How to see the Vatican

This volume gives the only description in English of the Vatican, considered, not as a collection of museums, but as the Royal Palace of the Popes, since Mr. Sladen’s well-known book, The Secrets of the Vatican, is now completely out of print, and can never be published again, part of it remaining in the hands of the original publishers, Messrs. Hurst & Blackett, and part having been transferred to ourselves.

This was because the chapters of the book which related to the home-life of the Pope necessarily need changing much oftener than the parts which describe the Vatican Palace itself. Those portions have been brought up to date, and are published, with some very interesting new matter included, by Messrs. Hurst & Blackett, under the title of The Pope at Home. The remainder of the book, likewise brought up to date, and with certain interesting additions, constitutes How to See the Vatican.

The illustrations are taken from photographs of parts of the Vatican not usually shown to visitors, reproductions of prints of Old St. Peter’s and the treasures of the Crypt; and various plans of the Vatican and the Crypt to explain the gradual growth of the Palace and Cathedral of the Popes from the date of St. Peter’s Martyrdom—A.D. 67—to our own day.

It will be noted also that the museums, picture galleries, and the like, for the reason mentioned above, and to keep the book within handbook limits, are only alluded to incidentally.

The word Vatican is familiar to travellers in the signification of a place with museums of matchless sculpture, and a gallery of paintings, and a chapel whose paintings are yet more famous. This does not help them to understand the first signification. The number of English people who have visited the Vatican Collections without giving any thought to the Vatican beyond them is very great. This is excusable because there is no guide-book in English, and no adequate guide-book in any language, to the Vatican as a Palace.

The reason is not hard to discover. In the days before the cataclysm of 1870, when Pius IX. was on the Papal Throne reigning like an Augustus, the insatiable curiosity which characterizes readers pampered by the gossip-loving periodicals of the twentieth century had not demanded what we call books of travel, meaning books of sight-seeing, which are so popular now. And since 1870 the Vatican has been in mourning.

For reasons pointed out in the Publishers’ Note, How to See the Vatican excludes those parts of the Palace with which every visitor is familiar, viz. the Sculpture Galleries, the Sistine Chapel, the Stanze and Loggie of Raffaelle, and the Pinacoteca. They are merely catalogued in the opening chapter, in which I give the category of the various chapels, chambers, courtyards, and gardens which make up the Vatican. I take it for granted that everyone is familiar with them, and devote my space to introducing the British and American publics to the neglected or usually closed parts of the Palace, with the necessary historical allusions.

I open with the story of the Vatican and the Quintian Meadows from the days when the curly-haired Cincinnatus left his plough to head the armies of the Republic as Dictator. Then I tell the story of the building of the world’s most famous palace from the time of Pope Saint Symmachus to the times of the three Popes of exile who bore the devoted name of Pius—Pius VI., Pius VII., and Pius IX.; and give two chapters to the reconstruction of Old St. Peter’s, built by Constantine the Great, which lasted for more than a dozen centuries; and three chapters to that wonderful charnel-house of Gothic art in Rome, the Crypt of St. Peter’s, whose pavement is the actual floor of the Church of Constantine, and whose vaults are strewn with the shattered tombs of eighty-six Mediæval Popes.

It is into these chapters and the chapters on Nicholas V., the Father of the Vatican Library, the Mæcenas of the Papacy, the Apostle of Learning, that history enters so much.

After these I deal with the Vatican Libraries,—old and new,—the glowing hall and marvellous manuscripts and antiques of the Library of Sixtus V., and the Leonine Library, below it, by which Leo XIII. fulfilled Nicholas V.’s ambition of making the Vatican enlighten the world. I give a glimpse of Montaigne in the Vatican Library. I say what I know about the Archives from the time of Pope Saint Damasus; and dwell on the beauty and romance of the Vatican Gardens—the Pope’s kingdom of this world. That is followed by a number of shorter chapters on the byways of the Vatican trodden by few feet—the Paoline and Leonine Chapels, the Treasury of the Sistine Chapel, the Pope’s private tapestry rooms and personal apartments, the Sala Regia, the Sala Ducale, the Loggia of Giovanni da Udine, the Pope’s Coach-house, the Gallery of Raffaelle’s tapestries, the Gallery of the Candelabri, the Gallery of the Maps, the mysteries of the Sacristy and the Dome of St. Peter’s; and I wind up with the little-known Etruscan Museum and the Borgia Apartments. The few who have crossed the threshold of the Etruscan Museum may be glad to cross it again with one who has visited most of the Etruscan cities, half-buried in flowers and turf, on hills in hidden valleys, which are the delight and despair of the antiquarian. The Borgia Rooms, now not so difficult to visit, are included, not to give a detailed criticism of their pictures, already so superbly treated by Ehrle and Stevenson, and Ricci, but partly to convey their effect as the most typically palatial part of the royal Palace of the Popes, and partly to give a number of interesting facts about them which have never before appeared in English.

From the above it will be seen that I have aimed at giving the traveller who goes to Rome for sight-seeing, and the stay-at-home who has to do his sight-seeing in books of travel, some idea of the parts of the Vatican which are not generally seen; either because the visitor does not know where to look for them, or because they are only shown as a special favour.

I am myself a Protestant, a member of the Church of England. My idea of patriotism makes it impossible that I should ever leave the Church of my forefathers. But it is only upon the Rights and the Independence of the Church that I have strong feelings; the differences of dogma which have grown up since it parted from the Church of Rome do not concern me. I feel towards the Church of Rome as an Anglophile American feels towards England: I feel that I sprang from it. I do not forget that I belonged to it, until the Middle Ages, which are my special study and delight, were ended. Its history and antiquities occupy a great part of my thoughts, for I spend half my life in Italy, and the days I have passed in Italy have mostly been devoted to Church antiquities. I regard the venerable Church, which has been going like a clock since the days of the Apostles, with the utmost affection and interest. Not having been brought up in the Church of Rome, and having a feeling of repulsion to all dogma, I cannot hope to penetrate deeper than the outer shell of that ancient and glorious institution. But I hope that those who are members of the Church of Rome will recognize the pleasure and enthusiasm with which I study their antiquities and monuments; and accept my assurance that, if I have written anything which hurts their feelings, I have not written it with any outspokenness or levity that I might not have used in writing of England. And England is my religion.

Before closing this foreword I have to make various acknowledgments. There are many books to which I have to acknowledge my indebtedness. First among these comes Gregorovius’s great History of Rome in the Middle Ages, translated by Mrs. Gustavus W. Hamilton, and published by George Bell & Sons (8 vols. in 13, £3 3s. nett). This book is a fountain of inspiration to anyone who essays to write about Rome in the Middle Ages. Not only are its springs inexhaustible: the fountain itself is so clear and beautiful that to take draughts from it is a perpetual delight. The smaller volume of Gregorovius, from which I have made several quotations—the Tombs of the Popes, translated by Mr. R. W. Seton Watson, and published by Archibald Constable & Co. (with whose permission these quotations have been made)—I should not have used so much but for the admirable English of the translation. Other books of Messrs. Bell, to which I have referred a few times, are Miss Mary Knight Potter’s The Art of the Vatican, and Roscoe’s Life of Leo X.

Mr. John Murray has published several books which I have constantly before me. Besides Murray’s Handbook to Rome, which has always been recognized as one of the best in any language, there are Sir A. H. Layard’s Handbook to the Italian Schools of Painting, based on Kugler’s handbook, sixth edition (2 vols., 24s. nett); Dennis’s Cities and Cemeteries of Etruria (2 vols., 36s. nett); Nielsen’s History of the Papacy in the Nineteenth Century, 1907 (2 vols., 24s. nett); and Mr. W. G. Waters’s Translation of the Journal of Montaigne’s Travels, which contains some interesting passages about the Vatican Library. Dean Milman’s History of Latin Christianity, published by the same firm, I have found of very little use; it is too concentrated.

Messrs. Macmillan & Co. have brought out valuable books on the subject. Lanciani’s four earlier volumes, Pagan and Christian Rome, Ancient Rome, the Destruction of Ancient Rome, and Ruins and Excavations of Ancient Rome, all of them published by this firm, are never off my writing-table. Macmillan’s Handbook to Italy and Sicily has a special value because in it the towns are arranged alphabetically in gazetteer fashion. Other books of this firm to which I have occasionally to refer are Mr. Walter Lowrie’s Christian Art and Archæology, Professor Bryce’s phenomenal book, The Holy Roman Empire, and those delightful books, Mrs. Oliphant’s Makers of Modern Rome, and Mr. Marion Crawford’s Ave Roma Immortalis. The essay entitled A Survey of the Thirteenth Century, in Mr. Frederic Harrison’s volume of essays, The Meaning of History, which I keep on a shelf beside my volumes of John Addington Symonds, I have found very suggestive.

There are few publishers to whom I am more indebted in the preparation of this work than Messrs. A. & C. Black, who publish the admirable Handbook to Christian and Ecclesiastical Rome, by Misses Tuker and Malleson, which I have used throughout for checking the information given in French and Italian works. I have also referred a few times to the large book on Rome by the same ladies, which is one of the best illustrated volumes in Messrs. Black’s colour series; and Professor Middleton’s classic Remains of Ancient Rome. Messrs. Black have also a two-and-sixpenny guide-book to Rome, with coloured illustrations, written by Mr. E. A. Reynolds-Ball in 1906.

Mr. T. Fisher Unwin has four volumes in his Story of the Nations series (price 5s. nett per vol.): Rome, by Mr. Arthur Gilman, M.A. (6th imp., 3rd ed.); The Papal Monarchy, by Dr. William Barry; Mediæval Rome, by Mr. William Miller; and Modern Rome, by Professor Pietro Orsi—all of them useful for facts.

I have had constant occasion to refer to that valuable book, Hare’s Walks in Rome, brought up to date like Hare’s Days round Rome, by Mr. St. Clair Baddeley, who has the responsible position of representing the English subscribers interested in the Excavation of the Forum. Both these books are published by Messrs. Kegan Paul, Trench, & Co. One of the best books dealing incidentally with the Vatican is Klaczko’s Rome and the Renaissance, translated by Mr. John Dennie, very beautifully brought out by G. P. Putnam’s Sons.

For one period of the Vatican Messrs. Duckworth & Co.’s beautifully produced edition of Mrs. Ady’s Raffaelle is useful.

There is a little about the Vatican Library in Helbig’s Guide to the Public Collections of Classical Antiquities in Rome, published by Baedeker. Baedeker’s Central Italy is indispensable; it is so extremely well arranged, so sure to mention salient facts, like dates and measurements, which one has occasion to check.

For the purpose of this volume I have not had occasion to use much that very picturesque book, Father Chandlery’s Pilgrim Walks in Rome, published by the Manresa Press, though I have found it most useful in the larger work I am preparing about Rome. I understand that much information about Old St. Peter’s is scattered through Father Barnes’s large work on St. Peter in Rome, which I have not seen.

One of the best accounts of the Pope’s apartments to be found anywhere is in Zola’s Rome, of which the English edition is published by Messrs. Chatto & Windus, who are likewise the publishers of the cheap editions of Charles Reade’s The Cloister and the Hearth, into which Nicholas V. comes; and Wilkie Collins’s Antonina.

Far the most interesting volume of gossip about the Popes is Silvagni’s La Corte e la Società Romana nei XVIII. e XIX. secoli, of which a most spirited translation has been published by Mrs. Frances Maclaughlin (Elliot Stock).

A rather similar book is the late W. W. Story’s famous Roba di Roma, sixth edition, published by Messrs. Chapman & Hall, who are also the publishers of Mr. Frederic Harrison’s novel, Theophano, which has a great deal about Rome and the Popes in the age of the Ottos. As interesting as Roba di Roma, if not as Silvagni, but, of course, written from a very different standpoint, is Cardinal Wiseman’s Recollections of the Last Four Popes and of Rome in their Times, published by Messrs. Hurst & Blackett.

Last in the list of English books I may mention the translation of Dr. Ludwig Pastor’s History of the Popes, published by Mr. John Hodges, in the Catholic Standard Library, a book as picturesque and packed with learning as Gregorovius’s, if less succinct.

Finally, I may say that for all recent special information on my subject I have had to go to French and Italian books.

First, I must naturally mention the superb works written by Messrs. Ehrle and Stevenson on the Borgia Rooms, and Corrado Ricci on Pinturicchio, in which much space is devoted to the Borgia Rooms. Both of these noble works, which cost five or six guineas apiece, were written in Italian, but of the latter Mr. Heinemann has brought out a superbly illustrated translation with glorious coloured plates.

The house of Firmin-Didot et Cie have brought out, at 3 frs. 50 centimes each, two most valuable volumes containing contributions by M. Georges Goyau, M. Paul Fabre, M. Pératé, and the Vicomte Melchior de Vogüé, under the titles of La Gouvernement de l’Église, and La Papauté et la Civilization. The former is indispensable to anyone who wishes to form a succinct idea of the personnel of the Vatican; it is most lucidly and attractively written; and it and the Vie Intime de Pie X., by the Abbé Cigala, who is by birth a noble of Turin, are the two most interesting books on the Vatican which I have read.

The Vie Intime is even more up to date than the Gouvernement de l’Eglise; it is published by Lethielleux et Cie, who also are the publishers of M. Lector’s Le Conclave.

For the information about the Vatican and St. Peter’s Crypt, which form a pièce de résistance in my book, I am most indebted to the Éléments d’Archéologie Chrétienne of Professor Marucchi, the Pope’s archæologist, the de Rossi of the day, and the Cryptes Vaticanes of Père Dufresne, which was, until I brought out Old St. Peter’s and St. Peter’s Crypt, the only book on the subject, and is a mine of information.

I have left to the end Pistolesi’s magnificent work, Il Vaticano, published eighty years ago in eight huge folios, at the expense, I believe, of a former Earl of Shrewsbury. Half my illustrations are reproductions of the hundreds of superb plans and plates in this book. Pistolesi is what Americans would call the bed-rock, upon which many of the later books about the Vatican are founded, and its value is much enhanced by the fact that, unlike most large Italian works, it is well indexed.

I hope that I have not omitted any of the works which have been valuable to me in the prolonged studies which preceded the writing of my book. If I have, I tender my most sincere apologies to their authors and publishers. I must conclude with a word of thanks to Miss Heath Wilson, of the English Library in the Piazza di Spagna at Rome, a valued friend, who has given me much help by procuring for me various materials not procurable in England.

In this book I have traced the story of the Vatican Hill and the Vatican Palace from their earliest days. I have endeavoured to reconstruct Old St. Peter’s out of the fragments that survive, and have lingered long in the Crypt of St. Peter’s, which, with its memories and remains of the ancient basilica, is both as a monument and in history the most important part of the Vatican. My purpose in this volume has been to initiate the British and American public in the sights of the Vatican which visitors do not generally see.

I shall not take up their time by describing again in detail the parts of the palace which are already adequately described in a score of good books. We shall need all our space for the particular object we have in view.

Of all the secret places of the Vatican there is none which fires the imagination of the visitor more than the Garden of the Pope, so often called his Eden. The allusion is inevitable—for at the very gates of the Vatican, on the pinnacle of the Castle of Sant’ Angelo, is the great Bronze Angel with the drawn sword, whom the Pope will not pass, because the tomb of the heathen Emperor below is filled with the soldiers of the re-born Rome, which dispossessed the Church of the kingdom of this world. Once past this cordon, he would be out of his dominions.

But the simile is incomplete, because the World without, and not the Garden within, is the Eden to which the Angel bars the way. Yet the garden must be a very Paradise to the Popes, because it is the only spot where they may listen, as Numa Pompilius listened on this very hill, to the vaticinations of Nature, the wise counsellor of the weary brain.

In these narrow limits are wood and vineyard—a classic garden buried from the wind and open to the sun; the voices of falling waters; and the garden-pavilion of the fourth Pius, with its haunting beauty in the image of a Roman Emperor’s pleasure-house. It is full of memories of the saintly Carlo Borromeo—but it is easier to credit it with the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius.

How thankful must he be, whose feet never pass beyond his gates, that in Italy the flowers of the field assert their right-of-way to every nook uncumbered with masonry. The shady groves, where he walks, when the heat of the summer day is a burden, have, in the bright leafless days of Spring, a joyous carpet of violets and anemones, squills as blue as Roman skies, and crimson cyclamens which embalm the breeze.

But more than all these must he prize, as he stands on the towered wall, built a thousand years ago by the fourth Leo to guard the Holy Hill from the heathen Saracen, the view of the open road, of the spacious Campagna, and the distant sea, which is to him the world—the Vineyard where there is no cold shadow of Italian Monarchy falling, as the shadow of Elijah fell upon the sunshine of King Ahab.

Prosaic as may be the suggestions of the word coach-house in unlovely London, romance lurked till lately in the coach-house of the Popes, shadowed by the stately stone-pines of his Garden. For here were shown the trappings with which the successor of St. Peter rode on his white mule down the Sacred Way, climbed by the Scipios and Cæsars in their Triumphs, to take seisin of the Lateran, the chief Church of Christendom, the proto-palace of the Papacy. That great coach, all scarlet and gold, with the flying and trumpeting cherubs, carried Pius IX., the last of the Pope-Kings, in his royal processions, surrounded by all the Papal Court on foot, on the four great days of the year. Six huge white horses drew it, and one of their postilions lived to tell the tale among the relics of the former grandeur.

In these days, when the Pope never drives from the Vatican Gates, the coach-house has surrendered its unneeded chambers to the Pope’s pictures and the swelling Archives of the Vatican, many of which made the lorn pilgrimage to Avignon, in the years of the First Captivity; and have only come back in these latter days.

From the archive rooms you step into the noble Leonine Library, which Leo XIII. established to receive all the printed books of the Biblioteca Vaticana.

There is a pathos haunting the Leonine Library, like that which stalks in the deserted halls of Holyrood, for here the first of the Popes to wear no earthly crown strove to carry on with undiminished dignity the more than royal ambition of the immortal Nicholas V., to make the Vatican the light of the world, to maintain on its hill a city that could not be hid.

He laid the foundation of not one new hall, he added few books that were not printed in his own Papal presses, but he turned the famous and immemorial Library from a stagnant pool into a stream of living waters, which should flow to the ends of the earth. For he made the springs of learning—the innumerable Archives—the priceless manuscripts, the half-million of printed books gathered in his own halls of study, mingle their currents for every scholar, of whatever country or creed, who thirsted for the river of learning, strewn with golden sands for discoverers.

The new halls in which Pope Leo stored the printed books are, in architecture, as they are in virtue, the foundations of the noble Sala Sistina, which is the outward and visible glory of the Vatican Library.

This vast hall, over two hundred feet in length, frescoed with gay arabesques perpetuating the designs which Raffaelle and Giovanni da Udine copied from Nero’s Golden House,⁠[1] when it was first rescued from the earth of jealous centuries, is at once the most brilliant and the most dignified, though not the best in art, of the imperial Chambers of Rome. In it, cased in glass, are the most famous manuscripts in the world. It is still the most princely of libraries as it was in the days before the Spanish Armada, when the superb Sixtus founded it. But when you are in it you have no heed for him; your thoughts go back another four generations to the fairy changeling who was turned from a humble scholar—from a poor priest who tolled bells—into the most brilliant monarch who ever sat on the throne of St. Peter. In that same year, 1447, when the little Ligurian of Sarzana was turned by chance into the head of Christendom, and burst upon an astonished world as a rose opens in the night, the great Ligurian city of Genoa gave birth to the greatest of all the sailors and citizens who sprang from the Republic of the Dorias.

Christopher Columbus was born just as Nicholas V. became Pontiff. Truly the world was promised, if not a Renaissance, a fresh dawn, in which the clouds of Papal Schisms and Italian Wars should lift for a day of matchless brilliance, wherein the ships of Europe were to swim to Africa, India, and America, and the writers of Greece to come back across the Styx.

Few of the nine thousand manuscripts collected for the most magnificent and munificent of the patrons of learning by the great scholars of the Mid Quattrocento, like Poggio Bracciolini, the forerunner of Angelo Mai, but have gone the way of all the earth like the eight resplendent chests which contained his choicest treasures. Splendour was the language in which Nicholas would have the Vatican proclaim its message to the world. And even of the buildings with which he sought to make the Vatican Hill the rival of the Palatine, only one cell remains in the glory with which he clothed it—the tiny chapel which glows with the masterpieces of Fra Angelico, though it was Nicholas who built the walls of the Appartamenti which Pinturicchio frescoed for the Borgias, and of the Stanze which Raffaelle immortalized for Julius II.

Of the thousands of marvellous manuscripts, and the paintings of the Classic Age, gathered in the Library, of the Vatican Codex and the Nozze Aldobrandini, and the bits of Old Roman life from the Catacombs, I speak in their place.

The immortal grace of Raffaelle in the Stanze and Loggie, the magnificence of Michel Angelo in the Sistine Chapel, the masterpieces of the Vatican Picture Gallery, even the visions of Greece in her glory, which people the Sculpture Halls of the transformed Villa of Innocent VIII., I pass by in silent wonder, for they are not in the secret places of the Vatican.

But it is not everyone who can effect a visit to the Borgia Rooms which Leo XIII. rescued from the tall bookcases of the library, and restored to apartments for Princes. Here till recently, like his forerunners when their high office was first created, dwelt the Cardinal Secretary of State amid the almost matchless splendour of the halls which Alexander VI. caused to be frescoed by Pinturicchio. The Borgia Apartments are the most sparkling gem in the Vatican’s golden crown of art.

Apart from the duty or the curiosity which takes you to attend a reception of the Cardinal Secretary, or the Maggiordomo in his apartments, it is well to pay the visit to appreciate the atmosphere of the Papal Court, its dignity, tempered with approachability; its simplicity, tempered by quiet richness; its unmistakable air of a Royal presence.

Though it may be visited without leave, it is only on one day in the week, and therefore, where a hundred see the Apollo Belvedere, barely one sees the storied arras richly dight, which Raffaelle designed for Leo X. to hang under the frescoes of the Sistine Chapel. These tapestries, woven in the looms of Flanders four hundred years ago, suffered from fire and sword in the evil days of the Constable of Bourbon and his Protestant Landsknechts, but they are still the world’s premier tapestries: their colours still glow: their genius is such that we can only think of the Apostles in the forms in which Raffaelle created them: and in the Gallery of the Candelabri, which you visit with them, is a collection of masterpieces.

Nor are these the only tapestries in the Vatican, for there are two other rooms where the Pope and his Cardinals robe, and State banquets are held, and the officers of the Swiss Guard have their mess, which are hung with the noblest tapestries of the sixteenth century, some of them woven for the profuse Farnese Pope, some from the Gobelins looms, given by the Roi Soleil to commemorate his betrothal—all reputed to be priceless. Priceless, too, are some of the Papal treasures in the sacristies of St. Peter’s and the Sistine.

The chief treasures in the Tesoro of St. Peter’s are the dalmatic worn by Charlemagne when he came to Rome a thousand years ago to be crowned; and the candlesticks wrought by Benvenuto Cellini to grace the High Altar when the Pope is celebrating Mass. In the Sistine Treasury are preserved the lace robe worn by Boniface VIII. at the first Jubilee, six centuries ago, and the first Golden Rose from which have sprung all the Golden Roses conferred by the Papacy on its benefactors. But here the special treasures are lost in the marvellous richness of the suites of robes worn by the Pope and the Cardinals in functions of special state, such as the black robes woven on gold in which the officiating Cardinals stand round the catafalque of the dead Pope, and the trailing robes, as rich and white as snow, in which the Pope is borne into St. Peter’s like a saint in glory, on his Sedia Gestatoria.

Every visitor must needs enter the Vatican by one of three entrances: by whichever he may enter he must be dead of soul whose imagination is not fired.

If it is the gate in the little pavilion, as graceful as a Classical temple, which admits the unprivileged to the Pope’s Garden, the Vatican Library and the Museum of Sculpture, the Sistine Chapel and Raffaelle’s Stanze and Loggia, he will be met by a procession of the gods of Greece, chiselled out of fair white marble in the workshops of two thousand years ago.

If he stops and enters at the Portone di Ferro—the iron gate at the foot of the hill—he is in the oldest part of the palace, whose dark and frowning towers, more in keeping with the fortress of Avignon, rose in the age of the Borgias and della Roveres; the tall, dour Swiss, who guard them, still wear the motley liveries, and, on occasion, the pikemen’s armour of the Middle Ages. On either side, as he passes in, rise the Sistine Chapel and the Palace of the Borgias—all of the fifteenth century; and this is the way by which, in the old days of the temporal power and pomp, the Papal cortège issued.

To the stranger in the gates the chief entrance of the Vatican must always be the great Portone di Bronzo—the Bronze Gate, which opens on the stupendous Piazza of St. Peter’s, and the temple-like colonnade of Bernini.

Here, too, are the picturesque Swiss, and a vista, more regal if not so ancient or historical. The stranger will not heed the closely guarded staircase on his right until he knows that it is the Jacob’s ladder to the apartments of the Pontiff himself. His eyes will be taken up with the Scala Regia (the giant staircase, royal in name as well as in magnificence), which leads up through a stately colonnade to the Sala Regia—the Royal Hall—where, surrounded by vast frescoed triumphs of the Catholic Faith, beneath a fretted ceiling as rich in gold as the waters of Pactolus, the Pope-King was wont to receive the Ambassadors of his brother Kings. The very passage which leads off it is of such dimensions and ambitions that it is called the Ducal Hall.

The Vatican is full of chambers with lofty and romantic names—such as the Hall of the Beatifications, where saints on earth are canonized; the Gallery of Inscriptions; the Christian and Profane Museums; the Hall of the Popes; the Hall of the Madonna; the Hall of the Lives of the Saints; the Hall of the Credo; the Hall of the Sibyls (the last five in the Borgia Apartments)—not one of which but is worth seeing, not one of which but can be seen.

The Vatican, like Janus, the God of Rome, has two faces. Seen from the one side it is the Pope’s Kingdom; seen from the other it is his home. On the first you may gaze on any weekday morning; the second none may behold but those who are bidden.

Who shall complain? There is little to observe in the Pope’s apartments but his private life—and that he who lives the life of the man with the iron mask has a right to keep sealed from observation.

Apart from the aura of Sanctity, apart from venerable associations, this portion of the palace has nothing to show within which would compare with the work of the Borgias and della Roveres. It is only three hundred years old, and recent Popes have returned to Apostolic simplicity.

But it contains a few noble chambers, like the Hall of the Consistory, and is rendered impressive by the atmosphere and the velvet-liveried retainers of a Court.

What the Vatican lacks is architectural nobility. When you gaze on the glowing vaults of Raffaelle’s Loggia, the triple tier of arcades which surround the superb Court of Saint Damasus, even when you move in the gorgeous baroque immensity of chambers like the Sala Regia, you feel their majesty. But the Vatican has neither the romantic splendour of Windsor, nor the grandeur of the Louvre. It looks more like a Parliament House than a Palace. Everyone, who lifts his eyes to it, must wish that Nicholas V. had lived to accomplish his gorgeous visions, and had crowned the royal and holy hill with ramparts and towers and soaring white palaces till it rivalled the Palatine groaning under the palaces of the Cæsars.

The Vatican, says Hare, in his Walks in Rome, is the largest palace in the world. He gives its measurements as one thousand one hundred and fifty-one English feet long, and seven hundred and sixty-seven broad. These measurements are, with slight variations, repeated in other guide-books, with the exception that in Baedeker’s Central Italy it is further stated that the total extent covered by the palace is thirteen and a half acres, while in Baedeker’s Paris it is stated that the Louvre and the fragment of the Tuileries together cover forty-eight acres. And in any case you have to ask to what these measurements of length and breadth refer. From the left-hand edge of the Sistine Chapel to the extreme point of the Sculpture Museum, built out of Innocent’s VIII.’s Villa Belvedere, the length must be very much greater than eleven hundred and fifty-one feet. For the long Gallery of the Library alone measures a thousand and twenty feet. But if the width be taken to refer to the stretch from the back of the sacristies of the Sistine Chapel to the back of the Papal apartments, that may be approximately correct. It is to be noted also that whereas Hare and Murray each concede eleven thousand apartments, Baedeker says that the number of halls, chapels, saloons, and private apartments is more likely to come to one thousand than to eleven thousand, while Misson, who visited the Vatican intelligently, in the reign of Queen Anne, says twelve thousand five hundred. Be this as it may, all of them concede twenty courts and eight grand staircases, and Murray puts down the minor staircases at about two hundred.

We must now consider the principal buildings of which the Vatican Palace consists. The first of the twenty courtyards is the Cortile di San Damaso (4), standing at the head of the Scala Pia (1), the Pope’s staircase, which leads up on the right directly you enter the bronze gates. It is the grand courtyard of the Vatican, officially, for the apartments of the Pope, the apartments of the Cardinal Secretary of State, and the entrance to the library used by members of the Household open off it.

A second courtyard (e) is in the centre of the apartments actually occupied by the Pope. A third, just to the south of the Papal apartments, is called the Courtyard of the Grooms, Cortile dei Palafrenieri (c). The fourth is the Court of the Parrot (Cortile del Pappagallo) (10). It is situated between the Sala Ducale (24, 25) and the Borgia Rooms (36, 37, 38, 39), in the oldest part of the Vatican Palace proper, built in the fifteenth century by Nicholas V., Sixtus IV., and Alexander VI. It is connected by a narrow passage with the Court of the Iron Gate, the Cortile del Portone di Ferro (11), which stands between the Sala Regia (26) and the ante-chapel of the Sistine Chapel (29) on one side and the Torre Borgia (40) on the other. This again opens out of the Cortile della Sentinella (12)—Court of the Guard—the place where you always see a little knot of the Swiss Guards in their picturesque uniforms as you begin to climb the hill past the entrance of the Picture Gallery to the Pavilion (100), which admits you to the Sculpture Galleries, the Library, and the Pope’s Garden, and all the other parts of the Vatican to which admission can be secured by payment.

As far as the exterior is concerned, this is by far the most interesting part of the Vatican Palace. Its lofty gateway and towers, with their beetling machicoles, the heavy, overhanging balconies, reminding one, with their forbidding strength, of the rock-like Papal Palace of Avignon, are full of the atmosphere of the fifteenth century. There is a grimness in the very colour of the old brown walls. The whole aspect gives you an idea of the many-towered castle which bore the name of the Vatican in the days of the Old St. Peter’s—the one actual fragment of the gigantic enceinte with which Nicholas V. proposed to surround the Vatican Hill, filling its interior with the Holy and Royal city which was to exceed the Palatine of the Cæsars in the vastness and splendour of its buildings, and to contain such a library as would make it the focus of light and learning for all Christendom, for all the civilized world. Thomas Parentucelli, the little man of Sarzana, did not live and work and dream in vain, though the Popes are no longer kings of the Earth, and of all his buildings on the Vatican Hill only one tiny chapel, made heavenly by the genius of Fra Angelico, remains perfect—though even of his books but a handful are left. For the Vatican Library is still the library of libraries, where the originals that have given us our copies of the classic writers of Greece and Rome almost all lie. That is the outward and visible sign, and added to that is the inward and spiritual grace of learning and scholarship which has rarely ceased to illuminate the Papal Court since Nicholas V. gave it birth. He might well have been figured as Moses drawing the waters of learning from the dry rock with a stroke of his rod—the pastoral staff.

Only separated from this old brown bit of the Vatican by the building of Nicholas, which was converted into the Borgia Apartments, is the seventh courtyard (58), the Cortile del Belvedere, which is divided from the ninth, the Giardino della Pigna (39), by the Vatican Library, and the Braccio Nuovo (72) of the Sculpture Galleries, and the little court of the Vatican printing-office (64), which must be counted the eighth.

The entire space occupied by the seventh, eighth, and ninth courtyards, the Cortile del Belvedere, the Giardino della Pigna, and the Giardino della Stamperia, and the buildings which divide them, formed one superb courtyard in the building designed by Bramante at the command of Pope Julius II., to connect the Vatican Palace of his enemies the Borgias with the villa or garden palace of Pope Innocent VIII., which received its name of the Belvedere from its beautiful view. There is another little garden or court, the tenth, in the centre of the Villa of Innocent VIII., which now forms the principal Sculpture Museum. This also is called the Cortile del Belvedere. Of the remaining courtyards, those of the Maresciallo of the Conclave (14), and the Maggiordomo (15), abut on the Sala Ducale, and that of the Archivi is on the far side of the Pavilion by which you enter the Sculpture Museum. But neither these nor the Court of the Falegnami behind the Papal apartments concern the general public—nor do any other of the courts except the Cortile del Forno, which lies at the back of St. Peter’s where you turn up to the Sculpture Gallery.

The principal staircases of the Vatican are the Scala Pia (1), the Scala Regia; the Scala Nobile, which leads up to the Hall of the Biga and the Etruscan Museum; the staircase to the Museo Pio-Clementino; the great staircase on the north side of the Courtyard of San Damaso; the staircase which leads from the Sistine Chapel down to St. Peter’s, and the staircase leading to the Pope’s apartments up from the Courtyard of San Damaso.

The great Scala Pia which sweeps up from the Bronze Doors to the Courtyard of S. Damaso (and consequently to the Pope’s apartments), receives its name from Pius IX., who converted it from an open staircase at the same time as he enclosed the south side of the Courtyard of S. Damaso. Half-way up it is the office of the Pope’s Maestro di Camera, and at the top are the apartments of the Maggiordomo, consisting of a large cloak-room, fitted with tables on which visitors lay their coats and hats, leading into a luxurious apartment of the dimensions of a hall, where the visitors wait and the principal secretaries have their tables, and thence into the Maggiordomo’s office itself.

The Scala Regia is a mountain of stone, claimed by ardent Roman Catholics to be the finest interior staircase in the world. It was designed, like the glorious colonnades of the Piazza of St. Peter’s, by Bernini. It was ordered by the Barberini Pope (Urban VIII.), but not finished till the time of the Chigi Pope (Alexander VII.), whose arms it bears.

It furnishes a magnificent prospect as it mounts up from the Bronze Doors, the public entrance to the Vatican, stretching away in a long vista, commencing with a superb Ionic colonnade; and it must not be forgotten that Bernini also designed enormous gilt consoles for the further decoration, and for the illumination of his great staircase, which still exist but are kept stored away; I allude to them elsewhere. The stucco ornamentations above the arches and on the ceilings which bear the arms of Alexander VII. are the work of the sculptor Algardi and have considerable beauty and elegance, though they are not at all comparable to the work of the Sicilian Giacomo Serpotta, who lived a hundred years later, and, of course, may have been inspired by Algardi. The other staircases will be described as they come into the topographical plan.

At the top of the Scala Pia, as I have said, is the beautiful Cortile di S. Damaso (4), the royal court of the Vatican, which, in its conception, was one of the masterpieces of Bramante, though it has been altered so considerably—particularly under Pius IX.—that much of its original grace is lost. Good old Pio Nono was, it must be confessed, on the horns of a dilemma: on the one hand he had Bramante’s most elegant arcades (20, 21, 22) to consider, on the other hand there were the frescoes of Raffaelle and Giovanni da Udine, which were feeling the effects of four centuries of semi-exposure to the weather. As in the case of St. Peter’s and the Cortile del Belvedere, Bramante was sacrificed to later ideas. The airy and soaring effect of the triple arcades with which he had surrounded the Courtyard of S. Damaso was lost in the glass screens with which the arches were filled. But the frescoes benefited by the conversion of the loggias into a sort of winter garden. The right hand, or east side, of this court is taken up with the apartments, said to be only twenty-two in number, which Sixtus V. built round a minor courtyard for the actual use of the Popes. Of these the Pope’s library, study and bedroom, private reception-room, and a sort of antechamber to it (i, h, g), look south across the Piazza of St. Peter’s over. Rome. The throneroom, the private chapel and its anteroom, the anteroom which leads into them and the second public anteroom, occupy the east side of the quadrangle. The Hall of the Grooms and the first public anteroom occupy the north side, and most of the west side is taken up with the state entrance and the staircase and the fine Sala Clementina (f), in which one of the three pickets of Swiss Guards on duty at the Vatican is stationed.

Out of this opens the Hall of the Bussolanti. This is the name given to the lay attendants, dressed in crimson velvet, who mount guard over the Bussola—the door for keeping out draughts—which gives access to the Pope’s private antechambers. There are thirty-six Bussolanti. In their hall, the laity who are admitted to an audience with the Pope leave their hats and coats and umbrellas. After passing the Bussola you thread a series of antechambers, says Goyau. “The first is guarded by gendarmes, and the secretaries of Cardinals await here the return of their masters. The second is in charge of the Palatine Guards. Turning off to the right the visitor, by a third hall decorated with tapestries, reaches a fourth, in charge of the Noble Guards. To the right a door which can be opened wide gives access to the Chapel of the Holy Father. And it is in this hall that you are stationed when you are present at the Pope’s Mass. A fifth room, called the Anticamera d’Onore, is adorned with the Papal Throne. When you are granted a private audience you attend in this room. It is here that the Pope takes up his position to receive important bodies of visitors; to receive, at the New Year, or on the anniversary of his coronation, the congratulations of the Prelates and Cardinals; and to hear during Lent and Advent the preachings intended for the Papal Court. Two Camerieri d’Onore, one in a violet habit, the other with spada e cappa, are on duty in this antechamber. Before a door at the bottom a Noble Guard is on duty. This door admits to the Anticamera Segreta, reserved for prelates who are at least Camerieri Segreti, and for Cardinals. From this point you have only a threshold to cross and you are at the feet of the Pope.”

