Some say that Benedict was poisoned because of the ill-feeling of the Florentines towards him, and others that he died by the jealous hand of Philippe le Bel of France. The historians of the present day deny the fact of poison at all. Be these matters as they may, the fact of the dead pope’s tomb remains—an entrancing bit of human workmanship. It was made by Giovanni Pisano, son of the great Niccola, “who first breathed life, with the breath of genius, into the dead forms of plastic art.” Pope Benedict lies asleep; stretched out quite flat and thin in his exquisitely folded robes; there is a canopy over him with curtains strung across it and two angels have drawn the curtain back to gaze at the figure of the dead man. The columns of the tomb were filled up once with precious mosaics, but during Napoleon’s occupation of Perugia, a regiment of men and horse were quartered in the church of S. Domenico, and the French soldiers are said to have employed their leisure hours in picking out these treasures with their pen-knives. Perhaps it was these same thoughtless beings who wilfully mutilated the exquisite figures of children, fragments of which are still left clinging to the spiral curves.
The terra-cotta decorations in the chapel of the Rosario are the work of Agostino Ducci—the Florentine sculptor who made the lovely front of S. Bernardino, (see chapter viii.), and they would be interesting if only for that reason. Though mutilated in parts, and spoilt by careless white-wash, much of the detail is still charming; notably the three little angels over the central arch. As for the rest of the church it has but little interest now-a-days. The immense Gothic window of the choir is said to be the largest in Italy, but the original glass is entirely gone from its frame. The whole has been carefully restored by Signor Moretti of Perugia. The stalls are covered with good intarsia work, but they have been greatly spoiled by careless restoration, and have a naked and forsaken look about them. S. Domenico is one of those pathetic buildings which leave upon one’s mind the feeling of arrested decay, and one hurries gladly from it and out into the sunlight of the street.
S. Pietro.
Very different in every way is the church of S. Pietro, which one reaches after passing through the gate of Porta Romana. “The Basilica of S. Pietro is so adorned with beauties,” says its faithful, but perhaps too fond, biographer, “that it would suffer and be overburdened were others added to it.” The praise is certainly high, but it has a certain grain of truth, and the church of S. Pietro, is, amongst the churches of Perugia, a jewel of inestimable price, for unlike all the others it has been left with all its treasures and its pictures in it (see note, p. 163).
The church and monastery of S. Pietro are built on the hill of Capraio or Calvary, which stretches away to the south of the town. They form the first object which catches the eye as one approaches the city on the line from Rome; they serve as a sure landmark from many distant points of Umbria, and one cannot stay long in the city without becoming sincerely attached to the beautiful group of pale brick buildings, crowned by their graceful campanile, which catch the sunrise and the sunset lights, and fascinate one’s fancy at every time and season.
It is difficult to decide the date of the first church of S. Pietro. Tradition says that it is built on the site of an old Etruscan temple, and that it was the first Christian building of Perugia, certainly it was the first cathedral. We hear that the earliest Christians of Perugia used to meet in subterranean passages under the present church of S. Costanzo, which stands on the same spur of hill as that of S. Pietro, and that there S. Costanzo, the second Bishop of Perugia, gathered his little flock together to “feed them with the milk of the holy word of God.” We know that the present basilica was built by a certain Abbot, Pietro Vincioli, a monk of the Benedictine order, who lived in the tenth century, and was a great friend of the Emperor Otto III. Bonazzi gives a delightful description of this Abbot and of his method of building and the miracles he employed for the purpose. It seems that Pietro was famous for his great sanctity and learning, and that he lived at a time when everybody imagined that the world was about to come to an end: