Impressions of Rome, 1100–1250
But Rome was more than a museum. Few pilgrims, even in the obdurately anti-classical mood of the ‘dark ages’ could look on the city of the apostles and blind themselves to the capital of a lost civilization. In the eleventh and twelfth centuries it still inspired a romantic fascination which would have marked it out as a resort of travellers even if St. Peter and St. Paul had never been there and the popes had never established it as the headquarters of a religious bureaucracy. One pilgrim recalled his first sight of the city ‘from a far off hill beyond which lay those innumerable palaces bristling with a cornfield of towers; I was overwhelmed, and imagined how Caesar would have seen it from that spot.’ Countless other pilgrims following the northern road and reaching the summit of Monte Mario must have experienced the same feelings and sung the words of the famous hymn which began:
O Roma nobilis, orbis et domina,
Cunctarum urbium excellentissima.
But the grandeur of distance disappeared as the pilgrims approached the city, and many of them may well have been dismayed by the closer sight of the shrunken mediaeval Rome in the centre of the vast open space enclosed by its ancient walls. When Master Gregory, who had been so exhilarated by the distant view of the cornfield of towers, reached the centre of the city he saw in it a certain sign that the world itself was drawing to an end. No one was indifferent to Rome. Many hated it. Few were as uncritically enthusiastic about it as the author of O Roma Nobilis. Rome, proclaimed William of Malmesbury, ‘once mistress of the earth seems slight nowadays in comparison with its glorious past. And the Romans, whose ancestors wore the toga and ruled the earth, are now a miserable lazy race who live by selling justice for gold and putting price tags on every canon of the law of the Church.’ The English satirist Walter Map knew it only as the seat of the papal curia, whose name stood for ‘Radix Omnium Malorum Avaritia’ – greed is the root of all evil.
The admiration of mediaeval poets was tempered by their admission that the beauty of Rome was the beauty of the past, the pathetic contrast between her noble classical ruins and her modern degeneracy. This feeling was voiced by Hildebert archbishop of Tours in a famous poem, in which he reflected that ‘not even the decay of years, nor fire nor sword have eclipsed the splendour of her ascendance’:
Par tibi Roma nihil, cum sis prope tota ruina
Quam magna fueris integra fracta doces.
Nothing can equal Rome, even Rome in ruins.
Your ruins themselves speak louder than your former greatness.
Hildebert had first seen Rome as the Norman leader Robert Guiscard left it in 1084. In the course of the fighting and the three days of plundering that followed, the quarters around the Colosseum and the Lateran, the districts of St. Silvester and St. Lawrence in Lucina were razed to the ground. Rome bore the marks of its violent history until the fifteenth century, and for many years writers describing it quoted Hildebert’s words with approval.
The architectural revolution which transformed the face of northern Europe and of the great cities of northern Italy left Rome virtually untouched. The popes of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries were great restorers and decorators of existing buildings. The churches of S. Maria in Cosmedin and S. Maria in Tastevere were sumptuously redecorated in this period, the church of St. Lawrence Without the Walls greatly enlarged. But the only entirely new building of any importance erected before the fifteenth century was the Gothic church of S. Maria sopre Minerva, begun under Nicholas III in 1280.
St. Peter’s was the principal attraction. Although damaged in each successive riot and siege it was on each occasion tolerably restored. Until the beginning of the thirteenth century it was still possible to enter the confessio or shrine of St. Peter beneath the high altar, and thirteen lamps burned perpetually before it. But towards the end of the twelfth century a new relic began to rival the body of the apostle. This was the sudarium of Veronica, believed to be the napkin on which Christ had wiped his face on the road to Calvary, leaving the impression of his features. How St. Peter’s came to possess this relic is not at all clear, but it had certainly been there since the eighth century, when it was one of the subsidiary relics kept in the confessio. In 1208 Innocent III instituted a liturgical station at the hospital of S. Spirito on the first Sunday after the Epiphany, and ordered that the sudarium should be taken from St. Peter’s on that day and displayed in a special reliquary ‘of gold and silver and precious stones, so constructed that it might be carried solemnly in processions’. In response to the clamorous demand of pilgrims the relic was displayed at regular intervals, and in 1289 the pope conferred a generous indulgence on the ‘precious image that the faithful call the Veronica’.
