Rome

by Matthew Kneale

  As Rome’s aqueducts declined, so did Romans’ drinking habits. Though a couple of springs supplied water to the Leonine City and a few lucky Romans had wells, in 1527 most Romans washed with, cooked with and drank Tiber water. It was decanted for a week to allow sediment to fall away and was then considered clean. Visitors from elsewhere in Italy were appalled, and rightly so. The Tiber was Rome’s main sewer, rubbish dump and morgue and classical Romans would never have dreamed of drinking its water. Yet Renaissance Romans not only drank it but claimed to enjoy its taste. Clement VII, when he paid a visit to Marseilles in 1533, insisted on taking several barrels of it with him so he would not have to risk drinking the local supply.

  Then there was the question of hygiene. To put it simply, Renaissance Romans stank. Classical Romans would have been disgusted, as even their household slaves smelt far sweeter. By 1527 it was standard practice for most Romans – like most Europeans – to enjoy a full body wash only during major life events: in other words, when they were born, before their wedding night, and when they died. For all other occasions a quick dab at appropriate areas would do. Romans’ clothes were cleaned hardly more often than their owners and their outer garments were given a thorough wash only once a year. Romans in 1527 would have itched and scratched as constantly as they had in 1081, if not more so.

  Renaissance Romans also lived less long than their eleventh-century predecessors. As well as measles, typhus and tuberculosis, early sixteenth-century Romans had a constant fear of plague, while malaria was as lethal as ever, especially – as always – to poor Romans who could not escape the city in late summer. Romans’ love of Tiber water would have afflicted them with waterborne diseases. Finally, if this were not already enough, there was a wholly new health threat: the French Disease, also known as the Great Pox, the French Pox and – by the French – the Neapolitan Disease. Today we call it syphilis. It seems to have originated in the Americas and first became known in Europe in 1495 when it was contracted by French troops besieging Naples. Within months it was causing alarm and intense discomfort across Italy. It produced rubbery growths on the genitals that could grow as large as a bread roll, as well as the pustules that devoured skin and bone, and purple rashes to the face that marked out sufferers. As well as Pope Julius II, celebrity victims included Cesare Borgia, three sons of the duke of Ferrara, Charles V’s grandfather, Emperor Maximilian, and a good number of cardinals. Observers at the time noted that it seemed especially fond of priests.

  If there were more diseases to catch in 1527 than five centuries earlier, one might hope that medicine had improved. It was undeniably more impressive. In 1527 a sufferer could pray to specialist saints or could seek help from a whole array of professionals, including street tradesmen selling quack remedies, apothecaries who had shops filled with drugs, surgeons who patched up wounds – and who doubled as barbers – while, for those who had money to spend, there was a wealthy and educated elite of professional physicians who looked with scorn on all of the rest.

  Yet these professionals were not justified in their disdain. Italian medicine may have grown as an industry but its thinking had barely changed since 1081, or for that matter since 408. Renaissance doctors still followed the ideas of classical Hippocrates and Galen, to which had been added a little further wisdom from Arab medical writers such as Avicenna. They still viewed bad health as stemming from an imbalance of the four humours. Many accepted that sickness might be caused by sinfulness or evil spells and did not question Aristotle’s claim that women were defective males. A visit to the doctor in 1527 was hardly more likely to cure you than it had been five or fifteen centuries earlier, and though Rome had more hospitals in 1527 than it had in 1081, they were so infested with sickness that it was usually wiser to stay at home.

  Romans were certainly safer staying at home rather than stepping into the street outside. Rome, like other Italian cities at this time, had a murder rate that was four times higher than that of crime-ridden late 1980s New York. Serious crimes often sprang from the prevailing honour system, under which a show of disrespect could bring a quick and violent response. The system, which extended across the Mediterranean – and in a gentle way still does – was nothing new and had been present throughout Rome’s long history. What was new in 1527 was that interrogations of suspected criminals by Roman magistrates were carefully documented and the records have survived. For the first time we have a clear picture of the city’s crime.

