The Makers of Modern Rome, in Four Books

Leo the Pope was no such noble soul. He was only an urbane and skilful Medici, great to take every advantage of the divine slaves that were ready for his service – using them not badly, encouraging them to do their best, if not for higher motives yet to please him, the Sommo Pontefice, surely the best thing that they could hope for; and to win such share of the ducats which came to him from the sale of the offices of the Vatican, the cardinals' hats, the papal knighthoods, and other trumpery, as might suffice for all their wants. He sold these and other things, indulgences for instance, sown broadcast over the face of the earth and raising crops of a quite different kind. But on the other hand he never sold a benefice. He remitted the tax on salt; and he gave liberally to whoever asked him, and enjoyed life with all his heart, in itself no bad quality.

"The pontificate of Leo was the most gay and the most happy that Rome ever saw," says the chronicler. "Being much enamoured of building he took up with a great soul the making of San Pietro, which Julius, with marvellous art, had begun. He ennobled the palace of the Vatican with triple porticoes, ample and long, of the most beautiful fabrication, with gilded roofs and ornamented by excellent pictures. He rebuilt almost from the foundations the church of our Lady of the Monte Cœlio, from which he had his title as cardinal, and adorned it with mosaics. Finally there was nothing which during all his life he had more at heart or more ardently desired than the excellent name of liberal, although it was the wont ordinarily of all the others to turn their backs upon that virtue of liberality, and to keep far from it. He judged those unworthy of high station who did not with large and benign hand disperse the gifts of fortune, and above all those which were acquired by little or no fatigue. But while he in this guise governed Rome, and all Italy enjoyed a gladsome peace, he was by a too early death taken from this world although still in the flower and height of his years."

He died forty-five years old on December 1, 1521.

The great works which one and another of the Popes thus left half done were completed – St. Peter's by Sixtus V. 1590, and Paul V. 1615. The Last Judgment completing the Sistine chapel was finished by Michael Angelo in 1541 under Clement VII. and Paul III. And thus the Rome of our days – the Rome which not as pilgrims, but as persons living according to the fashion of our own times, which compels us to go to and fro over all the earth and see whatever is to be seen, we visit every year in large numbers – was left more or less as it is now, for the admiration of the world. Much has been done since, and is doing still every day to make more intelligible and more evident the memorials of an inexhaustible antiquity – but in the Rome of the Popes, the Rome of Christendom, History has had but little and Art not another word to say.

THE END

1

It is touching and pathetic to divine, in the present Pope, something of that visionary and disinterested ambition, that longing to bless and help the universe, which was in those dreams of the mediæval mind, prompted by a great pity, and a love that is half divine. Leo XIII. is too wise a man to dream of temporal power restored, though he is a martyr to the theory of it: but there would seem to be in his old age which makes it impossible if nothing else did, a trembling consciousness of capacity to be in himself a Papa Angelico, and gather us all under his wings.

2

It is supposed by some from this that the election took place in this church and not in the Lateran; but that is contradicted by Gregory himself, who says it took place in Ecclesia S. Salvatoris, a name frequently used for the Lateran. Bowden suggests that "at the close of the tumultuous proceedings in the Lateran the cardinal clergy" may have "adjourned to St. Peter ad Vincula formally to ratify and register the election."

3

This personage is always called Cencio in the Italian records. He is supposed by some to have been of the family of the Crescenzi, of which name, as well as of Vincenzo, this is the diminutive.

4

On this subject the records differ, some asserting these letters to have been read at once on Roland's removal, some that the sitting was adjourned after that wonderful incident.

5

The Vice-Provost of Eton who has kindly read these pages in the gentle criticism which can say no harsh word, here remarks: "If success is measured less by immediate results than by guiding the way in which men think, I should say that Innocent was successful. 'What will the Pope say?' was the question asked in every corner of the world – though he was not always obeyed."

6

A necessary distinction when there were so many of the same name —i. e., Pietro the son of Agapito, nephew of old Stefano.

7

Changed their dresses, throwing those which they took off among the people.

8

The bath, or baptismal vase of Constantine (so-called) here referred to, still stands in the Baptistery of the Lateran.

9

An amusing story used to be told in Rome concerning this place, which no doubt sprang from the legend of that old ecclesiastical inhabitation. It was that a bishop, travelling across the country (it is always a bishop who is the bon vivant of Italian story), sent a messenger before him with instructions to write on the wall of every town his opinion of the wine of the place, that his master might judge whether he should alight there or not. If it was good Est was to be the word. When the courier came to Montefiascone he was so delighted with the vintage there that he emblazoned the gate with a triple legend of Est, Est, Est. The bishop arrived, alighted; and never left Montefiascone more. The wine in its native flasks is still distinguished by this inscription.

10

See the death of Pope Leo IX., p. 199.