On the first day of March I went to the service at the Sistine Chapel. At the high altar the priest who said mass stood beyond the altar with his face turned towards the people, no one being behind him. On this occasion the Pope was present, for he had some days before excluded therefrom the nuns who had hitherto been wont to be present, so as to make more room. In their place he installed, by a most excellent regulation, the poor folk who beg about the city. Each one of the cardinals gave twenty crowns in aid of the movement, and very liberal alms were given by other private persons. To their hospital the Pope has given five hundred crowns a month.
In Rome there is a vast amount of private devotion, and many confraternities in which are manifest striking testimonies of piety, but it seems to me that in general there is less devotion than in the better ordered towns of France. They set more store here on ceremonies, in which they go to great lengths. Here I may write what I will with a free conscience, so I will give two illustrations of my meaning. A certain man was with a courtesan, lying in bed and enjoying the full liberty of the situation, when, at the twenty-fourth hour, the Ave Maria sounded, and the girl sprang out of bed and knelt down on the floor to say her prayer. Shortly afterwards he was with another, when suddenly the good mother (for these girls are always in the hands of some old bawd whom they call mother or aunt) knocked at the door and, having entered in a transport of rage, tore off from the girl’s neck a ribbon from which was hanging a little image of Our Lady, so that it might not be contaminated by the sinful act of the wearer. The young girl showed herself exceedingly penitent, in that she had omitted her customary practice of first removing this image from her person.
The ambassador of the Muscovite[93] was present at this service, clad in a scarlet mantle, a long coat of cloth of gold, and a hat of cloth of gold made in the shape of a nightcap and trimmed with fur, under which was a smaller cap of cloth of silver. This is the second ambassador of Muscovy who has been sent to the papal court, the other having come here in the time of Paul III. Report said that this man’s mission was to stir up the Pope to interfere in the war which the King of Poland was waging against his master. His plea was that the Muscovite ruler must needs sustain the first onslaught of the Turk, and that, should he be weakened by fighting Poland, he would be unable to undertake war elsewhere, thus leaving open a wide breach through which the Turk might enter and attack us all. The Muscovite also offered to make certain concessions in the religious controversies at present pending between himself and the Roman Church. The ambassador had lodging with the Castellan, as had the other in Pope Paul’s time, and was maintained at the Pope’s charges. He resisted stiffly to conform to the usage of kissing the Pope’s foot, consenting only to kiss his right hand, and remained obstinate until it was pointed out to him that even the Emperor was not exempt from this ceremonial duty, the instances of kings being insufficient to convince him. He could speak no language other than his own, and had come unaccompanied by an interpreter, and with only three or four men in his train. It is said he was in great peril as he journeyed in disguise through Poland. In his country there is such great ignorance of external affairs, that he took to Venice letters from his master addressed to the High Governor of the Signiory of Venice; and, being asked what might be the meaning of this style, replied that in Muscovy they believed that Venice was under the command of the Pope, who sent thither governors, as he did to Bologna and other cities. God knows in what mood the Magnificoes must have listened to such ignorant discourse. Both to them and to the Pope he brought presents of sables, and of furs still more rich and rare, to wit, skins of the black fox.
On the 6th of March I went to see the library of the Vatican, which is contained in five or six rooms all communicating one with the other. There are many rows of desks, each desk having a great number of books chained thereto. Also, in the chests, which were all opened for my inspection, I saw many manuscripts, of which I chiefly remarked a Seneca and the Opuscula of Plutarch. Amongst the noteworthy sights I saw was the statue of the good Aristides,[94] with a fine head, bald and thickly bearded, a grand forehead, and an expression full of sweetness and majesty. The base is very ancient, and has his name written thereupon. I saw likewise a Chinese book writ in strange characters, on leaves made of a certain stuff much more tender and transparent than the paper we use, and because this fabric is not thick enough to bear the stain of ink, they write on only one side of the sheet, and the sheets are all doubled and folded at the outside edges by which they are held together. It is said that these sheets are the bark of a certain tree, as is a fragment of ancient papyrus which I saw covered with unknown characters. I saw also the Breviary of Saint Gregory in manuscript, which has no date, but the account they give of it states that it has come down from one hand to another from Saint Gregory’s time. It is a missal not unlike our own, and it was taken to the recent Council at Trent as an authority for the ceremonies of our Church. Next, a book by Saint Thomas Aquinas, containing corrections made by the author himself, who wrote badly, using a small character worse even than my own. Next, a Bible printed on parchment, one of those which Plantin[95] has recently printed in four languages, which book King Philip presented to the Pope, according to an inscription on the cover. Next, the original manuscript of the book which King Henry of England wrote against Luther and sent fifty years ago to Pope Leo X.[96] It contains a subscription and a graceful Latin distich, both written by his own hand:—
“Anglorum Rex Henricus, Leo decime, mittit
Hoc opus, & fidei testem & amicitæ.”
