PORTA SAN PAOLO
Gate in the Aurelian wall rebuilt by Belisarius. This is the gate of the Ostian Way leading to the basilica of S. Paul's—one of the seven great pilgrimage churches—of which the Kings of England were Protectors.
CHAPTER VIII
ROMAN PRINCELY FAMILIES
To be a patrician of Rome is to possess one of the proudest of titles, and from the senator of the ancient city to the prince of to-day the aristocracy of Rome has been one of its most vital and characteristic institutions.
Though the Roman cardinal as a prince of the Church has always been admitted, whatever his origin, within the pale, the Roman nobility with the rarest exceptions has never swelled its ranks with newcomers owing their tides to acquired wealth or successful public life, but, conservative and exclusive, preserves the traditions of the past and forms a society unlike any other in Europe.
The greater number of the princely families whose names are familiar to every sojourner in Rome date their connection with the city from the fifteenth century and onwards, when the popes ceased to be chosen from among the Romans, and a new aristocracy grew up, the creation of successive pontiffs, who, themselves reigning but not hereditary sovereigns, wished to raise their relatives to a rank second only to their own.
Others trace their descent from some mediæval chieftain, or are feudal in origin, and these alone are indigenous to the city and its surroundings, and their history is indissolubly woven into the records of Rome's past. For many dark centuries, during a barbarous period of bloodshed crime and cruelty, the history of Rome was what her great nobles made it; and they in their turn rose to fame and power or sank into oblivion, leaving no traces or but the scantiest records of their fate. The great mediæval family of Conti, Counts of Segni, whose race gave four popes to Rome, among them the great Innocent III., have disappeared from history, leaving as a magnificent monument to their greatness the huge tower which bears their name.
In the twelfth century, the Sabine Savelli and the Jewish Pierleoni were great and prominent. Streets and piazzas called after them in the region near the crowded little Piazza Montanara testify to their importance. The Savelli dwelt in a castle in the Via di Monserrato. It was afterwards turned into a prison, the Corte Savella, and here for a time the unhappy Beatrice Cenci and her accomplices were confined. Both Savelli and Pierleoni successively occupied a stronghold erected within the ancient walls of the theatre of Marcellus, and a fortified palace which stood against it, now Orsini property. One of the Savelli popes, Honorius IV., built himself a castle on the Aventine, and at one period the whole of the hill was entrenched and fortified, the ancient temple of Libertas on its summit being transformed into a citadel. These immense buildings have crumbled away, and the sole monuments that remain to record the past greatness of this family are the tombs of Pope Honorius, of his father and mother, and of other Savellis in their chapel in the church of Ara Coeli on the Capitol.