This is the easternmost portion of the Vatican Palace, and under its shadow on the south side are the Court of the Grooms, etc. The other two sides of the Court of S. Damaso, which is the next portion of the palace westwards, are taken up with the Loggie of Raffaelle (20, 21, 22), completed by him as the architect from the design of Bramante. Only a limited number of the panels, called Raffaelle’s Bible, because they are taken from Bible history, are from Raffaelle’s hand; but of great interest also are the stucchi and arabesques executed by Giovanni da Udine, who was the sole artist employed in the first-floor gallery on the west side. I have told in another chapter how he copied these arabesques from the newly discovered baths of Titus; they have the double merit of reproducing an ancient Roman monument and being extremely graceful and spirited. The Loggie of Raffaelle do not fall within the scope of this book, for they are one of the parts of the palace which everybody visits. It is through Giovanni da Udine’s loggia that the students who have the privilege of reading in the Vatican Library, as well as the privileged inhabitants of the Vatican, enter the Library, passing along the Gallery of the Inscriptions (Galleria Lapidaria), which is nearly seven hundred feet in length and covered with five thousand fragments of pagan and early Christian inscriptions, sarcophagi and cippi, collected mainly by Pius VII. when Napoleon had carried off all the prizes of sculpture from the Vatican galleries, though a few of them were collected by Clement XIV. and Pius VI. Underneath this is the atelier in which the famous Vatican mosaics, upon which I have said a few words in another chapter, are made. The Gallery of Inscriptions (42) leads into the Chiaramonti Museum (77), which I shall leave until I am speaking of the Sculpture Galleries, to which it belongs. It also received its present designation and use from Pius VII.—the Chiaramonti Pope—and the two together fill one of the two great wings, nearly four hundred yards long, which Pope Julius II. commissioned Bramante to build to unite the palaces which stood in his day with the Villa of Pope Innocent VIII. on the northern edge of the Vatican Hill.

It is best to retrace our steps to the Loggia of Giovanni da Udine, at the back of which are four interesting rooms; the first and largest of the Borgia Apartments, the smoking-room of the Cardinals, called also the Galleriola, (35), or the audience-room; the Spogliatoio, or Hall of the Pappagallo (35), and the Hall of the Paramenti (23). I have mentioned these in order from north to south, but I will take the last, which is entered through the Sala Ducale (24, 25), first. It is singularly well named, for the term Sala dei Paramenti might be applied with equal fidelity to its being the room where the Cardinals put on their sacerdotal robes for great functions, or its being the room with the tapestry hangings with the arms of the Farnese Pope, Paul III., 1534-1549, which are said to be so priceless.

A door from the Sala dei Paramenti admits into the Sala del Pappagallo, or Hall of the Parrot, which contains the nuptial tapestries of Louis XIV. and is the room set apart for the Pope to robe in before he goes to functions in St. Peter’s. Here the Cardinal Secretary of State gives his state dinners, and here, in ordinary life, the officers of the Swiss Guard dine. The long gallery opening out of the end of this room, with reclining benches along its side, after the manner of the guard-rooms of Tunis, is the Galleriola, now the smoking-room of the Cardinals.

The Borgia Apartments are now approached through the Sculpture Galleries, but they have a separate staircase in the north-west corner of the Courtyard of S. Damaso. They formed for some years the official residence of the present Pope’s Prime Minister, the Cardinal Secretary of State, and are the subject of a separate chapter. The first of them—known as the Sala dei Pontefici, or Hall of the Popes (36)—is much the largest. Leo X. had the ceiling decorated with mythological emblems by Giovanni da Udine and Pierino del Vaga, pupils of Raffaelle. It is impossible to believe that the lost Hours of Raffaelle lie, as some have said, under these frescoes, because Leo X. was far too great an admirer of the work of Raffaelle to have allowed a jot or tittle of it to be hidden.

This room is hung with magnificent French tapestries of the sixteenth century, mostly representing the story of Cephalus and Procris. Here I must warn readers that all guide-books, except the latest, are incorrect in the information which they give about the Borgia Apartments, as they have been subjected to so many changes. Even Hare’s Walks in Rome, brought up to date by a man who knows his Rome so well as Mr. St. Clair Baddeley, states that they have been opened as a kind of “Mediæval museum of the Papacy,” Museo di Leone XIII. (Hare, 1905), while in Black’s Guide to Rome (1906), it is repeated that they are the “Mediæval museum of the Papacy,” and that Room I. serves as the anteroom of the Swiss Guard, while another guide-book places the armoury in them. Until twenty years ago all the printed books of the Vatican Library were kept in them.

Coats and hats and umbrellas are left in the Sala dei Pontefici (36), which leads into the second of the Borgia Apartments, where the celebrated frescoes by Pinturicchio, which rival his frescoes in the Library of Siena, begin. This is called the Hall of the Mysteries, or the Hall of the Madonna (37). Here except in the hours during which the public were admitted, one of the Cardinal’s secretaries used to sit who received the cards of visitors admitted for an audience. The regular reception hours were after the Angelus. The exquisite Annunciation is in this room.

From the Camera della Vita della Madonna opens the Camera della Vita dei Santi (38), in which the frescoes are glorious. For here are the story of Santa Barbara; the infinitely lovely picture of St. Catherine (Lucrezia Borgia) disputing with the philosophers before the Emperor; the San Sebastian; the Santa Susanna, and the Isis and Osiris ceiling, selected to give the legend of the bull Apis, the ox being the Borgia arms. This is the waiting-room in which visitors used to remain after the secretary has passed them until the Cardinal sent for them, or more ordinarily, came in person to call them; for the courtesy and courtliness of the great Vatican officials is exquisite.

The fourth room opening out of these is called the Camera delle Arti e Scienze (39), where the Cardinal held his audiences. This, again, has superb Pinturicchio frescoes, representing the Seven Liberal Arts.

From there a staircase of about a dozen steps leads up into the Torre Borgia (40), where there are two rooms, the first of which, with large oriel windows, was the Cardinal Secretary’s study. Just below the ceiling runs a fresco of the Apostles, each holding his special portion of the Creed, whence its name, “The Hall of the Credo.” The celebrated Nozze Aldobrandini, the finest antique fresco known before the grand discoveries at Pompeii, is no longer in this room, as stated in Hare’s Walks in Rome, 1905. It is now in the Vatican Library, where anyone can see it, whereas these two rooms in the Torre Borgia were till recently never shown to the public. The other room in the tower, known as the Sala del Sibylle, has an elaborately frescoed ceiling, and I believe some fine tapestries, but I have not seen this room.

I am told that not even the Cardinal Secretary has seen the bathroom in the suite of rooms higher up in this tower, once occupied by Cardinal Bibiena, the patron of Raffaelle, whose niece was betrothed to the painter, and lies buried by his side in the Pantheon; this was painted by Raffaelle with mythological subjects. Something in these beautiful frescoes offended the prudery of Gregory XIV.’s advisers, and the bath was taken away; and the pictures, which were spared as being some of Raffaelle’s good work, were covered up with wooden panelling to turn the offending bathroom into a chapel. It is said that the panelling has now been removed, but I have not heard of anyone having been allowed to see the pictures.

Over the Borgia Apartments are Raffaelle’s Stanze. Admittance to them is by a staircase turning off the Scala Regia of Bernini. After passing through an anteroom and two small rooms hung with modern pictures of miracles and martyrdoms, you enter the Sala della Immacolata, adorned with huge pictures of the promulgation of the Immaculate Conception by Pius IX., which contains in the centre the superb gilt ark, presented to Pius IX. by the French clergy, one of the finest pieces of modern cabinet-making.

From this you enter the Stanze, which represent the highest triumph of Raffaelle. For Sodoma, Perugino, Luca Signorelli, and other great fifteenth-century masters had all but completed the frescoing of these rooms when Julius II. decided to have them re-frescoed by Raffaelle. You cannot help wondering what became of their feelings, if not of their work. The first Stanza contains the Fire in the Borgo, the Coronation of Charlemagne, the Defeat of the Saracens at Ostia, and Leo III. justifying himself before Charlemagne. These are all by Raffaelle. Perugino’s pictures remain on the ceiling, and the mosaics on the floor come from an ancient Roman villa. This is called Stanza del Incendio. In the second room, called the Stanza della Segnatura, the arabesques of the ceiling are by Raffaelle. The walls are covered by some of Raffaelle’s greatest frescoes: the School of Athens, the Disputa, and the Parnassus are in this room. The third room, the Stanza d’Eliodoro, was (except the ceiling, which was probably by Giulio Romano) entirely by Raffaelle’s own hand. Here are the Liberation of St. Peter, the Mass of Bolsena, the Expulsion of Heliodorus, and the Repulse of Attila. The fourth room, called the Sala di Costantino, is by the pupils of Raffaelle, though preliminary sketches had been made by Raffaelle for the Battle between Constantine and Maxentius. The ceiling is a great deal later; it was completed under Sixtus V. (1585-1590). A door at the end of this room leads into the old hall of the Pope’s grooms (palafrenieri), which, according to Tuker and Malleson, was entirely decorated in chiaroscuro by Raffaelle, though the paintings have been retouched and spoilt by Carlo Maratta and Zucchero. Doors at the end to the left and right lead into Raffaelle’s Loggie and the Chapel of Nicholas V., which is one of the gems of the Vatican, decorated with the masterpieces of Fra Angelico. They were his last and most matured work, executed 1450-1455, and can only be compared to the brilliant Riccardi Chapel of Benozzo Gozzoli at Florence.

After seeing Raffaelle’s Stanze and the Chapel of Nicholas V., it is usual to proceed to the second floor of the Loggie, which enclose the Cortile of S. Damaso, known as Raffaelle’s Loggie, alluded to above. After leaving them, more stairs are ascended to the upper tier of the Loggie, which were decorated with maps under Clement VII. by Antonio da Varese. From this you entered the anteroom of the former Pinacoteca.

The new Pinacoteca is on the road up to the Sculpture Galleries; it was adapted from the disused stables of the Pope. The pictures are not very numerous, but include one or two of the most famous paintings in the world, such as Raffaelle’s Transfiguration.

I will suppose you to have finished your first day’s perambulation of the Vatican by descending from the picture gallery to the Bronze Doors, though, unless accompanied by a very high official of the Vatican Household, you would never have been allowed to have seen all these things one after another as convenience dictated, or to descend this way.

On your way down you would have passed the entrance to the Sala Regia and the famous apartments which lead off it. It would have been better to have passed them in any case, even if you had had time to devote to them, for the right way by which to approach the Sala Regia is to enter the Bronze Gate and mount Bernini’s magnificent staircase, the Scala Regia, so that you may get a true impression of its magnificence.

The Sala Regia (26), called also the Aula Magna, i.e. the Grand Hall, was built by Antonio Sangallo the younger, for that rather baroque Pope, Paul III., for the reception of the Ambassadors of foreign Sovereigns. It is very large and has a very ornate stucco ceiling by Pierino del Vaga, though the stucchi over the door are by Daniele da Volterra. The frescoes of the Triumphs of the Popes are by Vasari, the Zuccheri, and others. The room is over a hundred feet long, fifty feet wide, and seventy feet high. The door on the left admits to the Sistine Chapel (30), which I need not describe, as it is one of the parts of the Vatican usually visited by sightseers.

The door opposite admits to the Sala Ducale (24, 25), a very long, narrow low room, constructed by Bernini, known as the Aula Minor; it is divided into two parts by an arch in the most degraded style of art, composed of curtains and cupids, also by Bernini. Through it the Pope and his Cardinals go to functions at St. Peter’s after robing in the Sala del Pappagallo and the Sala dei Paramenti. And visitors who are lucky enough to get permission to see these two rooms have to approach them through the Sala Ducale. Another door on the same side of the Sala Regia as the Sala Ducale, leads down to the court of the Maresciallo of the Papal Conclave (14).

Opposite this is the door which admits to the Leonine Chapel in the Gallery, which runs over the porch of St Peter’s, built by Carlo Maderno, and hardly mentioned in any guide-book, although it is of very great importance, as it gives on to the gallery of St. Peter’s, from which the newly-elected Pope blesses the people, and contains the window over the Piazza from which he used to bless the people before the loss of the temporal power in 1870. It was converted into a chapel by Leo XIII.

Between it and the Cappella Paolina (34), which is entered by a door at the south-west end of the Sala Regia, are a number of small chambers, in which are stored the gilt consoles, and other portable decorations designed by Bernini for St. Peter’s.

The Cappella Paolina (34) is chiefly famous for having two huge frescoes by Michel Angelo, much restored by his pupils. It was built by the same architect as the Sala Regia, and has some of the best late stucchi in the Vatican.

Though the Sistine Chapel, being so well-known, does not fall within the compass of this work, it is necessary to traverse it, and pass through a little door under Michel Angelo’s fresco of the Last Judgment, to enter the succession of small chambers (31) which form its treasury, where the Pope’s vestments, the vestments for the Cardinals on special occasions, the Popes’ tiaras, the Golden Rose, and other objects of the highest interest are kept. At the back of the Sistine Chapel a staircase (32) leads down from the Vatican to St. Peter’s.

To see the remaining parts of the Vatican, which include all the Museums and the Library, the ordinary visitor has to cross the great Piazza of St. Peter’s, and walk round three-quarters of the Church, until he finds himself in the Cortile del Forno, a quadrangular court, with a fountain in the middle of it, which has St. Peter’s on the one side and the Mint on the other. The Mint, standing on a kind of a terrace, is territorially not part of the Vatican: it is the one spot on the Vatican Hill of which the Italian Government took possession. The road which passes between the two is the Via delle Fondamenta, along which Pope Leo XIII. took that memorable drive which was taken to mean coming out of his captivity, referred to in another chapter.

Before passing under the arch to go up the Vialone di Belvedere to the Sculpture Gallery, glance to your right, where a group of fifteenth-century buildings, tower and gateway and balcony, brown and feudal-looking, arrest your attention. At the entrance are sentries in the half-mediæval dress of the Swiss Guard. That embattled gateway admits to the Cortile della Sentinella (12); one of the three places in the Vatican which has a corps-de-garde, the state entrance to the palace by which Kings and Cardinals and Ambassadors enter to visit the Pope. This court, as I have said, is bounded by the Sistine Chapel (30) on the south, and on the north by the Chapel of Pius V. (56), and the end of the Museo Cristiano. It opens into a second court, known as the Cortile del Portone di Ferro (11); bounded by the Sistine Ante-chapel (29) and the Sala Regia (26) on the south, and the Torre Borgia (40) on the north. This is divided from the Cortile del Pappagallo (10) by a wing containing two small halls—the halls of the Noble Guard. The ground floor rooms round these quadrangles are devoted to various humble and prosaic uses. The chamber on the first floor at the angle of the Vialone and the Cortile della Sentinella is the Chapel of Pius V., with the Room of Small Cabinets beside it. Then follow various rooms of the Christian Museum of the Vatican Library; the Hall of the Christian Paintings (55), the Hall of the Papiri (54), with the Hall of the Nozze Aldobrandini (55) at right angles to them, spanning the road, which has the Room of the Terra-cottas leading off it, the Christian Museum (53), properly so called, the Hall of Aristides (52), the Hall of the Obelisk (51), the Hall of the Bonaventura (50), the Hall of the Vatican Manuscripts (61), the Libraries of the Alexandrine Collection (62), the Ottoboni Collection (65), the Capponi Collection (65), the Borghigiana Collection (66), the first two halls of the Library (66), and the Museo Profano (67). The whole of these, from the Chapel of Pius V. northwards, form the western long wing from the old parts of the Palace to Innocent VIII.’s Villa, and they are confronted all the way along by the Pope’s private garden, separated from them by the Vialone di Belvedere. In the whole of this portion of the Vatican Library, nearly four hundred yards long, you do not see a single book: they are all manuscripts, and put away in presses in the ancient Roman fashion; but you see a good many museum objects. As far as it goes, the Vatican Library would be one of the most interesting museums in Rome if they only let you stop an instant to take anything in. The rooms underneath were constructed for coach-houses and stables. Part of them has been converted into the new Pinacoteca for the Pope’s pictures, and some of the stables have been turned into new chambers for the Archivio, or archive office.

I have spoken elsewhere of the enormous Cortile,⁠[2] between three and four hundred yards long, which Bramante designed to fill the entire space between the two long wings from the old Palace to the Villa of Innocent VIII., of which I have been describing the westernmost. It was to have had a triple tier of the classic arcades in which Bramante delighted; and would, without doubt, have been the finest Cortile in Europe. Tournaments and races were to have been held in it. One could see in it the pagan mind of Pope Julius II., purposing to match the Circus of Caligula and Nero, out of which, owing to the execution of St. Peter, the Vatican grew. At the Palace end there was what the ancient Romans called an esedra, a sort of open-air apse (60), in which the Roman Emperors were wont to ensconce themselves like gods in niches. There is one in the Stadium of Domitian on the Palatine, and another in the Baths of Trajan on the Esquiline. Bramante designed his esedra to be a sort of theatre. It is to be noted that bull-fights have been held here. Jousting went on in the Court of the Tournaments until the time of Sixtus V., as long, in fact, as it went on anywhere. The name applied to the arcades when they were first built was the Porticus Julii. The northern half, now the Giardino della Pigna, was always the height of a terrace above the southern half.

Sixtus V. spoiled for ever the conception of Bramante by building the Sala Sistina (48) (his magnificent new hall which was to receive the Vatican Library) right across the middle of the vast quadrangle; it is the Sala Sistina, two hundred and twenty feet long, forty-eight feet wide, and twenty-nine feet high, gorgeously arabesqued, in which the visitor sees, in glass cases, the most precious manuscripts of the Vatican, and an alarming number of Sèvres vases, presented to Pius IX. The rooms underneath the Sala Sistina have at various times been given up to armouries and stables, but Leo XIII., who loved to ennoble his palace like the old Popes before him, inaugurated the most sweeping and effective changes in the Vatican Library since the days of Sixtus himself. He was desirous of taking the books out of the Borgia Apartments, which, when he was elected to the Papacy, formed the library of printed books. But he was even more desirous to fulfil the aspiration of Nicholas V., by making the splendid Library of the Vatican a light of the world, “a city set upon an hill.” He gave the order for the rooms under the Sala Sistina to be converted into a library to receive all the printed books. The change was effected with astonishing celerity, and when it was ready, the whole two hundred and fifty thousand books stored in the Borgia Apartments were transferred to it in fourteen days by fifteen workmen. You go down into the new library close to the entrance of the Sala Sistina from the Gallery of Inscriptions. I should have mentioned that before you enter the Sala Sistina you cross the first of a range of four small rooms. It is called the writer’s room (44), but is chiefly used for sticks and umbrellas, which must be left there. Out of it open in succession the small Reading Room, the Room of the Papiri (46), and the Librarian’s Room (47).

At the far end of the New Library, adjoining the Archives (the new rooms of which are on the ground floor facing the Vatican Gardens), is Cardinal Mai’s Library; and between the two are three reading-rooms facing the Cortile del Belvedere, and the Palatina, Aracœli, and Zelada Libraries, facing the Cortile of the Stamperia, or printing-office of the Vatican, which divides it from the Braccio Nuovo; a new Sculpture Gallery, which Pius VII. had built by Raffaelle Stern in 1821, and which contains some of the gems of the Vatican Collection. The Braccio Nuovo forms the south side of the Giardino della Pigna, the north side of which is the old Belvedere, the Villa of Innocent VIII., which has been converted into the Vatican Sculpture Museum. To many people this is their favourite spot in the whole Vatican, for it is here that the treasures are amassed for which it is hardest to find a parallel anywhere in the world—the inimitable marble copies, executed in the first days of the Christian Era, of bronze masterpieces of the most glorious of the great sculptors, except Phidias. Praxiteles, Myron and Polycletus are all represented by superb copies.

You enter the Sculpture Galleries through the gateway of the gracious little pavilion, called il Padiglione (101), and ascend the first flight of the beautiful and well-named Scala Nobile, which takes you into the Sala a Croce Greca (100). As everyone visits the Sculpture Galleries, I shall say little of the contents of its various chambers. From this you pass through the Sala Rotonda (99) into the Hall of the Muses (98), and thence into the Sala degli Animali, the Hall of the Animals (92). So far you have no choice, but here you can either walk straight into the court of the Belvedere, in whose portico are four little cabinets (p, q, r, and s), containing the Apollo Belvedere, the Laocoön, the so-called Antinous, and Canova’s immeasurably inferior statues: or you can turn to your left into the Galleria delle Statue, Gallery of the Statues, which contains, among its other priceless treasures, the Ariadne, the Torso of Hercules, the Apollo Sauroctonus, and the Genius of the Vatican; and the Cabinetto delle Maschere, Cabinet of the Masks (97), which has a balcony to which the public are not admitted outside; it opens off the Gallery of the Statues (93); the Sala dei Busti, the Hall of the Busts (95), is at the end. From thence you pass to three little chambers called the Vestibule of the Torso (87), the Vestibule of the Vase (88), and the Vestibule of the Meleager (89); and the Museo Chiaramonti, a hall of interminable length, stocked with the worst statues in the Vatican Museum—those, in fact, with which poor Pius VII. had to console himself when Napoleon took all the best ones away. Near the entrance is the door which admits to the Giardino della Pigna (79), which is now entirely closed to the public; but is interesting as containing the bronze fir-cone or Pigna, and the bronze peacocks which adorned the fountain of the atrium of Old St. Peter’s. In the small rooms running along the north side of the Garden of the Pigna are the Egyptian Museum, formed almost entirely of Egyptian objects found in Rome.

When you regain the entrance to the Sculpture Gallery, or rather, when you come back to the landing of the Scala Nobile, you ascend higher. First you will want to look into the delightful little Sala della Biga, which occupies the upper half of the pavilion through which you enter. It gets its name from the beautiful, though so much restored, marble chariot which stands in the centre. All round this room are exquisitely beautiful statues, several of them amongst the finest in the collection.

A side-door admits to the Etruscan Museum, the celebrated Museo Gregoriano, founded by Gregory XVI., which contains the most precious collection of ancient Etruscan remains in the world. It is mainly over the Egyptian Museum; and its display of Greek vases, mostly from the tombs of the perished Etruscan city of Vulci, is unrivalled. It had the choice over other museums: in drinking bowls especially it is unapproachable.

Between the Hall of the Biga and the Etruscan Museum is the entrance to the Galleria dei Candelabri: a series of six halls, opening into the Galleria degli Arazzi, which terminates in the Galleria Geografica (the Gallery of the Maps), which is five hundred feet long. The Arazzi are, of course, the tapestries manufactured in Flanders from the designs of Raffaelle and his pupils, and the Galleria Geografica is part of the Pope’s own apartments, to which it is very difficult to gain admission. It leads, in fact, into the “Hall of Papal Audiences”; and these galleries between them constitute the upper story which covers the whole length of the Long Gallery of the Vatican Library—the whole length from Innocent VIII.’s Villa to the Palace.

I have now mentioned all the most important chapels, courts, staircases, halls and chambers in the Vatican which the public has any reasonable hope of visiting, or any object in visiting. The rest of the rooms which go to make up the thousand rooms of Baedeker, or the seven thousand of Tuker and Malleson, or the eleven thousand of Murray and Hare, are occupied by the large population, estimated at two thousand and odd persons, inhabiting the Vatican, and having for a parish church the Cappella Paolina. There still remain, however, a few buildings outside the actual gates of the palace, but within the Vatican precincts: such as the Palace of the Holy Office (the Inquisition), and the Armeria, which, with Castel Gandolfo and a few palaces and churches in Rome, constitute the Pope’s kingdom.

The Mint, or Zecca, which, as I have said, was taken possession of by the Italian Government, is not difficult to see; it is open daily, but to see the workshops one must apply to the Director for an order.

The Vatican is not one of the seven hills of Rome, and, as Mr. Dyer points out in the Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography, it was even less a part of the city than the Janiculum; it was not included in the walls of Aurelian. The origin of the name itself is uncertain. One theory is that it was derived from Vates, a seer or prophet, because the Romans gained possession of it from the Etruscans through an oracular response—Vatum responso expulsis Etruscis; another from Vaticinia, which means prophecies or oracles. Mr. Dyer, a very great authority, has even less confidence in Niebuhr’s assumption that there was an ancient Etruscan city there called Vatica or Vaticum. The flat ground round it was called the Campus Vaticanus; and it was here that the great dictator Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus had his farm of four acres, the Prata Quinctia, which have impressed their name on that portion of the city.

As it is the first legend connected with this famous site, I will quote the passage from Livy which tells how the envoys found Cincinnatus when they went to tell him that he had been chosen Dictator in the crisis of the war with the Sabines. “They sent for the consul Nautius, yet not supposing him capable of affording them sufficient protection, resolved that a Dictator should be chosen to extricate them from this distress, and Lucius Quintius Cincinnatus was accordingly appointed with unanimous approbation. Here they may receive instruction who despise every quality that men can boast, in comparison with riches; and who think that those who possess them can alone have merit, and to such alone honours and distinctions belong. Lucius Quintius, the now sole hope of the people, and of the Empire of Rome, cultivated a farm of four acres on the other side of the Tiber, at this time called the Quintian meadows, opposite to the very spot where the duck-pond stands. There he was found by the deputies, either leaning on a stake, in a ditch which he was making, or ploughing; in some work of husbandry he was certainly employed. After mutual salutations, and wishes on the part of the commissioners ‘that it might be happy both to him and the commonwealth,’ he was requested to ‘put on his gown, and hear a message from the senate.’ Surprised, and asking if ‘all was well?’ he bade his wife, Racilia, bring out his gown quickly from the cottage. When he had put it on, after wiping the sweat and dust from his brow, he came forward, when the deputies congratulated him, and saluted him Dictator; requested his presence in the city, and informed him of the alarming situation of the army. A vessel had been prepared for Quintius by order of government, and on his landing on the other side, he was received by his three sons, who came out to meet him; then by his other relations and friends, and afterwards by the greater part of the patricians. Surrounded by this numerous attendance, and the lictors marching before him, he was conducted to his residence.” After he conquered the Æquians, and on the sixteenth day, Cincinnatus resigned the Dictatorship, which he had received for the term of six months.

Dyer points out that there were no buildings in this quarter before the time of the Emperors; and that almost the only one of any note in all antiquity was a sepulchre—the tomb of Hadrian.

The second important mention we get of the hill is that of Caligula building a Circus here for racing in the gardens of his mother Agrippina. The Circus in which St. Peter was crucified should be called the Circus of Caligula, and not that of Nero, who merely adopted it; though its ruins in the Middle Ages were called the Palace of Nero.

Tacitus tells us in his history that the district was noted for its unhealthy air; while Cicero says that its soil was unfruitful; and Martial execrated its wine in an epigram: “Vaticana bibis, bibis venenum” (“If you drink Vatican wine you drink poison”).

At this point we must go to Lanciani, who informs us that two roads issued from the bridge called indifferently Vaticanus, Neronianus, or Triumphalis, which spanned the river between S. Giovanni dei Fiorentini and the hospital of Santo Spirito. The Via Triumphalis, which corresponds to the modern Strada di Monte Mario, and the Via Cornelia, led to the woodlands west of the city between the Via Aurelia Nova and the Via Triumphalis.

When the Apostles came to Rome, in the reign of Nero, the topography of the Vatican district, which was crossed by the Via Cornelia, was, says Lanciani, as follows:

“On the left of the road was a circus, begun by Caligula, and finished by Nero; on the right, a line of tombs built against the clay cliffs of the Vatican. The Circus was the scene of the first sufferings of the Christians, described by Tacitus in the well-known passage of the Annals, XV. 45. Some of the Christians were covered with the skins of wild beasts, so that savage dogs might tear them to pieces; others were besmeared with tar and tallow, and burnt at the stake; others were crucified (crucibus adfixi); while Nero, in the attire of a vulgar Auriga, ran his races round the goals. This took place 65 A.D. Two years later the leader of the Christians shared the same fate in the same place. He was affixed to a cross like the others, and we know exactly where. A tradition current in Rome from time immemorial says that St. Peter was executed inter duas metas (between the two metae).”

Inter duas metas is considered by scientific historians to signify the spot marked by a square stone just outside the Sacristy of St. Peter’s. It was formerly marked by the obelisk,⁠[3] which now stands in the Piazza of St. Peter’s, and was removed to its present position for Sixtus V. by the architect Fontana in 1586.

This obelisk, says Lanciani, is the only relic left of the famous Gardens of Agrippina, the mother of Caligula. It is a monolith of red granite, brought over from Heliopolis, and is the only one which has not been thrown down since the fall of the Empire. It is first called the guglia, or needle, in a Bull of Leo IX., 1053, who also calls it the tomb of Julius Cæsar, thinking that the bronze globe at the top held his ashes.

Leo XIII. allowed a tablet to be put up on the wall close by, declaring this to be the scene of the execution; but he had not reckoned on the clamour that would be provoked. There was a tradition a few centuries old that it had taken place on the spot marked by the Tempietto of Bramante, in the cloister of the Church of S. Pietro in Montorio on the hill called the Janiculum in the time of Lars Porsena of Clusium, and now called the Passeggiata Margherita, and by other names. The monks of S. Pietro in Montorio make a respectable income out of selling dust from the sacred spot, and did not relish the idea of losing it. S. Pietro in Montorio is under the protection of Spain; and the Spanish Ambassador to the Vatican was instructed to demand the removal of the obnoxious tablet. The Pope yielded, but scientific opinion has been too strong, and the Vatican is soon to make a pronouncement on the subject. The whole controversy hangs upon the words, “Inter duas metas.” St. Peter is recorded to have been buried inter duas metas: common sense would apply the words to the two goals of Nero’s Circus in which he was executed; but the contention of the monks of S. Pietro in Montorio can best be understood from Professor Marucchi’s lucid summarization, which I here translate: “According to the Apocryphal Acts of St. Peter, which may date as far back as the third or fourth century, St. Peter was crucified ‘near the Palace of Nero—near the Obelisk of Nero,’ and tradition adds, ‘Inter duas metas.’ Now there was no obelisk on the Janiculum, but there was a celebrated obelisk in the Gardens of Nero, not far from the Temple of Apollo, and exactly between the two metae of the Circus. Later on it was pretended that the two metae must be looked for in the two pyramids called the tombs of Romulus and Remus; one was by the Porta S. Paolo (this was what we now call the pyramid of Caius Cestius), the other, which was destroyed in the time of Alexander VI., stood near S. Maria Traspontina.

“According to the Liber Pontificalis, St. Peter was buried in the place of his martyrdom, that is to say, at the Vatican. It was there, as we know from other authorities, that the first victims of Nero were buried in the year 64 A.D. Monsignor Lugari pretends that the Janiculum was the place especially set apart for crucifixion.”

It is in vain that the partisans of the Janiculum seek a proof in the direction near the Naumachia; for, though it is true that there was a Naumachia at the foot of the Janiculum, there was another actually in the Gardens of Nero. Marucchi says that the tradition in favour of S. Pietro in Montorio was due to scholars who misinterpreted documents, and that up to the fourteenth century there was no important tradition of St. Peter here.⁠[4]⁠

He has the great authority of Lanciani to support him, who tells us that for many years after the peace of Constantine, the exact spot of St. Peter’s execution was marked by a chapel, called the Chapel of the Crucifixion; that the meaning of the name and its origin, as well as the topographical details connected with the event, were lost in the darkness of the Middle Ages; that the memorial chapel lost its identity, and was believed to belong to Him who was crucified—that is, to Christ Himself; and that it disappeared seven or eight centuries ago, about the time when the words inter duas metas, by which the spot was so exactly located, lost their proper interpretation and began to be applied to the tomb of pyramidal shape for which the Latin word also is meta—the meta of Remus being that which we now call the Pyramid of Caius Cestius, and the meta of Romulus, a pyramidal tower which once stood near the Church of S. Maria Traspontina. There is a curious monumental evidence of this on the stone screens (preserved in the crypt) of the Confessio of Old St. Peter’s, which Matteo Pollaiuolo executed for Pope Sixtus IV. in the middle of the fifteenth century. Père Dufresne, in his Les Cryptes Vaticanes, says, “The Apostle was put to death, according to ancient documents, inter duas metas. Abandoning the natural interpretation, one would see in these metae, namely, that they are those of the Circus of Nero; it was believed at the end of the Middle Ages and during the Renaissance that they were the Pyramid of Caius Cestius and a sort of tower constructed near S. Maria Traspontina. These two monuments are represented in the panel of the martyrdom of St. Peter on each side of the cross. The relatively modern tradition to which they refer has no lack of partisans, but it is otherwise difficult to sustain.” Dufresne adds that there is the same confusion on the old Bronze Doors of St. Peter’s with regard to St. Peter’s martyrdom. These were made in 1445, by Filarete and Simone Ghini, for Eugenius IV., whose reign was about forty years earlier than that of Sixtus IV.

Lanciani goes on to show how the line of the Via Cornelia can be traced by the classical tombs discovered at various times along its borders; and gives a very clear plan showing how the Via Cornelia, in passing along the north edge of the Circus of Nero and Caligula, cut right through Old St. Peter’s east and west, intersecting the Confessio just at the south of St. Peter’s tomb. It must, in fact, have intersected the site occupied by the chapel of St. Peter’s tomb in the crypt to-day. The old tombs destroyed by the Emperor Elagabalus, in fact, were on the site of the nave of Old St. Peter’s, and were rediscovered in the time of Paul V. scattered all round the tomb of St. Peter. We need not here enter into the disputed question whether Linus, the second of the Popes, was buried near St. Peter, though Lanciani accepts the evidence. “It seems hardly possible for anyone to doubt that St. Peter was buried here by Linus and Anacletus, successively second and third Popes.” Even Mr. Bernard W. Henderson, in his great Life and Principate of the Emperor Nero, published by Methuen & Co., allows that he was executed on this spot; for he says that “the Church of S. Pietro crowns the site of his martyrdom, as, in Catholic belief, it enshrines, not the memory alone, but also his holy relics. Tradition—and in this respect it is absolutely worthy of all credence—never varies in choosing Rome as the city where he ended his life by his triumphant death. Thither he had come but a few months perhaps before his end. Thence he had written his great Catholic Epistle, bearing undismayed witness to the peril which threatened all the Christians.” Mr. Henderson’s opinion is of great value, because he can be most iconoclastic. A few pages earlier he is ruthless in disposing of the idea that St. Peter went to Rome in 42 A.D. “Saint Peter, who vanishes from the Scripture records between the years 42 and 51 A.D., going, says St. Luke simply, ‘to another place,’ is held to have proceeded from Jerusalem to Rome, there to have preached the Gospel and founded the Roman Church some fifteen years before his greater colleague St. Paul addressed his epistle to that Church. None of these traditions can be accepted as even probabilities.”

One thing must be remembered: that there is no inherent improbability in the tomb having survived. The Romans spared the tombs even of Carthage, and, as Lanciani says, the privileges which the Roman law allowed the sepulchres, even of criminals, made it possible for the Christians to keep these graves in good order with impunity. Of the successive buildings which grew up round the tomb of the Apostle I shall speak in another chapter.

The beginnings of the Vatican Palace are almost lost in antiquity. But they may be traced back historically to the Episcopia which Pope Symmachus (498-514) erected. The buildings were much enlarged by Innocent III. (1198-1216), and, of course, by Nicholas III. (1277-1280), who, Gregorovius says, may be regarded as “the earliest founder of the Vatican residence in its historic form.” As early as the beginning of the sixth century the Vatican basilica was surrounded by a mass of buildings, chiefly chapels and mausoleums, but including one or two monasteries. In the time of Stephen II. (752) these were largely increased, and mingled with houses for pilgrims and a multitude of people who made a living by ministering to their wants. As early as the days of S. Gregory III. (731-741) there were three monasteries; and Stephen II., in 752, added a fourth, and built the bell-tower of the atrium of the basilica, which he overlaid with gold and silver. Gregorovius considers that the belfry towers which form such a feature of the basilicas of Rome began in the eighth century. Stephen also restored the ruined tomb of the wives of the Emperor Honorius, which stood outside St. Peter’s by the present Sacristy, into a chapel which he dedicated to S. Petronilla, who is supposed to have been the daughter of St. Peter. He left at any rate one of the graves undisturbed, of which the contents were discovered and ruthlessly destroyed under Paul III., as related elsewhere. Innocent III., one of the greatest men who ever sat on the throne of St. Peter, and who reigned from 1198-1216, continued the buildings at the Vatican begun by his predecessor, Celestine III. He not only enlarged it, but surrounded it with walls and gate towers.

The Vatican, standing on a hill beside the Tiber, and within strong walls erected by S. Leo IV. (a magnificent fragment of which still remains in the Vatican Gardens), was a much safer residence for the Popes, when rioting was going on, than the Lateran. So the Popes, from this time onwards, made the Vatican their principal residence. Innocent IV. (1243-1254), the arch-enemy of the Emperor Frederick II., also enlarged the Vatican. But the conception of the Vatican, as we have it, must be attributed to Nicholas III., Gian Gaetani Orsini (1277-1280), and Nicholas V., Thomas of Sarzana (1447-1455). The Orsini’s architects were two Florentines named Fra Sisto and Fra Ristori. Gregorovius tells us how “he made the approach to the Vatican free, and planned the gardens, surrounding them with walls and towers. His foundation was called the Viridarium Novum, from which the gate beside St. Peter’s received the name of the Porta Viridaria. The feeling for nature thus again woke, and for the first time for centuries the Romans saw a park laid out.”

Soon after the removal of the Popes to Avignon in 1308, the Lateran, which has always been considered the Mother Church of the Papacy, was destroyed by fire. Consequently, when the Popes returned from their seventy years’ exile at Avignon they took up their residence at the Vatican, which has been their principal residence ever since. Gregory XII. (1406-1409), who had fortified himself in the Vatican against Louis of Anjou and John XXIII., united the Vatican with Sant’ Angelo by a walled-in passage. In the same year five large wolves were killed in the Vatican Gardens.

Nicholas V., the simple scholar of humble birth, who founded the Vatican Library and was the first of all the Popes to appreciate and try and preserve the glorious buildings which they had inherited from ancient Rome, also conceived the magnificent idea of making the Vatican Hill rival the Palatine with its Imperial Palaces and gardens. “The ruinous Borgo,” says Gregorovius, “was to become a gigantic Papal city. From a piazza in front of Sant’ Angelo, three streets forming the Vicus Curialis were to lead to the Piazza of St. Peter’s, with six great porticoes, covered markets, workshops for artists, and banks of exchange. He contemplated the Pope and the entire Curia dwelling in the most magnificent of palaces, a combination of sumptuous buildings and parks. The palace was not to have its equal on the earth. He would even construct a theatre for the Imperial coronations, a hall of Conclave, and a theatre for spectacles. The Papal fortress was to be entered through a splendid triumphal gate. A new cathedral with a lofty cupola, in the form of a Latin cross, with two towers in front of the vestibule and spacious buildings at each side for the clergy, was to be erected in the place of the ancient basilica.”

It is difficult to gather from the documents hitherto available how much Nicholas actually built. None of his buildings remain except the exquisite little chapel frescoed by Fra Angelico with the story of S. Lorenzo, and part of the wing which now bears the name of the Borgias.