I read both the prefaces, one to the Pope and the other to the reader. The king claims indulgence for any literary shortcomings on the score of his military occupations, but the style is good scholastic Latin. I inspected the library without any difficulty; indeed, any one may visit it and make what extracts he likes; it is open almost every morning. I was taken to every part thereof by a gentleman, who invited me to make use of it as often as I might desire.
Our ambassador quitted Rome just at this time without having ever seen the library, and he complained because pressure had been put upon him to beg this favour of Cardinal Charlet,[97] and that he had never been allowed to inspect the manuscript Seneca, which he desired greatly to see. It was my good luck which carried me on to success, for, having heard of the ambassador’s failure, I was in despair. Thus it seems all things come easily to men of a certain temper, and are unattainable by others. Right occasion and opportunity have their privileges, and often hold out to ordinary folk what they deny to kings. Curiosity often stands in its own way, and the like may be affirmed of greatness and power. In the library I saw also a manuscript Virgil[98] in an exceedingly large handwriting, of that long and narrow character which we see in Rome in inscriptions of the age of the Emperors somewhere about the reign of Constantine, a character which takes somewhat of Gothic form, and misses that square proportion which the old Latin inscriptions possess. The sight of this Virgil confirmed a belief which I have always held, to wit, that the four lines usually put at the opening of the Æneid are borrowed, since this copy has them not. Also a copy of the Acts of the Apostles, written in very fair Greek golden character. The lettering is massive, solid in substance, and raised upon the paper, so that any one who may pass his finger over the same will detect the thickness thereof. We have, I believe, lost all knowledge of this method.
On March 13th an old Antiochan patriarch, an Arabian, and well versed in five or six of the languages of those regions, and quite ignorant of Greek or of the other tongues we use, a personage with whom I had become very intimate, gave me a certain compound for the relief of my gravel, and written directions for the employment of the same. He bestowed it for me in a little earthen pot, where I might keep it ten or even twenty years, and assured me that I might anticipate a complete cure of my distemper by the first dose I should take. In case I might lose the writing he gave me, I will set down his instructions here. The drug should be taken at bedtime after a light supper; a piece the size of two peas should be mixed in lukewarm water, after having been crumbled in the fingers. This will make five doses, one to be taken every alternate day.
One day I dined with our ambassador at Rome, where Muret[99] and other learned men were of the company. I spoke concerning the translation of Plutarch into French, and controverted those who esteem it less than I do. I maintained at least that, in passages where the translator may have missed the exact meaning of Plutarch, he has given instead one verisimilar and in accurate combination with what is writ before and after. To show me that I was hereby claiming too much for this work, they brought forward two passages; one (the criticism of which they assigned to a son of M. Mangot,[100] a Parisian advocate, who had just quitted Rome) was from the life of Solon—somewhere about the middle—in which the translator says that Solon claimed for himself that he had given freedom to Attica, and had removed the boundary stones which divided inherited plots of land. Here he had made a mistake, for the Greek word in question[101] is rather used to denote certain signposts which were wont to be set up on lands which were pledged or under bond, so that buyers might be forewarned that these were mortgaged. The word which the translator employed has none of the meaning of the original, inasmuch as it would lead the reader to infer that the lands alluded to were not separate freeholds, but were held in common. The Latin of Estienne comes nearer to the truth.[102] The second passage was one near the end of the treatise on the “Nurture of Children.” This the translator gives as follows: “The observation of these rules is rather to be desired than advised.” But his critics now affirmed the real meaning of the Greek to be: “That thing is more to be desired than to be hoped for.” The same proverb may be found elsewhere under different form. In place of this clear and intelligible meaning the translator has substituted one which is weak and foreign. Wherefore, accepting their presupposition of the true sense of the passage in question, I professed myself entirely of their opinion.[103]