The cool darkness of the little chamber, near the door into the orchard, the blazing candles all sent away, the grateful freshness of the Roman night—come before us like a picture, with the Pope's splendid robes glimmering white, and the sober-suited citizen little seen in the quick-falling twilight. It must have been in the spring or early summer, the sweetest time in Rome. Pope Eugenius had died in the month of February, and it was on the 16th of March, 1447, that Nicolas was elected to the Holy See.
A few years after came the jubilee, in the year 1450, as had now become the habit, and the influx of pilgrims was very great. It was a time of great profit not only to the Romans who turned the city into one vast inn to receive the visitors, but also to the Pope. "The people were like ants on the roads which led from Florence to Rome," we are told. The crowd was so immense crossing the bridge of St. Angelo, that there were some terrible accidents, and as many as two hundred people were killed on their way to the shrine of the Apostles. "There was not a great lord in all Christendom who did not come to this jubilee." "Much money came to the Apostolical See," continues the biographer, "and the Pope began to build in many places, and to send everywhere for Greek and Latin books wherever he could find them, without regard to the price.
"He also had many scribes from every quarter to whom he gave constant employment; also many learned men both to compose new works, and to translate those which had not been translated, making great provision for them, both ordinary and extraordinary; and to those who translated books, when they were brought to him, he gave much money that they might go on willingly with that which they had to do. He collected a very great number of books on every subject, both in Greek and Latin, to the number of five thousand volumes. These at the end of his life were found in the catalogue which did not include the half of the copies of books he had on every subject; for if there was a book which could not be found, or which he could not have in any other way, he had it copied. The intention of Pope Nicolas was to make a library in St. Peter's for the use of the Court of Rome, which would have been a marvellous thing had it been carried out; but it was interrupted by death."
Vespasian adds for his own part a list of these books, which occupies a whole column in one of Muratori's gigantic pages.
Another anecdote we must add to show our Pope's quaint ways with his little court of literary men.
"Pope Nicolas was the light and the ornament of literature, and of men of letters. If there had arisen another Pontiff after him who would have followed up his work, the state of letters would have been elevated to a worthy degree. But after him things went from bad to worse, and there were no prizes for virtue. The liberality of Pope Nicolas was such that many turned to him who would not otherwise have done so. In every place where he could do honour to men of letters, he did so, and left nobody out. When Messer Francesco Filelfo passed through Rome on his way to Naples without paying him a visit, the Pope, hearing of it, sent for him. Those who went to call him said to him, 'Messer Francesco, we are astonished that you should have passed through Rome without going to see him.' Messer Francesco replied that he was carrying some of his books to King Alfonso, but meant to see the Pope on his return. The Pope had a scarsella at his side in which were five hundred florins which he emptied out, saying to him, 'Take this money for your expenses on the way.' This is what one calls liberal! He had always a scarsella (pouch) at his side where were several hundreds of florins and gave them away for God's sake, and to worthy persons. He took them out of the scarsella by handfuls and gave to them. Liberality is natural to men, and does not come by nobility nor by gentry: for in every generation we see some who are very liberal and some who are equally avaricious."
But the literary aspect of Pope Nicolas's character, however delightful, is not that with which we are chiefly concerned. He was the first Pope to conceive a systematic plan for the reconstruction and permanent restoration of Rome, a plan which it is needless to say his life was not long enough to carry out, but which yet formed the basis of all after-plans, and was eventually more or less accomplished by different hands.
It was to the centre of ecclesiastical Rome, the shrine of the Apostles, the chief church of Christendom and its adjacent buildings that the care of the Builder-Pope was first directed. The Leonine city, or Borgo as it is more familiarly called, is that portion of Rome which lies on the left side of the Tiber, and which extends from the castle of St. Angelo to the boundary of the Vatican gardens—enclosing the church of St. Peter, the Vatican Palace with all its wealth, and the great Hospital of Santo Spirito, surrounded and intersected by many little streets, and joined to the other portions of the city by the bridge of St. Angelo. Behind the mass of picture galleries, museums, and collections of all kinds, which now fill up the endless halls and corridors of the Papal palace, comes a sweep of noble gardens full of shade and shelter from the Roman sun, such a resort for the
"learnèd leisure