The buildings of Paul II. (1464-1471), the magnificent Venetian Pope who erected the Palazzo di Venezia, have entirely disappeared. But Sixtus IV. (1471-1484), the first of the two della Rovere Popes, whose conceptions were smaller, immortalized himself by his contributions to the Vatican, for he built the Sistine Chapel, whose walls he had frescoed by the greatest masters of his day, Perugino, Pinturicchio, Ghirlandajo, Botticelli, Cosimo Rosselli, and Luca Signorelli.

It must be borne in mind that the end wall over the High Altar now occupied by Michel Angelo’s Last Judgment was originally filled with three frescoes by Perugino. The Last Judgment was not painted till more than half a century after Pope Sixtus’s death, and Michel Angelo did not begin the ceiling to which the chapel owes its fame until twenty-four years after that Pope’s death. But the exquisite screen by Bregno, in the manner of Mino da Fiesole, was executed for him. Gregorovius is right in saying that this chapel, built in 1473, is “more a hall than a chapel; simple to barrenness, it seems nothing more than the beautifully decorated scene for Papal functions. It breathes no air of religious feeling. And only to its purpose, and to Michel Angelo’s paintings, does the Sistina owe the fact that it has become the most celebrated chapel in the world.” Raffaelle designed the tapestries, which bear his name, to fill the bare spaces on the walls below the Fifteenth-Century frescoes. When these, the most impressive of all tapestries, were in their places, the tout ensemble must have been almost beyond rivalry. Sixtus IV. also built under his chapel a library which was afterwards converted into a storehouse, though it was considered, when he built it, the most sumptuous in the world. Innocent VIII. (1484-1492) had a beautiful villa constructed for his use in the Vatican Gardens, as Pius IV. and Leo XIII. did after him. Their casinos are still used for their original purpose: this, which was called the Villa Belvedere, was constructed for him by Antonio Pollaiuolo about 1490, and decorated with frescoes by Mantegna, which have perished. It was about a quarter of a mile from the Vatican Palace until Julius II. connected them. Gregorovius calls it Innocent’s finest work, and Innocent was a man of taste, and built a good deal. His successor, the execrated Borgia Pope, Alexander VI. (1492-1503), in the midst of all his ambitions and excesses, found the time and money to embellish the Vatican with one of its greatest glories, the Appartamenti Borgia, the suite of rooms embellished by Pinturicchio with frescoes, which, as chamber decorations, have no superiors, except the same artist’s glorious frescoes illustrating the career of Pius II. in the library of the Cathedral of Siena. His successor, Pius III., survived his elevation for less than a month, and then came the magnificent megalomaniac, Julius II. (1503-1513), who packed all the gigantic works of his Pontificate into a brief ten years.

In the period from the accession of Nicholas V. to the death of Leo X. (1447-1521), a space of seventy-four years, there were ten Popes, and all except three of them had generous ambitions for the extension and embellishment of the Vatican. Pius III., Francesco Piccolomini, who was only Pope for twenty-six days, cannot be counted. Calixtus III., the first Borgia Pope, and Pius II., Æneas Sylvius Piccolomini, had an honourable reason for suspending their building operations, for the capture of Constantinople by the Turk under Mahomet II. a few years before filled them with apprehensions for the fate of Christendom, unless fresh crusades could be organized by leaguing all the Christian Princes. But the spectre soon diminished when the Papacy entered into a not very honourable treaty with the Sultan Bajazet II. for detaining his brother and rival for the throne, Prince Djem, as a sort of state captive in the Vatican, in consideration of a huge annual sum. Djem, when he was defeated by Bajazet, fled to the Knights of St. John at Rhodes, who had distinguished themselves by defying the assaults of his brother. The crafty Knights would not surrender him, but undertook to keep him a prisoner if the Sultan paid thirty-five thousand ducats a year and promised to maintain a lasting peace with Christendom. For greater safety the Knights sent him to France, where he remained imprisoned for nearly seven years, when Innocent VIII. secured the custody of his person and the money paid by his brother, in return for facilitating the marriage of the King of France with the heiress of Brittany, which did not up till then belong to the French Crown, and by making the Grand Master of the Knights a Cardinal. The Sultan also presented to the Pope the Lance (head) which claimed to be the actual weapon with which the Side of Our Lord was pierced, and was considered to be the genuine relic rather than those previously shown at Paris and Nüremberg.

For the moment I am not speaking of St. Peter’s, but of the Vatican Palace; but Julius II., Giuliano della Rovere, was responsible for the gigantic features of both. It was he who joined Innocent VIII.’s Villa Belvedere to the Vatican by the Cortile of the Belvedere, which, before it was intersected by the Library and the Braccio Nuovo, was twelve hundred feet long. Bramante was the architect: he designed the upper part for a garden terrace, the lower for a tournament ground. One cannot help being reminded of the neighbouring Circus of Caligula and Nero, out of which, as the place of St. Peter’s execution, the whole Vatican group of buildings grew. “The Piazza,” says Gregorovius, “was to be surrounded with a beautiful portico with three rows of pilasters, one above the other, and to end in huge niches, an upper one for the Belvedere, and a lower one with rows of seats for the spectators of the games. Nicholas V. had already entertained the idea of a secular theatre in the Vatican, and would have had classic comedies represented there. Julius II. would probably instead have given the Romans combats with animals and tournaments. Even later Popes had games of chivalry celebrated in the courtyard of the Belvedere, although not in the theatre, as Julius II. had intended.”

Julius was so impatient to see this magnificent conception carried out that he ordered the work to be continued day and night, but he died when only one portico was finished. And the masonry had been so badly executed that in less than thirty years the walls required a support, and, half a century after that, the completion of Bramante’s idea was rendered impossible by Sixtus V. building the great hall of his library right across the quadrangle.

But Julius also commissioned, and Bramante built, the Cortile of S. Damaso, one of the most wonderful in the world, for it is of vast size and is surrounded on three sides by the triple arcades of the Loggie, which Gregorovius calls the “most successful imitation of the antique ... an unequalled example of vigour, lightness, and grace.” Some of them were frescoed by Raffaelle, and he was the architect who completed them after Bramante’s death. Julius II. is hailed as the founder of the Vatican Museum; for not only did he commence the collection in the Belvedere, the converted Villa of Innocent VIII., but he enriched it with his own statue of Apollo, named after the Belvedere, with the Laocoön, with the Torso of Hercules, and with the Ariadne. It was for Julius that Michel Angelo executed his immortal paintings on the roof of the Sistine Chapel, which made it the most celebrated chapel in the world. This was a task of almost filial piety, for it put a finishing touch on the chapel of the uncle, born Francesco della Rovere, to whom Julius owed his elevation.

Leo X., Giovanni de’ Medici, had the same magnificent and Mæcenatic tastes; it was he who completed the Loggie of S. Damaso under the direction of Raffaelle. It was he who had ten of the designs intended for these Loggie not executed in the Loggie, but in the Vatican tapestries woven at Arras in 1514. They were to hang on the walls of the Sistine Chapel below the frescoes: they are now kept in the Galleria degli Arazzi. Of them Gregorovius wrote: “In these Raffaelle ascends from the idyl to the drama in its loftiest and most exalted conception. In artistic unity of treatment and vigour of action, these designs surpass any of his works in the Stanze, and are his most consummate and grandest creations.” Raffaelle’s Stanze were originally commissioned by Julius II., and completed under Leo X. Raffaelle himself did not live to complete his task.

Leo X. appointed Raffaelle architect of St. Peter’s, and custodian of all the antiquities of Rome and the city territory. It was in these capacities that Raffaelle, who had a passion for the monuments of antiquity, conceived the famous scheme for making an illustrated plan of the city, in which he was engaged at the time of his death. He sets it forth in the letter long attributed to that Conte Baldassare Castiglione whose portrait painted by him is one of the chefs d’œuvre of the Louvre. “There are many persons,” says he, “Holy Father, who, estimating great things by their own narrow judgment, esteem the military exploits of the ancient Romans, and the skill which they have displayed in their buildings, so spacious, and so richly ornamented, as rather fabulous than true. With me, however, it is widely different; for when I perceive, in what yet remains of Rome, the divinity of mind which the ancients possessed, it seems to me not unreasonable to conclude that many things were to them easy which to us appear impossible. Having, therefore, under this conviction, always been studious of the remains of antiquity, and having with no small labour investigated and accurately measured such as have occurred to me, and compared them with the writings of the best authors on this subject, I conceive that I have obtained some acquaintance with the architecture of the ancients. This acquisition, whilst it gives me great pleasure, has also affected me with no small concern, in observing the inanimate remains, as it were, of this once noble city, the queen of the universe, thus lacerated and dispersed. As there is a duty from every child towards his parents and his country, so I find myself called upon to exert what little ability I possess, in perpetuating somewhat of the image, or rather the shadow, of that which is in fact the universal country of all Christians, and at one time was so elevated and so powerful, that mankind began to believe that she was raised beyond the efforts of fortune and destined to perpetual duration. Hence it would seem that time, envious of the glory of mortals, but not fully confiding in his own strength, had combined with fortune, and with the profane and unsparing barbarians, that to his corroding file and consuming tooth they might add their destructive fury; and by fire, by sword, and every other mode of devastation, might complete the ruin of Rome. Thus those famous works, which might otherwise have remained to the present day in full splendour and beauty, were, by the rage and ferocity of these merciless men, or rather wild beasts, overthrown and destroyed; yet not so entirely as not to leave a sort of mechanism of the whole, without ornament indeed; or, so to express it, the skeleton of the body without the flesh. But why should we complain of the Goths, the Vandals, or other perfidious enemies, whilst they who ought, like fathers and guardians, to have protected the defenceless remains of Rome, have themselves contributed towards their destruction. How many have there been, who having enjoyed the same office as your Holiness, but not the same knowledge, nor the same greatness of mind, nor that clemency in which you resemble the Deity; how many have there been who have employed themselves in the demolition of ancient temples, statues, arches, and other glorious works! How many who have allowed these edifices to be undermined, for the sole purpose of obtaining the pozzolana from their foundations; in consequence of which they have fallen in ruins! What materials for building have been formed from statues and other antique sculptures! Insomuch, that I might venture to assert that the new Rome which we now see, as large as it may appear, so beautiful and so ornamented with palaces, churches, and other buildings, is wholly composed of the remains of ancient marble. Nor can I reflect without sorrow, that even since I have been in Rome, which is not yet eleven years, so many beautiful monuments have been destroyed; as the obelisk which stood in the Alexandrian road, the unfortunate arch, and so many columns and temples, chiefly demolished by M. Bartolommeo della Rovere. It ought not, therefore, Holy Father, to be the last object of your attention, to take care that the little which now remains of this the ancient mother of Italian glory and magnificence, be not, by means of the ignorant and malicious, wholly extirpated and destroyed; but may be preserved as a testimony of the worth and excellence of those divine minds, by whose example we of the present day are incited to great and laudable undertakings. Your object, however, is rather to leave the examples of the ancients to speak for themselves, and to equal or surpass them by the erection of splendid edifices, by the encouragement and remuneration of talents and of genius, and by dispensing among the Princes of Christendom the blessed seeds of peace. For as the ruin of all discipline and of all arts is the consequence of the calamities of war, so from peace and public tranquillity is derived that desirable leisure, which carries them to the highest pitch of excellence.” After this introduction, the author proceeds: “Having, then, been commanded by your Holiness to make a design of ancient Rome, as far as it can be discovered from what now remains, with all the edifices of which such ruins yet appear as may enable us infallibly to ascertain what they originally were, and to supply such parts as are wholly destroyed by making them correspond with those that yet exist, I have used every possible exertion, that I might give you full satisfaction, and convey a perfect idea of the subject.”

Hadrian VI. (1522-1523), who succeeded Leo X., was not an Italian at all; but he only lived a year, and was succeeded by another Medici, Clement VII. (1523-1534). It was in his reign that the devastating sack of Rome under the command of the Duc du Bourbon took place, which did more damage to the precious monuments of art and antiquity than any other catastrophe which ever befell the city. For the invading army included many Protestants. “The Protestant Germans, under Fründesberg, considered the smashing of images, the ransacking of churches, the tearing of priestly vestments, and the razing of convent and monastery as part of their religious duty. They felt to the elaborate paraphernalia of the Roman Church much as the Early Christians did to the stone and marble gods and temples of the heathen. In each case the loss to art has been the same.”

When the Imperial army withdrew, Clement VII. came out of the Castle of Sant’ Angelo, behind whose impregnable walls he had taken refuge, and had Raffaelle’s Stanze finished by his pupils. Clement VII. was succeeded by Paul III., Alessandro Farnese (1534-1549), who commissioned Michel Angelo to paint the Last Judgment in the Sistine Chapel, for which three famous frescoes by Perugino were destroyed. This was unveiled in 1541. For the same Pontiff Michel Angelo also painted the two great frescoes in the Paoline Chapel, which, like that noble but baroquely painted chamber, the Sala Regia, was built for Paul by Antonio da Sangallo. Julius III. (1550-1555) had a stately flight of steps made for the Belvedere by Michel Angelo. Marcellus II. was elected and died in that same year, 1555. Paul IV. (1555-1559), Gian Pietro Caraffa, notorious as the Pope who took the most active part in the cruelties of the Inquisition, is also notorious for having had clothes painted round the figures of Michel Angelo’s Last Judgment during Michel Angelo’s lifetime. In delightful contrast to him was his successor, Pius IV., Giovanni Angelo de’ Medici (1559-1565); he ordered the great Court of the Belvedere to be finished after the plans of Bramante by Michel Angelo, who loathed the very name of Bramante; for him was built the exquisite garden-house of the Vatican, Pirro Ligorio’s masterpiece, the Villa Pia, the nearest to a classical building of any work of the Renaissance.

Pius V. was the last Pope canonized as a saint; he was too much taken up with the Turks to build much. It was in his reign that the great battle of Lepanto was fought, which so pervades the Gargantuan frescoes of sixteenth-century Rome. In it the Venetian and Spanish fleet, commanded by Don John of Austria, and the Papal fleet, commanded by Mark Antonio Colonna, sank ninety Turkish galleys and captured one hundred and eighty, killed thirty thousand Turks, and took ten thousand prisoners, and freed fifteen thousand Christian slaves, with the loss of only fifteen galleys and eight thousand men. Gregory XIII., the Buoncompagni Pope (1572-1585), was more than a maker of Calendars, though it is for the Gregorian Calendar, which we still use, more than three centuries later, that his name is a household word. He built the Loggie which connect the Loggie of Raffaelle with the apartments occupied by the Pope, and was a great patron of painters—Federigo Zucchero, whom he employed on the Paoline Chapel; Vasari, whom he employed on the Sala Regia, and others. But his fame as an embellisher of the Vatican is utterly eclipsed by that of his successor, the famous Sixtus V., Felice Peretti (1585-1590), the building Pope, with whom, in his brief reign of five years, the Romans thought that the Renaissance was beginning again. Nothing pleased Sixtus V.; he wished to move the obelisk near the Sacristy of St. Peter’s which marked the site where St. Peter was crucified into the centre of the Piazza in front of St. Peter’s. It weighed nearly a million Roman pounds, but Fontana, the architect, was given carte blanche, and set about his task with eight hundred men, one hundred and fifty horses, and forty-six cranes. The story of its removal is one of the most famous passages in Hare: “The obelisk was first exorcised as a pagan idol, and then dedicated to the Cross. Its removal was preceded by High Mass in St. Peter’s, after which Pope Sixtus bestowed a solemn benediction upon Fontana and his workmen, and ordered that none should speak, on pain of death, during the raising of the obelisk. The immense mass was slowly rising upon its base, when suddenly it ceased to move, and it became suspected that the ropes were giving way. An awful moment of suspense ensued, when the breathless silence was broken by a cry of ‘Acqua alle funi!’ (‘Wet the ropes!’), and the workmen, acting upon the advice so unexpectedly received, again saw the monster move, and gradually settle on to its base. The man who saved the obelisk was Bresca, a sailor of Bordighera, a village of the Riviera di Ponente, and Sixtus V., in his gratitude, promised him that his native village should ever henceforth have the privilege of furnishing the Easter palms to St. Peter’s. A vessel laden with palm-branches, which abound in Bordighera, is annually sent to the Tiber in the week before Palm Sunday, and the palms, after being prepared and plaited by the nuns of S. Antonio Abbate, are used in the ceremonial in St. Peter’s. The obelisk was formerly called ‘St. Peter’s Needle’ (‘Aguglia di S. Pietro’). In the Middle Ages it was believed that the bronze globe on the summit contained the ashes of Julius Cæsar.”

It was Sixtus who built the wing of the Courtyard of S. Damaso, which has been the residence of the Popes ever since. It was Sixtus who built the great hall of the Vatican Library, two hundred and twenty feet long, which, with its brilliant decorations in Pompeian style, is one of the finest chambers in Rome. But it destroyed the finest cortile in the world, the Courtyard of the Belvedere built by Bramante to connect the Villa Belvedere with the Vatican, which it cut clean in half. It is the actual palace of the Popes, built by Sixtus, though finally completed by Clement VIII., Ippolito Aldobrandini (1592-1605) (who condemned poor Beatrice Cenci to death), and succeeded him after the brief reigns of Urban VII. (1590), Gregory XIV. (1590-1591), and Innocent IX. (1591)—it is that palace which dominates the attention of the spectator as he lifts up his eyes to the hill of the Vatican from the Piazza of St. Peter’s. Clement VIII. was also the Pontiff whose chance it was to gaze upon the tomb of the Apostle when its vaulting fell in while they were building the New St. Peter’s. It was he who built the chapel in the crypt in front of the tomb in the form of an inverted cross, and erected the altar in that most sacred place. He was succeeded for a few months by another Medici, Leo XI. (1605), and then by Paul V., Camillo Borghese (1605-1621), who built the two great fountains in the Vatican Gardens and cared for the fortunes of his family in a more than usually open way. His successor, Gregory XV., Alessandro Ludovisi (1621-1623), did nothing for the Vatican; he devoted his energies to promoting the Order of Jesus. He canonized St. Ignatius Loyola and St. Francis Xavier, and founded the Propaganda, which Gregorovius, in his Tombs of the Popes, calls the largest institution in the world. His name has been given to the mushroom quarter of Rome, in which new hotels and boarding-houses spring up every day. But it was called, not after him, but his nephew, Cardinal Ludovico Ludovisi. It was he who founded the Ludovisi collection, including the famous Juno, which has found its way to the National Museum in the Baths of Diocletian. Nor did he, as might have been imagined, found the Università Gregoriana in the Collegio Romano. That was founded by Gregory XIII. in 1582. The next two Popes, Urban VIII. and Innocent X., distanced all their predecessors in their zeal for the endowment of their families. Urban VIII., Maffeo Barberini (1623-1644), was not only a nepotist; he was such a vandal in tearing down ancient buildings to use their materials in his own constructions, that Roman wit coined the proverb, “Quod non fecerunt Barbari, fecerunt Barberini,” which may roughly be translated, “What the barbarians would not do, the Barberini did.” But Urban VIII. may be forgiven something for the magnificence of his ideas. For he built the Barberini Palace, the greatest ornament to Rome of all the vast buildings erected by Popes or Cardinals, except St. Peter’s itself. And he repaired the walls of Rome, especially that part which surrounds the Vatican Hill, with tremendous bastions, more like the rocks of nature than the works of man. And it was he who gave the original commission for that hill of stone, the Scala Regia, the enormous State staircase designed by Bernini for the Vatican. Also the Barberini Library, collected principally by his nephew, Cardinal Francesco Barberini, purchased by Leo XIII. for the Vatican Library, is worthy of mention among the greatest collections which have gone to form the Vatican Library. It was Urban VIII., too, not Clement VIII., according to some, who put the finishing touches on the apartments founded by Sixtus V., which are the residence of the Popes. At all events, he added to Sixtus V.’s great work, the Vatican Library, in order to house the Biblioteca Palatina, which had lately been bequeathed to it. And it was he who established the armoury in the rooms above the library to keep his army properly fitted out, just as he restored the walls of his capital against invaders.

His successor, Innocent X., Giambattista Pamfili (1644-1655), did little for the Vatican; his designing sister-in-law, Olimpia Maldaichini, who founded the gigantic wealth of the Pamfili family, saw to that. His successor, Alexander VII., the Chigi Pope (1655-1667), was public-spirited enough. He will always be remembered as the patron for whom Bernini erected the glorious colonnade of the Piazza of St. Peter’s, one of the very few works with which the megalomaniac Popes succeeded in rivalling the megalomaniac Emperors of Rome. It was he, too, who completed the superb Scala Regia, where he re-erected the famous bronze doors of Innocent VIII., which had already been adapted by Paul V. Another commission which he gave to Bernini, the Sala Ducale, cannot be accorded equal commendation—it is vulgar even for its age. Clement IX., Giulio Rospigliosi, reigned from 1667-1669; Clement X., Emilio Altieri (1670-1676), Innocent XI., Benedetto Odescalchi (1676-1689), Alexander VIII., Pietro Ottoboni (1689-1691), Innocent XII., Antonio Pignatelli (1691-1700), Clement XI., Giovanni Francesco Albani (1700-1721), Innocent XIII., Michel Angelo de’ Conti (1721-1724), Benedict XIII., Vincenzo Maria Orsini (1724-1730), Clement XII., Lorenzo Corsini (1730-1740), Benedict XIV., Prospero Lambertini (1740-1758), Clement XIII., Carlo Rezzonico (1758-1769); though these and others of the Popes added to the Vatican collections, none of them made any substantial additions to the buildings till Clement XIV., Lorenzo Francesco Ganganelli (1769-1774), who with his successor, Pius VI., Angelo Braschi (1775-1799), converted the gardens of Innocent VIII.’s Belvedere Villa into the Museo Pio-Clementino.

Pius VI. built from their foundations the Sala degli Animali, the Galleria delle Muse, the Rotonda, the Sala a Croce Greca, the Sala della Biga, and the superb staircase that leads up to it. Gregorovius, in his Tombs of the Popes, draws dramatic attention to the tragic ends of these two Popes: “In the year 1773 he (Clement XIV.) annulled the Order of Jesus. As men hinted, this was as good as if he had taken poison. Soon afterwards his appearance altered, he complained of pains in his vitals, he wasted away like a shadow. ‘I am passing into eternity,’ he said, ‘and I know the reason why.’ On September 22, 1774, he died at the age of sixty-nine. His body became black immediately, and decayed so rapidly that it was impossible to lay out the body for the ceremony of kissing his feet. And yet he had possessed an iron constitution, such as seemed capable of lasting till a hundred.

“But still more unfortunate than Clement XIV. was his successor, Pius VI., Braschi. In his reign occurred the dreadful catastrophe of the French Revolution.

“Pius VI. reigned twenty-four years, from 1775 to 1799, seeing many changes and enduring much. He has no tomb in St. Peter’s. His body rests in the Grotte Vaticane, his heart at Valence, where Napoleon raised a monument to his memory. Only his statue—by Canova—kneels upon the floor of the ‘Confession,’ and will kneel there so long as St. Peter’s dome endures above it. Gazing into its sombre depths beyond the circle of ever-burning lamps, one beholds in vague outline the figure of this luckless old man. Who does not know how Pius VI., in the days of the Franco-Roman Republic, was carried off forcibly from the Vatican, how place after place received the friendless exile, and how at length he died in a foreign land? And of the many who wander to-day through the gorgeous halls of the Museum Pio-Clementinum how few remember, amid the endless profusion of ancient masterpieces, the tragic fate of the two Popes who reared it there as an eternal delight for mankind!

“Thus the eighteenth century closed upon the Papacy in exile and despair.”

It is for poetical outbursts like this, as well as for his vast erudition, that one haunts the beloved pages of Gregorovius.

A much later writer, Mr. J. E. C. Bodley, in his able little book on the great Vatican question of our own day, The Church in France, talking of this Pope, says: “The constitution was never accepted by the Holy See. It was repudiated by Pius VI., who was destined to die on French soil, the victim of the Revolution. At Valence, a picturesque city on the Rhone, which thousands of English people rush past every winter without stopping, the register of his death may still be seen in the municipal archives, where it is inscribed, after the manner of the time, as of one, ‘Jean Braschi,’ who followed the profession of ‘Pontiff.’”

Pius VI. not only established new ideals with these beautiful halls of the Vatican Sculpture Gallery, which were designed by Sermonetti; he enriched them with two thousand fine specimens. Hardly, Miss Mary Knight Potter reminds us, had Pius got his collection into his museum before the Treaty of Tolentino, 1797, gave Napoleon the right of carrying them off to France, where they were deposited in the Louvre. And just a year later, on his refusal to renounce his temporal authority, when General Berthier entered Rome, he was taken prisoner and carried to Siena, Florence, Parma, Piacenza, Turin, Grenoble, and Valence, where he died a year and a half after his deposition. Pius VII., the Chiaramonti Pope (1800-1823), was also one of the great embellishers of the Vatican. He founded the vast Museo Chiaramonti, in one of the two great galleries which connect the transformed Villa Belvedere with the original Vatican Palace.

Here we have a vista, seemingly unending, of statuary; the statues are not equal to those of the Museo Pio-Clementino, but they are a monument of his courage and love of art, for they are what he collected to replace the depredations of Napoleon. His also is the Gallery of Inscriptions and the Egyptian Museum. It was he who gave ten thousand scudi for the famous antique fresco called the Nozze Aldobrandini, now shown in the Vatican Library. And it was for him that Raffael Stern built, in 1817, the Braccio Nuovo, the plain gallery, more than two hundred feet long, so admirably designed for its purpose, which houses some of the best statuary in the Vatican.

Like his predecessor, Pius VII. was carried off a prisoner to France: he had asserted the independence and neutrality of his dominions, when ordered to expel the enemies of France from his territory and their ships from his ports. He refused to resign, and excommunicated the invaders sent to compel him. He was taken prisoner on July 5, 1809, and kept in France till the 2nd of January 1814. He had already, in 1804, visited France, under strong pressure, to crown Napoleon. After the French armies had been driven from Germany, Napoleon endeavoured to purchase a new Concordat, offering the Pope the Papal possessions south of the Apennines, but Pius refused to treat with him except from Rome, which he entered on the 24th of May 1814. It must have been with peculiar satisfaction that, owing to the firmness of the English, he saw all the magnificent statuary taken from the Vatican to the Louvre by Napoleon restored with the exception of a few minor statues, the value of which was more than compensated by the magnificent pictures which were sent back from Paris to him, though they had been taken not from him, but from various Italian churches. With them he founded the famous Vatican Gallery.

Pius VII. was succeeded by Leo XII., Annibale della Genga (1823-1829), and Pius VIII., Francesco Saverio Castiglione (1829-1831). Gregory XVI., Mauro Capellari (1831-1846), distinguished his reign by two great works. He saved the ancient town and monuments of Tivoli by creating a tunnel and the most majestic of artificial waterfalls to divert the waters of the Anio, which threatened the Tibur of Horace with destruction, and, by his patronage of the brothers Campanari, and his establishment of the Museo Etrusco in the Vatican, he did much for preserving the memory of one of the most extraordinary peoples who have perished off the face of the earth—the Etruscans. Gregory was succeeded by Pius IX., Giovanni Maria Mastai-Ferretti, who reigned longer than any other Pope, and was the first “to pass the years of St. Peter.”

No Pope has impressed himself more on the imagination of the Romans, for he loved the splendid pageants which passed away with the temporal power nearly forty years ago. And he loved his capital, and did much for its monuments, though he restored sometimes not wisely but too well. His principal addition to the Vatican was the completion of the Cortile of S. Damaso, and the magnificent Scala Pia, which leads up to the actual palace of the Pope.

Leo XIII., Gioacchino Pecci (1878-1903), made one supreme contribution to the glories of the Vatican by restoring the Borgia Apartments, whose frescoes are, after those of the Cathedral Library at Siena, the masterpieces of Pinturicchio. These had for many years been almost invisible owing to the tall bookcases in which the whole of the printed books of the Vatican Library were crowded. Leo XIII., as related in the chapter on the subject, cleared out and entirely reconstituted the apartments under the great hall of the Vatican Library and various adjoining rooms to form the new Leonine Library, which now contains all the printed books. In conjunction with this work he had the Borgia Apartments restored by the art director of the Vatican, Commendatore Ludovico Seitz, who must be allowed to have carried out the work with singular success. He showed such good taste, such a laudable desire to alter as little as possible, so much knowledge and delicacy in removing whitewash and re-backing the frescoes. Pope Leo also converted the Hall of Canonizations into a chapel, and spent a great deal of money on beautifying the floors and ceilings of the Galleria degli Arazzi and the Galleria dei Candelabri.

The present Pope succeeded too recently for his work to show much, but his broad-minded and enlightened régime is certain to result in important and permanent improvements, among which he is contemplating a Museum of Old St. Peter’s.

“From the Ælian bridge over the Tiber they traversed the long colonnade which led to the atrium of St. Peter’s, with its fountain and its tombs of the Popes. There they witnessed the Pope, John XIII., and his Cardinals receive the Imperial party on the thirty-five steps of the entrance. With martial surroundings and sacerdotal pomp, the mighty Otto, his wife and son, were conducted into the basilica of Constantine, which had then been the venerated temple of Rome for six centuries and a half.

“The Vatican Basilica of the tenth century was, of course, wholly unlike the St. Peter’s we see to-day. It was quite similar to the restored Church of St. Paul’s fuori le Murà, as we now see it, but it was some twenty feet longer and a little wider, and had five naves divided off by four rows of vast monolith columns. There were ninety-six in all, of various marbles, different in style and even in size, for they had been the first hasty spoils of antique palaces and temples. The walls, above the order of columns, were decorated with mosaics, such as no Roman hand could then produce or ever restore. A grand arch, such as we see at the older basilicas to-day, enriched with silver plates and adorned with mosaic, separated the nave from the chancel, below which was the tribune, an inheritance from the prætor’s court of old. It now contained the high altar and the sedile of the Vicar of Christ. Before the high altar stood the Confessio, the vault wherein lay the bones of St. Peter, with a screen of silver such as the Greeks called iconostasis, crowded with silver images of saints and virgins. And the whole was illuminated by a gigantic candelabra holding more than a thousand lighted tapers.

“The Byzantine visitors were amazed to find the Cathedral of Old Rome so utterly different from their own Hagia Sophia at home. It was nearly one hundred feet longer and not much less in width. Its mosaics, its monoliths, and its tribune resembled those of the great temple of Justinian; but its flat roof, long aisles, rude workmanship, and want of symmetry roused contempt and pity from the cultivated taste of the Greek artist. The basilica of St. Peter’s was, indeed, but a crude adaptation of the law courts of the Cæsars, whilst the Church of the Holy Wisdom was one of the most original creations in the whole record of human art” (Frederic Harrison in Theophano: The Crusade of the Tenth Century: a Romantic Monograph).

I have it on the authority of the most influential of the Cardinals that the Pope is thinking of establishing a St. Peter’s Museum, like the Opera del Duomo at Florence and Siena. As this Museum must consist chiefly of the remains of Old St. Peter’s, I shall endeavour to recall all that is known of Old St. Peter’s, and to give the best list I can of the remains of it which are to be found in the crypt of the present church and elsewhere. The most important paintings of it are preserved in a little German capital, where a Royal Abbess, who was too infirm to make the pilgrimage to Rome, was accorded the privilege of substituting visits to the church or convent embellished with these paintings. Various pictures of it, of course, exist in Rome; and there is a contemporary model of it preserved in the Vatican. But the chief recruiting-ground we have for ideas for a Museum of Old St. Peter’s is the crypt of the present church.

Until the present Pope’s reign the crypt of St. Peter’s was to the ordinary traveller terra incognita. It was as difficult to see as the museum of the Torlonias, who, unlike the old Roman nobility, rigidly exclude the public from studying their art treasures. Leo XIII. for a long time would allow no one to visit it without his personal permission. He believed that dynamiters wished to blow up St. Peter’s, though it is difficult to think that so holy a place would not be sacred even to a criminal in search of advertisement. And a criminal, though regardless of sacrilege, might be deterred by the superstition, universally accredited, that some stupendous misfortune would happen to him who disturbed the grave of St. Peter.⁠[5]⁠

So firm is the belief, that no attempt has ever been made to restore to public view the glorious cross, weighing one hundred and fifty pounds, and of the height of a man, made of pure gold, which the Empress Helena, mother of Constantine the Great, erected at the head of the tomb, and which Clement VIII. (died 1605) saw lying there, when a portion of the vault fell in. Accompanied by Cardinals Bellarmin and Antoniano, he examined it. He found that it bore the inscription: “Constantinus Aug. et Helena Aug. hanc domum regalem (auro decorant quam) simili fulgore coruscans aula circumdat.” He entertained at first the idea of clearing away the ruins and exposing the tomb, but was deterred, possibly by the superstition which is now so universal at Rome, that even if the Pope were to order the cross to be removed into the projected Museum, no Roman would take part in the work. Clement had the opening hurriedly closed and covered with a thick layer of masonry. This cross is the most valuable example of its kind known to survive.

In Leo XIII.’s day the crypt could only be seen by torchlight, and it would have been easy for a miscreant to have concealed himself in its dark recesses; but the Vatican authorities have now very wisely had it illuminated with electric light, like the ancient Roman house of S. Cecilia, preserved under her church, and one, at least, of the catacombs. Only, though proper persons are allowed to visit it, the regulations are so puzzling that few people ever achieve admission except under the wing of a high ecclesiastic or a guide who lectures on the crypt.⁠[6]⁠

The crypt of St. Peter’s (known to Italians as the Grotte Vaticane) is amazingly interesting, for the Grotte Vecchie (old crypt), which extend below St. Peter’s from the tomb to the entrance, are actually part of the original basilica of Constantine. You stand on the very pavement trodden by the feet of Popes and Kings, and millions of the faithful, for a thousand years. In it are preserved the grand old Gothic tombs of some of the greatest of the Popes, and in it, fragrant with white roses laid on them by the adherents of the lost cause, are the tombs of the last three Stuart Kings,—James III., better known as the Old Pretender; Charles III., better known as the Young Pretender, or Bonnie Prince Charlie; and Henry IX., better known as the Cardinal of York,—unwieldy sarcophagi of painted plaster. These unhappy and—with the exception of the Cardinal of York—unworthy princes rest here, and not beneath the elegant monument by Canova of an angel with tired wings, which George IV. had the good grace to erect to their memory on the first pier of the nave of St. Peter’s. When I say unworthy, I must record this in James III.’s favour, that had he seen fit to change his religion for the Crown of England, he would have reigned longer than any of our Sovereigns, not excepting Queen Victoria, for he survived his father by more than sixty-four years. Not many in the history of the world have given up so much for their faith.

The Grotte Vecchie, which fill the space between the floor of Old St. Peter’s and the present church, will hardly allow a tall man to stand upright. Here are buried the brilliant young Emperor Otto II., and such famous Popes as Boniface VIII. (died 1303), Hadrian IV. (died 1159), Nicholas V. (died 1455), and Paul II. (died 1471). The fine sarcophagi of Pius II. (Æneas Sylvius Piccolomini), the most courtly of the Popes (died 1464), and of Alexander VI., the fierce Borgia Pope (died 1503), do not hold their bones; the latter never did. Hadrian IV. (died 1159), the only Englishman who ever grasped the keys of St. Peter, lies in a mighty sarcophagus of Oriental granite. Paul II., who had the finest tomb of all the Middle Ages, fragments of which, carved with incomparable grace by Mino da Fiesole, fill up half the Grotte Nuove (new crypt), lies in a plain sarcophagus, with its front quite overwhelmed by the recumbent effigy on its lid, and covered by an inscription as close as a column of a newspaper. A very simple grave holds the greatest of the patrons of literature, Nicholas V. The Emperor Otto II. lies in a plaster leviathan. Christina of Sweden, who gave up her crown to be converted, and Charlotte of Cyprus, who had been spoiled by the Egyptians and an unnatural natural brother, and naïvely asked the Pope to make them disgorge her kingdom, lie under plain incised slabs. Only one woman not a queen rests in Old St. Peter’s, Madame Agnes, the Colonna who married a Caetani.

The Grotte Nuove form the substructures of the dome, and are more in the nature of a museum than a cemetery. Most important in them are the frescoes of the old basilica, and some of its glories, like the shrine of the Holy Lance. But there is a statue of St. Peter, older and more beautiful than the statue worshipped above. Its body was a Roman Consul, and its head was changed in the early days of Christianity. Near by are a beautiful inscription of Pope Saint Damasus about the drainage of the Vatican Hill;⁠[7] and the exquisite bas-reliefs from Nero’s Garden, which may have been the inspiration of Mino da Fiesole, whose glorious sculptures, executed for the vast mausoleum of Paul II., fill, with the screen made by Matteo Pollaiuolo for the Old Confessio, half these Grotte Nuove. Mino never excelled his figure of Faith, holding a chalice on Paul II.’s tomb. Matteo, in his inspired moments, approached Mino; in his uninspired moments he was no better than his baroque successors. Beautiful, too, are the mosaics on Otto’s tomb, and the noble throne on which St. Peter sits in the chapel of S. Maria della Bocciata.

What you can see of the tomb of St. Peter in the crypt requires scant mention. You look upon nothing ancient, hardly anything mediæval, or worth remembering. It was inevitable that all its ancient features should be sacrificed to wealth and piety. Pope Clement VIII., to whom it had been vouchsafed to see the Apostolic tomb, lavished both upon the chapel which he built over it in his gratitude.

I must say no more, till a later chapter, about this rich museum of Old St. Peter’s; I must now try and draw a picture of the basilica itself.

Like the Lateran, St. Paul’s Without the Walls, S. Lorenzo Without the Walls, S. Agnese Without the Walls, and SS. Pietro e Marcellino, it was one of the six basilicas attributed to Constantine the Great. No one of them has been suffered to continue in anything like its original state, and Gregorovius will not admit that the evidence in favour of any of them except the Lateran is more than presumptive. He says, in vol. i. pp. 92-93 (Hamilton’s Translation): “It is entirely unknown under what Pope and Emperor the Church of St. Peter was founded; but besides the unanimous voice of tradition, all that can be gathered on the subject from the Acts of the Church, added to the testimony of the oldest chroniclers, lead us to the conclusion that it dates from the time of Constantine. The Liber Pontificalis states that at the request of Bishop Sylvester the Emperor erected a basilica to St. Peter in the Temple of Apollo, and enclosed the body of the Apostle in an irremovable coffin of bronze of Cyprus. The Temple of Apollo in Vatican Territory is certainly only known to legend; but later excavations have shown that the Church of St. Peter was founded near a sanctuary dedicated to Cybele, whose rites were long celebrated in Rome, and survived even after the time when Theodosius knelt at the grave of the Apostle. Legend relates that Constantine himself inaugurated the foundation by turning the first spadeful of soil, of which, moreover, he carried twelve basketfuls, in honour of the twelve Apostles. Whether the Circus of Caligula was already destroyed, or whether this occurred during the construction, we do not know; it is, at least, certain that the basilica was built on one side of the Circus and out of its materials. This site was especially chosen for the Church of the Prince of the Apostles as having, according to tradition, been the scene of his crucifixion, and further sanctified to Christianity by the martyrdoms which it had witnessed under Nero.”

