Crossing the Bridge of Sixtus the student might see vividly, as students do, the scene of that sacrilegious morning when the lone old stream, with no Horatius now, was swarthy boatmen swinging the oar with the stroke of the rover, and as each galley shot out of the bend of the Aventine, the chief, from under his turban, eyed the opening prospect of plunder with the glance of an Ishmaelite. When they rifled the grave, would the student say, if they found anything of the Fisherman, certainly they did not leave anything. If the ashes of Peter ever did rest there, were they not sent by the Saracens to await those of Wycliffe in the sea?
A pamphlet, by a Hebrew, with the title of The Ghetto and Rome's Great Show, reminds us that from under the flank of the Capitoline some would come out of the pen in which the Popes had, for ages, shut up the children of Israel. No doubt some travelled Rabbi would do so. Such a man would have mentally dwelt all his life among the ancients, and personally he would have seen the Pyramids and Thebes, the Tomb of Abraham, with Jerusalem, Baalbec, and probably the Remains upon the Euphrates, if not those on the Tigris. To him Roman dates were modern, and Roman monuments, though great for Europe, were on a scale comparatively small, not equalling in magnitude those of Asia, not approaching in grace those of Hellas. In his eye all the princes of the ancient monarchies laughed at the notion of Gregorovius, that the idea of a world-empire originated with the Romans—nay, no more than did the idea of the Trojan War.
Towards Pius IX personally the feeling of the Jew would be rather kindly, for he, like Sixtus V, had relieved the Hebrews from some of the severities to which they had long been subjected by preceding Popes. But this would not prevent the whole tormented past from rising in memory before the Rabbi and stirring him to hope that he might now be going to witness the last show ever to be exhibited by one of the cruel race of the Pope-Kings. The pen in which his people had been shut up, the distinguishing badge, the differential taxes, the religious worry, and the manifold enormities committed upon them in the name of Christ who loved them, of Peter who lived for them, and of Paul who gave himself repeatedly to death for them, had long helped to set him and his on hating Christ, and Peter, and Paul. "Hard as their lot was under the Caesars," says our pamphlet, "it became harder still when the ecclesiastical Head was crowned by Pepin Le Bref king of the States of the Church, and actually ruler of the world." The day was now past when the Corso, in carnival-time, rang with the shouts of so-called Christians, hailing the spectacle of Jews naked, except a girdle round the loins and ropes round their necks, forced to run races against riderless mules, and asses, and buffaloes. For a long time this service had been performed for the sacred city by riderless horses, goaded by spiked balls slashing into their sides. Nevertheless, those former days would rise up before the Rabbi's eye, as would also the price paid for ransom. As he passed along, between him and the Corso stood the one pile still entire which to memory represented the Pagan Romanism under which his first ancestors in the city had suffered, and to the eye represented the Papal Romanism under which their descendants had continued for so many ages to groan. Dedicated by Agrippa to Cybele and all the gods, it had been rededicated by Boniface IV to Mary and all the martyrs. Though still best known as the Pantheon, its name in Rome is St. Mary of the Rotunda.
Our Rabbi would naturally, on such an occasion, compare it as it had been and as it now is; for the associations of the day would suggest to his mind that gathering of the provincials in the plain of Dura, when some of his forefathers had to bear witness against the longing natural to those who imagine themselves heads of the human species, to set up new idols, and to insist on unity by means more urgent than godly. That was the first clearly recorded scene in the fiery drama of Catholic Unity; a unity bending, breaking, or burning all nations, peoples, and tongues into religious and political submission to one human head. Probably the Rabbi would admit that there was some ground of justice in the words of Joseph de Maistre, that the Pantheon had been devoted to all the vices, and now was devoted to all the virtues. Thus far the Christian element in Papal Romanism had asserted its moral superiority. But the Rabbi would feel that there was exaggeration upon both sides of De Maistre's assertion. The gods of the Pagans were not all personified vices, any more than are now all those of the Hindus. Many of them were so, and that is enough. On the other hand, not all the saints of the Papal Pantheon represent personified virtues, judged by any code but the sad one of the Popes themselves. The Rabbi would hardly recognize St. Peter Arbues, red with the blood of thousands of the seed of Abraham, as one of the Virtues, any more than as one of the Graces. He would, however, recognize the correctness of Joseph De Maistre's estimate of the kind of change made by the Popes in the Pantheon. He would also admit the good judgment of M. Fisquet in selecting the following passage of De Maistre, when describing the ceremonies of Rome for Frond's history—[198]
It is in the Pantheon that Paganism is rectified and brought back to the primitive system, of which it is only a visible corruption. The name of God is exclusive and incommunicable. Nevertheless, there are many gods, in heaven and in earth. There are intelligences, better natures of deified men (hommes divinisés). The gods of Christianity are the saints. Around God are assembled all the gods, to serve Him in the place and order assigned to them.
The Rabbi might say, The Law pulls down the word "gods," by applying it to magistrates, thus making it mean little; but these ignorant priests lift it up to mean something more than the Pagans ever did mean by it, as if the latter had imagined that each god was a supreme being, or something near it. De Maistre, however, had more sense. He knew that "saints" was another name for gods, only they were not to be vicious, which was no doubt the original idea.[199]
By this time the dull and dripping air would begin to vibrate with the roll of carriages. Both in the rain and under cover, the throng was pouring towards one point. From the poor streets, where once stretched the glorious Fora of the Caesars, from the old Suburra, from the regions covered by the gardens of Sallust, from the spot where the persecuting name of Diocletian and a splendid church are now locally associated, from all the flanks of the Quirinal, would the stream come pouring towards the old Field of Mars. Bishops, artists, and the models of the artists, priests and beggars, quaint peasants, handsome artisans, well-dressed tradesmen, pressed in slush and silence past the lone pillar of Trajan, nobly sad, standing amidst memories of might and signs of impotence.
In the crowd speckled by ecclesiastical and peasant costumes, many an English figure, both home and colonial, steadily made way, and many an American one, and a few of the swarthy South Americans. At least one Scotch bonnet and plaid pushed through the throng.[200] And he who wore them saw the well-known cap of the German student. Though, in general, not much addicted to attend solemnities, the Roman shopkeeper would on this occasion be well represented. His motto had hardly been "Bread and Shows," but rather "Shows and Bread." The city had, to a considerable extent, lived upon its exhibitions; and every grand one designed by the priests raised them in the eyes of shopkeepers, lodging-keepers, and cabmen.[201]