The use of hospices is much connected with Carlovingian times; they came in when the Church ruled, and pilgrimages became the fashion. The first hospices were in monasteries. In 752 S. Anselmo founded one for pilgrims at Nonantola, in Agro Mutinense. The council of Aquisgrana (Aix-la-Chapelle) made decrees as to the establishment of hospices, and Charlemagne made laws on the subject, "ut in omni regno nostro, neque pauper perigrinus hospitia denegare audeant." To the ordinary fine for homicide, Pepin II. added sixty soldi more if the person killed were a pilgrim. One who denied food and shelter to a pilgrim was fined three soldi. These humane provisions, like all such, soon became abused; so many non-religious people travelled on pilgrims' privileges, that at the end of Charlemagne's reign it was found necessary to provide real pilgrims with a Tessera trattoria to prove their authenticity.
Among the earliest hospices might be mentioned the leper hospital founded in Classis near Ravenna in S. Apollinare's time, and one in Rome, founded by the Roman lady Fabiola for destitute or abandoned sick and poor. In 785 a certain Datheus, arch-priest at Milan, founded an exonodochio (home for destitute children), and Queen Amalasunta built a foundling hospital at Ravenna, in the sixth century. Charlemagne commanded that there should be a place in the peristyle of the churches for the reception of foundlings. The Loggia del Bigallo, though a later building, is a beautiful specimen of such a peristyle.
CHAPTER VI
IN THE TROUBLOUS TIMES
After the Carlovingian dynasty had withdrawn from Italy, the country had two or three centuries of troublous times, in which very few people thought of church-building, and if the Comacine Masters found work in their own land, it was more the building of castles and strongholds in their most solid opera gallica, than the sculpturing of saints or the rearing of gorgeous basilicæ.
After the Carlovingians came the House of Berengarius, which held the Italian throne from 888 to the intervention of Otho I. of Germany in 951. During this time there was always a military fermentation going on; Duke Guido of Spoleto fighting Berengarius; Arnolph and his son Sventebald fighting Guido; the Hungarians overrunning and sacking Italy on the north, where there were battles at Brenta, Garigliano, Firenzuola, and bloodshed generally till the murder of Berengarius.
Nor were things more peaceful in the south. Between A.D. 924 and 950 the Saracens invaded Sicily, and having established themselves there, assaulted Rome, and marched on towards the Alps.
In Central Italy the Dukes of Burgundy, Provence, and Bavaria were found contesting with Lothaire for the succession. At length, in 951, Otho came down from Germany and scattered them all, restoring comparative peace for a time, though an arbitrary one; but it did not last long.
Next came superstitious fears; the poor battered Italians, demoralized by fierce human foes, succumbed entirely to the moral subjugator, superstition. They were firmly persuaded that the year 1000 should be the end of the world, and every activity, public and private, was paralyzed. It was only after that era had passed, and found Italy still existing, that new life began to stir in its inhabitants. Of course, fighting still continued, but these were holy wars—the Crusades, of which Urban II. preached the first in 1096. Then the art of sculpturesque architecture, which is the handmaid of religious enthusiasm, began to revive, and the Comacine Masters again had palmy days.
But they had not been entirely idle during these warlike times. Prof. Merzario says[83]—
"In this darkness which extended over all Italy, only one small lamp remained alight, making a bright spark in the vast Italian necropolis. It was from the Magistri Comacini. Their respective names are unknown, their individual works unspecialized, but the breath of their spirit might be felt all through those centuries, and their name collectively is legion. We may safely say that of all the works of art between A.D. 800 and 1000, the greater and better part are due to that brotherhood—always faithful and often secret—of the Magistri Comacini. The authority and judgment of learned men justify the assertion."