The Makers of Modern Rome, in Four Books

by Mrs. Oliphant

He died in the midst of all this great work, while yet the dust of the downfall of St. Peter's was in the air. Had it been possible that he could have lived to see the new and splendid temple risen in its place, we could better understand the wonderful hardihood of the act; but it would be almost inconceivable how even the most impious of men could have executed such an impulse, leaving nothing but a partial ruin behind him of the great Shrine of Christendom, did we not know that a whole line of able rulers had carried on the plan to gradual completion. It was not till a hundred and fifty years later that the new St. Peter's in its present form, vast and splendid, but apparently framed to look, to the first glance, as little so as possible, stood complete, to the admiration of the world. In the violence of destruction a great number of the tombs of the Popes perished, by means of that cynical carelessness and profanity which is more cruel than any hostile impulse. Julius preserved the grave of his uncle Sixtus, where he was himself afterwards laid, not in his own splendid tomb which had been in the making for many years, and which is now to be seen in the church of San Pietro in Vincoli from which he took his Cardinal's title. He had therefore little good of that work of art as he well deserved, and it was itself sadly diminished, cut down, and completed by various secondary hands; but it is kept within the ken of the spectator by Michael Angelo's Moses and some other portions of his original work, though it neither enshrines the body nor marks the resting place of its imperious master. Julius died in 1513, "more illustrious in military glory than a Pope ought to be." Panvinio says: "He was of great soul and constancy, and a powerful defender of all ecclesiastical things: he would not suffer any offence, and was implacable with rebels and contumacious persons. He was such a one as could not but be praised for having with so much strength and fidelity preserved and increased the possessions of the Church, although there are a few to whom it appears that he was more given to arms than was becoming a holy Pope." "On the 21st of February 1513, died Pope Julius, at nine hours of the night," says another chronicler, Sebastiano Branca; "he held the papacy nine years, three months, and twenty-five days. He was from Savona: he acquired many lands for the Church: no Pope had ever done what Pope Julius did. The first was Faenza, the others Forli, Cervia, Ravenna, Rimini, Parma, Piacenza, and Arezzo. He gained them all for the Church, nor ever thought of giving them to his own family. Pesaro he gave to the Duke of Urbino, his nephew, but no other. Thirty-three cardinals died in his time. And he caused the death in war of more than a hundred thousand people." There could not be a more grim summary.

It is curious to remark that the men who originated the splendour of modern Rome, who built its noblest churches and palaces, and emblazoned its walls with the noblest works of art, and filled its libraries with the highest luxury of books, were men of the humblest race, of peasant origin, born to poverty and toil. Thomas of Sarzana, Pope Nicolas V., Francesco and Giuliano of Savona, Popes Sixtus IV. and Julius II.: these men were born without even the distinction of a surname, in the huts where poor men lie, or more humbly still in some room hung high against the rocky foundations of a village, perched upon a cliff, after the fashion of Italy. It was they who set the fashion of a magnificence beyond the dreams of the greatest princes of their time.

