From the steps of S. Ercolano one of the only broad and comparatively even streets of the town—the Corso Cavour—leads to the main road through the Porta Romana, down the steep hill to the Tiber and across the plain to join the road to Rome. Most of the history of Perugia has come and gone along this road; it was here that the popes made their triumphal entries, here probably that the barbarians forced a passage, and here, even in our own days, that Perugia suffered a final and a painful siege from Rome. It was on the of 20th of June 1859 that the Swiss guard fought its way along it, burning down the houses and beating back as they advanced the ill-organised body of inhabitants. Strange thrilling details of that day have been told to us by people who were present. One inhabitant, a mere boy then, was up with his parents at the top of their house in the Corso Cavour, but smelling smoke in the shop below they crept downstairs to see what might be happening, and found the Pope’s guard foraging amongst their medicine bottles. The mother and boy fled back up the stairs, but the father was caught and carried out into the street to be shot. Then the small boy leaned from the window, covering his face with a scarf, and pleaded so passionately for his father’s life that the Swiss soldiers spared him and passed to more profitable pursuits further up in the town. (We hear that they were filled with so great a lust for blood that they even wrung the neck of a tame falcon in the Piazza Sopramuro!) Another gentleman who had come in with the Pope’s guard gave us some details of the siege, and amongst them he told us of a certain priest at S. Pietro, who, thinking to kill the leader of the troops, shot at the drum-major, whose magnificent appearance would no doubt make him remarkable to a quiet monk. The unfortunate priest was shot for his pains up in the square on the following morning.[67]
The Corso Cavour has a very modern look about it. Most of its big buildings are used as barracks, but some few of the old are left. The Palazzo Bracceschi has a fine old outside staircase and a good collection of pictures, amongst them an exquisite Madonna and child attributed to Filippo Lippi, but more like a Neri di Bicci, also some fine original drawings.
S. Domenico.
The gigantic church of S. Domenico towers above the street to the left. It is one of those desolate unfinished Gothic buildings which one finds so often in Italian cities—a great idea dwarfed, not by want of inspiration, but by the need of money to complete it. The church as we now see it is merely a patchwork of the first architect’s original conception. It was begun early in the fourteenth century from designs by Giovanni Pisano, but it was not finished till 1459. The building owed much of its splendour to a young man of Perugia, Cristiano Armanni, who, whilst studying at Bologna, had been converted to the faith by the preaching of S. Domenico. Cristiano returned from the university in the society of a certain S. Niccolò of Calabria, and induced his parents and his friends to give him money for the new church which was about to be built to honour S. Domenico. The magistrates of Perugia contributed a banner to the cause, and they decided that wherever S. Niccolò might place this banner, there the new church should be built. He planted it near the church of S. Stefano, and on that site the present church of S. Domenico now stands. Through the fault of inferior masons, part of the choir and the middle nave fell through in 1614, but Bishop Comitoli determined to rebuild it on the original design. He spent more than 4000 scudi on this generous act and was as ill-rewarded as the most patient builder of card-castles ever was, for the whole of his work collapsed for the second time. It was finally rebuilt on the designs of Carlo Maderno, in 1632. But all this tinkering has left very sorry scars, and even the tower outside has not been spared. It was begun later than the rest of the church and was not finished till about the end of the fourteenth century, when Paul III. at once had the top of it knocked off because he declared that the monks of S. Domenico could, from their campanile, look down and spy upon the building of his fortress!
One or two relics alone remain of the many beautiful bits of art with which the church was rich in early days. Of these the tomb of Pope Benedict XI. is the most fascinating.
Of the life of Benedict there is not much to say; his reign covered a period of only eight months, and perhaps his greatest glory is in his tomb. He was a native of Treviso and belonged to the Dominican order. In 1304 he, like other popes and tired people, came to Perugia in search of the peace he could not find in Rome, and there, in that same year, he died. When in Perugia his mother came to see him—a thing which had only once happened to a pope before.
“Moved by a desire to see her son,” says Mariotti, “Filomarina came to Perugia, and here having had herself nobly dressed by the people of Perugia, as befitted the mother of the Pope, she presented herself to her son. But he, seeing her so beautifully clad, pretended that he did not know her, saying that this was not his mother, because she was a poor old woman and not a lady like this one. And his mother hearing this thing, and being a good and holy woman, took off those rich adornments, and putting on her own again, she returned to the Pope, who recognising her as his mother, received her with all tenderness.”
Pope Benedict was anxious to make peace between the Bianchi and Neri of Florence, and received from some of the heads of the Guelph factions a visit of state in his residence at Perugia. Twelve of them, headed by Corso Donato, came with all their suite behind them: one hundred and fifty horses we hear, and many friends and relatives. No satisfactory agreement was arranged, and shortly afterwards this holy but powerless Pope passed into his rest.
It was supposed that Benedict died of poison, and the older stories run, like the modern one of Zola, on the subject of a basket of poisoned figs.
“In the year of Christ 1304, on the 27th of the month of June,” says Villani, “Pope Benedict died in the city of Perugia, and it was said that he died of poison. As the Pope sat eating at his table a young man came to him dressed and veiled in the guise of a woman, and as a servant of S. Petronilla, with a basin of silver in which were many beautiful figs and flowers which he presented to the Pope in the name of the faithful Abbess of the convent. The Pope received the figs with very great delight, and because he loved them, he made no enquiry concerning them, seeing moreover that they came from a woman, and he ate a great quantity, whereupon he immediately fell ill, and after a few days he died, and was buried with great honours by the Preaching Friars who belonged to the Dominican order at Perugia. Benedict was a good and an honest man, but it is said that because of the envy of certain of his cardinals, they had him poisoned in this fashion.”