Constantine, in 324 A.D., made Christianity the official religion of the world, and his basilica lasted with ever-increasing splendour till after the Reformation. Eighty-six of the two hundred and fifty-eight Popes were buried in it, and one of them, Paul II., had the most glorious tomb in all Italy. I can hardly conceive a supreme artist like Bramante destroying it, but destroy it he did. He deserves his nickname of “the ruiner” (il Rovinante).

The church at Rome which gives us the best idea of Old St. Peter’s would be San Clemente, if the Irish College kept the atrium open; but San Clemente, for all its beauty and immense antiquity, is a small affair. We can understand Old St. Peter’s better by comparing it to the basilica of S. Ambrogio at Milan. Gregorovius has told us of “the broad flight of marble steps leading up to the atrium, upon which was the platform where St. Peter’s successor received the successors of Constantine, when the latter came to pray at the grave of the Apostle, or at the later date to receive the Imperial Crown at the hands of the Pope.” These admitted to a superb atrium or fore-court, one hundred and seventy feet long, and almost as wide, which was encircled by a colonnade and opened into a huge basilica over three hundred and thirty feet long, consisting of a lofty nave terminating in an apse, four aisles, and a transept, which projected slightly beyond the aisles and divided the nave from its apse. This transept was probably raised above the level of the nave like the transept of the great friar’s church of Santa Croce at Florence, and made the church a “T” shape, instead of cruciform, like our cathedrals. The nave was enormously high, one hundred and twenty-five feet, and lighted with a clerestory above the architrave, which rested on nearly a hundred monolith columns of the most precious marbles taken from heathen temples. A double aisle on each side was divided by a row of columns: the roofs were of wood.

Of the original Constantinian Church Gregorovius gives as unflattering a picture as Mr. Frederic Harrison in his Theophano quoted above: “The great church was erected in haste. The execution and the workmanship were bad, and the style from the first barbarous; the apse and outer walls were built from materials collected at random; the architrave, which rested upon the columns within, was pieced out of antique fragments, and even the ancient pillars of marble or granite, ninety-six in number, did not correspond in either capitals or bases. Slabs of marble from the Circus, on which the original inscriptions or Pagan sculptures still remained, served for the threshold. We are surprised to find in the earliest basilica of St. Peter the characteristic peculiar to so many of the present churches in Rome, namely, the presence of Pagan relics in the shape of fragments, and patchwork of ancient marbles. The interior, which was entered by five doors opening into five naves, was large and of imposing dimensions. The light descended into the lofty central nave through small arched windows disclosing the rough rafters of the roof, and flickered, now on a pavement formed of a patchwork of ancient marbles, now on high walls as yet unrelieved by mosaics.”

But in process of time the interior became a glory of mosaics and marbles, and in the preciousness of its materials, the flash of gold and mellowness of colour, must have rivalled the two gems of Christendom—St. Mark’s and the Royal Chapel at Palermo. Its façade was decorated with a mosaic representing the Lamb of God, between animals symbolizing the Evangelists, and at each end of its gable was a huge bronze peacock, the emblem of immortality. According to Klaczko, the atrium was filled with a profusion of flowers and trees—palms, cypresses, olives, and rose trees—and ornamented on all sides with a handsome Corinthian portico. At the right of the church door rose a slender and lofty bell-tower, of the age of Charlemagne, with a queer little pointed steeple. But the great feature of the atrium was the famous Cantharus, or fountain of lustration, in the centre. “It was a magnificent fountain, surrounded by eight porphyry columns, and protected by a gilded roof, with a great display of dolphins, peacocks, and dragons on it. A colossal pine-cone in bronze, reputed to have been brought from Hadrian’s mausoleum, formed the core of the fountain.... Dante, to give a measure of the formidable Nimrod, the founder of Babylon, whom he encounters in the lowest circle of the Inferno, says that the giant’s head appeared to him ‘long and large as the pine-cone of St. Peter’s in Rome, and the rest of him to correspond.’” This pine-cone and the peacocks are still preserved in the Garden of the Pigna, which is surrounded by the Sculpture Galleries of the Vatican. It was of this fountain that S. Paulinus of Nola, quoted by Gregorovius (Hamilton’s Translation), wrote: “Where the atrium expands into an entrance hall, adorned by the fountain which, refreshing our hands and lips with its welcome flow, gurgles under the shadow of the massive bronze cupola with its four pillars, forming a mystic circle round the gushing waters. Could there be any ornament more befitting the entrance to the church, preparing, as it does, all who come in for the sacred mysteries that await them?”

Pope Saint Damasus added a Baptistery to the atrium in 366; we know from a poem of Prudentius that it had very fine mosaics. In it was placed the famous chair of St. Peter, which has, since the time of Alexander VII. (1655-1667), been preserved in the Tribune of St. Peter’s.

Another building outside the main basilica was the famous Templum Probi, which occupied approximately the site of the present sacristy, and was the mortuary chapel of the Anicii, “the celebrated senatorial family which had embraced Christianity earlier than any other in Rome,” and which numbered among its heads Gregory the Great himself. Anicius Probus, four times Prefect of Rome, who shared the Consulship with the Emperor Gratian, the last great Mæcenas of Rome, was buried in it in the beautiful sarcophagus which is now preserved in the Cappella della Pietà of St. Peter’s. Junius Bassus, whose glorious sarcophagus is in the crypt of the great basilica beside the tomb of the Apostle, was also a member of the family. Near this was the imperial mausoleum built by the Emperor Honorius for his wives Maria and Thermantia, the daughters of Stilicho, which was turned by Pope Stephen II. into a circular chapel in honour of S. Petronilla. I have referred to it in the chapter on the Sistine Treasure. “In the time of Honorius the ancient basilica of St. Peter was a large and elongated brick building, the gable of which, surmounted by a cross, rose over the pillared, cloister-like vestibule” (Gregorovius). It was Honorius who persuaded the Emperor Heraclius to bestow upon St. Peter’s the famous gilt bronze tiles of the finest temple Rome ever had—that Temple of Venus and Rome, of which the remains at the end of the Forum still fill us with astonishment, and which even the Vandals had spared. This was the death-warrant of the Temple. “Its tiles were removed to cover the roof of St. Peter’s, and scarcely a Roman but rejoiced, scarcely one who bewailed the ruin of one of the finest monuments of antiquity” (Gregorovius).

Another great building Pope was Hadrian I. (772-795), the friend whose name is inseparably linked with that of the mighty Charlemagne, by the famous epitaph preserved in the porch of the present St. Peter’s: the Emperor aided him generously in his benefactions. But he was a restorer and embellisher rather than an originator. His principal work was the restoration of what must have been one of the finest architectural ornaments of Rome—the great portico which led from the Ælian bridge—remains of which are still embodied in the Bridge of Sant’ Angelo—up to Old St. Peter’s. It was he who restored the mosaics of Old St. Peter’s, and covered the floor of the shrine with heavy tiles of silver and the walls of the inner shrine with plates of gold embossed with scenes from the Bible; overlaid the altar with wrought gold; and erected statues in massive gold to Our Saviour and the Virgin, St. Peter, St. Paul, and St. Andrew. “Everything else,” says Gregorovius, “was done with the same lavish splendour. Tapestries of purple and gold were hung between the columns of the nave at festivals. At Christmas and Easter, on the feast of each of the two Apostles, and on that of the Pope, the huge lamp, known as the great Pharos, or lighthouse, was lit. This lamp, which hung suspended from the silver cross-beams of the Arch of Triumph above the shrine, was also the gift of Hadrian, and with its one thousand three hundred and seventy lights well deserved the name bestowed upon it.”

The place of Pope Hadrian’s great portico as an architectural link between the Tiber and St. Peter’s is taken by the noble fifteenth-century Archi-Ospedale di Santo Spirito, erected for Sixtus IV. by Caprina—mellow old brickwork filling the site of the inn for pilgrims which the King of the West Saxons had erected for pilgrims from England in 717, and which was burnt twice, first by the Saracens, and afterwards by Frederick Barbarossa. Vast numbers of Anglo-Saxon pilgrims came to Rome: at least three Saxon Kings died there.

The heroic but barbarous Cadwalla, King of the West Saxons, in 689, after covering himself with glory in war, determined to go to Rome and be baptized by the Pope; he was baptized under the name of Peter on Easter Eve, clad in white and with a lighted taper in his hand, and was buried in the atrium of St. Peter’s. His epitaph is still in existence, and does not at all tally with Professor Freeman’s judgment of him. The example was contagious: only twenty years later two other English Kings, Coenred of Mercia, and Offa, King of the East Saxons, went to Rome, not only to be baptized, but to give up their crowns and possessions and become monks. “Their long waving hair was cut off and dedicated to St. Peter; their royal youth was buried in the white frock of monasticism, and the princes from Arthur’s heroic island deemed themselves fortunate in being permitted to disappear from sight, amid a swarm of obscure monks, in one of the convents near St. Peter’s, with the prospect of a grave in the atrium of the basilica, and a place among the blessed in Heaven” (Gregorovius).

But these monarchs are of small importance compared with the great Alfred and the mighty Canute, the most famous respectively of our Saxon and of our Danish Kings, both of whom visited Rome. Indeed, Alfred was there twice. When he was four years old, his father, Ethelwulf, sent him, it is thought in charge of St. Swithin, the masterful Bishop and rainy Saint of Winchester, to the Warrior Pope, S. Leo IV., who built the vast walls round the Vatican, which still tower above the gardens of the Popes. Leo not only took him for “Bishop’s son” or godchild, but hallowed him as a King (which, as Freeman says, was a curious proceeding, considering that England had nothing to do with Rome, and that Alfred was the younger son; nor did it prevent three of his brothers occupying the throne before him). Alfred returned to England, but two years later, when Ethelwulf, having made his country secure against the Danes and given a tenth of his goods to the Church, himself made a pilgrimage to Rome, he took Alfred with him.

Ethelwulf allowed the Pope to crown him, and determined, “for the welfare of his soul, to send yearly to Rome, out of his private income, the sum of three hundred marks, one hundred of which were destined to fill the lamps of St. Peter’s with oil on Easter Eve and the morning of Easter Day, one hundred for the same service at St. Paul’s, and one hundred were a present to the Holy Father himself. From this annual donation proceeded the so-called Peter’s penny, or Romescot”⁠[8] (Pauli).

He also rebuilt the “Saxon Schools,” which had, as mentioned, twice been destroyed by fire, and gave enormous gifts to St. Peter’s. Both on his way there and his way back he stopped at the Court of Charles the Bald, grandson of Charlemagne, whose beautiful young daughter Judith he married on the second occasion. Who knows what seeds of greatness may not have been planted in the mind of the child Alfred by that double visit to Rome, and that double visit to the Imperial Court? In Rome he stayed for more than a year.

Rome seems at any rate to have had a profound influence on Canute, who, as ruler of England and the Scandinavian kingdoms, was a more powerful monarch than either Pope or Emperor. This was in the year 1027, when the Emperor Conrad was crowned at St. Peter’s at Easter, and walked from the church to his palace between two Kings, Canute and Rudolph of Burgundy, who were present at the coronation.

Canute, who was liberal in his gifts, showed his influence by inducing the Pope to free the English School at Rome from all taxes. But the most remarkable feature about his visit to Rome was the famous letter to the English from Rome, which is one of the greatest letters in all literature, and can only be compared to the last testament of St. Louis, as he lay dying of the plague at Carthage. From it we know that Canute visited the tomb of St. Peter, and was moved to the vow of repentance which changed him to such a just King in the latter part of his reign.

The coffers of the Pope were overflowing with the offerings of the pilgrims. The Saxons had a church, Santa Maria, on the site of S. Spirito, and the church of S. Michele in Sassia, though entirely rebuilt, is the church of the Frisians.

In the eleventh and twelfth centuries St. Peter’s, like the Pantheon, was often used as a fortress. The great Pope Alexander III. stood a siege of eight days in it from Frederick Barbarossa. The atrium and the tower of Santa Maria in Turri at the head of the staircase were fortified. At the close of eight days the fortifications were so battered down by Frederick and his allies from Viterbo, that the garrison laid down its arms to save St. Peter’s from destruction. Then Frederick installed his Anti-Pope, Paschal III.

The atrium and narthex were used for those who were not full members of the Church—catechumens, penitents, and others; the fountain was for ablutions, like the fountains in the courtyard of Turkish mosques and Japanese temples. The nave and aisles were occupied at services by the laity who were full members of the Church; the raised transept by the clergy and persons of distinction; the presbyters of the Church sat on a circular bench running round the wall of the apse; half to the right and half to the left of the Bishop’s throne, which occupied the exact centre, as it still does in more than one of the Roman basilicas.

The Confessio, containing the tomb of the martyr, generally sunk several feet below the level of the floor, here as in S. Giorgio in Velabro, and other primitive basilicas, stood just in front of the apse. This is important, because the tomb of St. Peter is, with the exception of the floor of the basilica of Constantine, the only part of Old St. Peter’s which exists undisturbed.

One must not imagine that the gold lamps (nearly a hundred in number) which burn in front of the burial-place of Peter, the rock upon whom the Church is founded, or the glittering oriental alabaster to be seen to-day, go back to the times of the old basilica, much less of Constantine, but the grille in front of the tomb, though not Ancient Roman, is of respectable antiquity, for it was put up by the last great Pope but one, Innocent III. (died 1216), who imposed his tyrannical will, not only on our weak King John, but on the mighty Philip Augustus of France, whom he separated from his lovely and beloved Agnes of Méran: so was the Fenestella Confessionis. Of the actual tomb of St. Peter one can see nothing. It is more than ever concealed since Clement VIII. had it walled over. It occupies approximately the spot beneath the Papal altar. Constantine had the remains enclosed in a great coffin of gold-plated bronze, and placed in a vault lined with gold, beneath lamps which, like the lamps hung round the Confessio of the present church, were never extinguished. There was an altar above the shrine, and over it rose a little temple on six porphyry columns. This kind of temple over the altar is a feature of most of the old basilicas which have survived.

The word basilica is only properly applied to the ancient Roman churches whose distinguishing mark is the altar in the centre of the church, at which the celebrant stands facing the people, like the Papal altar in St. Peter’s. As a consequence, basilicas have their High Altar at the west end. In the Middle Ages, Klaczko tells us, people were never weary of endowing this tomb and altar with every imaginable splendour of gold and gems; the numerous spoliations they suffered from Saracen, and even Christian, invaders, could not discourage the generous piety of the faithful.

After the Saracen sack of the ninth century S. Leo IV. covered the High Altar with plates of gold set with precious stones and enamelled portraits like the paliotto of S. Ambrose at Milan, gave golden tables, one of which alone weighed two hundredweight, a silver crucifix set with diamonds and amethysts, weighing seventy pounds, a silver ciborium, with columns weighing three-quarters of a ton, and a cross of gold encrusted with pearls, emeralds, and opals, which weighed half a ton: not to mention vases, censers, lamps of gold and silver, jewelled chalices, lecterns of wrought silver, silver doors, rare tapestries and hangings, robes and altar-cloths of silk and velvet set with pearls and precious stones and covered with golden embroideries. It was nothing particular to have a golden ciborium set with the most precious stones. We know that Ethelwulf, the father of King Alfred, bestowed gifts, consisting of a gold crown of four pounds’ weight, two dishes of the purest gold, a sword richly set in gold, two gold images, silver-gilt Saxon urns, stoles bordered with gold and purple stripes, white silken garments for celebrating the Mass, decorated with figures, and other costly articles of clothing required for the services of the Church.

Narratives of the period never cease dilating upon the immense treasures gathered there—tabernacles, ciboria, crosses, vases, candelabra, cherubs, and statues. There was a porphyry balustrade, surmounted by alabaster columns with an architrave of silver, decorated with chalices, fleur-de-lys, and translucent vases; in the centre there was an arcade surmounted by a golden Christ, attended by tall silver angels. The alabaster columns were spiral, and were surrounded by carved vine sprays; according to tradition they came from the Temple of Solomon. It was these, says Klaczko, which gave Bernini the idea of his frightful baldacchino (three of them are preserved in the present basilica). He believes that Giulio Romano’s fresco in the Vatican Stanze, known as the Donation of Constantine, is a representation of the Old St. Peter’s. “The scene takes place in the old basilica. In the background, in front of the High Altar, there are visible the twisted columns standing upon a stylobate, and supporting an architrave from which are suspended lamps. Is the production exact at every point? This I should not dare to affirm; but it is the work of Giulio Romano and his companions; it dates from a time when the chancel was yet standing.” Raffaelle evidently had this balustrade in his mind in his tapestry of the beautiful Gate of the Temple of Jerusalem.

Old St. Peter’s consisted then of a great court, with a splendid fountain in its centre, surrounded by a rich mass of vegetation, as sad as cypresses and as gay as roses, in its cloister garth; and with the cloister itself, like the narthex, filled with the tombs of early Popes and Kings. More than fourscore Popes were buried in Sylvester’s basilica, and it was only after the lapse of centuries that they were allowed to crowd into the church. The early Christians considered it irreverent to erect tombs in the churches themselves: the ancient Romans did not allow burials in the city bounds at all. St. Peter himself was buried in the ancient Roman fashion, alongside of one of the great roads leading out of Rome, the Via Cornelia, selected as the scene of his martyrdom.

The façades of both atrium and church glittered with mosaics like the façade of Santa Maria in Trastevere to-day. Against the exterior there was an agglomeration of convents, minor churches, hospitals, and houses, clinging to it like barnacles to a rock which is submerged at high tide. As this hive of buildings stood on its lofty terrace, approached by marble steps and backed by the towered and battlemented castle of the Popes, in the fifteenth century, it was an Italian Nüremberg.

Inside the church the number of mosaics is inconceivable to those who have not seen St. Mark’s or the Royal Chapel at Palermo, especially noteworthy, as we know from the paintings preserved of it in the crypt of St. Peter’s, being those of the Holy Lance. The mosaics of the great Triumphal Arch went back to Constantine, who placed upon it the inscription which recited the supremacy of St. Peter.

Five gates gave access to the nave and the four aisles; the outside gate on the left was called the Porta or Janua Judicii, by which the dead were carried into the church. The massive gate in the centre was called the Porta Argentea, which was covered with silver plates. Next to it on the right was the Porta Romana, which was reserved for the Roman people; and on the left the Porta Ravignana, or Ravennata, because it was reserved for the inhabitants of Trastevere descended from the garrison sent from Ravenna by one of the Exarchs. The outside gate on the right, the Porta Guidonea, was used by the pilgrims.⁠[9]⁠

Old St. Peter’s, with its atrium, was as long as the great church of to-day, and its width was not greatly less. It was venerable beyond all other churches in the world, not only for its hoary architecture, rich with the velvet touch of a thousand years, and its avenues of tombs of the great of the earth in mosaics and marbles; it was rich beyond all other churches in relics of martyrs and apostles, yes, even of the Saviour Himself; and the gold and silver offerings of the loyal and devout, which had accumulated in the centuries since the last sack of Rome. It was richest in sentiment and association, for it had been Christianity’s Holy of Holies, where the successors of St. Peter had been enthroned, and had issued their messages to the world from the time—almost the hour—that Constantine made Christianity the religion of the Empire over which he ruled. In it Gregory the Great (died 604) was borne to the tomb inscribed with the Conversion of England. In it Boniface VIII. (died 1303), who died with unbeaten pride, was laid in the incomparable sarcophagus by Arnolfo di Lapo, which is still the glory of the crypt, though the actual sarcophagus is all that remains of his magnificent mortuary chapel: and in it Innocent III. (died 1216), while smiting Europe with a rod of iron, found time to leave noble monuments in bronze and mosaic.

Old St. Peter’s was the outward and visible sign of the Apostolic Succession. Here people could tread the stones trodden by the Christians in the day of Constantine, who exulted in the fulfilment of the prophecy that the earth should be the Lord’s.

It looked as if it had not been built by the hands of men, but moulded by time. The holiness which had accumulated in this building exceeded even the holiness of the Temple of Jerusalem. So many years, so many sacrifices, so many memories, so many remains, of what was most sacred or most famous had been garnered into it. It is hard to believe that any Christian man would have dared to lay his hand on the church where nearly a hundred of the successors of St. Peter had been laid in the expectation that there they would rest till the Last Trump. But in the fifteenth century, the melting-pot of the Middle Ages, it began to be whispered that the old church was worn out and must come down. The best that can be said for those who repeated it is that Nicholas V. (died 1455), the founder of archæology, the first of all the Popes to love and try and save the treasures of antiquity, of which they were the heedless heirs, was convinced by the arguments of the Florentine architect Alberti,⁠[10] and began to build a new church round the old. He broke off his work. Was it because his heart failed him?

Julius II. (died 1513) took up the work. To him nothing was sacred but the prestige of the Popes. He was, like Nero, consumed with a desire to rebuild Rome on an unprecedented scale, and by a curious coincidence St. Peter’s stands on the site of the Gardens and Circus of Nero. Nero was accused of burning Rome to secure a site for his building operations. Julius II. did not go so far; he only broke up the church, which had been the cradle of Christendom for nearly twelve hundred years, in such indecent haste that the tombs of eighty-six of his predecessors were reduced to rubbish heaps. He could not even spare the masterpiece of Mino da Fiesole, the mausoleum of Paul II.

With the destruction of Old St. Peter’s the misfortunes predicted by the ancient superstition for anyone who disturbed the tomb of St. Peter seem to have overtaken the Papacy. Old St. Peter’s was the tabernacle of all Christendom, the present church is hardly more than the tabernacle of Southern Christendom.

Most of the remains of Old St. Peter’s are to be found in the crypt of the present church, the greater part of which, called by the Romans the Grotte Vecchie, preserves the actual floor of the old church intact. Another piece—a mosaic—belonging to the chapel which John VII. (705-707) built in his short reign to receive the Volto Santo—one of the major relics of the present church—is in the sacristy of S. Maria in Cosmedin. Coarse as it may seem in its present position, it nevertheless represents the most considerable artistic achievement of the age.

The remaining fragments are mostly in the present basilica. Important among them is a part of the mosaic called the Navicella, designed by Giotto in 1298, but restored out of all recognition. It represented St. Peter walking on the waters; and stood over the eastern entrance of the atrium in front of the old basilica. There are also three inscriptions which stood in front of the old basilica—one of which is a grant of indulgences by the strenuous old Pope, Boniface VIII., on the occasion of the first jubilee, 1300; another, six hundred years earlier, records the grant of certain olive gardens for supplying the oil of the cathedral lamps by Gregory II.; and the third—far the most interesting of the three—is that erected by Charlemagne over the tomb of Hadrian I., 772-795, which is thus Englished by Mr. R. W. Seton Watson in his translation of Gregorovius’s Tombs of the Popes, published by Archibald Constable & Co., with whose permission I reproduce it.

“Here has Pope Adrian found his rest—the Father of the Church,

The ornament of Rome, the immortal writer.

For him, to live was God; Piety was his law, his glory, Christ;

He was an apostolic shepherd, ready for every good deed.

He was noble by birth, and sprung from an ancient race;

Yet nobler far by reason of his holy merits.

The devout soul of this good Shepherd burned ever and in all places

To adorn the temples dedicated to God.

He heaped gifts upon the churches, and embued the people with the sacred dogmas;

To all he opened the narrow way to Heaven.

Generous to the poor, unequalled in piety, and instant in devout prayers for all men,

He was the glory of the City and the World;

By his doctrines, by his treasures, by the walls he built,

He raised thy citadels to honour, O noble Rome!

Death has not harmed him, since Death was conquered by the Saviour’s death—

Nay rather, Death has become the gate of a better life.

I, Charles, have writ these lines, in tears over my father.

O my father, my sweet love, for thee I mourn.

O forget me not! My thoughts are ever with thee.

Mayst thou abide with Christ in the blissful realms of Heaven!

Clergy and People alike loved thee with ardent love;

Thou alone wert loved of all, O best of Pontiffs.

Most illustrious of men, I link thy name and titles with my own—

I, Charles the King, thou, Adrian the Pope.

Ye who may chance to read these lines, say, with devout and suppliant heart,

‘Have pity upon them both, most merciful God!’

May this thy body rest in peace, beloved Father,

And may thy gentle soul joy with the saints of God—

Yea, till the last trump shall sound in thine ears.

Then rise with Peter, Prince of the Apostles, to behold thy God.

Thou wilt hear, I know, thy Judge’s clement voice,

‘Enter thou upon the great joys of thy Lord!’

Then most loving Father, be mindful, I beseech thee, of thy son!

And say, ‘Let this my son gain entrance with his father!’

O blessed Father, seek Christ’s heavenly Kingdom,

And thence aid with thy prayers thine earthly flock!

While yet the ruddy sun shines forth from his flaming chariot,

Thy praise, Holy Father, shall never cease on earth.

Pope Adrian, of blessed memory, reigned twenty-three years ten months seventeen days, and died on the seventh of the Kalends of January.”

It is needless to say that Charlemagne did not write it himself, because he could not write. It is generally assigned to the famous English scholar, Alcuin, the most distinguished scholar of the eighth century, who, from being master of the cloister school at York, became the friend of Charlemagne, and made his court a school of culture for the hitherto barbarous Frankish Empire.

The great bronze doors of the central entrance of St. Peter’s, which are only open for grand ceremonies, also belong to the old basilica. They were completed by Antonio Filarete and Simone Ghini in 1445; and, of course, refer to the martyrdom of St. Peter and St. Paul. They are chiefly interesting as portraying several classical buildings which were then perfect, but have since been destroyed, including the so-called tomb of Romulus (Meta Romuli), one of the landmarks on which the erroneous location of St. Peter’s martyrdom was founded. From this, called also, in the Middle Ages, the tomb of Scipio—perhaps in order to connect the great hero of Republican Rome with the chief of the Apostles—were taken the vast blocks of white marble with which Pope Donus paved the atrium of St. Peter’s.

Inside the Cathedral the bronze statue of St. Peter, whose foot is kissed by the faithful, is of high antiquity. By its style it cannot have been the actual statue, as has been so often asserted, of Jupiter Capitolinus; though it may have been cast from it, as another legend asserts, by S. Leo the Great, 440-461, since it is possibly of the fifth century, as Platner and Bunsen are ready to admit, though it is more like work of the sixth century. Marucchi thinks that Leo may have had the statue made out of gratitude for his repulse of Attila. The statue stood formerly in the oratory of St. Martin, afterwards in the Chapel of SS. Processus and Martinian. Paul V. erected it in its present position. It is supposed to be the statue about which Pope Gregory II. wrote to Leo the Isaurian, who had threatened to destroy it, “That the people would know how to defend it, and that he would not be answerable for the blood that might be shed.”

The bronze grille of the Confessio was given by the great Pope Innocent III., who also ordered the mosaics lining the little chamber behind, which is right over the tomb of St. Peter, and contains the golden casket made by Benvenuto Cellini, used for the consecration of the pallium.

The great relics of the church, such as the Volto Santo, or S. Veronica’s Handkerchief; the Lance of S. Longinus, which pierced Our Saviour’s side; the piece of the True Cross; and the Head of St. Andrew, not to mention the relics of St. Peter and St. Paul, were, of course, transferred from the old basilica.

The story of S. Veronica’s Handkerchief is best told by Gregorovius (Hamilton’s Translation), vol. II. p. 198.

“Tiberius, afflicted with incurable leprosy, one day informed the senators that, being beyond the aid of man, he must have recourse to Heaven. He had been told that a divine magician, named Jesus, dwelt in Jerusalem, and he ordered the patrician Volusian immediately to repair thither and implore the renowned physician to accompany him back to the Imperial court. Storms delayed the arrival of the messenger for a whole year; and on reaching Jerusalem, Volusian was met by Pilate with regrets that the Emperor had not sooner made known his desires, as the magician had already been crucified by the Jews. Volusian, unable to execute his commission, thought himself fortunate in obtaining a portrait of Jesus. Veronica, a pious matron, had wiped the face of the Saviour as he passed, overpowered by the weight of the cross, and the Saviour, in return, had allowed the cloth to retain the impress of His features. Volusian conducted Veronica, and with her the portrait, back to Rome, bringing Pilate in chains on board the same vessel. When they arrived in the presence of the Emperor, Tiberius sentenced the ex-governor to lifelong exile in the town of Ameria. The handkerchief he ordered to be brought before him, and hardly had he set eyes on it when he burst into tears, fell on his knees in adoration, and immediately recovered of his leprosy. He heaped wealth upon Veronica, and had the handkerchief set in gold and precious stones, and preserved in his palace. He survived his recovery only nine months—an interval which he spent in constant prayer to the Saviour and in adoration of His portrait.”

Gregorovius adds in a footnote, that the Jesuit Landsberg assures us that the portrait is true to life, and even discovers the print of the blow inflicted by an impious soldier on the face of Christ. He says that the legend is one of a number which bring the Pagan Emperors into Christianity, and attributes to the twelfth century the legend which relates that Tiberius, in consequence of his miraculous cure, ordered Christ to be enrolled among the Gods, but admits that Bishop Orosius, who lived seven centuries earlier and who knew nothing of the Handkerchief, informs us that Tiberius, on the refusal of the Senate to enroll Christ among the Gods, became suddenly transformed from an amiable prince into a cruel tyrant.

Roman Catholic hagiologists recognize that Veronica is a corruption of Vera Icon (the True Likeness), and do not claim that the devout woman was called Veronica. She is said to have lived to be a hundred, and bequeathed the Handkerchief at her death to Pope Clement, the fourth Pope, who was elected 91 A.D. The Popes kept it in their treasury till the time of Boniface IV., at the beginning of the seventh century. He gave it a shrine in the Pantheon, where a chest is still shown with a Latin inscription to this effect: “In this chest the Cloth of the Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ was brought from Jerusalem to the Emperor Tiberius,” though it obviously has no pretensions to the necessary antiquity. John VII., about a century later, built the chapel for it at St. Peter’s mentioned above. The S. Veronica of the Hagiology is a fifteenth-century saint.

At the west end of the right aisle, in the chapel of the Pietà, are several most ancient objects. The first is the white marble column called the Colonna Santa, one of the twelve which ornamented the Confessio of the old basilica. It is said, writes the Rev. H. W. Pullen, to have been brought from the Temple of Solomon at Jerusalem; and to be the one against which the Saviour leaned when He disputed with the Doctors. It is highly ornamented with wreaths and spiral flutings, and is enclosed in a pyramidal cage of ironwork. The marble well-mouth which surrounds the base was added by Cardinal Orsini in 1438.

On the opposite side of the chapel is a sarcophagus of the same century as the famous sarcophagus of Junius Bassus, which is one of the chief glories of the crypt. It belonged to Anicius Probus, who was also Prefect of Rome, and was a member of the Anicii, the greatest family in Rome at that period. This sarcophagus was formerly used as a pedestal for the baptismal font, and came from the mortuary chapel, called the Templum Probi, which stood on the site of the present Sacristy.

The monument of the Countess Matilda of Tuscany, who was the chief founder of the temporal power of the Popes, is on the pier just by the next chapel—that of S. Sebastian. It belongs, however, not to the date of her death in 1115, but to that of the removal of her remains from Mantua to St. Peter’s in 1635 by Urban VIII. It is the work of Bernini. In the next chapel, that of the Holy Sacrament, through which the Pope enters St. Peter’s from the Vatican, is the gorgeous mediæval tomb of Sixtus IV., executed by Antonio Pollaiuolo in 1493, which, in spite of its rather decadent and quite irreverent character, is one of the finest bronze monuments in Italy. A little plain slab beside it marks the tomb of the ambitious Julius II., the real founder of the New St. Peter’s. The tomb of Sixtus, who built the Sistine Chapel, though rich and beautiful, is neither elegant nor good art. The two spiral columns of Tyrian marble in this chapel are like that in the chapel of the Pietà, from the Confessio of Old St. Peter’s. In the next chapel, the Cappella Gregoriana, is an ancient image of the Madonna di Soccorso, dating from 1118, which was in Old St. Peter’s. Opposite the left aisle of the tribune is the Madonna della Colonna, consisting of a picture of the Madonna and Child, painted on a column of Porta Santa marble. I leave for fuller treatment below one of the earliest and most precious monuments preserved in the Cathedral,—the ancient Chair of St. Peter, which is kept either in the costly but hopelessly baroque monument, erected to receive it by Alexander VII., or else, as some say, in a safe in the wall behind. In any case it occupies the centre of the tribune wall. The Cappella Clementina, near the entrance to the Sacristy, contains whatever remains there are, after so many removals, of the body of St. Gregory the Great. On a pier opposite the place where the body of the late Pope is always laid, until its new monument is ready, between the Chapel of the Presentation and the Choir of the Canons, is the tomb of Innocent VIII., erected in 1492, which is really the finest mediæval monument in St. Peter’s. Like that of Sixtus IV., it is by Antonio Pollaiuolo. But his brother, Pietro, collaborated in this monument, which is in far better taste. It was Innocent VIII. who built the villa in the Vatican gardens which is now the Sculpture Museum. Gregorovius, translated by Mr. Seton Watson, is perhaps a little too hard on this sculpture. “Like the Tomb of Sixtus, it is paltry and full of affectation. The Pope lies upon a bronze sarcophagus, resting on the pier. Above the tomb he is represented once more, as in life, enthroned and raising his right hand in blessing, while he holds in his left the Holy Lance which came as a present from the Sultan Bajazet. On either side the niches of the pillars are filled with theological and moral virtues—Faith, Love and Hope, Justice, Courage, Moderation, and Wisdom. The inscription acclaims Innocent as the unwearied preserver of peace in Italy, and as the glory of the new world which was discovered in his reign.”

In the Baptistery close by is the font, a magnificent piece of porphyry which is wrongly claimed to have been the cover of the sarcophagus of the Emperor Otto II., who died in 983. It is also claimed to have been the lid of the sarcophagus in which Hadrian was buried in the Castle of Sant’ Angelo; but it is now considered to have formed part of the sarcophagus of the famous, or infamous, Crescentius, who was put to death by Otto III. in 996. Crescentius, calling himself Consul or Senator of Rome, on the plea of freeing the Romans from the usurpations of Pope and Emperor, and giving them local self-government, seized the power himself. Otto, who was sixteen, had him executed in the Castle of Sant’ Angelo and subjected his dead body to all manner of ignominy and contempt. But the wonder of the world, as his own generation calls him, says Bryce in his Holy Roman Empire, died childless on the threshold of manhood; the victim, if we may trust the story of the times, of the revenge of Stephania, the widow of Crescentius, who ensnared him by her beauty, and killed him with lingering poison. Otto III. was not, as one guide-book states, buried in the crypt of St. Peter’s; he is buried in the choir of the Cathedral at Aix-la-Chapelle, where Charlemagne lies.

The Sacristy contains some remains of Old St. Peter’s, such as the three panels from the Confessio of Old St. Peter’s which were painted by Giotto on both sides for Cardinal Stefaneschi. The frescoes, by Melozzo da Forli, are not, of course, from Old St. Peter’s, but from the church of SS. Apostoli. In the Treasury of the Sacristy is the celebrated Vatican Cross which bears the name of the Emperor Justin II., 565-578, for whom it was made; the wooden panelling, representing Our Lord sitting between St. Peter and St. Paul, cannot, as Marucchi, the de Rossi of the day, points out, have been presented by Constantine the Great, as the legend on it claims, for it is clearly a work of the ninth century; and the Slavonic inscription upon it has now been deciphered, and declares it to have been presented to the tomb of St. Peter’s by S. Cyril and S. Methodius: Cyril was the church name adopted by a noble Roman of Thessalonica, named Constantine.

Of the famous relic of the Volto Santo, Marucchi says that, although it is certainly very ancient, there is no mention of it before Bernard of Soracte in the eleventh century. He adds that the reproductions of it are all imaginary; on the original you can only see a few faint traces.

I suppose that the most of the general public imagine that the chair of St. Peter is the chair in which his statue sits in the nave of his cathedral for the faithful to kiss his foot, as the faithful have kissed the foot of this venerable image for twelve hundred years. This is not the chair of St. Peter. Only once in a hundred years do human eyes behold the chair which tradition claims to have been used by the Apostle in the meetings of the Earliest Church. Popular tradition believes it to be enclosed in the bronze chair, weighing, with its accessories, a hundred and nine tons, constructed at a cost of £24,000 by Bernini, for the rich Chigi Pope, Alexander VII. (1655-1667), a miracle of bad taste, one of the most vulgar monuments in the cathedral, which stands in the centre of the tribunal at the east end. It is not there, but in a cupboard behind, high up in the wall, locked with three separate keys, each kept by a different functionary. I append the description given of it by the chief ecclesiastical antiquary of Rome, Professor Marucchi, Éléments d’Archéologie Chrétienne. Professor Marucchi had the information from Signor de Rossi, one of the most famous of all Italian antiquaries, who was permitted by Pius IX. to examine the precious relic.