  The worst honour crimes usually involved seduction of females. The honour system had no sense of gender fairness and male promiscuity won little disapproval, but if an unmarried Roman’s sister or daughter opted for night-time pleasure her whole family was shamed. The disaster could be overcome if the seducer then married the girl – and preferably handed over a cash payment by way of an apology – but if he did not do so, or if, horror of horrors, a Roman’s wife were seduced, then injury or murder could well follow.

  Fortunately, most honour crimes were less dramatic. Romans frequently insulted one another – quick, biting repartee was much admired – and these insults could inspire all kinds of petty trouble, from brawls among washerwomen by the Tiber, to a prostitute’s rejected client daubing her door with excrement. The honour system was also responsible, in an indirect way, for legal suits concerning injuries brought about by rampaging bulls. By tradition, Renaissance Romans who wanted to impress a girl would rent an ox from the city’s slaughterhouse, together with a pack of specially trained dogs. If all went well the dogs would bite at the unfortunate ox’s ears, causing it to become so demoralized that it would let itself be led tamely by a rope to the home of the girl who – as the suitor hoped – would then applaud from her window. If all did not go well, the city authorities had to deal with the denunciations of irate shopkeepers and injured passers-by.

  Yet Romans had little fear of the authorities. In Rome, as throughout Italy, police were despised as a useless, crooked force that tyrannized the helpless and kowtowed to the strong and there was a certain amount of truth in this view. Magistrates, too, inspired little terror. They could torture suspects but, compared to those of classical Rome, when slaves could be lacerated with whips, ripped apart on racks and burned with scalding hot plates, Renaissance Roman tortures were feeble. Males had their hands tied behind their backs, were hauled up by a rope, held for a short time and then dropped (a process known as the strappado). Females were more likely to have their fingers or toes pinched. Transgressors often regarded their torture with a certain pride. As for the city’s jails, these were used less to inflict punishment than to remove those who disturbed the peace or who were found tiresome: incurables, cripples, vagabonds, drunks, people with mental problems, and epileptics. Many were held in the Carceri di Tor di Nona by the Tiber, which was built from the ruins of the classical-era river port (inmates of lower cells occasionally drowned). VIP prisoners were held in the city’s maximum security jail, Castel Sant’Angelo. Only in extreme cases were Romans taken up to the city gallows, which, appropriately enough, appear to have been placed on the Tarpeian Rock, from where citizens had been thrown in Rome’s earliest days.

  One phenomenon against which Renaissance Rome’s authorities were noticeably helpless was mobs of stone-throwing boys. These were a plague in many Italian cities but especially in Rome, where the problem became acute from the 1480s. Youths and small boys, wearing heavy coats to protect themselves, would unleash showers of stones against one another. Sometimes hundreds became involved, fighting battles that might be local (Trastevere versus the Monti area across the river) or political (pro-French versus pro-imperial) or religious (Christians versus Jews). As well as one another, the boys would attack anyone who seemed vulnerable or different, from poor farmers just in from the countryside, to foreigners, to Jews. In tough times the rich were also targets, and prostitutes were frequent victims.

  These terrible mobs exacerbated a change that had been going on for several centuries. A visitor from 1081 would have been surprised by how
few females – or at least respectable females – they saw on the streets. In Renaissance Rome, much as in classical Rome, respectable women, if they were visible at all, were usually to be found looking out from the safety of their doorway or peering down from a window. They had been forced from the streets not only by stone-throwing boys but also by fears for their own reputation. The city’s streets were now seen as places of immoral, honourless prostitutes.

  Respectable Roman women found their lives were also restricted in other ways. Renaissance Italy had no powerful female rulers: no Marozia or Matilda of Tuscany. The daughters of leading families disappeared from sight after marriage, vanishing into an indoor life of domesticity and pregnancy. Women who did try to exert influence were criticized or ridiculed. Pope Leo X’s sisters, who lobbied Clement VII for favours to their husbands and sons – the kind of lobbying that everybody at the papal court was engaged in – became, quite unfairly, scapegoats for Clement’s financial troubles. This diminution of female independence had been growing across Europe for several centuries. It was caused in part by another change: the replacement of female inheritance by dowries. Yet not all women accepted their lot. Intriguingly, it was Renaissance Italy that saw a visible fightback, in the form of two of the world’s first true feminist writers, both of them from Venice: Modesta Pozzo and Lucrezia Marinella, who wrote the strikingly titled The Nobility and Excellence of Women.

