Now I close this letter, dear wife, by wishing you happy days far from all the tumult of the world. I only wait for my departure, for life has lost its relish for me, since my lord and Emperor has passed into the great silence. Greet the brethren and the few who still survive from the time of the Great Emperor, and accept, dear Emma, the greeting of your dead husband, whom you will not see before the Day of Resurrection, the great Easter, when we shall all meet again. Till then, “Be of one mind, live in peace, and the God of Jove and of peace shall be with you.”
THE CLOSE OF THE FIRST MILLENNIUM
In the year 998 A.D. Rome had become a German Empire and the German Emperor had become a Roman. Otto III, brought up by his Graeco-Byzantine mother Theofano, had inherited her love of the southern lands, and therefore generally occupied his palace on the Aventine, installed himself as Emperor, and cherished a plan of converting Rome into the capital of the German Empire. He was now twenty years old, ambitious, crochety, pious, and cruel.
During one of his absences, the old Roman spirit had revived, and the high-born senator Crescentius had set up himself as Tribune of the people, freed Rome from the Germans, driven away Pope Gregory V, and installed John XVI in his place. The Emperor returned quickly to Rome, took Crescentius and his Pope prisoner, and then presented the Romans with a vivid spectacle, the like of which they had not seen, though their fathers had.
The Leonine quarter, which embraced the Vatican Hill, with the oldest St. Peter’s Church and a papal palace, was connected with the town by the Pons Aelius or Bridge of Hadrian. At the head of the bridge, on the right side, was the sepulchre of Hadrian, a tower-shaped building in which the Emperors up to the time of Caracalla had been buried. When the Goths took Rome, the sepulchre became a fortress, and remained so for a long time.
When the Romans woke up on that memorable morning of the year 998 A.D., they saw twelve wooden crosses erected on Hadrian’s Tower terrace. Right above them was to be seen the image of the Archangel Michael, with his drawn sword, which had been erected by Gregory the Great. Many people were assembled on the Aelian Bridge to see the spectacle, and among them were a French merchant and a Gothic pilgrim who had come from the west across the Leonine quarter. The sword of the Archangel flamed in the beams of the sun, which was now high.
“What are those crosses for?” asked the pilgrim, shading his eyes.
“There are twelve! Perhaps they are intended to represent the twelve Apostles.”