It was only in the eleventh century that the Lateran palace and basilica began to command as much attention as St. Peter’s. The ‘Sancta Sanctorum’, which was the private chapel of the popes, was the scene of some of the most solemn services of the Roman calendar, particularly those which occurred around Easter. It contained a formidable collection of relics, notably the heads of both apostles preserved in splendid reliquaries on the main altar. The ark of the covenant was there (it attracted a certain amount of cynical comment), as were the tablets of Moses, the rod of Aaron, a golden urn of manna, the tunic of the Virgin, various pieces of clothing worn by John the Baptist including his hair shirt, the five loaves and two fishes which fed the five thousand, and the table used at the Last Supper. The chapel of St. Lawrence in the papal palace contained other spectacular relics, including the foreskin and umbilical cord of Christ preserved in a gold and jewelled crucifix filled with oil; and a piece of the true cross enclosed in a small reliquary of gold and silver with engraved panels.
The superb processions held at Easter impressed upon more than one onlooker the contrast between the mediaeval papacy and its classical setting. After the service in S. Maria Maggiore, the pope passed in procession to St. Peter’s and thence back to the Lateran palace by a route which took it past some of the city’s classical finest monuments. A contemporary described the papal train passing ‘beneath the triumphal arches of Theodosius, Valentinain, and Gratian, past the Capitol and the Mamertine prison, … under the triumphal arch [of Severus], between the arch of Janus and the Temple of Concord. Then they walk between the forum of Trajan [i.e. Nerva] and the forum of Caesar … crossing the very spot where Simon Magus fell near the Temple of Romulus…. Finally they reach the arch of Titus and Vespasian which is called the seven-branched candlestick … and so past the Colosseum to the Lateran.’ Many of these monuments were in an advanced state of decay. In particular most of them were disfigured by being converted into fortresses. Master Gregory’s abiding impression of Rome was that of a ‘cornfield of towers’ for it was the practice of the noble families of Rome to build towers on top of the classical monuments from which to assail their enemies in times of civil war. The arch of Titus was called the ‘seven-branched candlestick’ because it formed part of the fortress of the Frangipani family who had covered it with fortifications. The enemies of Gregory VII accused him of carrying out this practice to excess, adding battlements to every bridge, tower, or triumphal arch in the city. Even churches were not exempt, for St. Peter’s was fortified by the mob in 1145. The lamentable condition of the arch of Severus is revealed by the judgement of Innocent III in a lawsuit between its two owners. Half of it had been converted into the church of St. Sergius and St. Bacchus while the other half was the property of a certain Ciminus who had built on it a small embattled tower with an observation platform. In times of peace many proprietors found a commercial use for their towers by charging pilgrims for the right to climb up and enjoy a panoramic view of Rome. The monastery of S. Silvestro in Capite owned the column of Marcus Aurelius, which was leased out for this purpose and provided them with a lucrative source of revenue.
Some attempt, it is true, was made to preserve the monuments. The senate, which restored itself during the republican revolution of 1143, threatened with
death all persons who defaced or damaged the column of Trajan, ‘so that it should remain as it stands to honour the Roman people as long as the world endures.’ But the task was made impossible by the looting of builders. To the depradations of the builders were added those of prelates and even pilgrims, who met their need for marble by removing it from the classical monuments. The churches of Hildesheim were adorned with marble from Rome, looted by bishop Bernard. Desiderius abbot of Monte Cassino did the same when he was rebuilding his abbey church. Even the canons of Durham cathedral knew that marble was easily to be had in Rome and asked a pilgrim to obtain enough to cover the floor of their church. Many pilgrims who came to Rome for reasons of piety or ecclesiastical business found their interest unexpectedly aroused by the visible testimony of its classical past. The wealthier amongst them took to collecting antiquities. Abbot Suger of St.-Denis confessed that he would gladly have removed the columns from the baths of Diocletian and shipped them to France for the adornment of his abbey. Henry of Blois, bishop of Winchester and brother of king Stephen, obtained the pope’s permission to buy up old statues and take them back to England. John of Salisbury, who was in Rome at the time, recorded the astonishment of the papal courtiers at the sight of the bishop ‘conspicuous by his long beard and philosophical solemnity, engaged in buying up idols carved by pagan hands’.