It was not so, however, with the successor of Julius II., the Pope in whose name all the grandeur and magnificence of Rome is concentrated, and of whom we think most immediately when the golden age of ecclesiastical luxury and the splendour of art is named. Leo X. was as true a son of luxury as they were of the soil. The race of Medici has always been fortunate in its records. The greatest painters of the world have been at its feet, encouraged and cherished and tyrannised over. Literature such as was in the highest esteem in those days flattered and caressed and fawned upon them. Lorenzo, somewhat foolishly styled in history the Magnificent,—in forgetfulness of the fact that il Magnifico was the common title of a Florentine official,—is by many supposed to be the most conspicuous and splendid character in the history of Florence. And Leo X. bears the same renown in the records of Papal Rome. We will not say that he was a modern Nero fiddling while Rome was burning, for he showed himself in many ways an unusually astute politician, and as little disposed to let slip any temporal advantage as his fighting predecessors—but the spectacle is still a curious one of a man expending his life and his wealth (or that of other people) in what was even the most exquisite and splendid of decorations, such wonders of ornamentation as Raphael's frescoes—while the Papacy itself was being assailed by the greatest rebellion ever raised against it. To go on painting the walls while the foundations of the building are being ruined under your feet and at any moment may fall about your ears, reducing your splendid ornaments to powder, is a thing which gives the most curious sensation to the looker on. The world did not know in those days that even to an institution so corrupt superficially as the Church of Rome the ancient promise stood fast, and not only the gates of hell, but those more like of heaven, should not prevail against her. Out of Italy it was believed that the Church which had but lately been ruled over by a Borgia, and which was admittedly full of wickedness in high places, must go down altogether under the tremendous blow. A great part of the world indeed went on believing so for a century or two. But in the midst of that almost universal conviction nothing can be more curious than to see the life of Papal Rome going on as if nothing had happened, and young Raphael and all his disciples coming and going, cheerful as the day, about the great empty chambers which they were making into a wonder of the earth. Michael Angelo, it is true, in grim discontent hewed at those huge slaves of his in Florence, working wonderful thoughts into their great limbs; but all that Roman world flowed on in brightness and in glory under skies untouched by any threatening of catastrophe.

MODERN ROME: THE GRAVE OF KEATS.
To face page 592.

The Italian chroniclers scarcely so much as mention the beginnings of the Reformation. "At that time in the furthest part of Germany the abominable and infamous name of Martin Luther began to be heard," says one. The elephant which Emmanuel of Portugal sent to his Holiness, and which was supposed to be a thousand years old, takes up as much space. The sun shone on in Rome. The painters sang and whistled at their work, and their sublime patron went and came, and capped verses with Venetian Bembo, and the unique Aretino. They were not, it would seem, in the least afraid of Luther, nor even cognisant of him except in a faint and far-off way. He was so absurd as to object to the sale of indulgences. Now the sale of indulgences was not to be defended in theory, as all these philosophers knew. But to buy off the penances which otherwise they would at all events have been obliged to pretend to do, was a relief grateful to many persons who were not bad Christians, besides being good Catholics. Perhaps, indeed, in the gross popular imagination these indulgences might have come to look like permissions to sin, as that monster in Germany asserted them to be; but this did not really alter their true character, any more than other popular mistakes affected doctrine generally. And how to get on with that huge building of St. Peter's, at which innumerable workmen were labouring year after year, and which was the most terrible burden upon the Papal funds, without that method of wringing stone and mortar and gilding and mosaic out of the common people? Pope Leo took it very easily. Notwithstanding the acquisitions of Pope Julius, and the certainty with which the historians assure us that from his time the Patrimony of St. Peter was well established in the possession of Rome, some portion of it had been lost again, and had again to be recovered in the days of his successor. That was doubtless more important than the name, nefando, execrabile of the German monk. And so the wars went on, though not with the spirit and relish which Julius II. had brought into them. Leo X. had no desire to kill anybody. When he was compelled to do it he did it quite calmly and inexorably as became a Medici; but he took no pleasure in the act. If Luther had fallen into his hands the Curia would no doubt have found some means of letting the pestilent fellow off. A walk round the loggie or the stanze where the painters were so busy, and where Raphael, a born gentleman, would not grumble as that savage Buonarotti did, at being interrupted, but would pause and smile and explain, put the thought of all troublesome Germans easily out of the genial potentate's head. It was the Golden Age; and Rome was the centre of the world as was meet, and genius toiled untiringly for the embellishment of everything; and such clever remarks had never been made in any court, such witty suggestions, such fine language used and subtle arguments held, as those of all the scholars and all the wits who vied with each other for the ear and the glance of Pope Leo. The calm enjoyment of life over a volcano was never exhibited in such perfection before.