“The chair of St. Peter is the most important relic of the Apostle after his tomb. Several ancient testimonies make allusion to this monument. Thus we have the words of St. Optatus of Milevum, ‘Numquid potest dicere in Cathedra Petri? quam nescio si vel oculis novit, et ad cujus memoriam non accedit quasi schismaticus.’ And for the seventh century at least we have the directions of the Itineraries. ‘There also near the same road (the Cornelian) is the seat of the Apostles.’ We do not know where this chair was originally. I have shown in a recent study entitled ‘Sedes ubi prius sedit S. Petrus’ that we have reasons to place it in the catacomb of S. Priscilla, from which it might have been transported to the Vatican in the seventh century. It has been supposed that it is the same seat which served St. Peter in the House of Pudens, the magisterial chair of Pudens; it is an idea given for the first time in the seventeenth century by Febeo. Altogether imaginary things have also been said on the other side. It has been pretended, for example, that this chair was pagan. Lady Morgan has even affirmed that the inscription carved on it is Arabic, and contains a profession of the Mahometan faith. Signor de Rossi was able to study it at his leisure in 1867, when Pius IX. had it taken out of the monument constructed to receive it by Alexander VII. and had it exhibited in the chapel of the Holy Sacrament. It is agreed that the actual chair is not in the form of the ancient curule chairs; it is Byzantine, and seems to have been made towards the end of the sixth century. Four or five little pieces much eaten away are let into it—doubtless all that remains of the primitive chair. The decorations are of ivory and classic in character. They represent the Labours of Hercules. They would not have been allowed if the chair had been original, or even if it had dated back to the third or fourth century A.D. In the sixth they could no longer have had any pagan significance. I have discovered no trace elsewhere of the Arabic inscription.”

Gregorovius, vol. i. p. 98 (Hamilton’s Translation), says:—

“Bishop Damasus placed in the Baptistery the chair which tradition, from the second century onwards, had alleged to have been the actual chair and seat of Peter. This remarkable seat, the most ancient throne in the world, first occupied by simple, unpretending bishops, then by ambitious Popes, ruling nations and peoples, still survives.... It is in reality an ancient sedan chair (Sedia Gestatoria), to the now worm-eaten oak of which additions have from time to time been made in acacia wood.”

After taking the same view of the ornamentation as Marucchi, he adds:—

“Beyond doubt this celebrated chair, if not belonging to Apostolic times, is of very great antiquity, though the suggestion that it may be the Sedia Curulis of the Senator Pudens is altogether untrustworthy.”

The most important remains of Old St. Peter’s are to be seen in the crypt, most of which, as I have said, formed part of the old basilica. The most remarkable exception is the so-called tomb of the Apostle to which I have devoted much space in Chapter VII. You can see nothing of the tomb; all you see is the decadent altar which Clement VIII., who did see the tomb (the only person, except two of his Cardinals and a few of his workmen, who had seen it for nearly eight hundred years), erected between it and the eyes of future generations. There is nothing in the Chapel of the Tomb to detain you one moment, except the infinite sanctity of the spot which was the second cradle of Christianity. But the crypts abound in fragments of the grand old basilica, which was for more than a thousand years to Christendom what the Temple of Jerusalem was to the Jews. Right at the threshold of the Chapel of the Tomb is the sarcophagus of Junius Bassus, the young prefect of Rome who embraced Christianity, and died in his year of grace, fifteen hundred and fifty years ago, the one Christian sarcophagus in St. Peter’s, if not in Rome, which still holds the bones that were laid in it by the mourners.

And all round this side of the tomb, occupying perhaps almost the identical spot they occupied in Old St. Peter’s, are the panels made to ornament the Confessio by Matteo Pollaiuolo for Pope Sixtus IV. These tell the story of the martyrdom of St. Peter and St. Paul; for the old basilica was dedicated to both saints.

On the opposite side of the semicircular passage which constitutes this boundary of the new crypt, are precious fragments of the High Altar which Sixtus IV. erected over the Confessio; twelve quaintly carved Apostles from the atelier of Giovanni Dalmata, carved with the mediæval suggestiveness the Japanese use in portraying their sages.

Between the sarcophagus of Junius Bassus and the entrance to the old crypt are the gems of Old St. Peter’s, the masterpieces of Mino da Fiesole carved to decorate the magnificent tomb of the superb Venetian Pope, Paul II., including the exquisite representations of Faith, Charity, and the Original Sin.

Beyond that in the old crypt lie the tombs of the Colonna-Caetani Princess and all the Popes who were buried in Old St. Peter’s except Gregory V., and one of the Borgias (seemingly Calixtus III. rather than the terrible Alexander VI.), whose uses we are beginning to discover. Young Otto’s tomb close by, though it may hold the bones of one who was the first figure in the world nearly a thousand years ago, has no value for us; it is as clumsy as a plaster whale. The mosaics of the old church, saved in the old crypt, are mostly of the coarsest kind; but there is the stone, if its identity can be established, on which the bodies of the martyrs St. Peter and St. Paul were divided; and the tombstone of Charlotte of Cyprus, who succeeded to the kingdom of the Lusignans in 1458, just too late to be associated with the immortal discovery of printing in the Thirty-One-Line and Thirty-Line Indulgences of Pope Nicholas V. Here, too, is the epitaph of Amory de Montfort, the weakling son of Simon de Montfort, who was once dictator of England. He gave up the heritage of the Counts of Toulouse to France; he was taken prisoner by the Saracens in the Holy Land; but he warred mightily against the Albigenses, the defenceless heretics on his own lands, making us feel how good was that day at Evesham when the tall young Prince of England, who was to be the conqueror of Scotland and Wales, and to establish the manner of institutions under which all the civilized world was to come in the fulness of time, struck down his father’s haughty and rebellious subjects, the party of Montfort. The next inscription is almost the most interesting heirloom we have in the crypt of the Old St. Peter’s, the celebrated copy, carved in marble, of the donation of the Countess Matilda.

Few women have ever played so great a part in the world as the Countess of Tuscany, who founded the temporal power of the Popes by supporting them with all her forces during her life, and bequeathing her dominions to the Holy See when she died. If she had held her hand, even Gregory VII., the mighty Pontiff who had been Hildebrand, must have gone down before the violence of the Emperor Henry IV., who did penance to him at Canossa. But for her, the Popes would have been no more than patriarchs, with no force but those of sanctity and righteousness—moral powers, awed by violence, maintained by a willingness for martyrdom.

In the south arm of the new crypt, close by other precious memorials of the old church, fragments, for example, of the ciborium in which Innocent VIII. enclosed the prize of his life, the Holy Lance sent to him by the Turkish Sultan, are the mosaics from young Otto’s tomb, bas-reliefs of exquisite beauty from the Gardens of Nero, in whose Circus St. Peter was martyred; and sketches of the old church itself and of its various shrines, by those who had seen them in their glory. The finest of the inscriptions here tells us that Pope Saint Damasus drained the Vatican Hill to provide the water for his Baptistery; his drain is still perfect under the courtyard of the palace which bears his name beneath the windows of the Pope. Here, too, are the inscriptions of the first four Leos, all saints, and a portrait in mosaic of John VII., executed in his lifetime, and another panel of the mosaics which made his chapel of the Volto Santo the most famous building of his time. Here, above all, is the beautiful throne of the Avignon Pope, Benedict XII., who adopted the triple crown to show the threefold nature of the sovereignty of the Popes. His image is there, strong, phlegmatic, almost Egyptian in its massive strength. There is no throne in all Rome as beautiful and majestic as his. On it is seated an old, old statue of St. Peter a Roman Consul presented with the Apostle’s head and hands. Here is even the great stone cross which stood upon the façade of the elder church; and the exquisite bust of the eighth Boniface, by Arnolfo himself. The statues of the Apostles come from the tomb of Nicholas V., the founder of the greatness of the Vatican.

And they all, as it were, lead up to that most holy image of the Virgin, who stood in the portico of the old church, and when she was struck on the cheek with a stone, bled like a human being. The stones where the blood fell are here too, protected by iron bars, for the lips and fingers of the faithful, if not the blood-drops themselves, had worn the spots into holes which threatened to consume the entire stones.

Truly Old St. Peter’s is in the crypt. When we have permission to wander there we are surrounded by the faith, as well as the monuments, of the Middle Ages.

In theory, anyone can obtain permission to visit the crypt of St. Peter’s nowadays. Still, to get the permission involves a good deal of delay and difficulty. For first you must catch the Pope’s Maggiordomo at the Vatican, and obtain his permission, and then you have to get the further permission of another Monsignor at the Secretariat of the Reverenda Fabbrica di S. Pietro, in the Via di Aracœli, more than a mile off; and they are both at home only at rather inconvenient hours. If you are short of time it is an economy to take a ticket for a lecture on the Crypt of St. Peter’s. A lecturer is allowed to stay longer in the crypt than a person with an ordinary permesso; when you are with a lecturer you do not waste time in hunting out the principal objects yourself; you are taken straight to them: and there is so much to see that there is not a minute to spare. The heads of various colleges for priests also give lectures, but not often in English, and admission to them is a favour. Unless you are a privileged person you are only allowed to remain in the crypt for half an hour.

There are several entrances to the crypt; that by which the public are now admitted is at the foot of the pier in which the precious relic of S. Veronica’s handkerchief is kept. In the time of Misson, who visited St. Peter’s in the reign of Queen Anne, the public were admitted through the Confessio itself. He says: “Under this altar (i.e. the High Altar) there is a pair of stairs which leads to the chapel where St. Peter’s body is pretended to be kept, and to the other Holy Places in the vaults of this church.

“At the entry to these grottoes I observed a Bull engraved with marble (huc mulieribus ingredi non licet, nisi unico die Lunae post Pentecosten), by which women are forbidden to enter the place, save only on Whit Monday, on which day it is declared unlawful for any man to come there; and whosoever shall act contrary to either of these prohibitions is anathema. These places are dark, and the sexton told us that the order was occasioned by a certain amorous adventure. There is an Indulgence of seven years for every step of the stairs that lead to St. Peter’s Chapel, granted to such as descend them with due devotion.”

If tradition may be respected, the invisible tomb of St. Peter, on which the whole mighty edifice rests, was erected by Linus and Anacletus, the second and third Popes, less than a hundred years after the birth of Christ, not far from the spot where the Apostle was crucified in the Gardens of Nero. His tomb was erected as the law ordained, on one of the roads which led up to the city gate—the Via Cornelia. About two centuries after, in 306 A.D., according to a not very easily verifiable tradition, Constantine the Great, who was not at all great in the opinion of scientific historians, erected round the Apostle’s tomb the great basilica which was to be St. Peter’s, and the centre of Christendom for more than a thousand years. This we now speak of as Old St. Peter’s. The tomb, as was usual with the tombs of martyrs in basilicas, was a good deal below the level of the church; stairs led down to it. But at an early period, to protect the body of the Apostle from the risk of being carried off by the barbarians, who waxed bolder and bolder in their assaults on Rome, the tomb was walled over.

About the year 1450, in the reign of Nicholas V., it began to be rumoured that the church was dangerous, probably because Nicholas, who was the first of the Popes to appreciate the treasures of antiquity which the Papal See had inherited, was making a careful survey of his inheritance. Nicholas was such a keen lover of antiquities that much pressure must have been brought to bear upon him before he consented to the rebuilding of St. Peter’s. When he had given his consent, plans were obtained from two great Florentines, Leon Battista Alberti and Bernardo Rossellino, brother of Antonio, the heavenly sculptor: and Nicholas began to build a new cathedral round the old. Not much was done to it after his time until the accession of Julius II. Julius II. was a great monarch, if an indifferent priest; he suffered from megalomania as badly as Caracalla or Diocletian. Their gigantic baths may well have inspired him with the idea of the New St. Peter’s, which he entrusted to Bramante as architect. The old building was torn down in such haste that no care was taken to preserve the ancient monuments. It is to be hoped for the sake of art that Bramante yielded to force majeure. The Romans nicknamed him “il Rovinante.” The scanty remains of the tombs of the eighty-six Popes who were buried in the old basilica show the ruthless haste with which the work of demolition was carried out.

With the building of the New and the demolition of the Old St. Peter’s we are not much further concerned here, for we have arrived at the point at which we can understand the plan of the celebrated Grotte Vaticane—the Grotte Vecchie e Nuove, the old and new crypts of St. Peter’s. The old crypt is, roughly speaking, Old St. Peter’s to the height of six or seven feet from the pavement, for Bramante, with a sublime impertinence borrowed from the ancient Romans (Did not Augustus build his house on the top of the mansion of the silver-tongued Hortensius?), made the old basilica the foundation for his new church as far as it would serve. But it was not broad enough for the vast Greek cross which formed the ground plan of his design, so he had to extend the foundations right and left, and he made them in the form of crypts to ensure dryness, since St. Peter’s is very little above the level of the Tiber. These form the New Crypts. You enter by the pier of S. Veronica, where Julius II. laid the foundation of the New S. Peter’s. At the bottom of the steps galleries lead right and left; it is usual to take the right-hand passage, but much better to take the left, for the left brings you almost directly to the chapel of the tomb of St. Peter. Of the tomb itself you see nothing, because it is walled over with masonry; the obstruction is now much thicker than it was when erected to baffle the barbarians if they tried to find St. Peter’s body. In the year 1602 or 1603, when they were making the foundations for the new church, the vault over the tomb gave way and the workmen saw it below them. It was easy to recognize, because on it lay the old richly chased cross of pure gold, one hundred and fifty pounds in weight, deposited there by the pious hands of the Empress Helena, the mother of Constantine, who founded the original church. As mentioned above, the Pope, Clement VIII., was summoned hastily, and came with Cardinals Bellarmin and Antoniano. His first idea, very wisely, was to clear away the obstacles which prevented so blessed an object being seen now that the advance of civilization made it impossible to contemplate any risk of the profanation of the shrine. He found himself confronted by a superstition of unknown antiquity—the universal belief at Rome that anyone who touched St. Peter’s tomb would be struck dead. Yielding to this, after making a careful examination, he ordered the aperture to be closed, and a thick layer of masonry to be built over it.

Père Dufresne, the chief authority on the Vatican Crypt, says: “The tomb of the Apostle occupies almost the centre of the space surrounded by the new crypt. When approached from the cathedral above, just inside the double bronze door which faces the statue of Pius VI., is a little oblong chamber in an apse. In the floor of this chamber is a hollow in which are laid the pallia before they are sent to the Archbishops. The paving of the chamber has always been very rich. The Liber Pontificalis speaks of the silver plates of which it was formed; at the present time it is made of gilt bronze. The chasings represent a raying cross surrounded by the tiara, the keys, and a dove. One of the squares made by the arms of the cross, the upper one on the right, is the door which covers the opening of the cavity. In the time of St. Gregory the Great the respect inspired by the Apostle’s tomb was so profound that people hardly dared approach it to pray or make the necessary repairs. Not allowing himself to be stopped by tradition so disquieting, Père Grisar made a detailed examination of the tomb, his report having been summarized as follows: The cavity is made in masonry at the depth of little over a foot; it communicates with a chamber, of which the ceiling is formed by a slab of marble; this is filled with the débris thrown into it by the order of Clement VIII., when, in constructing the present basilica, the sarcophagus of St. Peter is believed to have been seen. A long rod of iron thrust into the débris did not penetrate more than half a yard. The slab of marble is pierced by a square hole corresponding to the opening in the cavity above. It has sagged; it is broken in two parts which sink towards the middle, the sides being secured with the masonry; the opening is not of perfect regularity: only one angle has its edges square, the others having been damaged. All these details are difficult to explain on the basis of accident; one is compelled to think that violence has been used—for example, on the part of the Saracens, when in 846 they occupied the Vatican basilica for several days. However, this violence was manifestly without success, since the slab is still fastened to the walls to which it was originally fixed.”

Behind the chamber of the pallia there is a chapel to which one has access through the crypts: this occupies the exact position of the ancient oratory called,

“Ad Caput Beati Petri.”

One may add that the little apse which faces the statue of Pius VI. down in the Confessio, has a thirteenth-century mosaic of Our Lord and a seventeenth-century mosaic of St. Peter and St. Paul; the former was erected by the great Pope Innocent III., who also gave the beautiful bronze grille. Formerly the Pope left a censer in the cavity every year, and when the old one was taken out distributed its contents among the pious people who wished to have mementoes of the Apostle, and objects which they brought with them were sometimes permitted to be lowered into the cavity so that they might be blessed by touching the tomb of the Apostle. The bronze door was given by the Pamfili Pope, Innocent X., whose portrait by Velasquez in the Doria Gallery is one of the finest portraits in the world. The altar in the crypt was erected by Clement VIII., the last person who saw the tomb of St. Peter.

The sarcophagus is under the Papal altar, and instead of corresponding to the exact centre of the basilica, it is a little to the right, which goes to prove that the architect of the Constantinian basilica had to take into account a more ancient monument with which he could not interfere.

The altar of Clement VIII. in the Chapel of the Tomb in the crypt has the same ornamentation as the floor of the little chamber above, the reversed raying cross flanked by tiaras and keys on each side, though I do not remember that the dove is here: but other emblems are introduced, such as lilies and a sword, laid obliquely over the cross. Above the altar is a mosaic of St. Peter and St. Paul, the remainder of the lunette on each side being filled up with gilt plaster reliefs of their respective executions. The carpet in front of the altar has woven upon it the inscription, “Principi Apost”; though none of the details are good, the effect is rather rich, as you come upon it through the sixteenth-century arch which admits you into the chapel. The chapel is in the form of a reversed cross to commemorate the Apostle’s humility in praying to be crucified head downwards, because he, who denied His Lord, was not worthy of the honour of crucifixion—crucifixion which with the Romans was reserved for the worst criminals, like our hanging. The chapel has a poor seventeenth-century stucco roof, with panels representing various miracles; its entrance is exactly opposite the sarcophagus of Junius Bassus. The altar is approached by three steps, and two prie-dieux stand in front of it. Pilgrims and others with special claims are occasionally permitted to hold services here.

But when you leave this place, so infinitely holy by its associations, you pass at once into the kingdom of art. You find yourself in a narrow gallery brilliantly lit by electricity, with the panels of Matteo Pollaiuolo’s Confessio on one hand, and the sarcophagus of Junius Bassus and the fragments of Paul II.’s tomb on the other. The memorial sculpture of ancient Rome bequeathed nothing superior to the reliefs on that sarcophagus; the bas-reliefs on the tomb of the Venetian Pope are the masterpieces of Mino da Fiesole—the Raffaelle of the sculptors of the Middle Ages. Matteo Pollaiuolo is not to be confused with the far better known Antonio and Pietro; he is not even mentioned in the great five-volume Dizionario Biografico Universale. His work is hardly known outside of St. Peter’s. At his best, in his low reliefs, he approaches Mino, but much of his work is very inferior. His Confessio, several feet high and many feet long (the most important, as being the largest of the complete monuments preserved in the crypt), once encircled the approach to the Apostle’s tomb in the old basilica. It deals with the trials and the martyrdoms of St. Peter and St. Paul, but makes no attempt to reproduce their traditional portraits. The St. Paul of the late Roman frescoes and the Byzantine mosaics has a narrow egg-shaped face, with a very high forehead and a parrot nose, and is quite bald. The St. Paul of Pollaiuolo has a snub nose, a broad face, and bushy hair and beard. But his St. Peter is reasonably near to the Byzantine portrait, which represents the chief of the Apostles as a man with bluff features, a red face, and thick curly white hair and beard. Two of the best panels are those which represent their executions. In the one St. Paul kneels bound before Nero, while a soldier prepares to strike off his head; in the other, St. Peter is being crucified head downwards. Both have beautiful backgrounds in very low relief. The horsemen and trumpet-blowers behind the former are most delicately carved; while the silhouette of a woman’s head, and the two heralds blowing horns under an oak tree in the latter, are even finer. Indeed, that woman’s profile might well become a favourite subject for reproduction.

The sarcophagus of Junius Bassus (numbered 231), opposite to the entrance to this chapel, is considered the finest Christian Roman sarcophagus which has come down to us. It is of great beauty, though the figures are not very well proportioned, the heads being too large. It is, in fact, low art, but the grouping and draperies have no little spirit and charm. It is curiously Roman: there is not a particle of Greek feeling about it. It is the more human for that: the Greeks idealized; the Romans were realistic. The Greeks have left us many exquisite sculptures, but hardly any real portraits. Roman portrait busts, on the other hand, are almost innumerable.

For the moment I will not mention the sculpture on the top of the sarcophagus shown in the smaller reproduction; it does not belong to it, but the exquisite cornice at the top of the large reproduction is shown to belong to it by the inscription even if it were not proved by its homogeneity. It is supported by delightful little sculptured shafts with very ornate capitals. The first tableau shows the sacrifice of Abraham, with Isaac bound on one side and the ram on the other; the angel touching Abraham’s shoulder stands behind Isaac. In the second tableau St. Peter is denying Christ. In the third, Our Lord is seated between two figures, who may be St. Peter and St. Paul. In the fourth, He is being led away to prison between two Roman soldiers. It should be noticed that Our Lord is represented as a young and beardless man. In the fifth tableau, Pilate is washing his hands. The upper range of tableaux is divided from the lower by a truly remarkable device. Over each of the lower tableaux is a very ornate and debased arch, and the triangle over the capital of each of the four centre columns contains an allegorical representation of a miracle. Two of them are Old Testament miracles; two of them belong to the New Testament, not reckoning the representation of the Baptism of Christ. Two remarkable features have to be noticed in these allegorical sculptures. All the miracles, those of the Old Testament as well as the New, are performed by Our Lord; and all the figures are allegorized as sheep or lambs instead of being human. In the baptism John is a sheep and Our Lord a lamb. The scenes represent respectively the passage of the Red Sea; the water bursting from the rock at the touch of Moses’ rod; the Multiplication of the Loaves; the Baptism of Our Lord; and the Resurrection of Lazarus.

The lower range of tableaux represent Job’s wife offering her husband a loaf at the end of a stick; Adam and Eve and the serpent in Paradise; Jesus riding on the ass into Jerusalem; Daniel between two lions in the lions’ den; and St. Peter bound, being led away to prison.

Above the sarcophagus of Junius Bassus may be seen two monuments in the form of a pyramid and a globe, surmounted by a cross; they had, of course, no connection with it. They formerly decorated the top of the ciborium erected by Innocent VIII. for the Volto Santo—i.e. the handkerchief of S. Veronica on which the features of Our Lord were impressed, which is one of the most precious relics preserved at St. Peter’s. The little cross is, however, modern; it replaced a bronze crucifix carried off by Innocent XI. The ends of the sarcophagus are, as works of art, superior to the front; their subjects are taken from real life, and represent the four seasons. The genii amid the grapes, the olives, and the corn, are executed with great spirit. The sarcophagus exhibits the naïve touch so often found in sculptures of the Middle Ages: Job’s wife is holding her nose; John the Baptist is represented as a sheep with a paw on the lamb’s head.

There are comparatively few Early Christian remains in the crypt which go back to the days of the Roman Empire.

Far the most notable of these is this tomb of Junius Bassus. It is of the fourth century A.D., and is a noble sarcophagus in the finest state of preservation; it is, I think, the only tomb of Early Christian times which still contains the bones of the original occupant. The other early sarcophagi—such as that which still contains the bones of Hadrian IV., and those which once contained the bones of Pius II. and Pius III.—are Early Christian sarcophagi used a second time. There are many examples of them in Rome, and even pagan sarcophagi were often used in the same way; the emblems sometimes being converted and sometimes not. In Sicily I have seen a sarcophagus which had been used three times: first, for a Greek pagan, then for a Christian martyr, and then for a Norman Marquis of Geracé, who expected contact with the bones of the Saint to help him to a resurrection with the just, as the bones of Elisha brought the body of the dead man to life when they touched him.

Junius Bassus was Prefect of Rome, A.D. 359. The pious author, and the only author who has written about the whole of the crypt of St. Peter’s—a priest of S. Sulpice at Paris—calls him “the illustrious personage.” But though twenty-one of his name come into Smith’s Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography, he is not one of them. During his prefecture he was converted, as one is informed by an inscription engraved on his sarcophagus, and he died the same year. His inscription runs: IVN . BASSVS . V . C . QVI VIXIT ANNIS . XLII MEN . II . IN IPSA PRAEFECTVRA VRBI NEOFITVS IIT AD DEVM . VIII . KAL . SEPT EVSEBIO ET YPATIO COSS.

The important words are those which tell that he lived forty-two years and two months, and went to his God a neophyte while he was holding office as Praefectus Urbi.

Next to the tomb of Junius Bassus comes a series of panels from the masterpiece of Mino da Fiesole, the huge and gloriously beautiful Mausoleum of Paul II., the brilliant Venetian Pope who built the great Palazzo di Venezia. It is to be hoped that the municipality of Venice will show their appreciation of the honour done their city by the present Pope (who was Patriarch of Venice before his elevation to the Papacy), by undertaking the re-erection of the tomb of Paul II. in one of the chapels of the New St. Peter’s, where it would be shown off to perfection. A great number of its pieces have been preserved, and the men who restored the exterior of St. Mark’s could be trusted to insert the missing parts to the complete satisfaction of art lovers. The most beautiful of the figures is that of Faith, numbered 215, holding a chalice, and a cross now broken. One could not easily conceive a face of more heavenly beauty; but Charity, numbered 219, with an infant on her knees, is hardly less exquisite. Besides the beautiful single figures there are groups, one of which represents the Resurrection of Our Saviour, numbered 217, and another, the Last Judgment, numbered 218, where Our Lord, seated between St. Peter and St. Paul, and the other Apostles, raises His right hand to pronounce sentence. At His feet stands St. Michael, with sword and scales, waiting to deliver judgment. Two angels are sounding the Last Trump to summon the dead from their tombs. On the right of Our Saviour are the innocent; on His left the guilty are conducted to Eternal Fire by a demon. As fine as anything from the tomb is the exquisite panel of the Temptation in the Garden of Eden, numbered 209, in which the figures of Adam and Eve have disappeared, though one can trace their outlines; but the serpent twined round the tree has the head of a lovely human being. The group, numbered 205, of God the Father borne up on a cloak surrounded by cherub-like angels, is, with the exception of the central figure, so inferior that Mino obviously must have left its execution to his pupils; this is acknowledged to be the case. The Creation of Woman, on the other hand, numbered 208, is considered to be the work of Mino himself, though it is not at all equal in beauty to the statue of Faith, or the group of the Temptation in the Garden of Eden. In any case, if this is the work of Mino, it is possible that the figure of the Eternal Father in number 205 is also from his hand. The statues of St. Luke and St. John the Evangelist, numbered 212 and 213, are also assigned to this tomb. The figure of Hope, numbered 216, which had wings to fly to Heaven, and also belongs to the tomb, is not so beautiful as the Faith or Charity, though it is a noble piece of work: it is not by Mino da Fiesole, but by Giovanni Dalmata. Père Dufresne says that the group representing the Resurrection of Our Lord, numbered 217, belongs also to the tomb of Paul II., and not, as a modern inscription states, to that of Calixtus III. This group has much more of the charm of Mino da Fiesole than the Last Judgment, numbered 218, but experts pronounce it to be the work of a little-known sculptor, named Argenti. Père Dufresne points out that Mary being represented in the attitude of weeping in the adjoining mosaic is remarkable, as originally she was not represented in this attitude.

The piece of sculpture, numbered 214, which Dufresne assigned to this tomb, is now considered to be a part of the ciborium erected by Innocent VIII. for the Holy Lance. It is pronounced to be the work of Bramante and the celebrated sculptor, Paolo Romano, who has such beautiful works in the Church of S. Maria in Trastevere. The exquisite alto-relievo in marble which came from the ancient chapel of St. Blaise, numbered 204, one of the most beautiful objects in the crypts, is also from the atelier of Paolo Romano. The bas-reliefs, numbered 206 and 207, belonging to the tomb of Cardinal Eroli, are by Giovanni Dalmata. I mention this because there are not many opportunities of studying this sculptor. The statues of the Apostles, numbered 220, 225, 226, 227, 228, 230, 233, 234, 236, 237, and 238, which are considered very fine, all came from the ciborium erected at the back of the tomb of St. Peter by Sixtus IV.

As you step on to the floor of the old crypt you are overwhelmed with a rush of emotion, for you find yourself standing on the actual floor of the basilica of Constantine. Almost immediately on your left you enter a little three-cornered chapel, which contains the remains of the only woman of less than royal rank who is buried in St. Peter’s—that of Madame Agnes, who was born a Colonna and became by marriage a Caetani, thus uniting two of the most princely families in Rome; for while a Colonna is one of the two Principi Assistenti al Soglio—the Princes in attendance on the throne of the Pope—the Caetani are, since the extinction of the Conti, the premier family of the Roman nobility. Women are only allowed in this chapel on the day after Pentecost. When Misson visited Rome in his celebrated voyage in the reign of Queen Anne this was the only day on which they were allowed into any part of the crypt. The old crypt, which extends the whole length of the nave, is extremely low, only six or seven feet high, covered over by broad, round-barrelled vaults, painted white.

If you walk straight past the Colonna-Caetani chapel to the end, you will pass nearly all the principal tombs which were saved from Old St. Peter’s.

The first that you come to is that of Cardinal Eroli, which bears his effigy and arms. Only the sarcophagus remains here, but other portions of his mausoleum are preserved in the crypt, the most important of which is the relief of Our Saviour in the act of blessing, which is alluded to below. Cardinal Fonseca’s tomb is not important.

Eighty-six Popes were buried in the old basilica, but nearly all their tombs were destroyed by Bramante when he took down the old church in that wild haste. I will allude to them in the order in which you pass them. The Facchinetti Pope (Innocent IX.) only reigned two months, and died in 1591. The Cervini Pope (Marcellus II.), a distinguished diplomatist, died in 1555, after having been keeper of the Vatican Library and one of the Presidents of the Council of Trent. He was Pope only twenty-two days, and is buried in a sarcophagus of the fourth century, decorated with the figure of Our Saviour between St. Peter and St. Paul. Innocent VII., the Migliorati Pope, also had a brief reign, only a couple of years (1404-1406); his ambition was to restore the Roman University founded by Boniface VIII. The sarcophagus of Urban VI., the Prignano Pope (1378-1389), has passed through more vicissitudes than any in the crypt. It was hard that his body should not rest after such a stormy life. His bones are no longer in it; they were emptied out by the workmen who were building the dome when they needed a trough for water. The lions which formerly adorned the sarcophagus now adorn the throne of St. Peter in the chapel of S. Maria della Bocciata in the crypt. Gregorovius, in The Tombs of the Popes, done into English by Mr. Seton Watson so admirably, says: “That the tomb of Urban VI., despite its absurd and barbarous inscription, must have been truly magnificent, is proved by the drawings of it made before it was destroyed to make way for the new church.”

Hare, page 526, says: “Next follows the sarcophagus of Urban VI., Bartolommeo Prignano (1378-1389), the sole relic of the magnificent tomb of this cruel Pope, who is credited with having walled up two or three of his Cardinals while at Genoa during the Schism, and is believed to have died of poison. It bears his figure, and, in front, a bas-relief of him receiving the keys from St. Peter.... Its epitaph runs thus:—

This is the epitaph which Platina stigmatized as “satis rustico et inepto”—uncouth and foolish.

Nicholas III., who died in 1280, the Orsini Pope, was the rebuilder of the Vatican and the chapel of the Sancta Sanctorum at the top of the Scala Santa as it now is. Julius III., died 1555, the del Monte Pope, who has a plain altar tomb bearing only his name, was the founder of the charming Villa Papa Giulio near the Ponte Molle, which is now the Etruscan Museum. He was notorious for his nepotism; he created no less than five of his family Cardinals. The tomb of Paul II., the Barbo Pope, who died in 1471, formed part of one of the most remarkable monuments of the Middle Ages. His noble mausoleum was the masterpiece of Mino da Fiesole; the glorious fragments of it which remain in the crypt have already been described. If he was vain and luxurious, he was also noted for his love of art and antiquities and the prestige of the Papacy. In his Palazzo di Venezia he made a magnificent collection of classical and mediæval antiquities. When he died, his relative, Marco Barbo, Patriarch of Aquileia, commissioned Mino da Fiesole to execute his famous monument, which included, according to Père Dufresne, besides the sarcophagus, statues of the Evangelists, the theological virtues, and four Biblical scenes: the Creation of Woman, the Original Sin, the Resurrection of Our Lord, and the Last Judgment. Paul II., for whom Mino da Fiesole carved one of the most beautiful tombs of all time, rests in a comparatively low sarcophagus with a very long inscription on it, flanked with two rather charming little angels. The recumbent figure on the top entirely overwhelms the tomb: it shows a very tall and handsome man with statuesque features. He is reputed to have been the handsomest of all the Popes, and a malicious tradition relates that his Cardinals had great difficulty in preventing him taking the name of Formosus, the Beautiful, as his new name when he was elected Pope. “But,” says Gregorovius (Tombs of the Popes, Seton Watson’s Translation), “the Cardinals pointed out to him that the assumption of such a title would seem a mere idle allusion to his handsome figure. Men mocked at his vanity, because he loved nothing better than to show himself in processions, where he towered above the heads of other men. He decked himself out like a conceited woman before he went to attend the solemn functions of the Church. He squandered vast sums upon the adornment of his person. He had sapphires, chrysolites, smaragdi, diamonds, and pearls sent to him from all parts of the world, that he might adorn his mitre, and then displayed himself in it before the populace as the handsomest of all the Popes. Nicholas V. had collected manuscripts for his library with the passion of a humanist and an antiquary; Paul II., with equal zeal, collected antique gems, medals, statues, and works of art of every kind.”

Paul II. was buried in this sarcophagus against his own wishes, for he had had the gigantic sarcophagus of S. Constantia, the daughter of Constantine the Great, one of the two finest pieces of porphyry in the world, removed from the church at S. Costanza (a still uninjured building, erected by Constantine himself in the grounds of S. Agnese fuori le Murà) to his palace of San Marco (now the Palazzo di Venezia), and ordered that he should be buried in it.

Nicholas V., the Parentucelli Pope, who died in 1455, the little plain scholar from Sarzana, was the first of all the Popes to appreciate the antiquities of ancient Rome. For the revival of literature and art his was the most glorious reign of the brilliant fifteenth century. His death-bed speech, quoted by Père Dufresne, is an index to the character of the Scholar-Pope who founded the Vatican Library: “I found the Holy Church desolated with wars and choked with debts; I have reformed it and made it strong; I have delivered it from schism; I have reconquered its cities and castles; I have not only freed it from its debts, but I have raised for its defence splendid fortresses, such as those of Gualdo, Assisi, Fabriano, Civita-Castellana, Narni, Orvieto, Spoleto, and Viterbo. I have embellished it by raising imposing monuments, upon which I have lavished all the resources of art, aided by the glitter of gold and jewels. I have enriched it with books and tapestries, vases of gold and silver and magnificent ornaments, destined for Religion. And though I have amassed all these treasures I have not to reproach myself with cupidity or simony, or love of presents, or avarice; on the contrary, I have shown in every respect a noble liberality, both in building and in my numerous purchases of books, and in the impetus I have given to the copying of Greek and Latin manuscripts, and in pensions granted to learned men. That I have been able to do all this I owe to the favour of the Divine Creator and the state of peace which the Church has enjoyed uninterruptedly during my Pontificate.” Of Nicholas V., Gregorovius (Tombs of the Popes, Seton Watson’s Translation) says: “With Nicholas V., Thomas of Sarzana (1447-1455), the most liberal of all promoters of knowledge, the humanism of the century actually mounted the Papal throne.... Nicholas V., during whose reign Byzantium fell into the power of the Turks, rescued the treasures of classic literature by transporting them from thence to Rome, gave a fresh impulse to Greek studies, and gathered round him such men as Poggio Bracciolini, Gregory of Trebizond, Nicola Perotto, Lorenzo Valla, Theodore of Gaza, and Cardinal Bessarion. In the last year of his Pontificate the art of printing made its appearance in Rome, where it was hospitably received by the noble family of the Massimi.

“It was the same Pope who founded the Vatican Library, by despatching agents into every country, charged with the purchase of manuscripts. Lastly, he conceived the project—worthy of the Flavian Emperors—of enlarging the Vatican Palace into a Papal City, an Apostolic Palatine Hill, and of converting St. Peter’s into the mightiest temple of the world. The realization of this scheme was reserved for the daring mind of Julius II. But the latter, though he inherited his colossal ideas from Nicholas V., had no respect for the monument of so honourable a predecessor. He allowed it to perish during the demolition of the ancient church, and thus only a few remnants have been preserved in the Grotte Vaticane—statues of the Apostles Matthew, James, and John, figures of angels and other fragments.”

The founder of the noble study of archæology rests in a beautiful altar tomb, though not equal to that of Boniface VIII., which stands nearly opposite to it. At the very end of the aisle is the finest perfect tomb in the crypt—that of the great Pope, Boniface VIII. (died 1303), the last of the great Pontiffs like Gregory VII., Alexander III., and Innocent III., who tried to rule the world. This, too, is an altar tomb by the incomparable Arnolfo di Lapo,⁠[11] with a recumbent portrait figure which has hardly a superior anywhere, and an exquisitely carved pall. The face shows superb strength, and the draperies of the tomb are beautiful. It is the best tomb of the period in Rome in attitude and in effect, down to the smallest detail, such as the jewellery in his tiara. A shapely chapel rose over it, of which fragments (including a portion of the ciborium) are preserved close by. One bears the arms of the Caetani, the premier family of the Italian nobility, to which this Pope belonged.

The legend that he had died mad, biting his hands and arms, is disproved by the condition of his body, which was discovered in the time of Paul V. when the new Cathedral was being built. More than three hundred years after his death, the body was found quite perfect, with only the nose and lips decayed. It was opened again in 1835, but only the skeleton remained in full Pontifical costume. The inscription on his coffin recorded the state of preservation when the body was examined in 1835. Boniface was the Pope who canonized St. Louis and instituted the Jubilee to take place every hundred years: he was a great patron of art and literature. Boniface was the lifelong enemy of the Colonna; his motto might have been “Delenda est Columna.”⁠[12] In his anxiety to root them out, he destroyed the glorious old town of Palestrina and its great Temple of Fortune, which had survived in an almost perfect state from ancient times—the finest temple in all Italy. The Colonna bided their time, and when Philip le Bel of France sent an army into Italy, they made a dash at the grand old man of Anagni, who had fortified himself in his native city. The citizens were sullen and offered no resistance; then Sciarra Colonna, the fiercest of the clan, subjected the captive Pope to the humiliation of a mock crucifixion between two thieves. Boniface maintained his courage unshaken: he had refused to fly or to disguise himself. “If I die,” he said, “I will die a Pope.” The citizens rallied to him; a truce was patched up; but the shock had been too much for the old man, and soon brought down his grey hairs to the grave. Dante alluded to the incident in the twentieth canto of his Purgatory.

“I in Alagna see the fleur-de-lys,

Christ, in His Vicar, captive to the foe.

Him once again as mocked and scorned I see,

I see once more the vinegar and gall,

And slain between two robbers hangeth He.”

Purgatory, Canto XX., 86-90.