The most celebrated classical monument in Rome was the equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius, which in the middle ages was generally believed to represent the emperor Constantine. The statue emerges from obscurity in 962, when a rebellious official is recorded to have been hanged by the hair from it. At that time it stood in front of the Later an palace. Although scholarly opinion held that the horseman was Constantine, unlearned pilgrims, encouraged by their guide-books, permitted themselves unlimited speculation as to his identity. The most popular guide-book gave it as its opinion that the statue commemorated a great hero who had saved the city from its enemies in the days of the republic. This hero had ridden bareback into the besieging army and kidnapped the enemy king, ‘which is why we see today a statue of a man without a saddle, his right hand stretched out as it was when he seized the king.’ The English visitor, Master Gregory, was perplexed by the variety of opinions. The cardinals called it Marcus or Quirinus, the Romans called it Constantine, and the pilgrims Theoderic. Each of them justified his opinion by reciting some popular story from Roman history. All, however, were agreed that it was a ‘memorable work, executed with remarkable skill’. They paid it the compliment of copying it when they returned home. In western France equestrian statues of Constantine can still be seen on the west fronts of churches of Chateauneuf, Melle, Civray, Parthenay-le-Vieux, and elsewhere.
In his attempt to identify all the churches and classical ruins the pilgrim was assisted by guide-books which told him in a reasonably digestible form everything he needed to know. The book which held the field from the twelfth century to the fourteenth was the Mirabilia Urbis Romae, the ‘Wonders of Rome’. It is a remarkable work, which testifies both to the passionate interest of the Romans in their past, and to their profound ignorance of it. Nevertheless, few guide-books have ever enjoyed a greater reputation. It appeared in innumerable Latin editions, and was translated and versified in every language. Each century brought it up to date, and amended it in accordance with current tastes. The Mirabilia is a mine of extraordinary information. ‘The walls of Rome’, it begins, ‘have 361 towers, 49 bastions, and 12 gates. They are 22 miles in circumference.’ Continuing the statistical survey of the city in a tone reminiscent of tour guides in French public monuments, it lists the 12 gates, the 12 triumphal arches, the 7 hills, and the 10 baths. It gives the names of the palaces, theatres, churches, bridges, and cemeteries. Then the tone changes. The author discusses the legend of the statue of Constantine and tells his readers a few anecdotes about the principal buildings of Rome. At the church of S. Maria in Ara Coeli he recounts how the emperor Octavian had a vision there of the Virgin and child and resolved that he would refuse to be deified by the senate. As pilgrims wandered through the city they were given garbled versions of the persecution of Decius, the story of Anthony and Cleopatra, and other well-known incidents from classical history. Sometimes the author takes liberties with his classical myths. In one version Rome is founded not by Romulus and Remus but by Noah, who landed there after the flood and left behind his son Janus, from whom all Roman emperors were descended. The pages are filled with a nostalgic feeling for the Roman past, scattered with a few summary aesthetic judgements on its monuments. ‘The Capitol was once the capital of the world; there the consuls and senators governed the whole earth.’ ‘The circus of Priscus Tarquinius is very fine; the seats are stepped in such a way that no Roman’s head obstructed the view of the person behind him.’ But it is not the learned nostalgia of a Gibbon that pervades the Mirabilia. It is something more earnest and more naïve, a desire for knowledge without the means of gratifying it. ‘All these temples and palaces’, the guide concludes, ‘… we have described as we have read of them in old chronicles, heard of them from tradition, and seen them with our own eyes.’
