325 monasteries of men, twenty of women, and sixty chapters and colleges of canons and priests,42 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. 43 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 cement. Since the arrival of 45 Poggius, the temple of Concord 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. 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; I hesitate to believe that even in the fourteenth century they 46 42 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. 43 Vita di Sisto Quinto, da Gregorio Leti, tom. iii. p. 50. 44 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 xiiith century, as I have read in a Ms. treatise del' Governo civile de Rome [Roma], lent me formerly at Rome, and ascribed (I believe falsely) to the celebrated Gravina. Poggius likewise affirms that the sepulchre of Cæcilia Metella was burnt for lime (p. 19, 20). 45 Composed by Æneas Sylvius, afterwards Pope Pius II. and published by Mabillon from a Ms. of the Queen of Sweden (Museum Italicum, tom. i. p. 97):Oblectat me, Roma, tuas spectare ruinas: Ex cujus lapsu gloria prisca patet. 46 Vagabamur pariter in illa urbe tam magnâ; quæ, cum propter spatium vacua videretur, populum habet immensum (Opp. p. 605; Epist. Familiares, ii. IV. The domestic the Ro mans could be reduced to a contemptible 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, the increase of citizens was in some degree pernicious to the ancient city. 47 IV. I have reserved for the last and most potent and forcible quarrels of cause of destruction, the domestic hostilities of the Romans themselves.47a 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 nobles 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 nobles usurped the prerogative of fortifying their houses, and erecting strong towers 48 that were capable of resisting a sudden attack. The cities were filled with these 47 These states of the population of Rome, at different periods, are derived from an ingenious treatise of the physician Lancisi, de Romani Coeli Qualitatibus (p. 122). [Cp. above p. 274, note 29. The population at beginning of the 16th century was 85,000; in 1663, it was 105,433. Gregorovius, op. cit. vi. p. 731.] 47a [It would be truer to say that the author's third cause, the use and abuse of materials by the Romans, including the construction of fortresses by rival nobles, was the most potent. This has been clearly shown in Lanciani's investigation of the subject in his Destruction of Ancient Rome. As he says, the part of the barbarians in the work of demolition is "hardly worth considering when compared with the guilt of others". In his remarks, however, on hostile attacks, Gibbon should have noted the effects of the Norman pillage of the city in 1084 (see Lanciani, op. cit. p. 159 sqq.).] 48 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 Ævi, dissertat. xxvi. (tom. ii. p. 493-496, of the Latin, tom. i. p. 446, of the Italian, work). 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. 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.49 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.50 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 Hadrian has assumed the title and form of the castle of St. Angelo; " the Septizonium of Severus was capable of standing against a royal army; 52 the sepulchre of Metella has sunk under its outworks; 53 the theatres of Pompey and Marcellus were occupied by the Savelli 4 and Ursini families; and the rough 49 [Thirteen regions in the 14th century. Their names and armorial bearings in Gregorovius, vi. p. 727-8.] 50 As for instance, Templum Jani nunc dicitur, turris Centii Frangapanis; et sane Jano imposita 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, turres de Bratis; arcus Antonini, turris de Cosectis, &c. [There is an account of these towers and fortresses in Gregorovius, v. p. 657 sqq.] 51 Hadriani molem . . magnâ 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). [In A.D. 1379, the mausoleum of Hadrian, which held out for Pope Clement, was destroyed by the Romans. It was "pulled down to the central part which encloses the vault" (Gregorovius, vi. 516). The ruins lay for about twenty years till it was restored by Boniface IX. A.D. 1398, with a tower. In the 14th century there was a covered passage connecting St. Angelo with the Vatican.] 52 Against the emperor Henry IV. (Muratori, Annali d'Italia, tom. ix. p. 147). [See above, p. 317, note 17.] 53 I must copy an important passage of Montfaucon : Turris ingens rotunda . . . Cæciliæ Metella sepulchrum erat, cujus muri tam solidi, ut spatium perquam minimum intus vacuum supersit: et Torre di Bove [or Capo di Bove] dicitur, & boum capitibus muro inscriptis. Huic sequiori 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). [The sepulchre of Caecilia Metella still stands, a conspicuous object on the Appian Way.] 54 See the testimonies of Donatus, Nardini, and Montfaucon. In the Savelli 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 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,55" were crushed by the weight and velocity of enormous stones; 56 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 rased to the ground.57 In comparing the days of foreign, with the ages of palace, the remains of the theatre of Marcellus are still great and conspicuous. [The theatre of Marcellus, towards end of 11th century, was converted into a fortress by the Pierleoni. In the 14th century it was purchased by the Savelli. In 1712 it passed into the hands of the Orsini. "The section of the outside shell visible at present, a magnificent ruin in outline and colour, is buried 15 feet in modern soil and supports the Orsini palace erected upon its stage and ranges of seats. What stands above ground of the lower or Doric arcades is rented by the Prince for the most squalid and ignoble class of shops." Lanciani, Ruins and Excavations, p. 494. The Theatre of Balbus became the fortress of the Cenci.] 55 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; 1. i. c. 1. ver. 132, &c.). Hoc dixisse sat est, Romam caruisse Senatu Mensibus exactis heu sex; belloque vocatum (vocatus) In scelus, in socios fraternaque vulnera patres; 56 Muratori (Dissertazione sopra le Antiquità 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. 57 The vith 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). 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! neither 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 ancestors (he writes to a noble Annibaldi) have done with the battering-ram, what the Punic hero could not accomplish with the sword." 58 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 a new and perpetual supply from the monuments of antiquity. seum or theatre of These general observations may be separately applied to the The Coliamphitheatre of Titus, which has obtained the name of the amphiCOLISEUM,59 either from its magnitude or from Nero's colossal Titus statue an edifice, had it been left to time and nature, which might, perhaps, have claimed an eternal duration. The curious antiquaries, who have computed the numbers and seats, are disposed to believe that, above the upper row of stone steps, the amphitheatre was encircled and elevated with several stages of wooden galleries, which were repeatedly consumed by fire and restored by the emperors. Whatever was precious, or portable, or profane, the statues of gods and heroes, and the costly ornaments of sculpture, which were cast in brass, or overspread with leaves of silver and gold, became the first prey of conquest or fanaticism, of the avarice of the barbarians or the Christians. In the massy stones of the Coliseum many holes are discerned; 58 Petrarch thus addresses his friend, who, with shame and tears, had shewn Hostis, ab egregiis franguntur civibus, heu! heu! Perficit hic aries. 59 The fourth part of the Verona Illustrata of the Marquis Maffei, professedly treats of amphitheatres, particularly those of Rome and Verona, of their dimensions, wooden galleries, &c. It is from magnitude that he derives the name of Colosseum, or Coliseum: since the same appellation was applied to the amphitheatre of Capua, without the aid of a colossal statue; since that of Nero was erected in the court (in atrio) of his palace, and not in the Coliseum (p. iv. p. 15-19; l. i. c. 4). |