Upon which Dean Plumtre gives the following note: “The mockery and scorn, the wormwood and the gall, of the Crucifixion were reproduced by this new Pilate when he gave Boniface into the hands of his enemies of the House of Colonna.”

We know the features of the great and turbulent and worldly Pope as well as any in the long line of the successors of St. Peter; for we have not only the noble effigy on his tomb, but two erect contemporary portraits representing him in his pride and prime. He sits still enthroned in a stately esedra below the roof of his Cathedral of Anagni. And in the Lateran we have a portrait of him by Giotto himself, between two Cardinals, proclaiming the first Jubilee.

Gregorovius, in his Tombs of the Popes (Seton Watson’s Translation), sums up Boniface VIII. thus: “He stood at the death-bed of the thirteenth century, and saw the fourteenth born; he is one of the great representatives of the age of Dante. The mighty poet once appeared before him as Florentine Ambassador; and in the first Jubilee year of Rome, Giovanni Villani conceived the plan of his chronicle, the greatest triumph of Italian historical genius. It was in the year 1300 that Boniface proclaimed this festival, and we are still reminded of it to-day by a precious memorial,—a picture of Giotto, which is preserved under glass in the right aisle of the Lateran. It represents Boniface standing between two Cardinals, in the act of announcing the Year of Jubilee. This Pope was daring enough to renew once more the mighty struggle between Church and State. In the Bull Unum Sanctum, in which he laid claim to an over-lordship above all Kings and countries, he rashly bade defiance to the forces of nationality hitherto latent, but invincible when once awakened. In excommunicating Philip the Fair, King of France, he raised up an enemy who eventually worked his ruin.”

Following in immediate succession to the tomb of Boniface come four others of the highest interest. The first is that which should have contained the bones of the gifted Pius II., who died 1464, the most accomplished of all the Popes, that Æneas Sylvius Piccolomini of Siena, whose career fills the walls of the Library of Siena Cathedral with that series of frescoes by Pinturicchio which has no equal for beauty and brightness. The tomb in which his bones were to have been laid is a sarcophagus of the age of the foundation of the old basilica. The carvings, which are rather coarsely executed, according to Dufresne, represent various Biblical subjects. In the centre is Our Lord on a little hill from which pour four rivers. At His feet are miniature figures in the act of prayer, without doubt the deceased persons for whom the sarcophagus was originally intended; at the side are the Delivery of Our Lord, and Our Lord before Pilate. This sarcophagus was found during the rebuilding in the foundations of the older church. “Æneas Sylvius,” says Gregorovius, in The Tombs of the Popes (Seton Watson’s Translation), “was the son of a poor nobleman of the family of Piccolomini in Siena, which owed its greatness to his genius. His brilliant talents alike as poet, courtier, and man of the world, rapidly transformed him from a literary adventurer into a man of wide fame and popularity. In early life he was Secretary to the Anti-Pope Felix V., and ambassador to the Emperor Frederick III., who solemnly invested him with the poet’s laurel crown, and whose history Æneas wrote. At the Council of Basel he eloquently championed the rights of General Councils as opposed to those of the Roman Pontiffs, but afterwards seceded to the party of Eugenius IV., and laid the final foundations of his good fortune as Secretary to three successive Popes, while Calixtus III. raised him to the rank of Cardinal. When eventually he succeeded the latter on the Papal throne he renounced all the traditions of his past life. During an all too brief reign the cause that lay nearest to his heart was the destruction of the Turkish power. His ardent desire was to place himself at the head of a crusading army, and he died with his weapon already in his hand, full of warlike enthusiasm, amid the din of arming hosts assembled at the seaport of Ancona.”

Pius III., his nephew, who died in 1503, and was the last Pope buried in Old St. Peter’s (for his successor was Julius II., who demolished the old basilica), had chosen for his tomb a magnificent sarcophagus of the fifth century, not sculptured like his uncle’s, but of majestic solidity and simplicity. He reigned only twenty-six days, but few Popes ever accomplished so much in a month. His body rested here for a hundred years, then his remains, and those of his uncle, Pius II., were transferred to the pretentious tombs in the Church of S. Andrea della Valle. It was hard that Æneas Sylvius, the humanist, should be the prey of vulgarity.

But there was appropriateness in the transference, for the head of St. Andrew was brought from Byzantium to Rome by Thomas Palæologus during the reign of Pius II., and received with ceremonies of extraordinary fervour and splendour.

The next tomb has special interest for the English, for it is that of Hadrian IV., who died in 1159, the only Englishman who ever sat on the throne of St. Peter. He was born Nicholas Breakspear, of poor parents, at St. Albans. He showed the courage and capacity of his race, for he put down the disturbances caused by Arnold of Brescia with a firm hand, and adhered to his refusal to crown the great Frederick Barbarossa until the Emperor had done homage to him by holding his stirrup like King Pepin the Short. He was the first of the score of Popes who held Court at Orvieto, and Orvieto is full of grand old Romanesque houses of his day. He is buried in a gigantic sarcophagus of red Egyptian granite, majestic in its simplicity, which must have been the coffin of an ancient Roman, as is shown by the skulls of oxen which are carved upon it. The sole inscription is “Hadrianus Papa IV.” Not so very far from his tomb, but in the centre aisle, is that attributed to the extraordinary Alexander VI. (died 1503), the wicked Borgia Pope, whose crimes to secure the aggrandizement of his children, Lucrezia and Cesare, fill so many pages of history and fiction. If one may trust the kneeling portrait in those exquisite Borgia Apartments which he employed Pinturicchio to fresco, he was a splendid specimen of manhood, physically. But that portrait does not tally with the pious face of the recumbent effigy on the tomb which he is supposed to have occupied. Perhaps this belonged to the uncle who paved the way for his greatness, Calixtus III. (died 1458). Gregorovius, in The Tombs of the Popes (Seton Watson’s Translation), says: “The Borgia Pope has no monument, not even a grave.... The sarcophagus in the Vatican crypt, which is shown as that of Alexander, also belongs to his uncle, Calixtus III., whose full-length figure lies above.... Throughout life he was favoured by a boundless fortune. Nature had endowed him with a majestic presence and a lively understanding. The motives of his fearful crimes are to be found, not so much in his ambition, as in his sensuality and love for his bastard children. His reign brought with it universal ruin; it was the curse of Italy, which he delivered over to the mercy of French and Spanish armies, and the curse of the Church, in whose eyes his Pontificate must remain an eternal disgrace. And, indeed, a dreadful Nemesis was at hand. The voice of Savonarola, it is true, was stifled in the flames of the stake; but Luther still lived, and no succeeding Pope has ever availed to undo his mighty work.”

The bones of both of them lie in the church of the Spaniards, S. Maria di Montserrato. So universally was Alexander VI. execrated, that no monument was erected over them until the late Pope’s time, when there was an ebullition of Spanish amour propre, which partly took the shape of monumentalizing the notorious Borgia, partly of insisting on the removal of the tablet which showed the real place where St. Peter was executed; because it injured the other Spanish church of S. Pietro in Montorio, to have doubts cast on the spot under the Tempietto of Bramante, where, without any proper authority, the monks maintained the execution to have taken place. Both the Borgia Popes were buried, until 1610, in the Chapel of S. Maria delle Febbri. In a line with this tomb is that of the great young Emperor, Otto II., an enormous plaster erection, which one might almost call a tumulus, painted to resemble porphyry; it is about twelve feet long and four feet high, and is said to contain an ancient sarcophagus, for which the present font of St. Peter’s is wrongly supposed to have formed the cover. It really belonged to the tomb of the famous Crescentius, Prefect of Rome, alluded to below. But Klaczko says: “Stranger still were the destinies of the tomb of the Emperor Otho II. The ancient sarcophagus which held the mortal remains of the young monarch until 1609—the year when the last part of the old basilica was torn down—was afterwards changed into a fountain to adorn the Cortile of the Quirinale Palace; and its superb lid, a colossal mass of red porphyry, now inverted, is the baptismal font of St. Peter’s, in the first chapel on the left of the entrance. Let it be noted that this same porphyry lid came from Hadrian’s mausoleum, and had probably sheltered the ashes of that Ultra-Pagan Prince!”

Between the two at the end of the central aisle is the tomb of Raymond Zacosta, the Grand Master of the Knights of St. John of Malta. Close by the tomb of Otto is that of Gregory V., who was made Pope at the age of twenty-three by his cousin, the Emperor Otto III. He died after a brief reign, made strong by the opposition of the famous Crescentius and the Anti-Pope John XVI. He is buried in a costly sarcophagus of the fifth century.

Gregorovius, in his Tombs of the Popes (Seton Watson’s Translation), says: “Not far from the grave of Otto stands the sarcophagus of the first Pope of German origin—Gregory V.—Bruno (996-999). It was erected by his cousin Otto III. With him the Dark Ages came to an end, and the era of the Hildebrandine reforms begins to dawn. A fortunate accident has preserved his coffin and its inscription; and its time-worn characters, in barbarous Latin, make the past live once more before us. It was an age full of glory for the German nation, but dismal enough in the history of the Eternal City. On April 29, 998, the Castle of Sant’ Angelo fell into the power of the young Emperor, and with it Crescentius, the forerunner of Arnold of Brescia and Cola di Rienzi. For this daring Roman, sprung from a noble Latian family, was the first in the long series of patriots who sought to free the city of their fathers from the tyranny alike of Pope and German Emperor. He had succeeded in expelling Gregory V., but Otto III. ere long restored his favourite to power; and the luckless champion of liberty was beheaded in Sant’ Angelo, and his corpse hurled with savage insults from the battlements.”

Gregory V. died young, like his kinsmen the Ottos, after a troubled reign of less than two years and a half; he was only twenty-seven or twenty-eight. Otto III., who had loved him with youthful enthusiasm, and had received from his hands the Imperial Crown, had the dead Pope interred close to Gregory the Great in a white marble sarcophagus, covered with rudely executed reliefs representing scenes from Scripture.

“He who rests here, of noble eyes and countenance,

Was once called Gregory, fifth of the name.

His early name was Bruno, of the royal Frankish race,

The son of Otto and of Judith his spouse.

A German in speech, he was brought up in the city of Worms;

He yet mounted the Apostolic Throne, when young in years.

He reigned two years and almost eight months,

Dying when February had numbered thrice six days.

Generous to the poor, each Sunday he gave out vestments among them.

Careful to observe the Apostolic number.”

(Translated by R. W. Seton Watson in Gregorovius’s Tombs of the Popes.)

All epitaphs and epigraphs make stiff reading for a book which aims at interesting the ordinary mortal; so I shall pass them by with the less important pieces of sculpture and fragments of mosaics.

Many people will recognize a strange coincidence, if not an intention or an omen, in the fact that the præcordia of Pius IX. repose in the left aisle close to the tombs—enormous and hideous arks of painted plaster—which contain the bones of the last three Stuarts,—James, the Old Pretender, Charles Edward, the Young Pretender, and Henry, Cardinal of York. These unhappy and luckless Princes rest here and not beneath the elegant monument, by Canova, which George IV. had the good grace to erect to their memory on the first pier of the nave of St. Peter’s.

As I have mentioned, had James seen fit to change his religion for the Crown of Britain, he would have reigned longer than any of our Sovereigns, not even excepting Queen Victoria. For James II. died in 1701, and James III. just lived into 1766. But though few in the history of the world have given up so much for their faith, he can hardly be canonized; Rome knows him too well. For he spent the last half-century of what Chambers calls his “fainéant, dissolute, prayerful life” there. Charles Edward was born at Rome in 1720, and died there in 1788. His youth was chivalrous and splendid, but for the last forty years of his life he was a miserable drunkard.

Henry, created by his father Duke of York, and by Benedict XIV., Cardinal, was the best of the three. He was much loved at Frascati, where he was Bishop, and celebrated for his charity. While he enjoyed the revenues of the two rich abbeys bestowed upon him through the favour of the French Court he was wealthy. When Charles Edward died, in 1788, he had a medal struck, bearing this legend in Latin: “Henry IX., King of England, by the Grace of God, but not by the will of men.”

He lost his income from France by the French Revolution, but relieved the necessities of Pius VI. by selling his family jewels. In the last years of his life, George IV., then Prince Regent, and he, exchanged various amenities. George gave him a pension of £4000 a year, and when he died, an old, old man, in 1807, he bequeathed to George the Crown jewels, carried off by his grandfather from England a hundred and nineteen years before—a record in the annals of longevity. In 1819 the Prince Regent commissioned Canova to erect the famous monument. Charles Edward was buried first at Frascati, where the Cardinal lived, but his remains were translated to St. Peter’s. It is down in the crypt that the adherents of the lost cause, the protesting subjects of the fallen Stuarts, come to lay their white roses; not on the tomb of him who sacrificed so much and so long, but on that of the graceless, graceful Charles Edward.

The Cardinal of York—was there ever a more beautiful title?—was Arch-Priest of St. Peter’s for fifty-six years.

Near the Stuart tombs is that of another nomad, who gave up a throne for the Roman Catholic religion, Christina of Sweden, the daughter of the champion of the Protestants in the Thirty Years’ War. She bequeathed to the Vatican the splendid library her father had acquired by the capture of Prague and other cities.

Almost in a line with the tombs of the Stuarts, let into the opposite pier, is a porphyry slab, on which tradition declares that Pope S. Silvester, in 319, divided the bodies of St. Peter and St. Paul to give part to each of the two basilicas of the Vatican and the Ostian Way. But Professor Marucchi, the antiquary to the Holy See, rejects the tradition. Next to it is another marble slab, called the accursed stone, on which many martyrs are said to have suffered.

It was transferred from a church outside the Leonine city to the Old St. Peter’s, where it was placed by the side of the Chapel of the Volto Santo. Near here also are a fine fragment of the pavement of the basilica of Constantine (proving that the floor of the crypt was the floor of Old St. Peter’s), and the famous marble copy of the donation of the Countess Matilda, giving all her dominions to the Papacy. She made the formal gift to a Legate of Pascal II. in 1120, and this marble copy was erected close to the tomb of St. Peter. The Countess is buried in St. Peter’s, on the right side opposite the Chapel of the Holy Sacrament. It was the support of Matilda that enabled Gregory VII. to humiliate the Emperor Henry IV. at Canossa. The Castle of Canossa belonged to her.

In the floor close by is the tomb of Charlotte, Queen of Cyprus and Jerusalem, who was dethroned in 1458, and came to implore the Pope’s aid in recovering her crown. Pius II. had the good sense to recognize the impossibility, and gave her a pension and a palace instead. There are still in the Vatican Library books presented to her.

Here you enter the new crypt. Just at the entrance there is a representation of the head of St. Andrew, carried on a cloth by two angels, erected to commemorate the acquisition of the head of the Apostle from Constantinople by Pius II. Gregorovius gives a wonderful description of its reception in the seventh volume of his history:

“Rodrigo Borgia, afterwards Alexander VI., covered his palace with the most costly draperies, and transformed the surrounding quarter into a paradise resonant with music. The Pope made a Latin speech to the head, in which he said, ‘So thou comest at last, O most holy head of an Apostle driven from thine abode by the fury of the Turk. Like an exile, thou takest refuge with thy brother, the Prince of the Apostles. This is Alma Roma which thou seest before thee, and which is dedicated to the most precious blood of thy brother in the flesh. The Romans, who are thy brother’s family, greet thee as their uncle and father.’”

When the head was finally deposited near St. Peter’s tomb, Cardinal Bessarion addressed a discourse to St. Peter, in which he expressed his conviction that the Prince of the Apostles would avenge the outrages his brother had received from the Turks, and that Andrew, as a new protector to Rome, would unite the Kings in a crusade. The head of St. Andrew is now preserved in one of the piers of the dome.

All round here are fifteenth-century sculptures belonging to the tombs of Nicholas V. and Innocent VIII., and the famous altar and ciborium which Innocent erected to receive the head of the Holy Lance with which Our Lord’s side was pierced, when it was sent to him by the Sultan Bajazet. They consist of statues and medallions. The lovely statues of the four doctors of the Latin Church—St. Ambrose, St. Gregory, St. Jerome, and St. Augustine—are said to have belonged to the tomb of Calixtus III. Charming, too, are the fifteenth-century medallions of the Evangelists, which belonged to the ciborium of the Holy Lance.

Just opposite the Chapel of S. Mary of the Women with Child, is the famous inscription of Pope S. Damasus, which gives its name to the principal court of the Vatican. It is the most beautiful inscription in the crypts. It is disappointing to find that this stately epigraph only refers to the drainage, which the saint, with saving common sense, diverted from the tombs to a place where it could be used for a baptistery. S. Damasus lived in the first century of the old basilica.

The fine ancient mosaics on the pier between the entrance to this chapel and the adjoining chapel of S. Maria della Bocciata came from the tomb of poor young Otto II., who had such high hopes of living to see the Millennium, and died a mere boy in 983. The figure of Christ reminds you of the great mosaic Christs of Palermo, Monreale, and Cefalù, especially in the action of the hand. Père Dufresne says that St. Peter’s holding three keys is significant, without doubt typifying the fact that the Sovereign Pontiff exercises authority over the Church, triumphant, militant, and suffering.

The Chapel of S. Maria Pregnantium is the largest chapel in the crypt. Close to its door is a beautiful bas-relief of Our Saviour blessing the Innocents; a fragment of the tomb of Cardinal Eroli, by Giovanni Dalmata, a sculptor of ability who flourished about 1470-1480, concerning whom, like Paolo Romano and Francesco Laurana (who were approximately his contemporaries, and the latter of whom executed busts of conspicuous beauty and European fame), one can practically find no details in works of reference. The group by the Dalmatian is interesting, because the head of Our Lord has the hair raying out like sunbeams, as you have it on the handkerchief of S. Veronica.

Opposite this is a fine inscription of Pope Hormisdas, the Pontiff who reunited the Eastern and Western Churches after they had been separated for thirty-five years. The mosaic angel by Giotto on the same wall is very lovely, but it looks as if it had been restored by Guido Reni or Carlo Dolce: it came from the wall of the nave of Old St. Peter’s. Between it and the window is another fragment of Matteo Pollaiuolo’s screen, which went round the Confessio of Old St. Peter’s; the piece which represents Nero condemning the Apostles formed the paliotto of the High Altar. As a representation of Nero it is worthless. The sculptor tried to make him finicking and comical, as a concession to the religious prejudices of the times. Opposite this is a beautiful inscription of the twelfth century, a panegyric of S. Boniface IV., the Pope who had the satisfaction of extorting from the worthless Emperor, Phocas, a grant of the Pantheon, which after due purification he consecrated as S. Maria ad Martyres, transferring to it thirty waggon-loads of the bones of the martyrs from the Catacombs. From here a low stair leads up into a smaller chapel, which contains some most interesting objects: such as the mosaic portrait of John VII., very like the Ravenna mosaics; possibly also like its subject, because the square nimbus shows that it was executed in his lifetime. John holds a representation of the oratory from which this mosaic came in his hand. This is the oratory which stood on the extreme left of the west front of Old St. Peter’s, and was built in the eighth century in honour of the Virgin. It was also called the Oratory of the SS. Sudarium, and the Oratory of S. Veronica, because the celebrated relic of the Holy Face, which we call S. Veronica’s handkerchief, and the Italians call the Volto Santo, was kept there. It was destroyed in the seventeenth century. Near this is a marble tablet engraved with three prayers for the soul of Gregory III., who died in 741, which were written on marble after his death and placed on his tomb. Opposite to this is a very holy spot, where once reposed in the same tomb S. Leo I., S. Leo II., S. Leo III., and S. Leo IV. The first S. Leo, the Great, stayed the hand of Attila; the third crowned Charlemagne; the fourth was the builder of the Leonine city. They all lie in one of the transepts of the New St. Peter’s, under the altar of St. Mary of the Column. Near this is a twelfth-century picture of the Virgin, which was in the old basilica. The head is charming, but far more important is the painting beside it of the façade, and the portico of the old basilica, and of the Old Vatican.

Separated from the Chapel of S. Maria Pregnantium by a wall is the Chapel of S. Maria della Bocciata. On the right hand, as you enter it, are some lovely arabesque bas-reliefs from the Garden of Nero, which equal in loveliness anything of the kind which has survived from classical times. Who knows if they may not have been preserved as having stood by the spot where St. Peter met his death? Who knows that Mino da Fiesole, who worked so much for Old St. Peter’s, did not draw the inspiration for his delicious bas-reliefs from them? In the vault above them we have frescoes of some of the most precious objects in Old St. Peter’s, such as the shrine of the Holy Lance, erected by Pope Innocent VIII., of which fine fragments remain scattered about his crypt. Its splendour was brief, for the Lance Head, with which tradition said the side of the Saviour was pierced, was only brought to Rome in 1492, the gift of the Sultan, Bajazet II., sent as a diplomatic offering to the Pope, who was very obligingly keeping his brother and rival, Prince Djem, out of Turkey in honourable captivity. The Prince is one of the most notable figures in the frescoes of the Borgia Apartments. There are also pictures of the baldachin which was over the Volto Santo, and the ciborium which contained the shroud that wrapped Our Lord’s body; and some of the most famous mosaics of the old church. Underneath them is a thirteenth-century mosaic which came from the Oratory of John VII. Opposite this is one of the finest statues in the crypt—that of Benedict XII., who died 1342. The style and execution are noble; the sculptor had quite an Egyptian inspiration. It is so majestic, though it is not of full length, that it is worthy of the Pope who founded the Palace of Avignon, which, of all the work of human hands, comes nearest to the rocks of God. Between it and the door is a singularly beautiful monument, a statue of St. Peter seated on a throne designed for Benedict XII., with the lions at his feet which once adorned the tomb of Urban VI. The throne is the most beautiful in Rome. It consists of a sort of triptych of three gables. The centre is occupied by the seat, while in each of the sides is the figure of an angel between two elegant little spiral columns with ribbons of mosaic twined round them. The base is inlaid with porphyry discs and scrolls of the school of the Cosmati. The statue, which is much older than the statue exhibited in the church above for the adoration of the faithful, was once a Roman Consul, but was given a new head with a halo, and a new hand with keys.

The Chapel of S. Maria della Bocciata, which contains some of the gems of all the crypts, takes its name from an image of the Virgin which used to stand in the portico, whose face bled when it was struck by pebbles. The two stones, worn into holes, protected by bars underneath it, are by some thought to have been worn by the fall of the blood; but others say by the fingers of the faithful touching the sacred spot. The image now stands at the end of the chapel, which contains such noble monuments. Opposite the entrance is a little chapel dedicated to Our Saviour, called the Salvatorino. On the pier at the entrance of this chapel is the great marble cross which crowned the façade of Old St. Peter’s in the Middle Ages. Almost opposite its entrance is a statue of St. James the Less, which belonged to the magnificent ciborium erected by Sixtus IV. at the back of the High Altar of Old St. Peter’s. The other eleven Apostles are all preserved in the Grotte Nuove. This statue stands just by the entrance into the crypt from St. Veronica’s pier.

It is well to leave these two chapels to the end, because they are par excellence the museums of Old St. Peter’s. And the reason why the crypts are holy ground is because they are all we have of the Old St. Peter’s, which was the Temple of Christianity.

“Dans son règne trop bref de huit années il dépassa par l’ampleur inouïe de ses plans tout ce que les imaginations les plus ardentes avaient pu concevoir.... Nicolas V. voulut égaler la Rome papale à la Rome des empereurs; il la voulut reine du monde. Roma caput mundi regit orbis frena rotundi. Il fallait que cette fière devise inscrite, deux siècles auparavant, par Louis de Bavière en exergue de sa bulle d’or, fût enfin pleinement réalisée: Rome centre de la Renaissance, et mère de toute civilization! Seul peutêtre des papes du quinzième siècle, Nicolas V. fut poussé à ce puissant dessein par autre chose que l’immensité d’un orgueil cherchant à se combler, le désir effréné d’une gloire qui se veut immortelle; il regarda plus loin et plus haut” (André Pératé, Les Papes et les Arts).

The Vatican, like Florence, played a protagonist’s part in the Renaissance. It cannot be denied, I think, that it had its inspiration from Florence, for Thomas of Sarzana, Tommaso Parentucelli, the wizened little scholar born in the last years of the fourteenth century, who found himself at forty-nine, in the year of grace 1447, the head of a liberal Christendom, had, as he was climbing the ladder to the pinnacle of earthly greatness, himself been a librarian and copyist of manuscripts in Florence. While he was climbing the ladder his eyes had ever rested on the same rung as his hands instead of gazing at the top. He had done the work of the day without a thought above it, and when the mutual jealousies of others had, to his utter astonishment, lifted him to the throne of St. Peter as Nicholas V., he fulfilled a scholar’s ambitions and ladled out with both hands to other scholars the wealth which seemed as bottomless as the sea.

He gave a thousand crowns to Guarino for executing a translation of Strabo for him. He offered ten thousand gold ducats for a translation of Homer; five thousand gold ducats for a MS. of St. Matthew in the original Greek; while he paid the greatest painters of his day from seven to fifteen ducats a month. Scholarship has never had such a Mæcenas as Nicholas V. When scholars did not come to him of their own accord he wrote to them to ask why.

Supreme events happened in the short reign (it only lasted from 1447-1455) of the Little Man of Sarzana. For in 1453 Mahomet II. accomplished the long purpose of the Falcon of the Prophet in conquering Constantinople; and in 1454 Europe at length achieved what Corea, a century before, and China perhaps many centuries before, had achieved, in the printing of books from movable types.

Nicholas has left eternally recorded his wish to help the cause of scholarship, for the first two documents printed in Europe, bearing the very date of that year—1454—were the Thirty-Line and Thirty-One-Line Indulgences printed at Mainz, by the order of the Pope on behalf of the Kingdom of Cyprus against the Turks.

Unfortunately for the printers they did not wend their way to Rome for another ten years, when Nicholas had long lain in the stately tomb of which the fragments are gathered up in the crypt of St. Peter’s. Calixtus III., his successor, was a man of a very different stamp; he could only think of crusades. Pius II., who succeeded him, had been, as Æneas Sylvius, one of the greatest humanists of his age; but he, like Calixtus, thought that everything should give way to the paramount necessity of organizing a Christian League against the Turks. Paul II., the luxurious Venetian who was elected in 1464, was more interested in forming a museum. To their eternal honour, the Massimi, who claim to be the oldest family in Rome, and the lineal descendants of Fabius Maximus, who saved the city from Hannibal, though they are not ranked as the oldest of the Roman nobility, received the wandering printers into their grim ancient palace, which still stands unchanged nearly opposite the Church of S. Andrea della Valle. Pius II., the humanist, lies buried in S. Andrea, for the chief glory of his Papacy was the reception of the head of the Apostle Andrew, which the wily Greek, Thomas Palæologus, brought with him, as a peace offering, when he arrived in Rome as a refugee from the conquering Turk.

Nicholas V. tried to raise Christendom against the Turks with indulgences, but he saw more clearly another aspect of the case—the importance of collecting the manuscripts carried away by Greek refugees from Constantinople and other conquered cities. He had two soaring ideas: the Renaissance of the world by learning, and the turning of the eyes of Christendom to a Vatican which should outshine in magnificence the Palatine of the Emperors. He once said that his wish was to spend all that he possessed on books and buildings: he did not dream then that he would ever have anything to spend except his health and his time; but when he was unexpectedly elevated to the Papacy he was as good as his word, and his ruling passion was strong even in death. On his very death-bed he addressed a Latin speech to his Cardinals, which his biographer, Manetti, preserved, and the historian, Pastor, has picked out for us. “Only the learned,” says the Pope, “who have studied the origin and development of the authority of the Roman Church, can really understand its greatness. Thus, to create solid and stable convictions in the minds of the uncultured masses, there must be something that appeals to the eye; a popular faith, sustained only on doctrines, will never be anything but feeble and vacillating. But if the authority of the Holy See were visibly displayed in majestic buildings, imperishable memorials, and witnesses seemingly planted by the Hand of God Himself, belief would grow and strengthen like a tradition from one generation to another, and all the world would accept and revere it. Noble edifices, combining taste and beauty with imposing proportions, would immensely conduce to the exaltation of the chair of St. Peter.” ... “If,” said Nicholas, “we had been able to accomplish all that We wished, Our successors would find themselves more respected by all Christian nations, and would be able to dwell in Rome with greater security, both from external and internal foes. Thus it is not out of ostentation, or ambition, or a vainglorious desire of immortalizing Our name, that We have conceived and commenced all these great works, but for the exaltation of the power of the Holy See throughout Christendom, and in order that future Popes should no longer be in danger of being driven away, taken prisoners, besieged, and otherwise oppressed.”

Pastor quotes this to show the falsity of the idea that love of fame guided Nicholas in all his actions and was the true explanation of the splendour of his court—his buildings, his library, and his liberality to learned men and artists.

Gregorovius says that all Nicholas undertook was directed towards exaltation; the one object of his ambition was to increase his dignity and authority by the visible splendour of its monuments, and the intellectual influence it would exert if it became the centre of the learning of the world. I must quote the summary of Nicholas’s plans which Pastor takes from Manetti. “The tomb of St. Peter, actually situated at the one extremity, was to be the ideal centre of this grandiose plan. The opposite extremity was to be formed, by a large square in front of the Castle and Bridge of Sant’ Angelo. From this square three straight and broad avenues were to start, and terminate in another vast open space at the foot of the Vatican Hill; the central avenue was to lead to the basilica; the one on the right to the Vatican Palace, that on the left to the buildings facing it. These streets were to be flanked with spacious colonnades to serve as a protection against sun and rain, and the lower stories of the houses were to be shops, the whole street being divided into sections, each section assigned to a separate craft or trade. The upper stories were to serve as dwelling-houses for the members of the Papal Court; architectural effects and salubrity were to be equally considered in their construction.

“The principal square, into which these three streets were to run, and of which the right side was to be formed by the entrance to the Papal Palace, and the left by the houses of the clergy, was to measure five hundred and fifty feet in length and two hundred and seventy-five in breadth. In its centre there was to be a group of colossal figures representing the four Evangelists, which was to support the obelisk of Nero; and this again was to be surmounted by a bronze statue of the Saviour, holding a golden cross in His right hand. At the end of the square,” continues Manetti, “where the ground begins to rise, broad steps ascend to a high platform, with a handsome belfry, adorned with splendid marbles, on the right hand and on the left. Between and behind these is a double portico having five portals, of which the three central ones correspond with the principal avenue coming from the Bridge of Sant’ Angelo, and the two side ones with the two other streets. This quasi-triumphal arch leads into a court surrounded with pillars and having a fountain in the centre, and finally through this into the church itself.

“All that the progress of art and science had achieved in the way of beauty and magnificence was to be displayed in the new St. Peter’s. The plan of the church was that of a basilica with nave and double aisles, divided by pillars, and having a row of chapels along each of the outermost aisles. Its length was to be six hundred and forty feet, the breadth of the nave three hundred and twenty, the height of the dome inside two hundred and twenty; this was to be richly decorated, and the upper part of the wall was to be pierced with large circular windows, freely admitting the light. The high altar was to be placed at the intersection of the nave and transepts, and the Papal Throne and the stalls for the Cardinals and the Court within the apse. The roof was to be of lead, the pavement of coloured marbles, and behind the church was to be a Campo Santo, where the Popes and prelates should be interred, ‘in order that a temple, so glorious and beautiful that it seemed rather a divine than a human creation, should not be polluted by the presence of the dead.’ An immense pile of buildings at the side was destined for the accommodation of the clergy.

“The Papal city, which, by its natural site, was detached from the rest of Rome, was to be fortified in such a manner,” says Manetti, “that no living thing but a bird could get into it. The new Vatican was to be a citadel, but at the same time to contain all the elegance and splendour of a palace of the Renaissance. A magnificent triumphal arch was to adorn the entrance. The ground floors, with spacious halls, corridors, and pavilions, surrounding a garden traversed by cool rivulets and filled with fruit trees and flowers of all sorts, was to be the summer habitation. The first floor was to be furnished with all that was required to make winter agreeable; while the airy upper story was to serve as a spring and autumn residence. The Papal Palace was also to include quarters for the College of Cardinals, accommodation for all the various offices and requirements of the Papal Court, a sumptuous hall for the coronations of the Popes and the reception of Emperors, Princes, and Ambassadors, suitable apartments for the Conclave, and for keeping the treasures of the Church, several Chapels, and a magnificent library.”

Pastor does not blame Nicholas for his share in the destruction of Old St. Peter’s as much as most writers—he quotes architectural evidence to show that it had become unsatisfactory; but surely it would have been a simple matter for an architectural genius like Alberti to take down the unsafe portions and rebuild them, if measures less drastic were unavailing. I fear that we must acknowledge that the glamour of the Renaissance and the theories of Alberti had fascinated Nicholas.

Of all the vast architectural works executed for Nicholas only one, and that the smallest, attracts the attention of most people—the little chapel, built, according to one interpretation of the documents, as his study, which is still called the Chapel of Nicholas V., and was decorated with the masterpieces of Fra Angelico, the frescoes of the stories of St. Lawrence and St. Stephen. Of all the pictures painted for him by the greatest artists of his day, we have practically nothing else left. And of the stained glass, with which he so liberally embellished the Vatican, doubtless in memory of the great Florentine churches, I do not know of one inch in existence. Not only St. Peter’s, but all the rooms in the Vatican had painted windows. The minor arts were equally recognized by this Pope. “For many hundred years,” says a contemporary writer, “so much silken apparel and so many jewels and precious stones had not been seen in Rome.”

Nicholas founded the first manufactory of tapestries in Rome. The goldsmiths and gold embroiderers, not only of Rome, but of Florence, Venice, and Paris, were unable to keep pace with his orders. The splendid vestments and Church jewels and the superb magnificence of the Church service were for the same purpose as his architectural grandeur. Even in all the lesser details of its accessories and details, says Pastor, the Church was to reflect the splendour of the heavenly Jerusalem.

It is significant of the character of Nicholas that we so constantly meet the name of his bookseller, Vespasiano da Bisticci. It was to him that, when he was elected Pope, Thomas of Sarzana said: “It will disturb the pride of many that a priest who was only good for ringing bells has been made Pope, and would the Florentines have believed it?”

This Vespasiano not only sold books and took orders for them to be copied in these last days before printing burst upon the Western world, but wrote little biographies of the famous men of his time, chief among them Pope Nicholas. The forty-five copyists produced two thousand volumes in twenty-two months. Gregorovius gives some of the prices of them:—

“A Bible costs from twenty-five to forty gold ducats; a small copy of Cicero’s Letters ‘ad Familiares’ costs ten ducats; while Poggio Bracciolini made Lionel of Este pay a hundred gold florins for a copy of the ‘Letters of Jerome,’ and made the poet Beccadelli pay a hundred and twenty ducats for a Livy which he had copied himself.”

Poggio Bracciolini was one of the most extraordinary figures of his time. For nearly fifty years he was in the service of the Roman Court, but he was hardly ever in Rome; he held various ecclesiastical offices, but remained a layman and seems to have taken no interest in ecclesiastical affairs, though his duties as Secretary made him take part in some of the greatest events of ecclesiastical history, such as the Council of Constance in 1414-1418, and the Council of Basle in 1431-1443. When his duties called him to Constance, says John Addington Symonds, he employed his leisure in exploring the libraries of Swiss and Swabian convents, especially St. Gall. He recovered the hitherto lost Quintilian and part of Valerius Flaccus at St. Gall, and unearthed manuscripts of Lucretius, Columella, Silius Italicus, and Vitruvius, all of which he copied out with his own hand and communicated to the learned. Resolute in recognizing erudition as the chief concern of man, he sighed over the follies of Popes and Princes, who spent their time in wars and ecclesiastical disputes when they might have been more profitably employed in reviving the lost learning of antiquity. “This point of view is eminently characteristic of the earlier Italian Renaissance. The men of that nation and of that epoch were bent on creating a new intellectual atmosphere for Europe by means of vital contact with antiquity.”

It is small wonder that Nicholas V. determined to get hold of him, and in spite of his merciless attacks on the Church, recalled him to Rome, where he employed him to write a scurrilous attack on the Anti-Pope Felix. But Symonds tells us that his most scurrilous attacks were made on rival scholars like Filelfo and Valla, that he used all the resources of a copious and unclean Latin vocabulary to degrade the objects of his satire, and ascribed to them without discrimination every crime of which humanity is capable. The most decent action of his life was his generous tribute to Jerome of Prague, the heretic at whose condemnation he was present. Gregorovius sums him up in a few brief sentences: “Poggio is the chief representative of humanism; a man of many sides, he lacked depth, and made Cicero his model. To his contemporaries he seemed a genius of eloquence; knowledge of art was alone wanting to make him complete.” He also tells us that one of the most widely circulated of his books was his celebrated Facetiæ, a collection of indecent anecdotes.

Nicholas was equally ready to be the patron of Filelfo and Valla. Gregorovius has given us a still more scathing portrait of Filelfo, “whose life forms a true mirror of the period of humanistic vagrance; a genuine type of the sophist, egotist, and boaster, a vulgar courtier, a marvellous slanderer, an insatiable pleasure-seeker, but nevertheless an enthusiastic student and an untiringly active virtuoso in the Professor’s chair.”

Before he was twenty-two he was a Professor at Venice, and at that age went to Constantinople as the Secretary to the Venetian Legation. It was there that he became equally great as a Latin and Greek scholar. Seven years later, after various diplomatic employments, he returned to Venice with a beautiful Greek wife and a valuable collection of Greek books. After being a Professor at Bologna for two years he went to Florence, and narrowly escaped assassination from some people whom he had lampooned. Being banished, he attempted to murder Cosimo de’ Medici by the hands of a hired assassin. He was a Professor at Bologna again for the next ten years, then went to the court of Milan for fourteen years, and in 1453, while on his way to Naples to be crowned as poet by King Alfonso, he passed through Rome.

Gregorovius says that he determined not to visit Nicholas, whom he had assailed with impudent demands for preferment in the Church and the request to be made a Cardinal. But he was sent for by the Pope and spent several days with him reading scurrilous attacks on Nicholas’s best friends. Nevertheless, Nicholas appointed him a Papal secretary, and with his own hand presented him with a purse containing five hundred ducats. More than twenty years after he took up a post at Rome under Sixtus IV., and was so charmed “by the city, its climate, the wealth and beauty of life, and the freedom, that he lamented that he had only come to inhabit it at the end of his life.” Gregorovius tells us how the world resounded with Filelfo’s fame, and the important part played by his innumerable writings in the sphere of Latin learning. But he concludes with another of his scathing summarizations: “Nevertheless, they were able to secure him—who deemed himself a demi-god—nothing more than the ‘paper-immortality’ of the library.”