One of the more sophisticated travellers who read the Mirabilia was Master Gregory, an Englishman who visited Rome at the beginning of the thirteenth century. Gregory, perhaps wisely, did not allow the Mirabilia to colour his judgement, and spoke with contempt of the unlettered pilgrims who believed all that they were told. Instead, he relied on the opinions of the ‘cardinals and clergy of Rome’ and on a small tract on ‘The Seven Wonders of the World’, De Septem Miraculis Mundi, which was generally, though wrongly, attributed to Bede. Standing on the Capitoline Hill, Gregory was struck by the sight of a nude statue of Venus in Pavian marble, a thing quite outside his experience, which prompted him to quote a few lines from Ovid’s Ara Amandi. ‘This inexplicably perfect work of craftsmanship’, he wrote, ‘looks more like a living figure than a statue. The face is a deep purple colour as if it were blushing at its own nudity, or as if a trickle of blood were flowing through its snow-white mouth.’ Gregory found the sight of this statue so compelling that he visited it three times, even though his hospice was more than two miles away. Continuing with his tour, he visited the baths of Diocletian, which had so impressed abbot Suger, and agreed that they were the finest classical buildings in the city. ‘I cannot do justice in writing to their ample dimensions and superb proportions. They are so large that one cannot take them in in one view. The columns that crown them are so tall that their summits were beyond a pebble’s throw.’ Gregory was informed by the cardinals that it would have taken a hundred men an entire year to build them. ‘But I shall say no more for if I were to tell you the truth, you would not believe me.’ The waterworks of Rome, although but a shadow of what they had once been, were still imposing enough to an Englishman. Gregory examined the Claudian aqueduct and observed that ‘the river Tiber, though all right for horses, is no good for men and indeed positively poisonous. Wherefore in four parts of the city, ancient artificial aqueducts bring fresh water in.’ He visited the sulphur baths near the aqueduct, paid the set charge to the attendant, and tested the water with his fingers; but the disgusting smell of the sulphur was too much for him and he left without bathing. Decay is a recurring theme in Gregory’s work and provoked some bitter reflections. He was disgusted by the pillaging of marble from the Domus Augustana on the Palatine Hill. The neglect or mutilation of statues in the forum of Nerva shocked him. The gold which once covered the roof of the Pantheon had all disappeared owing to the ‘boundless cupidity of the Romans, for whom no crime is too awful.’
Gregory’s description of Rome is the last account which survives until we come to the age of the great Jubilee indulgences. There is, indeed, some evidence that the Roman pilgrimage underwent a serious decline in the thirteenth century. The reputation of the city as a spiritual centre continued to diminish, and the almost continual warfare which afflicted Italy and Rome itself seem finally to have choked the flow of pilgrims. During his
quarrel with Becket, Henry II of England is reported to have prevented his subjects from embarking for Rome. The emperor Frederick II discouraged his subjects from undertaking pilgrimages to Rome, thus earning him a stiff rebuke from Innocent IV who accused him of putting the salvation of his subjects in jeopardy. The few national pilgrims’ hospices which survived began to disappear at the end of the twelfth century. The Irish hospice of the Holy Trinity ceased to exist at about this time. The deacon responsible for the English national hospice complained that its income from offerings was declining and that hardly any clergy or laymen could be found to serve in it; in 1203 it was finally dissolved and the buildings transformed into the hospital of S. Spirito. Doubtless simple men came to Rome as they had always done. But they came quietly, undramatically, and the sources are silent about them. The great and powerful recognized in Rome an important political capital, and they visited it because they had to. But they no longer came in the spirit of Canute, or even of Gerald of Wales. Richard I passed within a few miles of the city on his way to the crusade in 1190 but refused an invitation to visit it. On his way back from the east in 1273 Edward I passed through Rome and turned aside to discuss political affairs with the pope at Orvieto. But he did not trouble to visit the Roman shrines.
The Fount of Forgiveness
Pilgrimage: An Image of Mediaeval Religion Page 35