to the prevailing worship; but the Christian churches preferred the holy figure of the cross; and fashion or reason, had distributed after a peculiar model the cells and offices of the cloyster. Under the ecclesiastical reign, the number of these pious foundations was enormously multiplied; and the city was And I shall add, from the Chronicle of Sigebert (Historians of France, tom. v. p. 378), extruxit etiam Aquisgrani basilisam plurimæ pulchritudinis, ad cujus stracturam a ROMA et Ravenna columnas et marmora devehi fecit. 31 I cannot refuse to transcribe a long passage of Petrarch (Opp. p. 536, 537. in Epistolâ hortatoria ad Nicolaum Laurentium); it is so strong and full to the point: Nec pudor aut pietas continuit quominus impii spoliata Dei templa, occupatas arces, opes publicas regiones urbis, atque honores magistratuûm inter se divisos; (habeant?) quam unâ in re, turbulenti ac seditiosi homines et totius reliquæ vitæ consiliis et rationibus discordes, inhumani fœderis stupendâ societate convenerant, in pontes et mania atque immeritos lapides desæeirent. Denique post vi vel senio collapsa palatia, quæ quondam ingentes tenuerunt viri, post diruptos arcus triumphales (unde majores horum forsitan corruerunt), de ipsius vetustatis ac propriæ impietatis fragminibus vilem questûm turpi mercimonio captare non puduit. Itaque nunc, heu dolor! heu scelus indignum! de vestris marmoreis columnis, de liminibus templorum ad quæ nuper ex orbe toto concursus devotissimus fiebat), de imaginibus sepulchrorum sub quibus patruin vestrorum venerabilis civis (cinis?) erat, ut reliquas sileam, desidiosa Neapolis adornatur Sic paullatim ruinæ ipsæ deficjunt Yet king Robert was the friend of Petrarch. 32 Yet Charlemagne washed and swam at Aix la Chapelle with an 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). LXXI. CHAP. crowded with forty monasteries of men, twenty of women, and sixty chapters and colleges of canons and priests,33 who aggravated, instead of relieving, the depopulation of the tenth century. But if the forms of ancient architecture were disregarded by a people insensible of their use and beauty, the plentiful materials were applied to every call of necessity or superstition; till the fairest columns of the Ionic and Corinthian orders, the richest marbles of Paros and Numidia, were degraded, perhaps to the support of a convent or a stable. The daily havoc which is perpetrated by the Turks in the cities of Greece and Asia, may afford a melancholy example; and in the gradual destruction of the monuments of Rome, Sixtus the fifth may alone be excused for employing the stones of the Septizonium in the glorious. edifice of St. Peter's.34 A fragment, a ruin, howsoever mangled or profaned, may be viewed with pleasure and regret ; but the greater part of the marble was deprived of substance, as well as of place and proportion; it was burnt to lime for the purpose of cemept. Since the arrival of Poggius, the temple of Concord,35 and many capital structures, had vanished from his eyes; and an epigram of the same age expresses a just and pious fear, that the continuance of this practice would finally annihilate all the monuments of antiquity.36 The smallness of their numbers was the sole check on the demands and depredations of the Romans. The imagination of Petrarch might create the presence of a mighty people;37 and I hesitate to believe, that even in the 33 See the Annals of Italy, A. D. 988. For this and the preceding fact, Muratori himself is indebted to the Benedictine history of Père Mabillon. 34 Via di Sisto Quinto, da Gregorio Leti, tom. iii. p. 50. 33 Porticus ædis Concordiæ, quam cum primum ad urbem accessi vidi fere integram opere marmoreo admodum specioso: Romani postmodum ad calcem ædem totam et porticus partem disjectis columnis sunt demoliti (p. 12). The temple of Concord was therefore not destroyed by a sedition in the thirteenth 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 Cecilia Metella was burnt for lime (p. 19, 20). 36 Composed by Æneas Sylvius, afterwards Pope Pius II. and published by Mabilion from a MS. of the queen of Sweden (Musæum Italicum, tom. i. p. 97). Oblectat me, Roma, tuas spectare ruinas: Sed tuus hic populus muris defossa vetustis Nullum hinc indicium nobilitatis erit. 37 Vagabamur pariter in illa urbe tam magnâ; quæ, cum propter spatium LXXI. fourteenth century, they could be reduced to a contemptible CHAP. list of thirty-three thousand inhabitants. From that period to the reign of Leo the tenth, if they multiplied to the amount of eighty-five thousand,38 the encrease of citizens was in some degree pernicious to the ancient city. domestic mans. IV. I have reserved for the last, the most potent and for- IV. The cible cause of destruction, the domestic hostilities of the quarrels of Romans themselves. Under the dominion of the Greek the Roand 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 nobles and the people the Guelps 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 defence, 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 nobles 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 latitude to the more opulent and populous states. vacua videretur, populum habet immensum (Opp. p. 605. Epist. Familiares, ii. 14). 