The ablest of all these scholars was Lorenzo Valla, who, if Paul IV. had been Pope instead of Nicholas V., would have ended his days as a heretic at the stake instead of as a Canon of the Lateran. It was he who established the spuriousness of the Donation of Constantine which gave the Popes their temporal power. He added that “if the donation were genuine it would be already rendered null by the crimes of the Papacy alone.” He said that the Popes possessed no rights over Rome or the secular state. He called the Papal Government “the source of all evil, a rule of executioners and enemies,” and called on Eugenius IV. to abdicate. When Valla wished for a reconciliation Eugenius would not forgive him, but Nicholas V., the successor of Eugenius IV., was wise and generous; he made him an apostolic secretary, although he had attacked the Papacy with greater violence than Wyclif, and reduced him to silence in a characteristic way by keeping him hard at work translating Herodotus and Thucydides, for which no man living was more admirably fitted.

Nicholas, though, fine scholar as he was, he knew no Greek, was nevertheless a patron of Greek scholars. His liberal patronage of Manetti, the famous Hebrew scholar, was rewarded by Manetti’s enthusiastic biography, which has made us so familiar with the greatness and generosity of this remarkable Pontiff. Unfortunately his chief Greek protégé was the charlatan, George of Trebizond, who executed various inferior translations for him. It was not Nicholas, but his predecessor, Eugenius IV., who made the famous Bessarion a Cardinal.

Bessarion was a Greek, created Archbishop of Nicæa in 1437 by John Palæologus, whom he accompanied to Italy to bring about a union between the Greek and Latin Churches. Failing in this he passed over to the Latin Church. He held various Italian archbishoprics, and was titular Patriarch of Constantinople. He is honourably immortal for making his Palace near the Church of SS. Apostoli a court and refuge for the Greek scholars exiled by the fall of Constantinople.

Theodore of Gaza, to whom Gregorovius is unwontedly gentle, as “the first scholar of his time, as a model of humanism, and unblemished virtue,” was a friend of Bessarion, who entered the service of Nicholas V.

Nicholas—one of whose dreams in the foundation of the Vatican Library was to render all the treasures of Greek literature accessible to Latin scholars—kept, says Pastor, the most eminent humanists of the day—Poggio, Guarino, Decembrio, Filelfo, Valla—labouring at these tasks. I have mentioned his extreme liberality to scholars. He paid Valla five hundred gold scudi for his translation of Thucydides, and Perotti five hundred Papal ducats as a first instalment for his translation of Polybius. He paid Manetti, the Hebrew scholar, six hundred ducats a year, but Fra Angelico only fifteen ducats a month for painting his chapel, and Benozzo Gozzoli only seven ducats a month. “Nicholas,” says Pastor, “was the most generous man of a lavish age.”

Nicholas commissioned Manetti to translate the whole Bible from the original Hebrew and Greek, but his death prevented his plan being carried out.

Nicholas, when he was a poor priest, was always in debt with his purchases of manuscripts. When he became Pope his tastes and enthusiasms remained unchanged.

“A noble library,” says Pastor, “was to form the crowning glory of the new Vatican.” The idea of this library, by means of which Nicholas hoped to make Rome the centre of learning for all ages to come, was perhaps the grandest thought of this great Pope, who was “as admirable for his genuine piety and virtue as for his many-sided culture. He wished to place all the glorious monuments of Greek and Roman intellect under the immediate protection of the Holy See, and thus to hand them down intact for future generations.”

Nicholas’s manuscripts, we are told, were nearly all of them made on parchment and bound in crimson velvet with silver clasps.

Besides the library he collected at the Vatican, which is estimated at from 5000 to 9000 manuscripts, he had a private library, mostly of profane authors, of which one catalogue still exists.

We know from this catalogue that Nicholas V. had over eight hundred Latin manuscripts kept in eight great chests. The manuscripts in the first were Biblical; in the second were of “The Fathers”; in the third and fourth, those of the great mediæval Doctors of the Church, like Thomas Aquinas; in the fifth, of heathen classics, as well as theological and historical works, for here was kept Valla’s translation of Thucydides mentioned above; in the sixth, of works on Theology and the Canon Law; in the seventh, chiefly of classical authors—among them Livy, Cicero, Juvenal, Quintilian, Virgil, Catullus, Terence, Pliny, Sallust, Horace, Ovid, and a translation of Homer. The contents of the eighth were mixed.

Voigt, quoted by Pastor, has given us a charming picture of the little Scholar of Sarzana in the days when he had become Pope. “It was his greatest joy to walk about his library arranging the books and glancing through their pages, admiring the handsome bindings and contemplating his own arms stamped on those that had been dedicated to him, and dwelling in thought on the gratitude that future generations of scholars would entertain towards their benefactor.”

Nicholas was very particular as to the legibility and accuracy of his copies, for he had himself been a copyist in his Florentine days.

Of all the works of Nicholas V. there is only one tittle which strikes the eye of the casual visitor to the Vatican. Or, perhaps I should say, one tiny gem, for, though minute in proportions, it is in quality as perfect as anything in the Vatican. I refer to the Chapel of Nicholas V., which is thought also to have been the study mentioned in the Vatican account books of 1449, decorated with intarsia wood, and gilt friezes and cornices, and some paintings executed by Fra Giovanni da Firenze (Fiesole) and his pupils, and with two windows executed by Fra Giovanni da Roma, a painter on glass, representing the Blessed Virgin and SS. Stephen and Lawrence. Pastor sees in these “almost a certainty that this celebrated chapel and the study mentioned in those books are identical, the latter having been afterwards converted into a private chapel for the Pope.” This Chapel of Nicholas V. may, without injustice, be mentioned in the same breath with the Riccardi Chapel at Florence, the Borgia Rooms, and the Cathedral Library at Siena, as one of the few frescoed chambers of which the tout ensemble is as perfect as a single picture. And apart from the perfection and harmoniousness of the whole, we are confronted, as no one can help acknowledging, by the fact, that here Fra Angelico, then an old man of sixty, rose superior to all his previous efforts in making his figures more human and full of character, while his colouring remained as delightful as ever. It is said that one of the pupils who assisted him was Benozzo Gozzoli, the painter of the Riccardi Chapel at Florence. Certainly the two chapels leave rather a similar impression upon one. The frescoes deal with the lives of St. Stephen and St. Lawrence, the two saints who have a common grave in the Church of S. Lorenzo fuori le Mura. “This chapel,” says Kugler, “was for centuries consigned to oblivion, so that Bottari, in the last century, the door not being discoverable, made his entrance by a window. Here the story of the two saints is seen in a series on three of the walls, that of St. Stephen occupying the upper course. A Descent from the Cross by the master, above the altar, is still covered with whitewash. These remarkable frescoes evince a dramatic power and a skill in composition and drawing hardly shown by the master before, and prove that in his sixty-first year he was in the vigour of his art.”

The painter has left us a portrait of his patron, in the fresco of the Ordination of St. Lawrence by Sixtus II. The humanist Pope, who wears his own triple-crowned tiara in the place of the crownless tiara Sixtus would have worn, breathes an air of benignity which you feel must have belonged to one who so generously carried out the aspirations of his youth when the power came to him.

Pératé, who sees in the “frescoes” of this chapel the influence of the frescoes of Masaccio in the Carmine of Florence, considers that Nicholas V. was the builder of the Stanze, which Raffaelle was to cover with his famous frescoes; and points out that one of the last acts of Nicholas’s life was to compose an epitaph which was to go on the tomb of the gentle painter, Fra Angelico, with whom he had been so closely associated in the church of his order, the famous Dominican Church of S. Maria sopra Minerva.

“Non mihi sit laudi quod eram velut alter Apelles,

Sed quod lucra tuis omnia, Christe, dabam,

Altera nam terris opera extant, altera caelo,

Urbs me Iohannem Flos tulit Etruriae.”

Fra Angelico came from Fiesole, three miles outside Florence, but could any name fit Florence so perfectly as that death-bed phrase of the humanist Pope, who owed both his humanism and his pontificate to Florence: Flos Etruriae—the flower of Etruria.

Nicholas has been blamed for the unprecedented magnitude of his projects. A modern historian said: “The lives of twenty Popes, and the treasures of Rhampsinitus (i.e. Rameses) would be required to carry them out.” Pératé retorted that he only wanted twenty years and an architect of genius; and that since Alberti was the forerunner of Leonardo da Vinci, he had the genius, he only lacked the years.

The Vatican Library is the most famous in the world on account of its ancient manuscripts, of which it possesses about thirty-five thousand. It owes its character, if not its inception, to Nicholas V., who was as impressed with a veneration for books as he was for the glories of Rome. We have seen that he was the first of the Popes to show any appreciation or care for the monuments which he had inherited from the Emperors.

The world owes much to Nicholas V. But for him we might have been without the classical masterpieces of Rome, which were the inspirations of the builders of the Renaissance. He gave printing its first recognition in 1454, the year before he died, by issuing the Thirty-Line Indulgence and the Thirty-One-Line Indulgence, on behalf of the Kingdom of Cyprus; and he founded the Vatican Library almost simultaneously with the first printing done in Europe by the use of movable metal types—in other words, simultaneously with the invention of printing. The Vatican Library, which, as it is, contains no less than four thousand five hundred books published in the fifteenth century, might have had a complete set of early printed books if it had not been for the sack of Rome by the Constable Charles de Bourbon in 1527. It is impossible to exaggerate the importance of this. It meant that there was a library belonging to the wealthiest Monarch in Europe, intelligent from the very nature of his office, started in time to receive the first printed books. Historians have not said enough of Thomas of Sarzana, elected Pope as Nicholas V., who with his private collection of nine thousand manuscripts⁠[13] founded the public library of the Popes.

His successors themselves thought so little of him that they allowed his tomb, which was only second in splendour to that of Paul II., to be broken up when Old St. Peter’s was demolished to make room for the new. He was only left in the enjoyment of his sarcophagus. The crypts are full of the fragments of his mausoleum. His immediate successor, Calixtus III., though he made some additions to his books out of the volumes saved from the Turks at the fall of Constantinople, allowed many of them to be dispersed. And Pius II., learned humanist though he was, did nothing much, in his short reign of six years, for the library. From the handsome Paul II. nothing would be expected; nothing came. But Sixtus IV. (the first della Rovere Pope) included it in his magnificent ambitions, and located it in the suite under the Borgia Rooms. He appointed the celebrated Platina, the historian of the Popes, director, and gave the library a definite endowment for its maintenance. Platina’s appointment is the more remarkable because at the time of it he was still in the prison to which Sixtus’s predecessor had consigned him for attacking him in his writings.

Mrs. Oliphant, quoting the chronicler Panvinio, whom she presumes to have worked from Platina’s notes, speaks of Sixtus IV.’s “making under his chapel a library, which was the finest thing of all, for he there reinstated Platina, who had been kept under so profound a shadow in the time of Paul II., and called back the learned man whom his predecessor had discouraged, sending far and near through all Europe for books, and thus enlarging the library begun by Pope Nicholas, which is one of the most celebrated the world possesses, and to which he secured a revenue, ‘enough to enable those who had the care of it to live, and even to buy more books.’” This provision still exists, though it is no longer sufficient for the purpose for which it was dedicated.

All writers on the Vatican Library allude to Melozzo da Forli’s famous fresco⁠[14] in the Vatican Picture Gallery (which is now transferred to canvas), of Sixtus IV. founding the Vatican Library, which, as we have seen, he did not do; he was only the re-founder. Bishop Creighton, in his History of the Popes, describes the picture with his customary brevity and point: “The Pope, with a face characterized by mingled strength and coarseness, his hands grasping the arms of his chair, sits looking at Platina, who kneels before him, a man whose face is that of a scholar, with square jaw, thin lips, finely-cut mouth, and keen glancing eye. Cardinal Giuliano stands like an official who is about to give a message to the Pope, by whose side is Pietro Riario, with aquiline nose and sensual chin, red-cheeked and supercilious. Behind Platina is Count Girolamo, with a shock of black hair falling over large black eyes, his look contemptuous and his mien imperious.” Mrs. Oliphant points out that Cardinal Giuliano della Rovere, afterwards the great Pope Julius II., Cardinal Riario, and Count Girolamo, who was the Pope’s son or nephew, “a predatory baron, working out a fortune for himself with a sword,” were the three men for whom Sixtus IV. fought and struggled and soiled his hands with blood, and sold his favour to the highest bidder. “They were all young, intoxicated with their wonderful success, and with every kind of extravagance to be provided for; they made Rome glitter and glow with pageants.” Cardinal Riario covered in the whole of the vast Piazza of the SS. Apostoli, and hung it with tapestry for the reception of Donna Leonora, the daughter of King Ferrante; the Cardinal gave every one of her ladies a washing basin of gold. The next year he died, only twenty-eight years old, “poisoned,” Infessura says; “and this was the end of all our fine festa.”

Even Nicholas V. might be denied the title of founder, for Paul Fabre tells us that Pope Saint Damasus had a library, which was dispersed in the persecutions of Diocletian, though his books were not kept in the Vatican, but in a vast edifice built to house them and the archives near the Theatre of Pompey, which the Pope dedicated to San Lorenzo. The name, and probably the site, is still preserved in the Church of S. Lorenzo in Damaso, which forms part of the great Palace of the Cancelleria.

The present splendid building was erected by Fontana for Sixtus V., who considerably augmented the library in the year of the Spanish Armada, 1588; it runs right across the gigantic quadrangle of the Belvedere.

It has grown, not only by the purchases of successive Popes, but by the absorption of various libraries. In 1621, for instance, Duke Maximilian of Bavaria presented Gregory XV. with the Biblioteca Palatina, captured at the fall of Heidelberg by his general, Tilly, in the Thirty Years’ War. In 1658, the Chigi Pope, Alexander VII., purchased for it, at the price of ten thousand scudi, the Biblioteca Urbina founded by the Duke Frederick of Montefeltro; and some of the famous palimpsests from the Benedictine Abbey of Bobbio; and, in 1690, the Biblioteca Alexandrina, bequeathed to the Ottoboni Library by the convert Queen Christina of Sweden, which included the famous manuscripts of the Abbey of Fleury and other important French abbeys, as well as all the books taken by her father, the great Gustavus Adolphus, at Prague, Würzburg, and Bremen, amongst them over two thousand Latin and nearly two hundred Greek manuscripts. In 1746, under Benedict XIV., it received a still greater number of manuscripts by the acquisition of the Biblioteca Ottoboniana, which included the famous Altemps Library, purchased by Alexander VIII., the Ottoboni Pope, in which there were three thousand three hundred and ninety-one Latin manuscripts, and four hundred and seventy-four Greek. And in the same reign the Marchese Alessandro Capponi bequeathed his priceless manuscripts to it. Clement XIII., 1758, Clement XIV., 1769, and Pius VI., in 1775, were also important benefactors. In 1798, the French carried off nearly five hundred manuscripts, including the choicest artistic specimens. But they were restored seventeen years later, with the exception of a few from the Palatine Library, which were returned to Heidelberg. Two years after that, on the application of the King of Prussia, at the request of Humboldt, the Pope restored to Heidelberg no less than eight hundred and forty-eight manuscripts in German, which were of great value to German historians. Pius VII. acquired for the Vatican the library of Cardinal Zelada, in 1800; Leo XII., the noble collection of fine art literature of Count Cicognara, in 1823; and Gregory XVI. also largely augmented the library. Pius IX., in 1856, added forty thousand books, etc., belonging to Cardinal Mai. Lastly, in 1902, Leo XIII. purchased the celebrated library in the Palazzo Barberini for twenty thousand pounds. Everything about the purchase redounds to the honour of the late Pope; the library had been founded by the family of a former Pope, the ambitious Urban VIII. (Barberini), and the impoverished Barberini family were no longer the right people to have it. So Leo bought it. But there was a difficulty in the shape of the aged librarian, a priest; it was hard to deprive him of his office. Leo took him over with the books, and engaged to continue his salary as long as he lived. More than that, he transplanted all the bookcases, and the coats of arms which had hung over them, and re-erected them in the Vatican, where they still remain. The aged priest has survived his patron.

The Vatican Library can be divided, roughly speaking, into the old library on the first floor and the new Leonine Library on the ground floor, under the Sala Sistina. The upper floor comprises, besides the Sala Sistina, a group of rooms adjoining the Gallery of Inscriptions, and the whole of the Long Gallery under the Galleria dei Candelabri, degli Arazzi, and Geografica. The rooms adjoining the Gallery of Inscriptions are used for the librarian and reading-rooms; the Sala Sistina and the Long Gallery are used for show cases and the presses in which the manuscripts are stored. Practically all the printed books are now kept in the Leonine Library, which adjoins the new rooms of the Archivio, and was made out of rooms which were originally an armoury and rough magazine, and afterwards a stable, sixteen years ago. So I was informed by Monsignor Ugolini, the delightful, accomplished, and erudite prelate who is the senior Scrittore of the Vatican Library. Under Count Vespignani, the architect, and Comm. Ludovico Seitz, the art director of the Vatican, it was converted into a library in a matter of months, and opened in November 1898.

From the new library, which forms the subject of a separate chapter, a door admits to the Library of the Archives, which are under another Cardinal and another administration. The archives look like the Venetian archives preserved in the convent of the Frari at Venice. Before 1890, those who wished to consult the archives had to make a giro of a kilometre to get to them. Five years ago carriages and horses passed through the Cortile of the Belvedere. Before you leave the new library you have to examine the facsimiles which have been printed of some of the most famous manuscripts of the Sistine Library. And do not omit to have a look at the Barberini Library, where the dear old priest, who was taken over with the library by Leo XIII., will show you the books and the triple coat of arms, and explain why Urban VIII., the Barberini Pope, had bees. They were not bees at all, he explained, but I forget what he said they were.

It is a rude shock after this to be taken over the Sistine Library—that is, the Vatican Library proper—by one of the custodi who conduct parties round the Vatican in the usual brisk way, quite devoid of intelligence. Try and get an order to be taken round alone; it is both humiliating and unsatisfactory to be trotted round the galleries as a member of the general public, for they form a highly important museum. If you are obliged to go as a member of the many-headed, you will have to wait for a party to collect outside the door of the Museo Profano, by the entrance to the Sculpture Galleries. When the guide thinks there are enough of you—far too many to have any chance of seeing things properly—he lets you through. You find yourself in the Museo Profano, established by Pius VI., at the northern end of the long arm of the library in the Hall of the Porphyry Columns, to correspond with the Museo Cristiano, established by Benedict XIV. at the other end. It contains the jewels, and other precious pagan antiquities, such as cameos, ivories, bronze candlesticks, fibulae, and bracelets, of the celebrated Carpegna collection. The prime curiosity in one of the glass cases near the door is the hair of a lady of the second century, preserved by amianto—i.e. asbestos cloth, which for some reason or other has wonderful powers of arresting decay. There are also some dolls from the Catacombs—such a human and unexpected touch; and a vase cut out of amber.

The Museo Profano is the northern end of the Long Gallery of the Vatican Library, which is between three and four hundred yards long, and terminates at the far end in the Chapel of S. Pius V. Before proceeding further, I will point out the extreme simplicity of the ground plan of the library. It is in the shape of a “T,” with its foot starting from the Gallery of Inscriptions, its trunk crossing the courtyard of the Belvedere, while its enormously long arms are formed by the Long Gallery terminating in the Museo Cristiano and S. Pius V.’s Chapel on the south, and the Museo Profano and the entrance to the Sculpture Gallery on the north. The trunk on this floor consists of the Sala Sistina, and underneath it is the new Leonine Library which contains all the printed books. Sundry smaller rooms are grouped round both floors at each end of the trunk. And where the trunk joins the arms is the Archivio, which also has rooms underneath the Long Gallery. When you leave the Museo Profano to traverse the half of the Long Gallery which brings you to the west door of the Sala Sistina, you pass through, in succession, the Capponi, Ottoboni, Alessandrine, and other collections of manuscripts, the last being the so-called Hall of the Vatican Manuscripts. The entire walls are lined with painted presses, in which the manuscripts are kept hidden away from sight, as the ancient Romans kept theirs. You are now at the Sala Sistina, the superb main hall of the Vatican described below. It is perhaps just as well to go round once with the crowd to have an opportunity of observing the idiotic and perfunctory way in which the public are conducted over what should be one of the most interesting sights in the world—the great Vatican Library. I should not like to say that the official guides who show you over it have no more knowledge of the subject, or interest in it, than shopwalkers would have, but they remind you of them all the time, and draw your attention to the kind of things that would appeal to shopwalkers most. Certain books they are perforce obliged to show you, because they are mentioned in Baedeker; but they show far more animation when they are pointing out the various enormous vases from the French and German national potteries, with rich grounds of green or blue, round a light panel with some illustration connected with the giver or the receiver; a view of Paris or Sans Souci, or a portrait of Pius IX., or Leo XIII. These “presents-from-Brighton” are altogether out of place in the Vatican Library; or if they must be there, should be passed over in tolerant silence. The depth of the blue and the green or the sheen of the enamel may be triumphs of the potter’s art, but they are the kind of things which stupid people would give to show that so much money had been spent, and are nothing but a nuisance when they take up valuable minutes in the half-hour or so which the authorities consider sufficient for racing you round the Vatican Library. They are varied with the Sèvres china and silver font used for baptizing the poor Prince Imperial, which was presented by his father. You forget the vulgarity and meretriciousness of that in thinking of the undeserved fall, the pathetic close, of the dynasty of the Third Napoleon.

These are varied by a large Oriental alabaster vase, presented by the Khedive Ibrahim Pasha; two granite tables, supported with bronze figures of Hercules; a malachite cross, presented by Prince Demidoff; a malachite vase, presented by Czar Nicholas I., and a basin of Scotch granite, presented by the Duke of Northumberland to Cardinal Antonelli.

Among the wilderness of French and German public porcelain are a Sèvres candelabra, presented by Napoleon I. to Pius VII., whom he carried off a prisoner to France; three Sèvres vases given by Maréchal MacMahon to Pius IX.; Berlin vases presented by Wilhelm I. of Prussia, afterwards Emperor of Germany; and vases presented by Charles X., President Grévy, and President Carnot. The most enviable possession of them all is the huge block of virgin malachite, given by the Grand Duke Constantine. But there are two notable vases of red Russian quartz, presented by the Czar Alexander.

The hall in which these Royal mantelpiece vases, only valuable, are exhibited has a singular magnificence of effect. It is over two hundred feet long, nearly fifty feet wide, and thirty feet high, and is divided up the middle by six piers. It was constructed by Domenico Fontana for Sixtus V. in 1588, and paved with marble in the time of Pius IX. These pillars and the roof are decorated with frescoes in the Pompeian style, by Scipione Gaetani and others; and its rich light colouring and airy proportions make the Sala Sistina one of the finest chambers in Rome. But the walls have frescoes representing scenes which introduce views of the various buildings erected by that ambitious Pontiff, Sixtus V., which have little artistic merit. The room contains a number of horizontal cases, with glass tops and locked shutters to go over them, in which are exhibited the principal manuscript treasures of the Vatican. These include:‍—

The famous Vatican Library Book of Joshua, according to Kugler (Italian Schools of Painting, revised by A. H. Layard, third impression of sixth edition, John Murray. 1902), is a parchment roll of more than thirty feet long, entirely covered with historical scenes. According to an inscription upon it, it is not earlier than the seventh or eighth century in date, though doubtless copied from some work of the best Christian time. It has the appearance of a carefully, but boldly and freely, drawn sketch executed in few colours. It differs greatly from the highly finished splendour of the later Byzantine miniatures. The whole is so spirited in its composition, so beautiful in some of its motives, so rich in invention, that Kugler assigns it the highest place among the properly historical representations of Early Christian times. He pronounces the colours and weapons as still perfectly unique. Joshua, he says, is always distinguished by the nimbus, as are also the fine symbolical female forms, with sceptres and mural crowns, which represent the besieged and conquered cities. For here, as in so many classical frescoes, the whole landscape is expressed by symbols, such as mountain and river deities. “The wildest action is often most happily portrayed, though the artist, of course, shows little knowledge either of perspective or of the relative proportion of the figures. The copyist of the later period is discernible, almost solely, by his obvious ignorance of the drawing of joints and extremities.”

The celebrated Virgil of the Vatican, No. 3225, on the other hand, says Kugler, as an original work of the fourth or fifth century, appears to greater advantage, though in composition it does not equal the Book of Joshua. “The drawing displays a superabundance of motives from the antique, though in the action of the figures it is already very inanimate.”

The famous ancient Greek Calendar, called the Vatican Menologium, says Kugler, “with its four hundred and thirty splendid miniatures on a gold ground (executed for the Emperor Basil, the conqueror of the Bulgarians, 989-1025 A.D.), is essentially a work of that period, and decidedly one of the best known. Eight artists, whose names recur from time to time, decorated the separate days of this most costly of all Calendars (extending, however, only to the half of the year) with scenes from the Life of Christ, the Saints, and the history of the Church—the latter in the form of Synods. In the Biblical scenes, traces of earlier motives occur, but the martyrdoms of the Saints are really the work of the tenth century, and, horrible as many of them are, they do that century great credit; for though, in the single figures, we discern a great want of life, yet the composition is, upon the whole, well understood, and here and there very animated. The Saints are seen suffering martyrdom in various ways—dragged to death by horses, burnt in the red-hot effigy of a bull, crucified, drowned, scourged to death, torn by wild beasts in the amphitheatre, suspended by the feet, and so on, by which a tolerably correct knowledge of action is shown, though all idea of anatomy is absent. The drapery and heads are somewhat stiff and conventional, and the nude somewhat meagre, and, moreover, disfigured by an ugly brick-red colour—the result, perhaps, of an improper vehicle, which has also lowered the colours. Far inferior to these miniatures are those of the Dogmatica Panoplia, in the Vatican, executed for Alexis Commenus (1081-1118 A.D.), which are only remarkable for stiff, gold-embroidered garments, and weak decrepit heads. On the other hand, a collection of sermons for the Feast of the Virgin (in the Vatican), belonging to the twelfth century, in which the initials consist chiefly of animals, contains excellent compositions, not only of an early character, but also of that belonging to that century, and is remarkable for great beauty of decorative ornament. Another important manuscript of the time of the Commeni, the Klimax of Johannes Klimakus (in the Vatican), exhibits in small, highly delicate, and clearly drawn compositions, on a gold ground, the well-known allegories of the Virtues as the steps leading to Heaven, and of the Vices as those which lead to Hell. It is interesting here to observe the new treatment in the frequently recurring personifications of these abstract subjects, which were formerly characterized by form and attribute, and generally represented looking on in silent dignity, while here they appear only as small male and female figures, explained by marginal inscriptions—the bad qualities, however, being represented as negroes. The actions are mostly expressed in a very awkward manner, according to some prescribed system.”

The poem of Donizo in praise of Countess Matilda of Tuscany, whose donation of her lands to the Papacy allowed it to exist in its present form instead of sinking to the level of the Archbishoprics of Cologne or Treves, is pronounced by Kugler to be chiefly of historical interest, the execution being so very inferior.

The famous Urbino Bible of 1478 is, says Kugler, obviously by some Florentine hand.

Of the Dante of Giulio Clovio, Kugler says that “the paltry conceits of the allegories disturb the otherwise excellent execution.”

But none of the manuscripts exhibited are so rich in the personality of the writer as those of our English King, Henry VIII. For here are shown two letters of the King to Anne Boleyn; and a dedication copy of the pamphlet against Luther, which won him from Leo X., in 1521, the title of Fidei Defensor—Defender of the Faith—which is still borne by the Kings of England on their coins. It was confirmed by Clement VII., and indignantly taken away in the light of subsequent events. The pamphlet is entitled: “Assertio Septem Sacramentorum adversus Martinum Lutherum,” by Henry VIII., printed on vellum at London in 1521, with the King’s signature and the autograph inscription on the last page but one,

That they should so prominently exhibit these writings of our Henry VIII. and Martin Luther as treasures shows how broad-minded the Vatican authorities now are.

Besides the manuscripts and Sèvres and Berlin vases, there are many notable objects exhibited in the room, mostly offerings for Leo XIII.’s Jubilee, such as the gold rock given by the Emperor Francis Joseph of Austria, and a beautiful Crucifixion, in which the crosses are surrounded by a number of figures in white glazed china, made at the Royal Saxon factories. At the other end of the great hall you will enter a room which reminds me strongly of the Bodleian Library in general arrangement, colour, and decoration. A number of interesting objects are exhibited in it, and the portrait of Cardinal Mai; but it is principally used for students and the man who has charge of the umbrellas. It is connected by the Long Gallery, which has Pius VII.’s famous collection of ancient Roman, Christian, and Pagan Inscriptions affixed to its walls, with the Loggia of Giovanni da Udine under Raffaelle’s Loggie. This gallery inspired Fabre with one of his highest flights of enthusiasm: “Toute la partie antérieure, depuis le portique de Jean d’Udine, sur le cour Saint-Damase jusqu’ à l’entrée de la Vaticane, devint pour la Bibliothèque la plus royale avenue que Sixte-Quint eût jamais pu rêver pour elle.”

You will then retrace your steps through the Grand Hall (Sala Sistina) to the Long Gallery. At the end you will turn to the left and reach the Museo Cristiano, passing through the three rooms marked on the Tuker and Malleson plan as the Hall of the Bonaventura, the Hall of the Obelisk, and the Hall of Aristides. The Vatican Library statue of Aristides is very much admired.

The Museo Cristiano contains, in Room I., a number of objects from the Catacombs, such as lamps, gems, crosses, rings, bas-reliefs, in ivory and wood and metal; diptychs and triptychs of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and works by Benvenuto Cellini. Room II. is the Cabinet of the Papiri, dating from the fifth to the eighth century, and mostly from Ravenna. Room III. is full of valuable little paintings of the Middle Ages, kept in glass cases, including works of the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries, by Pietro Lorenzetti, Simone Martini, Taddeo Bartoli, Capanna, Mainardi, Nuzi, Sano di Pietro, Pinturicchio, Margaritone, etc. The small altarpiece, with the Virgin and Child, and numerous attendant figures, by Allegretto Nuzi of Fabriano, dated 1365, is of special interest, because this rare painter was the master of Gentile da Fabriano, who painted the celebrated picture of the Three Magi in the Accademia delle Belle Arti at Florence, a picture of world-wide fame alike for its beauty and for its introduction of goldsmith’s work. On the right of the entrance is a Russian Calendar in the shape of a cross of cedar wood, with miniatures (1650). These are not only valuable little pictures by great masters, but extremely interesting and beautiful, and ought to be exhibited in the Vatican Picture Gallery. Kugler mentions also one of them as the best specimen of the Otranto school. He says: “The best specimen—Christ in the Garden with the Magdalen—in the Museo Cristiano in the Vatican, bears the inscription, ‘Donatus Bizamanus pinxit in Hotranto,’” and in describing the Museo Cristiano, draws attention to “A very ancient and much-restored mosaic, in the Museo Cristiano in the Vatican, belonging possibly to the third century, as giving us some idea of the style of physiognomy which the heathens attributed to Christ. It is a bearded head in profile, agreeing pretty much with the type of countenance given to the philosophers of that period.”

Here they are thrown away; the shopwalker-guide does not deign so much as a glance to them; he is fully occupied with silver models of cathedrals and monuments like the Lion of Lucerne, and other totally useless but costly objects given by mayors and corporations to Leo XIII. for his Jubilee, in which the town of Quito, in South America, took the lead. The whole of these put together are not so interesting as the toothcombs and fish counters for playing games which came from the Catacombs. And imagine the interest that would have attached to a toothbrush from the Catacombs. Who knows but what the Early Christians used them? They are rather perishable things. The Early Christians certainly had glass plaques, because there are some in this museum.

If you let the guide have his way you would hardly get a peep at the two rooms at the end of the Museo Cristiano, which contain the frescoes that until about a century ago, when Herculaneum and Pompeii began to be opened up, were the most important pictures that had come down to us from the ancient world. The most famous of these frescoes is the so-called Nozze Aldobrandini, which was found on the Esquiline Hill, near the Arch of Gallienus, in the first years of the seventeenth century. Cardinal Aldobrandini bought it, and it was for many years in his villa. It was finally bought by Pius VII. two hundred years later for the sum of ten thousand scudi (crowns). The fresco is supposed to have been a kind of frieze imitated from an original of the time of Alexander the Great. Helbig sees in it a peculiar charm, through its simplicity, clearness, and grace, and a reflection of the fine feeling of restraint that obtained in the best Greek period.

To me the figures in it are like the figures in almost every other classical picture that has come down to us; they remind me of the silhouettes cut out of black paper and touched up with a few lines of white or gilt paint, which satisfied our grandparents in the days before the dire and positive efforts of early photography. It is difficult to believe that Zeuxis painted better than a primitive Japanese. Classical paintings have little beauty, even of colour—even from the wall-paper point of view. We love to look at them for the glimpses they give us of the life of the world when B.C. was passing into A.D. Why has nothing survived to show us if there were painters in Greece who could depict men and women like the sculptors of Tanagra and Myrina? These have told us more about the human side of ancient Greece with their little clay statuettes than we can glean even from the immortal literature of the Greeks. We are driven to the conclusion that every decent painting must have perished, and that our museums contain nothing better than the work of artisan decorators employed by house-builders.

There are two or three other fine groups of ancient Roman frescoes in the same suite: such as the wall paintings found in an ancient villa at Tor Marancia, which Helbig calls a “Gallery of ‘Mythical Fair Women,’ prominent for their crimes and misfortunes in love.” He considers them copies of good originals of stereotyped subjects of Alexandrian art. Among them are Pasiphaë; Scylla, the daughter of Nisos, King of Megara, whose life depended on a purple or golden lock in the midst of his hair. When Minos was besieging Megara, Scylla, of course, fell in love with him, and gave the lock to him, with the result that Megara was captured and Nisos slain. Among the other heroines are Canace, who fell in love with her brother; Myrrha, who fell in love with her father; and Phaedra. Here, too, are the famous scenes from the Odyssey, which adorned a large room in a palace discovered in 1848; “along with other paintings, now lost,” says Helbig, “they formed a kind of frieze above the dado on the walls; and they represent the adventures of Ulysses among the Laestrygonians, in Circe’s Island, and in Hades.” Besides these, the frescoes from Ostia are also well worthy of study.

The Library of the Vatican must have been an enchanting place when the Popes were in all their glory. To-day the parts generally shown to strangers give you more the idea of a beautifully arranged and uncrowded museum than a library. The windows command views of the various gardens of the Vatican—the sylvan scenery of the Observatory Hill, and the formality of the garden of the Pigna, whose vast bronze pine-cone came from the atrium, or garden court, that gave entrance to the Old St. Peter’s.

Visitors and readers (who require the permission of the Cardinal Secretary) are admitted from Easter to June 20, from eight to twelve o’clock, and from October to Easter, from nine to one o’clock, on any day on which the library is open. At present it is closed on Mondays, Thursdays, and holidays. The library is closed to the public between June and October.

The great essayist, Montaigne, when he made his famous journey into Italy by way of Switzerland and Germany in 1580 and 1581, kept a journal of his travels, part of it dictated to his secretary-valet, expressed now in the first, now in the third person; part of it written with his own hand.

He visited Rome, it will be observed, a few years before the accession of Sixtus V., which took place in 1585: the great Hall of the Vatican Library built by that Pope, and called after him, the Sala Sistina, in which the most valuable manuscripts are now exhibited, was not erected till three years after Sixtus’s accession, in the year of the Spanish Armada, 1588.

I give here the few hundred words in which Montaigne wrote his impressions of the Vatican Library, as translated by Mr. W. G. Waters, in the scholarly and delightfully illustrated edition published in three volumes in 1903, by Mr. Murray, under the title of The Journal of Montaigne’s Travels.

“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, 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 a 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 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. 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 & amicitie.’

“I read both 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, anyone 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, 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 to 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 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 anyone who may pass his finger over the same will detect the thickness thereof. We have, I believe, lost all knowledge of this method.”

As he speaks of the Library being in five or six rooms opening out of each other, it was probably still in the rooms under the Sistine Chapel, where it was placed by Sixtus IV. We know that the manuscripts collected by Nicholas V. were kept in chests, and that he had a Seneca of which he was proud. Montaigne may have seen some of his chests. The Aristides is still considered one of the gems of the Vatican Library collections. The papyri of the Library are famous. The Saint Gregory is not Gregory the Great, but St. Gregory Nazianzen: that extraordinary compromise between a hermit and a man of action, who, when he was at college at Athens, was the intimate friend both of Basil the Great and Julian, afterwards branded as the Apostate: who was in his time both Archbishop of Constantinople and a hermit in the desert: whose writings at some times rose to such sublime flights of poetry, such classical eloquence, that he is in his inspired moments, in the words of Chambers, “one of the first orators and most accomplished and thoughtful writers of all times,” though the mass of the enormous number of writings he has left behind him are redundant, pedantic, and heavy with far-fetched similes. He was born in Cappadocia about 330 A.D., and belonged originally to that extraordinary sect the “Hypsistarians, worshippers of the Most High, but also of the Fire, like the Persians, and keepers of the Jewish Sabbath, and the law of the purity of meats.”

St. Gregory comes prominently into Gaetano Negri’s great Life of Julian the Apostate (Fisher Unwin. Translated 1906).

The Council of Trent, to which Montaigne refers, sat with certain interruptions from December 13, 1545, to December 4, 1563.

Before I had read Montaigne’s description of his visit to the Library, I had, in a preceding chapter, drawn attention to the remarkable prominence of Henry VIII.’s autographs among the manuscripts chosen for exhibition in the glass cases in the Sala Sistina.

The three famous Vatican manuscripts of Virgil have been referred to in the last chapter.

I have not been able to find out anything about Maximilian Misson beyond the fact that he wrote A New Voyage to Italy, with curious Observations on Several other Countries: as Germany, Switzerland, Savoy, Geneva, Flanders, and Holland: together with useful instructions for those who shall travel thither, which was published by Tonson and others in the reign of Queen Anne, and dedicated to “The Right Honourable Charles, Earl of Arran; Viscount Tullo; Baron of Weston; and Claghernan, Captain of a Troop of Guards: Lieutenant-General in the Armies of Her Majesty.”