  Some Roman females were self-employed and financially independent, but not from choice. In 1527 the city had a thriving population of prostitutes that has been estimated at between 700 and 1,000: a good number for a city of 55,000. They were highly visible, dressing up – like their classical forebears – in men’s clothing, and loudly calling out to passers-by. During Carnival they were known to hurl perfumed eggs at potential customers. Their presence may seem a little surprising in the capital city of Catholic Christianity, a religion that venerated virginity and chastity, but Rome was also a city of single males, whether members of the male papal court, or wifeless immigrants. Male Romans outnumbered female Romans by six to four. Besides, in this era Christianity was fairly tolerant of prostitution. No Renaissance pope acted against prostitutes, and though there were attempts to restrict their presence to the district around Augustus’ tomb, many roamed wherever they chose, even seeking out custom in churches.

  A select few had access to Rome’s most desirable locations. These were Rome’s courtesans: high-class prostitutes who, like Japanese geishas, were valued both for their bedroom skills and for their wit and intellect (qualities which were considered a little unseemly in respectable women). Roman courtesans, who were famous for their large, circular beds discreetly enclosed by hangings, included fine poets and letter-writers who could recite beautifully in Italian and Latin. Some were celebrities of their time and one, known as Imperia, had a string of high-ranking admirers, including the painter Raphael, the Tuscan banker Agostino Chigi – who accepted Imperia’s daughter as his own – and also Cardinal Giulio de’ Medici, the future Pope Clement VII.

  Spending time with an alluring, witty courtesan on her circular bed was by no means the only pleasure to be found in Rome. Despite the city’s failing infrastructure, life could be sweet, especially for wealthy Romans, and early sixteenth-century Rome would be remembered as something of a golden age. Rich Romans’ drinking water may have become fouler over the centuries but this was not true of their food, which, for those with money to spend, was lavishly sophisticated. Ingredients were now to be found in Domitian’s old athletics stadium, the Circus Agonalis – which by 1527 had been paved and was beginning to evolve into the Piazza Navona – and to which the city’s main food market had recently moved from the Capitoline Hill (the fish market was still beneath the arches of Portico d’Ottavia). Along with a wide selection of meats, vegetables and fruit, Romans could enjoy a good number of items that are still favourites today, from ricotta cheese and buffalo mozzarella to mushrooms, truffles and artichokes. Dried pasta, though it was expensive compared to fresh, could also be found, and fresh pasta came in many of the forms it does now, from macaroni and pappardelle to tortelli and ravioli.

  As ingredients grew more varied, so did the dishes made from them. Eleventh-century Romans may have enjoyed a good diet but their meals were fairly simple, consisting largely of roasts or stews that were mopped up with bread. By contrast, great Renaissance banquets would have impressed a Roman emperor, though he might have found it a little sweet. Luxury Renaissance Roman dishes were highly flavoured with spices from the Orient: ginger, nutmeg, cinnamon and above all, sugar, which, as a novelty, was added to almost everything, including meats. Dentists thrived. Salty flavours were despised as food of the poor, who used salt as a preservative. Renaissance Rome, like classical Rome, had star chefs whose names were known throughout good society. One of these was Bartolomeo Scappi, who in April 1536 held a famously vast banquet in the home of Cardinal Campeggio in Trastevere, whose 200 dishes were recorded. Highlights included lamprey pie, cold roast carp in sugar and rice water, and hake in mustard sauce. The finale was intended for effect rather than taste: a gigantic pie was brought to the table and when the pastry was cut open a flock of live songbirds flew out.

  Wealthy Renaissance Romans also enjoyed intellectual pleasures. After a fine dinner a host might take his guests to see his collection of ancient Greek vases, classical statues and antique manuscripts. This was the age of humanism and the rediscovery of the classical past. Humanists were very much products of new technology: the printing revolution that had begun three generations earlier, which had made books and education more affordable than they had ever been. Humanists, who called themselves literati, or men of letters, were brought together by a shared fascination with classical times, and also a desire to produce written works in good Latin. Most were not from wealthy families, so they struggled financially. These days they might be described as perpetual students.