38 These states of the population of Rome at different periods, are derived from an ingenious treatise of the physician Lancisi, de Romani Cali Qualitatibus (p. 122). 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 Italiæ medii Avi, dissertat. xxvi. (tom. ii. p. 493...496. of the Latin, tom. i. p. 446. of the Italian work). LXXI. CHAP. 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 Cæsar, Titus, and the Antonines.40 With some slight alterations, a theatre, an amphitheatre, a mausoleum, was transformed into a strong and spacious citadel. I need not repeat, that the mole of Adrian has assumed the title and form of the castle of St. Angelo;11 the Septizonium of Severus was capable of standing against a royal army; the sepulchre of Metella has sunk under its outworks;43 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 splendour and elegance of an Italian palace. Even the churches were encompassed 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 40 As for instance, Templum Jani nunc dicitur, turris Centii Frangapanis; et sane Jano impositæ turris lateritiæ conspicua hodieque vestigia supersunt (Montfaucon Diarium Italicum, p. 186). The anonymous writer (p. 285.) enumerates, arcus Titi, turris Cartularia; Arcus Julii Cæsaris et Senatorum, turris de Bratis; arcus Antonini, turris de Cosectis, &c. 41 Hadriani molem... magna ex parte Romanorum injuria . . . disturbavit: quod certe funditus evertissent, si eorum manibus pervia, absumptis grandibus saxis, reliqua moles exstitisset (Poggius de Varietate Fortunæ, p. 12). 42 Against the emperor Henry IV. (Muratori, Annali d'Italia, tom. ix. p. 147). 43 I must copy an important passage of Montfaucon : Turris ingens rotunda... Cæciliæ Metellæ... sepulchrum erat, cujus muri tam solidi, ut spatium perquam minimum intus vacuum supersit: et Torre di Bove dicitur, a boum capitibus muro inscriptis. Huic sequicri ævo, tempore intestinorum bellorum, ceu urbecula adjuncta fuit, cujus monia et turres etiamnum visuntur; ita ut sepulchrum Metellæ quasi arx oppiduli fuerit. Ferventibus in urbe partibus, cum Ursini atque Columnenses mutuis cladibus perniciem inferrent civitati, in utriusve partis ditionem cederet magni momenti erat (p. 142). 44 See the testimonies of Donatus, Nardini, and Montfaucon. In the Savelli palace, the remains of the theatre of Marcellus are still great and conspi cuous. LXXI.. the castle of St. Angelo, they had resolved by a public de CHAP. cree 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 assailants 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.*" In comparing the days of foreign, with the ages of domestic, hostility, we must pronounce, that the latter have been far more ruinous to the city, and our opinion is confirmed by the evidence of Petrarch. "Behold," says the laureat, "the "relics of Rome, the image of her pristine greatness! nei"ther time nor the Barbarian can boast the merit of this "stupendous destruction: it was perpetrated by her own "citizens, by the most illustrious of her sons; and your ans "cestors (he writes to a noble Annibaldi) have done with "the battering-ram, what the Punic hero could not accom"plish which the sword."48 The influence of the two last 45 James cardinal of St. George, ad velum aureum, in his metrical I.ife of Pope Celestin V. (Muratori, Script. Ital. tom. i. P. iii. p. 621. l. i. c. 1. ver. 132, &c.) Hoc dixisse sat est, Romam caruisse Senatû Mensibus exactis heu sex; belloque vocatum (vocatos) In scelus, in socios fraternaque vulnera patres: Tormentis jecisse viros immania saxa; Ignibus; incensas turres, obscurataque fumo 46 Muratori (Dissertazione sopra le Antiquitá Italiane, tom. i. p. 427... 431.) finds, that stone bullets of two or three hundred pounds weight were not uncommon; and they are sometimes computed at xii or xviii cantari of Genoa, each cantaro weighing 150 pounds. 47 The sixth law of the Visconti prohibits this common and mischievous practice; and strictly enjoins, that the houses of banished citizens should be preserved pro communi utilitate (Gualvaneus de la Flamma, in Muratori, Script. Rerum Italicarum, tom. xii. p. 1041). 48 Petrarch thus addresses his friend, who, with shame and tears, had shewn him the mania, laceræ specimen miserabile Romæ, and declared his own intention of restoring them (Carmina Latina, 1. ii. epist. Paulo Annibalensi, xii. p. 97, 98): Nec VOL. VIII. N N |