Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 1 / Studies from the Chronicles of Rome

by F. Marion Crawford

The dance is over with the song. One of the parish priests mounts upon an ass, backwards, facing the beast's tail, and a papal chamberlain leads the animal, holding over its head a basin containing twenty pieces of copper money. When they have passed three rows of benches—which benches, by the bye?—the priest leans back, puts his hand behind him into the basin, and pockets the coins.

Then all the priests lay garlands at the feet of the Pope. But the priest of Santa Maria in Via Lata also lets a live fox out of a bag, and the little creature suddenly let loose flies for its life, through the parting crowd, out to the open country, seeking cover. It is like the Hebrew scapegoat. In return each priest receives a golden coin from the Pontiff's hand. The rite being finished, all return to their respective parishes, the dancing 'visitor' still leading the procession. Each priest is accompanied then by acolytes who bear holy water, branches of laurel, and baskets of little rolls, or of those big, sweet wafers, rolled into a cylinder and baked, which are called 'cialdoni,' and are eaten to this day by Romans with ice cream. From house to house they go; the priest blesses each dwelling, sprinkling water about with the laurel, and then burning the branch on the hearth and giving some of the rolls to the children. And all the time the dancer slowly dances and chants the strange words made up of some Hebrew, a little Chaldean and a leavening of nonsense.

Jaritan, jaritan, iarariasti
Raphaym, akrhoin, azariasti!

One may leave the interpretation of the jargon to curious scholars. As for the rite itself, were it not attested by trustworthy writers, one would be inclined to treat it as a mere invention, no more to be believed than the legend of Pope Joan, who was supposed to have been stoned to death near San Clemente, on the way to the Lateran.

An extraordinary number of traditions cling to the Region of Monti, and considering that in later times a great part of this quarter was a wilderness, the fact would seem strange. As for the 'Coromania' it seems to have disappeared after the devastation of Monti by Robert Guiscard in 1084, and the general destruction of the city from the Lateran to the Capitol is attributed to the Saracens who were with him. But a more logical cause of depopulation is found in the disappearance of water from the upper Region by the breaking of the aqueducts, from which alone it was derived. The consequence of this, in the Middle Age, was that the only obtainable water came from the river, and was naturally taken from it up-stream, towards the Piazza del Popolo, in the neighbourhood of which it was collected in tanks and kept until the mud sank to the bottom and it was approximately fit to drink.

In Imperial times the greater number of the public baths were situated in the Monti. The great Piazza di Termini, now re-named Piazza delle Terme, before the railway station, took its name from the Baths of Diocletian—'Thermæ,' 'Terme,' 'Termini.' The Baths of Titus, the Baths of Constantine, of Philippus, Novatus and others were all in Monti, supplied by the aqueduct of Claudius, the Anio Novus, the Aqua Marcia, Tepula, Julia, Marcia Nova and Anio Vetus. No people in the world were such bathers as the old Romans; yet few cities have ever suffered so much or so long from lack of good water as Rome in the Middle Age. The supply cut off, the whole use of the vast institutions was instantly gone, and the huge halls and porticos and playgrounds fell to ruin and base uses. Owing to their peculiar construction and being purposely made easy of access on all sides, like the temples, the buildings could not even be turned to account by the Barons for purposes of fortification, except as quarries for material with which to build their towers and bastions. The inner chambers became hiding-places for thieves, herdsmen in winter penned their flocks in the shelter of the great halls, grooms used the old playground as a track for breaking horses, and round and about the ruins, on feast days, the men of Monti and Trastevere chased one another in their murderous tournaments of stone throwing. A fanatic Sicilian priest saved the great hall of Diocletian's Baths from destruction in Michelangelo's time.

PORTA MAGGIORE, SUPPORTING THE CHANNELS OF THE AQUEDUCT OF CLAUDIUS AND THE ANIO NOVUS

The story is worth telling, for it is little known. In a little church in Palermo, in which the humble priest Antonio Del Duca officiated, he discovered under the wall-plaster a beautiful fresco or mosaic of the Seven Archangels, with their names and attributes. Day after day he looked at the fair figures till they took possession of his mind and heart and soul, and inspired him with the apparently hopeless desire to erect a church in Rome in their honour. To Rome he came, persuaded of his righteous mission, to fail of course, after seven years of indefatigable effort. Back to Palermo then, to the contemplation of his beloved angels. And again they seemed to drive him to Rome. Scarcely had he returned when in a dream he seemed to see his ideal church among the ruins of the Baths of Diocletian, which had been built, as tradition said, by thousands of condemned Christians. To dream was to wake with new enthusiasm, to wake was to act. In an hour, in the early dawn, he was in the great hall which is now the Church of Santa Maria degli Angeli, 'Saint Mary of the Angels.'

But it was long before his purpose was finally accomplished. Thirty years of his life he spent in unremitting labour for his purpose, and an accident at last determined his success. He had brought a nephew with him from Sicily, a certain Giacomo Del Duca, a sculptor, who was employed by Michelangelo to carve the great mask over the Porta Pia. Pope Pius the Fourth, for whom the gate was named, praised the stone face to Michelangelo, who told him who had made it. The name recalled the sculptor's uncle and his mad project, which appealed to Michelangelo's love of the gigantic. Even the coincidence of appellation pleased the Pope, for he himself had been christened Angelo, and his great architect and sculptor bore an archangel's name. So the work was done in short time, the great church was consecrated, and one of the noblest of Roman buildings was saved from ruin by the poor Sicilian,—and there, in 1896, the heir to the throne of Italy was married with great magnificence, that particular church being chosen because, as a historical monument, it is regarded as the property of the Italian State, and is therefore not under the immediate management of the Vatican. Probably not one in a thousand of the splendid throng that filled the church had heard the name of Antonio Del Duca, who lies buried before the high altar without a line to tell of all he did. So lies Bernini, somewhere in Santa Maria Maggiore, so lies Platina,—he, at least, the better for no epitaph,—and Beatrice Cenci and many others, rest unforgotten in nameless graves.