  In the early sixteenth century humanists were found all across Europe – the most renowned was Erasmus of Rotterdam – but many were drawn to Rome and its antiquities. They formed associations, which met in the gardens of leading members to discuss antiquities and read out Latin writings. They also set themselves the task of trying to correct medieval myths and rediscover the city’s ancient topography. To this end they scoured monasteries for forgotten texts, sifted through the city’s ruins, and deciphered ancient inscriptions. Poggio Bracciolini pointed out that the ancient pyramid beside Porta San Paolo was not, as had long been claimed, the tomb of Romulus’ brother Remus, but of a classical Roman named Cestius (not such a hard discovery, seeing as the name Cestius was written on its side in huge letters). By 1527 humanists had discovered that the equestrian statue of an emperor was not Constantine but Marcus Aurelius, that Rome’s ruined baths were not ancient palaces, and that the Colosseum was an amphitheatre rather than a temple to the sun.

  The more fortunate among them had some form of income from the Church. Some were hired as spin doctors or diplomats and Alexander VI, the Borgia pope, employed them to write eulogies of himself: a task in which their classical knowledge proved invaluable, as they could look back to ancient poets’ fawning praise of their emperors. But for every humanist who earned a decent living there were others who were on the breadline and whose stories reveal much about how Roman society functioned. Piero Valeriano, a humanist who came to Rome from Venice, endured four hungry years before finally enjoying a breakthrough. It came when Clement VII’s high-spending cousin Leo X was elected. It was Valeriano’s good fortune that his old Greek tutor was a friend of the new pope, and through his lobbying, Valeriano gained income from enough Church benefices for a comfortable life. Eight years later, when Leo died and was replaced by the stingy Dutch Pope Adrian VI, Valeriano, like many humanists, appears to have left Rome and it was he who made the cutting observation that Adrian had arrived with the plague. Yet he soon landed on his feet, becoming tutor to Clement VII’s illegitimate nephews, Alessandro and Ippolito de’ Medic
i. Valeriano was luckier than many other humanists, who struggled on tiny incomes from Rome’s university, La Sapienza, and struggled even more when, as was often the case, it was closed because of building repairs or an outbreak of the plague.

  Artists, or at least those of them who were successful, had a much easier time. Popes such as Julius II and Leo X were generous patrons and under their rule renowned artists, who in the past had been treated as social inferiors, were welcomed into Rome’s highest society. A few, such as Raphael, became so rich they built themselves palaces. In the first decades of the sixteenth century Rome was the greatest artistic centre in Italy and though some artists left when the stingy Dutch Pope Adrian VI cut spending, many stayed, including Sebastiano del Piombo and Parmigianino. Another Roman resident in 1527 was the Florentine silversmith and sculptor Benvenuto Cellini, famous for his outrageously self-aggrandizing autobiography. Rome’s artists had their own club and Cellini describes attending one of its dinners, to which every guest was required to bring a city prostitute as his guest. One of the leading artists of the era, Giovanni Antonio Bazzi openly used his gay nickname, Sodoma.

  If Rome could be a delightful place for the rich, though, life for less wealthy citizens was a different matter. Their existence was little better than it had been for their poor forebears five or twelve centuries earlier. Their homes frequently lacked kitchens, so they relied on inns and street stalls, and ate what poor Romans had always eaten: a mush of vegetables, cheap grain and beans, perhaps garnished with a little pork fat, tripe or some pigs’ trotters. The very poorest Romans lived in homes that would have been hardly more comfortable than Romulus’ hut. One stood right by St Peter’s. Struggling females enjoyed one privilege that their eleventh-century predecessors had not had: they could anonymously give away unwanted newborn babies. They used a twelfth-century invention, the ruota, a cylindrical device built into the walls of orphanages. Mothers placed the newborn into the device from the street, rang a bell and the baby was then taken by those inside.