We need not pause here to enumerate or describe those works which every visitor to Rome hastens to see, in which the benign and lovely art of Raphael has lighted up the splendid rooms of the Vatican with something of the light that never was on sea or shore. We confess that for ourselves one little picture from the same hand, to be met with here and there, and often far from the spot where it was painted, outvalues all those works of art; but no one can dispute their beauty or importance. Pope Leo did not by so much as the touch of a pencil contribute to their perfection, yet they are the chief glory of his time, and the chief element in his fame. He made them in so far that he provided the means, the noble situation as well as the more vulgar provision which was quite as necessary, and he has therefore a right to his share of the applause—by which he is well rewarded for all he did; for doubtless the payment of the moment, the pleasure which he sincerely took in them, and the pride of so nobly taking his share in the lasting illumination of Rome were a very great recompense in themselves, without the harvest he has since reaped in the applause of posterity. Nowadays we do not perhaps so honour the patron of art as people were apt to do in the last century. And there are, no doubt, many now who worship Raphael in the Vatican without a thought of Leo. Still he is worthy to be honoured. He gave the young painter a free hand, believing in his genius and probably attracted by his more genial nature, while holding Michael Angelo, for whom he seems always to have felt a certain repugnance, at arm's length.

We will not attempt to point out in Raphael's great mural paintings the flattering allusions to Leo's history and triumph which critics find there, nor yet the high purpose with which others hold the painter to have been moved in those great works. Bishop Creighton finds a lesson in them, which is highly edifying, but rather beyond what we should be disposed to look for. "The life of Raphael," he says, "expresses the best quality of the spirit of the Italian Renaissance, its belief in the power of culture to restore unity to life and implant serenity in the soul. It is clear that Raphael did not live for mere enjoyment, but that his time was spent in ceaseless activity animated by high hopes for the future." How this may be we do not know: but lean rather to the opinion that Raphael, like other men of great and spontaneous genius, did what was in him and did his best, with little ulterior purpose and small thought about the power of culture. It was his, we think, to show how art might best illustrate and with the most perfect effect the space given him to beautify, with a meaning not unworthy of the gracious work, but no didactic impulse. It was his to make these fine rooms, and the airy lightness of the brilliant loggie beautiful, with triumphant exposition of a theme full of pictorial possibilities. But what it should have to do with Luther, or how the one should counterbalance the other, it is difficult to perceive. Goethe on the other hand declares that going to Raphael's loggie from the Sistine chapel "we could scarcely bear to look at them. The eye was so educated and enlarged by those grand forms and the glorious completeness of all the parts that it could take no pleasure" in works so much less important. Such are the differences of opinion in all ages. It is the glory of this period of Roman history that at a time when the Apostolic See had lost so much, and when all its great purposes, its noble ideals, its reign of holiness and inspired wisdom had perished like the flower of the fields—when all that Gregory and Innocent had struggled their lives long to attain had dissolved like a bubble: when the Popes were no longer holy men, nor distinguished by any great and universal aim, but Italian princes like others, worse rather than better in some cases: there should have arisen, with a mantle of glory to hide the failure and the horror and the scorn, these two great brethren of Art—the one rugged, mournful, self-conscious, bowed down by the evil of the time, the other all sweetness and gladness, an angel of light, divining in his gracious simplicity the secrets of the skies.

Leo the Pope was no such noble soul. He was only an urbane and skilful Medici, great to take every advantage of the divine slaves that were ready for his service—using them not badly, encouraging them to do their best, if not for higher motives yet to please him, the Sommo Pontefice, surely the best thing that they could hope for; and to win such share of the ducats which came to him from the sale of the offices of the Vatican, the cardinals' hats, the papal knighthoods, and other trumpery, as might suffice for all their wants. He sold these and other things, indulgences for instance, sown broadcast over the face of the earth and raising crops of a quite different kind. But on the other hand he never sold a benefice. He remitted the tax on salt; and he gave liberally to whoever asked him, and enjoyed life with all his heart, in itself no bad quality.