I quote from the fifth edition, published in 1739. Misson had more to say about the Library than the rest of the Vatican and St. Peter’s put together. He mentions the bequest by Alexander VIII., the Ottoboni Pope, of nineteen hundred manuscripts, which had belonged to Christina, Queen of Sweden, who was given the name Alessandra by Alexander VII. when she declared herself Roman Catholic. He mentions the pictures with which it (the Library) is filled by various hands, representing “the Sciences, Counsels, most celebrated Libraries, Inventors of Letters, and some passages of the Life of Sixtus V.” Father Norris, presumably an Englishman or Irishman, was chief library keeper when he was there, and became a Cardinal. He examined the famous Codex of the Septuagint very closely, and has left us an interesting note about it:

“As it was not long since I had much observed the famous Septuagint Manuscript that was then in the hands of Mr. Justel, Keeper of the Royal Library in London, and which was given, or rather sold, by the poor Patriarch Cyrillus, etc., I was extremely desirous to see the Codex Romanus (of the Vatican) which has been printed, and with which the Alexandrian contends, both for value and antiquity. I was extremely surprised to find the Aspirates and the Accents distinctly marked everywhere through the whole Book, and even upon the Initial Letters. But the Abbot Laur. Zacagna, Library Keeper under F. Norris, and a person of great merit, told me that he was inclinable to believe that those Accents were added by a modern hand; and that this very Hand had taken the Pains, as he believed, to run over all the Characters through the whole Manuscript with a Pen, atramento super imposito. I remember his very words, to make the Accents and the Letters appear to be of the same Ink.” What has modern criticism to say to this?

Misson was a very sceptical person: he doubted the authenticity of the ninth-century manuscripts of Terence and Virgil, which are among the treasures of the Vatican, and of which the much-improved scholarship of the present day entertains no doubts. To him, also, as to Montaigne, a hundred years before, they showed the manuscripts of King Henry VIII., as among the most interesting things in the collection. They also showed him a German Bible, pretended to be in Luther’s own hand, which has a scurrilous prayer in the same hand which convinced him of its unauthenticity.

“I observed among the Manuscripts of the last Age, written by, and to Cardinals, that in them they style one another Messer Pietro, Messer Julio. They also showed us, as they do to all Englishmen, a little volume of fourteen Letters from Henry VIII. to Anne of Bollen. One is easily induced to believe what these Gentlemen say, that these Letters are of the King’s Own Hand, for the Writing is not fair. I read two or three of ’em in French, and as many in English. They are Love-Letters, full of Dear Heart, Cruel Absence, and such Expressions, but without any of what we call wit; not that the King wanted it, but he did not write those Letters with a Design to have them plac’d among the curiosities of the Vatican Library; no more than Scaliger ventur’d in familiar Discourse, a Thousand things Uncertain; sometimes ridiculous; which they have printed as so many Oracles, in the little Book called Scaligeriana. Next to the Love-Letters, they have placed the King’s printed Book, the Title of which is Assertio septem Sacramentorum, against Martin Luther: an admirable Subject indeed, for a King, or even any Body else to write on! But Henry VIII. compos’d this book no more than Cæsar did his Commentaries, or James I. his Demonology. You may see what Theod. de Beza has said of the pretended Book of K. Henry, in his Life of Calvin. The Volume I speak of, is the very same that was sent to the Pope; and it is also sign’d and mark’d with a flourish, by the King’s own Hand. This Prince obtain’d of his Holiness by that holy Book, as a Reward, or a Congratulation, the glorious and well-deserv’d Title which cost him little, of DEFENDER OF THE FAITH.

“Si quid Roma dabit, nugas dabit. Accipit Aurum. Verba dat. et.

“They shewed me the German Bible which you mention; which they pretend was translated by Luther, and Written by his own Hand. But the Credit of that story is destroyed by the extraordinary prayer at the End of the Book, which is of the same Hand with the Rest, and cannot be the language of Luther. Thus it is in the Original:—

“O Gott, durch deine gute,

Bescher uns Kleider und hute,

Auch mentel und rocke,

Fette Kalber und bocke,

Ochsen, Schafe, und Rinder

Viele weiber, wenig kinder

Schlette speis und trank

Machem einen das jahr lang.

“That is, O God, be graciously pleas’d to grant us Clothes and Hats, Cloaks, and Gowns, fat Calves and Goats, Oxen, Sheep, and Bulls, many Wives, and few Children. Bad Meat and ill Drink make Life uneasy. It must be acknowledged, that they who would persuade us that Luther was the Author of this Prayer, must have had an earnest desire to make him pass for a Debauchee, but not to be believed.”

Leo XIII. was a very thorough man. More than willing to restore to the Vatican, under proper conditions, one of its greatest art treasures, he determined at the same time to house the books removed from the Borgia Apartments in a manner more worthy of the premier library of the world. At the same time he formed the really magnificent conception of carrying out Nicholas V.’s project of making the Vatican Library the focus of European scholarship. No collection of ancient manuscripts can compare with that of the Vatican; and its archives have a value which can hardly be exaggerated as materials for the history of the Middle Ages. Pope Leo determined to place both the manuscripts and the archives at the disposal of scholars, and to arrange the printed books in whatever way was most convenient for reference to those who were working at the manuscripts and archives.

He set a connoisseur to work to suggest the most suitable sites to him, and as soon as the present site was suggested saw its points. It lies, roughly speaking, under the Sala Sistina, the superb hall of Sixtus V., which cuts Bramante’s vast Belvedere court in half. Ordinary visitors who are going over the Vatican Library spend most of their time in this magnificent chamber, brilliantly arabesqued, and filled with glass cases which contain the most famous manuscript treasures of the Vatican. But only students, or those specially privileged, descend to the Leonine Library below it, which consists of eight fine chambers, six under the Sala Sistina, one in a room at the east end taken from the Vatican Mosaic Factory, and one in the corresponding room at the other end adjoining the Archivio.

Hardly any of the guide-books deign to notice the existence of this new Leonine Library, which contains all the printed books of the most famous library in the world. And those which do mention it, with one exception, practically ignore it.

The six chambers are so lofty and so admirably suited to their purpose that you wonder how Pope Leo had to his hand such a heaven-sent suite for a library. But they present a very different appearance now to that which they presented when he chose them to receive the Library of Printed Books from the Borgia Rooms. They were at the time an armoury, though prior to this some books had been stored here; they had been stables; they were paved in the way you would expect from such uses; and on the north side the walls were, up to a considerable height, below the level of the ground. In May 1889, the Conte Vespignani, the architect of the Vatican, set to work to convert these rather unpromising premises into an ideal library. First he attacked the Giardino della Stamperia, which divided this large building from the Stamperia, or printing-house, where the Vatican Press still does its printing. He lowered the level of the earth by a good many feet; then he tore up the pavement of the future library, and built what the Italians call Vespai (literally, wasps’-nests—a cellular flooring), under it to allow the air free circulation between the floor and the soil. And this he re-covered with the style of paving called alla Veneziana, which is very close and compact, to prevent any possibility of the damp rising from the ground. The walls were then carefully plastered and decorated with paintings which harmonized with those of the Sala Sistina above. The result was a complete success, and within two years every printed book in the Vatican had been transferred to the new Leonine Library.

The whole bears the impress of the personality of this great Pope. At one end, where you descend from the Vatican Library above, you pass the noble statue of the late Pope’s favourite Saint, S. Thomas Aquinas, which was sculptured by Cesare Aurelio, and presented to Leo XIII., on the occasion of his Jubilee, by a subscription from all the Roman Catholic seminaries in the world. At the other end is an admirable statue of the Pope himself. Quite close to the statue of S. Thomas Aquinas, the greatest ecclesiastical philosopher of the Middle Ages (remembered by Englishmen chiefly as the most eminent of the Nominalists, the rival of Duns Scotus, the Realist), is the new Reference Library of Biblical Commentaries, Protestant as well as Catholic, which is to be the armoury of the future Aquinas against heresy, and is already much used. The priests are encouraged to come and study here. I saw them studying, and was much struck by the proportion of young men. The great room at this end, transverse to the main building, contains the latest acquisitions—the Terza Raccolta, and the Ruland Library, which was bequeathed by the famous bibliophile Canon, Antonio Ruland, Librarian of Würzburg. The Prima, Seconda, and Terza Raccolta are the three ancient collections formed at various times in the Vatican. In this library the students can go to the shelves themselves.

The main building under the Sala Sistina is one vast chamber divided into six bays by jutting-out bookcases, which do not, however, interfere with the vista extending from the statue of the Pope to the statue of Aquinas. The three bays to the south, which are naturally the most cheerful, are used for a reference library; the three bays to the north contain the famous Palatine Library, captured by Piccolomini at Heidelberg, and presented to the Vatican in 1623; the books from the Aracœli Library and the Library of Cardinal Zelada, acquired in the Pontificate of Pius VII., with the books comprised in the Prima Raccolta and Seconda Raccolta. The other transverse chamber, between the statue of Leo XIII. and the Archivio, contains the library of the famous Cardinal Mai. If not luxurious, the rooms embody the very latest improvements in the arrangement of libraries. The bookcases are of iron, whilst the shelves are lined with fragrant pine to keep away moths and bookworms. One room is devoted to a Library of Catalogues. For its own catalogue the Library uses a card system, managed in the latest way, in which the cards are locked in, so that their order cannot be disturbed without unlocking the case, though they can be consulted with perfect ease.

In the days before the new Leonine Library was formed, those who were studying the Vatican archives had to walk about half a mile to get to the Library of Printed Books if they wished to refer to anything; and even the students in the reading-room of the manuscripts had a good long way to go before they could get from the Library to the Borgia Rooms. Leo XIII., in looking about for a location for his new library, had it in his mind, above all things, to find a site equally convenient as a reference library for the students of the archives and the students of the manuscripts. It forms an actual passage between the two. No other site of anything like equal claims could have been found except in the great Sala Sistina itself; and to have blocked that up with bookcases would almost have been robbing Paul to pay Peter.

In the reference room, called the Biblioteca or Sala di Consultazione, are kept the works which are most likely to be consulted by the students of the archives and the manuscripts, and it is a most notable collection. An offer was made by the authorities to the various Governments and learned bodies in all civilized countries to exchange for their official publications copies of the valuable Vatican documents which Leo XIII. was having printed. Many of them disclaimed all idea of exchange, and hastened to present all their publications to the Pope, partly as a compliment to that great man on the completion of his great project, and partly out of gratitude for the throwing open of the Vatican archives and manuscripts to scholars of all nations and creeds. The Government of England, for instance, presented superbly bound copies of all the volumes in the Chronicles and Memorials of Great Britain and Ireland; the Calendar of State Papers; the Calendar of Documents of Scotland; the Register of the Council of Scotland; the Exchequer Rolls of Scotland, and Rymer’s Fœdera. The University of Oxford followed suit. The Grand Duke of Baden has been specially liberal, and the Czar, the Emperor William, and the Emperor of Austria have all contributed handsome donations. All the English Catholic books published during the reign of Leo XIII. have been presented to it. It is said that all the English books published in Leo XIII.’s Jubilee year were presented. I do not know if all the good books were presented, but an unconscionable number of bad ones seemed to be there. I saw many which appeared to me below the dignity of a library like this.

Among the finest works contained in this library are the splendid work on the Sistine Chapel prepared by Steinmann, by order of the Emperor Wilhelm of Germany, to commemorate his visit to Rome. A high staging was erected to take the photographs, from which the plates were prepared, from the most favourable positions. Another magnificent reprint is the reproduction of the Virgil of the Fourth Century, which is one of the most celebrated manuscripts in the Vatican Library. This is published in a wooden box.

One of the most interesting departments is that entitled “Popes, Cardinals, and Rome,” which is a collection of biographies of the first and topographies on the antiquities, churches, institutions, and civil and ecclesiastical offices of the Eternal City. Especially noteworthy are the two bookcases which deal with Italian inscriptions, geography, heraldry, genealogy, chronology, and palæography—such as the Inscriptiones Christianæ of G. B. de Rossi.

Beyond Cardinal Mai’s Library is the Archivio, the new rooms of which face the Vatican Gardens and adjoin the Pope’s coach-house. The Biblioteca di Consultazione is divided from the Palatine, Aracœli, and Zelada Libraries by the massive wall supporting the great piers which divide the Sala above.

The work of transporting the quarter of a million printed volumes which were housed in the Borgia Apartments is described in La Nuova Biblioteca Leonina nel Vaticano, by Monsignor Ugolini, the senior Scrittore of the Vatican Library.

The Borgia Apartments are on the first floor of the north side of the two inner courtyards which open out of the Cortile della Sentinella—the courtyard in which the sentinels stand under the wall of the Sistine Chapel, where the road turns round from the back of St. Peter’s to ascend to the entrance of the Sculpture Galleries. The Leonine Library is, as I have said, under the great Hall of the Vatican Library, which is known as the Sala Sistina, and goes right across the middle of the two long wings which unite the part of the Vatican containing the Borgia Rooms to the principal apartments in the Museum of Sculpture. Between it and the road which leads up to the Sculpture Galleries is the Archivio, which has several new rooms opening on to that road. It was decided to lower the books from the windows of the Borgia Apartments into the Cortile del Portone di Ferro, and take them through the Cortile della Sentinella; then to turn round and go up the Stradone del Giardino, which divides the Vatican Gardens from the Belvedere, till they reached the Archivio, through which they were transported to the Leonine Library.

In the Cortile del Portone di Ferro a solid staging in wood was constructed, which was built right up to the window of one of the rooms in the Borgia Apartments which were to be emptied. From above was fixed a crane to lower the books gently into the courtyard below, from which they could easily be transported on a trolley to their destination. Twenty-seven strong wooden cases made their appearance; they were each of them about thirty inches long, sixteen inches broad, and twenty inches high, and easily moved by two handles fastened to the sides. Their measurements were chosen so that they could easily contain folio volumes on the one hand, and could be easily moved and taken out on the other. The number twenty-seven was decided on after calculating the space in the rooms, the capacity of the trolley, the distance that had to be traversed, and the time necessary for each workman to do the handling. It was calculated that there would be nine at a time in the Borgia Apartments to be filled, nine in the new Library to be emptied, while the trolley was carrying the other nine alternately full and empty from one place to the other. In order that the arrangement of the books in the old Library should not be disturbed, orders were given that, except in the case of folios, all the books which came together in a shelf, up to a certain measure, should be bound with numbered straps, and laid in order in the boxes, following the respective number preceding that with which each one was marked. The boxes were locked, and, in order to avoid any danger of injury to the books, the insides of the boxes were made soft with quilting; and the straps, which are generally made of leather, were made of cloth, three or four inches wide, in order not to damage the bindings of the works, some of which were very valuable. The work was carried out with marvellous regularity, and with singular rapidity, as well as with mathematical precision; in such a way that, after only fourteen days’ work, which fell between the 25th of May and the 11th of June, performed by only fifteen workmen, with the assistance of the scrivente and the other employees of the library, the quarter of a million of volumes which were stored in the Borgia Apartments found themselves in the new Library arranged in exactly the same order as they had been before, without one book being damaged. Since the printed books have been in the new Library their number has about doubled.

Monsignor Ugolini was very broad-minded in his remarks upon the Protestant books in the Library of Biblical Studies. He pointed me out quite a number; from Sir William Smith’s Dictionary of the Bible and Christian Dictionary, to the works of Bishop Ellicott and Bishop Lightfoot. He replied freely to all the questions I asked him, and showed much dignity and humour in the excellent English in which he couched his answers. An English Roman Catholic lady, who was with me, pressed him to show her the Index Expurgatorius, which, as everyone knows, is the list of books which Roman Catholics are forbidden to read. “No, my dear lady,” he said. “It is much better for you not to see it, then you can read whatever your own judgment permits you to read, without committing any offence.” Poor, dear lady, she did not want such broad-mindedness; she wished to mortify the mind as, in the Middle Ages, she would have mortified the flesh!

In the new Library is preserved a writing-table bought and bequeathed by the antiquary de Rossi, one of the most celebrated explorers of the Forum and Catacombs. On this table Cardinal Mai, the most famous of the librarians of the Vatican, transcribed from a palimpsest, discovered by himself, on which St. Augustine’s Commentary on the Psalms had been written, the long-lost Republic of Cicero—not the only one of Cicero’s works which he discovered. Mai, who was born of poor parents in a village near Bergamo, in 1782, was librarian of the great Ambrosian Library at Milan before he was appointed to the Vatican. He died Cardinal Librarian of the Roman Catholic Church, in 1854. An account of his work will be found in the next chapter.

Some idea of the size of Cardinal Mai’s library may be formed from the fact that the first of the Borgia Rooms in which it was housed required forty thousand tiles to cover its floor.

It is well for it to be under the guardianship, in marble, of the greatest scholar of the Middle Ages, the Angelic Doctor, who wrote the Summa Theologiæ.

Paul V. must be regarded as the founder of the Archivio of the Vatican, for it was he who turned the suite of apartments which Sixtus V., when he was building the Vatican Library, designed for the residence of the librarian, into the Archivio.

The Popes began the systematic storage of their archives as far back as Pope S. Damasus (366-384), whose Archivio, roughly speaking, occupied the site of the Cancelleria.

M. Paul Fabre, the great authority on the subject, informs us that the Archives were soon moved to the Lateran, because it was more convenient to have the documents necessary for deciding questions in the place where the discussions were held, and the Lateran is between a mile and two miles from the Archivio of Pope S. Damasus. From the beginning of the seventh century, when one speaks of the Library of the Lateran it includes the Archives. M. Fabre tells us that the Library at this time was often called the Scrinium, a word which means a convenient locked chest in which one could put important documents—what we should call deed-boxes—though from the allusions of contemporaries the documents never seem to have been kept locked. It is to this Library of the Lateran that the Liber Pontificalis refers. M. Fabre shows from the accounts of the Council held in Rome in 649, that the Library must have been very well arranged and catalogued, for it is recorded that the chief of the notaries was able to produce at once any document or volume which was asked for. The name of this first of the great Pontifical librarians was Theophylactus.

The departure of the Popes to Avignon broke up the Lateran Library and Archives. They were taken at first to Assisi for safety, but in 1339 the masterful Benedict XII. had the Pontifical registers of the thirteenth century and a large quantity of the archives taken to Avignon. The rest of them were left in the Convent of Assisi, where the bulk of them were gradually and irredeemably lost. M. Fabre tells us that Sixtus IV. transferred the most important charters of the Holy See to the Castle of Sant’ Angelo, and that Leo X. transferred others taken from the Biblioteca Segreta of the Vatican there. “But the collection of documents, enclosed at that time in bags of silk of various colours, was small in comparison with those which had been left at Avignon, and all that had been produced by the daily business of the Curia since the end of the Grand Schism, which were dispersed in many places.” Without mentioning the Biblioteca Segreta, supposed to include the letters of Luther, there were the Archives of the Camera Apostolica, of the Gardaroba, of the Cancelleria, of the Apostolical Secretaries, and of the Nuncios.

It was the ambition of Pius IV., and the dream of S. Pius V., to bring them together in a single institution; and Clement VIII., as a preliminary of the execution of this grand design, had a very fine circular hall in the top of the Castle of Sant’ Angelo fitted with handsome presses, elaborately decorated, which Marini saw destroyed in 1799. Here he gathered all the scattered collections and transferred a certain number from the Vatican Archives. Paul V. (1605-1621) ordered the fitting up of the Archivio of the Vatican, mentioned in the beginning of the chapter, and, from that time forward, no fresh archives were sent to Sant’ Angelo. The documents in the Biblioteca Segreta naturally formed the kernel of the new Archivio. Michel Lonigo, who had charge of the transfer to the new Archivio, has left a detailed account of the documents which form the basis of the new Vatican Archivio. Gradually the Archivio of the Vatican became the chief repository of the Papal Archives.

Urban VIII., says M. Fabre, caused the Bulls registered “par voie sécrète” from Sixtus IV. (1471-1484) to Pius V. (1565-1572), to be transported there from the Archives of the Secretaries-Apostolical; and also from the Archives of the Secretariat of the Briefs, registers, and minutes of Briefs from Alexander VI. (1492-1503) to 1567; and added a certain number of volumes which came from Avignon, and the correspondence of the Nuncios of the sixteenth century, which had lain till then in the Archives of the Gardaroba; and Alexander VII. added the papers of the Secretariat of State. Under Alexander VII. the documents of the Nunciatures were arranged in the upper floor in special presses, and near them was formed another series with the letters of Cardinals, Princes, etc. Clement XI. instituted in the same room a series of Varia Politicorum; and in Benedict XIII.’s time the Canon de Pretis made an inventory of all these various collections.

Pius VI. enriched the Archives with five hundred large volumes recovered from Avignon, and finally, in the month of May 1798, the Archivist, Gaetano Marini, when he was ordered by the French to give up the keys of the Castle of Sant’ Angelo, obtained their permission to transfer all the documents preserved there to the Vatican Archives; this, thanks to the aid and energy of the French soldiers, was effected in a single day. Marini gave a further proof of his capacity and intelligence by preserving at the Vatican the exact order in which the documents had been arranged at Sant’ Angelo. But all this was upset by Napoleon’s transfer of the Vatican documents to Paris in 1810, and their restitution, owing to the good offices of the English in 1817. After the death of Marini the Archives, like the Library, were not kept in a way that could be considered satisfactory, until that great Pope Leo XIII., in his comprehensive scheme to set his house in order, turned his attention to them. He made immense additions, including two thousand volumes of Papal Briefs, added in 1883, and all the Archives of the Dataria in 1888.

Leo also extended the accommodation of the Archives by adding five rooms adjoining the old Sala da Studio of the Archives. They face the Vatican Gardens on the ground floor of the street which leads up to the Sculpture Galleries, in a line with the Pope’s coach-house. Two of these look on and communicate with the room devoted to Cardinal Mai’s library in the new Biblioteca Leonina.

Father Angelo Mai was appointed Chief-Assistant of the Vatican Library when he was thirty-seven. He held at the time a similar position in the great Ambrosian Library at Milan. “But whatever he had till now performed,” says Cardinal Wiseman, in his Last Four Popes, published by Hurst & Blackett, in 1858, “was eclipsed by the most fortunate and brilliant of his discoveries, that of Cicero’s long-coveted treatise De Republicâ. Petrarca, Poggio, and Bessarion, with a host of elegant scholars, had desired and sought in vain to see this treatise. It had eluded every research. Under a copy of St. Augustine’s Commentary on the Psalms Mai discovered it, in large, bold characters, with its title legible. I can well remember the commotion which the announcement of this success excited through the literary world in Rome. Of course, it took some time to prepare the work for publication. Indeed, I have heard from the learned discoverer himself, that while new types were being cast, and arrangements made for publishing it through all Europe, he was busily engaged in hunting out all the quotations of Cicero’s work dispersed through the ponderous tomes of subsequent writers—especially Fathers. The very one whose own lucubrations had shielded it from destruction, and covered it with a patina or antiquarian crust such as often saves a valuable medal, yielded no small number of extracts, which either were found in the discovered portions and so verified their genuineness, or were absent from them and so filled up lacunæ.

“How often have I had that precious volume in my hand, with the man whose fame it crowned explaining to friends around him the entire process of discovery, and the manner in which he drew out order from the chaotic confusion of its leaves. Indeed, seldom was it my lot to lead any party to visit the Vatican Library, while Monsignor Mai was librarian, without his leaving his own pursuit to show us its treasures, and not the least valuable of them, himself.”

Gregory XVI., wishing to employ his extraordinary abilities in the service of religion, made him secretary of the Congregation of the Propaganda, but he was allowed to have the MSS. of the Library at his house. “He did not confine his industry to palimpsests, but drew from the shelves of the Vatican, histories, poems, medical and mathematical treatises, acts of Councils, Biblical commentaries—in fine, works of every age and of every class, classical, patristic, mediæval, and even modern, not only in Greek and Latin, but in Arabic, Syro-Chaldaic, and Armenian. He re-established, under the auspices of Gregory, the celebrated Vatican press, which had formerly published the splendid St. Ephrem; he had cast for it new sets of types, for various alphabets, from the best models in old manuscripts; and especially employed it in the printing of the great Codex Vaticanus, which he transcribed.”

Out of the manuscripts which he discovered, he published between 1827 and 1838

He was appointed a Cardinal in 1838, at the same time as Cardinal Mezzofanti, one of the most famous linguists in history. He became Cardinal-Librarian in 1853, a year before his death.

Our Royal Society of Literature, in awarding the gold medal in 1824 to this gentle scholar, the most famous in the great roll of the librarians of the Vatican, hailed him as “the Discoverer and Restorer of Palimpsests.”

Cardinal Wiseman, who was his colleague in the Sacred College for four years, has left us a vivid picture of Mai’s labours.

“To drop figures, the peculiarity of Mai’s wonderful discovery consisted in the reading of manuscripts twice written; or, as they are more scientifically called, palimpsests. A book, for instance, may have been very properly catalogued as containing the commentaries or sermons of some abbot of the eleventh or twelfth century, works of which there may be several other transcripts in the library. Edited or not, it is improbable that the volume has been, or will be, looked into during a generation. But the lens-like eye of a Don Angelo peers into it, and it becomes a treasure-trove. The writer of the Middle Ages had taken down from the shelves a work which he considered of small value—perhaps there were duplicates of it—some letters, for instance, of a heathen Emperor to his tutor, and scrubbed, as he thought, the parchment clean, both of its inky and of its moral denigration, and then had written over it the recent production of some favourite author. It is this underwriting that Mai scanned with a sagacious eye; perhaps it was like the lines of a repainted canvas, which, in course of time, came through the more evanescent tints superadded, a leg or arm cropping out through the mouth of an impassioned head by the second artist; and he could trace clearly the large forms of uncial letters of the fourth or fifth century, sprawling through two lines of a neatly written brevier. Or the scouring had been more thoroughly done; and then a wash of gallic acid revived the pallid reed-strokes of the earlier scribe.

“Ingenuity, patience, learning, and immense perseverance were requisite for the process. Often only the unconnected passages were found, half a sentence in one page, which the next did not continue, but the rest of which might perhaps be found in another manuscript three hundred numbers off; sometimes portions of various works were jumbled together under one later production, upside down, back to back, like shuffled cards, while perhaps not one page contained the ‘Incipit,’ or the ‘Explicit feliciter liber 1, de——’ so as to give a clue to what these fragments contained. Learning was then, indeed, necessary; for conjecture often gave the first intimation of what had been discovered, from the style, or from the sentence having been fortunately embalmed, or petrified, by quotation in some later author.

“In this way did Mai labour on, looking through the tangled mass of confused materials, catching up the ends of different threads, and pursuing them with patient diligence, till he had drawn each, broken or perfect as it happened to exist. After one minor publication of a translation, he began in 1813, and continued till 1819, to pour out an unintermitting stream of volumes, containing works or portions of works, lost, as it had been supposed, irrecoverably. Various orations of Cicero; the lost writings of Julius Fronto; unpublished letters of Marcus Aurelius, Antoninus Pius, Lucius Verus, and Appian; fragments of speeches by Aurelius Symmachus; the History of Dionysius of Halicarnassus from the twelfth to the twentieth books; inedited fragments of Philo; ancient commentaries on Virgil; two books of Eusebius’s Chronicles; the Itineraries of Alexander, and of Constantius Augustus, son of the Emperor Constantine; three books of Julius Valerius on the actions of Alexander the Great; the sixth and fourteenth Sibylline books; finally, the celebrated Gothic version, by Ulphilas, of St. Paul and other parts of Scripture; such were the principal works recovered and published, with notes, prefaces, and translations, by this indefatigable scholar, in the period just mentioned of six years. It was a work in which he could have little or no assistance from others; in fact, it was an art exclusively his own.”

His library he wished to bequeath to the Roman clergy. But as he could not afford to provide a building or endowment he gave orders for it to be valued and sold, stipulating that the Pope was to have first offer at half the valuation. He was anxious that his collection should be kept separate and bear his name. He stipulated that every book should bear his arms. His manuscripts were all bequeathed to the Vatican. Pius IX. at once gave orders for the Library to be purchased, and it was kept in the first of the Borgia Apartments, the Sala dei Pontefici, until it was removed to the chamber which it now occupies in the end of the Leonine Library—the link with the Archivio.

I suppose there are moments when the Vatican Gardens look as beautiful as you would expect. I have not seen them at such a time. If I were Pope and confined by my policy to a park of a few acres, and a palace of eleven thousand rooms, I should do my best to make that park an earthly paradise; and one could do a great deal with the Hill of Evil Repute, the Mons Vaticanus. It is all ups and downs, and its crest commands on the one side one of the finest views of St. Peter’s and the Palace of the Pope, and on the other looks far away into the open country where the road runs down to Viterbo under an avenue of monumental stone-pines.

The Vatican Gardens, known as the Boscareccio, have little of the architectural nobility which endears the gardens of so many dead and gone Cardinals to us. The Fountain Garden in the Villa Lante, beyond Viterbo, which was the pleasure-house of the famous Cardinal Riario, recalls the Book of the Revelation. It is such a vision of water spread like a glassy sea, divided up into jewels by flourishes of hoary masonry. The Villa d’Este at Tivoli, built for Cardinal Ippolito d’Este, the grandson of Pope Alexander VI., and son of the beautiful Lucrezia Borgia, might be the entrance to Paradise, with its magnificent sweeps of broad and ancient steps from terrace to terrace, green with the shade of leaves that never fall, and glittering with the crystal arcs of leaping water.

The sentiment of an earlier and more liberal age allowed the society of fair women to the Princes of the Church. Else, maybe, the Este and Aldobrandini Cardinals had never built those stairways of the gods which grace the slopes of Tivoli and Frascati. The garden of the Vatican lacks the pagan beauty born of a desire to emulate the fairy temple of the blind goddess Fortuna, piled up the hill of Palestrina, the Præneste which rivalled Rome, till it was sacrificed, not to the righteousness, but to the revenge of Pope Boniface VIII., thirteen turbulent centuries after Our Lord had preached His Gospel of Peace.

But here, too, are the footprints of the Classics, for the Popes have loved to remember that they sat on the throne, not only of St. Peter, but of the Cæsars. The twenty-first of April, the birthday of Romulus, the first King of Rome, or, at any rate, of his city, is observed now as it was two thousand years ago.

The Pope’s classical garden is frigid in design, though sunny in aspect. Its chief ornaments are orange trees in tubs; royally prolific of fragrant white blossom and golden orbs of fruit; they are ranged along the lower terrace. The garden itself looks like a puzzle put together with gravel paths, box borders, and patterns of flower-beds. The larger beds have emblems and inscriptions executed in box—a tiara, for example, with “Pio X.” on one side and “Pont. Max.” on the other; or a Cardinal’s hat with tassels and cords, or tortured lions. Here and there is a small aloe or palmetto; here and there a cluster of narcissus looking as if it had been lost, and in one corner one palm tree as solitary as the Pope. Really it is only the oranges which light up the Pope’s garden, as the oranges plucked from sunny groves, and carried over the seas to be piled on a coster’s barrow, illuminate the sad winter streets of the poor people’s London on a Saturday night.

This is the bosom of the garden: it is embraced by more beautiful surroundings. You walk out from the Sculpture Gallery, for instance, on to a fine terrace which looks across this Chinese puzzle to the grandest view of St. Peter’s, where you have the whole figure of the giant dome, down to the bottom of its skirts, instead of just its umbrella. That is all you see from the Piazza, owing to the senseless and tasteless gallery which some Pope, looking about for an addition to his cathedral by which he might immortalize himself, employed Carlo Maderna to build over the noble porch which should have been the climax of the superb colonnade of Bernini.

Through the Sculpture Gallery and along that terrace walks the Pope to the few green acres which are all he has left of the kingdom of this world, except certain sacred buildings in Rome, and one pale villa on the Alban Hills, which looks across the Alban Lake at Alba Longa, the long white town whose inhabitants, flying in terror from the dying volcano above it, were the founders of Rome.

They say that if he has a mind the Pope can walk a mile through his palace before ever he sets foot in the open air. He would have to follow the windings of the paths to walk a mile in his garden kingdom. Along the wall of the classical garden which faces the Vatican are three shrine-like niches with appropriate statues; and there are more statues on the wall silhouetted against the close well-trimmed laurel hedge enclosing the boschetto, the little wood which is the only place where he who has the spiritual charge of Christendom can see the works of God, undistracted by the sight of the works of man. The hedges are grand; the wood is old, but not open enough to show the glory of the wild spring flowers of Italy. Who is there who has walked in April through the woods of the Aldobrandini Villa from Frascati to Tusculum, that can ever forget the fragrant cyclamens spread like palls of crimson velvet, the violets, the anemones, and the shyer peonies?

The Mons Vaticanus has many memories. If it did not derive its name from that Vaticinium or prophecy of Numa Pompilius, Cincinnatus certainly was ploughing the prata below when he was called to lead the armies of his country as Dictator. Though the ashes of Julius Cæsar were never in the bronze globe at the top of the Obelisk, the profuse Caracalla had a palace here. The road which led out of the city and over its crest was bordered on either side with the sepulchral monuments of dead citizens; and among them rose the monument of St. Peter himself (when he had been executed in the Circus at the foot of the hill which formed part of the Gardens of Nero), and the Mausoleum of the daughters of Stilicho. Many a moral has been drawn from the fact that Nero had his pleasaunce on the accursed hill—for as such was the Mons Vaticanus regarded for many centuries. It was a favourite resort also of Nero’s predecessor in the science of outrage, Caligula, and the madman Elagabalus, who, on one occasion, released thousands of poisonous snakes among an audience assembled in the Circus on the Vatican Hill.

On the most conspicuous part of the hill rests a splendid fragment of the Leonine Wall, built by S. Leo IV. in the middle of the ninth century for the protection of the Leonine City from the threatened invasion of the Saracens. The magnificent towers are as fine in their way as the vast circular keep built by the great Lord Talbot of the Hundred Years’ War in the Castle of Falaise. One of them is rather spoiled by having Leo XIII.’s sham fifteenth-century casino built against it. The casino is not shown at all, though I understand that the interior has been dismantled. Leo XIII. had a new window inserted in the first story of the old tower, and a tiny lift fitted to take him up into it. It is said that he used the chamber for a chapel. The wildest part of the garden is round here, but it is not wilder than the Bois de Boulogne.

The other tower is crowned by the Vatican Observatory. “It stands one hundred and eighty-seven feet above the sea,” says Lanciani, “and commands an unlimited view over the Campagna and the road; and is therefore described as the ‘Turris unde mare prospicitur,’ in the early representations of the Vatican group. It is now used as an observatory for photographing the section of the heavens which was allotted to the Holy See by the International Astronomical Congress.”

The mighty bastions of Urban VIII.’s wall recall the Spanish fortifications of Palermo. Far below is a gigantic brick-field, so enormous, with clay cliffs so towering, that it reminded me of nothing so much as the yawning abyss from which slate is hewn at the Delabole Quarries in Cornwall. All the Vatican, and, if tradition may be believed, the greater part of ancient Rome, came from these colossal brick-fields. Beyond them you see the open country.

Almost as noticeable as the fragment of the Leonine Wall, which still crowns the crest of the Vatican Hill, is the beautiful monument put up by the French Catholics over a grotto cut to imitate the Grotto at Lourdes. Over it they have erected a charmingly elegant tower and terrace; inside the cave is a blue-gowned image of the Virgin, with three jets of water in front of her. Pilgrims are invited to rest and drink here. Leo XIII. granted the signal favour of allowing this monument to be erected because of the devotion of the authorities of Lourdes to the Holy See. It is said that their offerings to the Pope amount to a hundred thousand pounds annually.

Leo XIII. had been a sportsman in his mountain home. He kept a few deer, a pair of ostriches, and a pelican (described as having pink wings), to remind him of it. Pius X. has banished them; it is alleged that they reminded him too keenly of his own captivity, and that he often gazes out of his windows with the expression of an exile. A witty Cardinal, who speaks English perfectly, informed me that the only animals kept at the Vatican now are the Papal Bulls.

It is a great shock to turn from the thousand-year-old towers and wall of S. Leo IV., and the tremendous rampart of Urban VIII., whose vast height you can descry by peeping through the loopholes, to the relics of that other Leo’s long pontificate. He was rightly held in a veneration seldom accorded to any human being. Even Queen Victoria was less venerated; but their standards of taste were about the same. His little kingdom in the Boscareccio of the Vatican was further from the kingdom of art than any in Italy. The posts of his pergola were of cast-iron, painted red; his favourite summer-house was made of deal with a corrugated iron roof which Mr. Humphreys would disown. In the summer-house, behind a dilapidated curtain, was a red velvet chair—an undress throne. The Romans used to say that his wine was so sour that it kept up the old tradition about the wine of the Vatican Hill being poisonous. One thing he had good, and that was the view of St. Peter’s. He was high up, and he was close, and he was on the best side—the dome seems to fill the sky.

If it is too early for the fairest of the spring flowers, you will see an undulating line of snow running along the peaks of the pale blue Sabine and Alban Hills. These form the background of the monstrous dome, which is the hive of Christendom—a hive with the bee-cells, those thousands of chambers which form the Vatican Palace, outside. Every queen-bee is a type of the white-robed Pope who dwells in that Palace.

The Pope wears white: when he is being elected three white Papal soutanes are made: of a large size, a small size, and a middle size. So of whatever size the new Pope is he can be temporarily fitted while the Papal tailor is making his clothes. These are much-prized perquisites, and fall to the highest Cardinals.

At the end of the wild part of the gardens are two great fountains; both of them the work of Paul V., the Borghese Pope, who took the marble from the Temple of Minerva in the Forum of Nerva and the great columns of the vestibule of Old St. Peter’s, to decorate his famous Acqua Paola Fountain, the finest head of water in Rome, which you pass on the way to the Villa Doria. Paul V.’s mind seemed to run to fountains.

The upper of his two fountains in the Vatican Gardens, the Fontana dell’ Aquila, gets its name from the Borghese crest, the great eagle of plaster which perches on the top. Everything about it is a sham except the water: the rocks are as shamelessly made of stucco as the dragons which peep out of their caves and the statues which stand up to their necks in water. All the plaster is beginning to disintegrate, half hidden in decayed masses of maidenhair. The whole thing looks like a wreck of the scenery of a Wagnerian opera except the water; that is deep enough to be blue. And, perhaps, once upon a time on hot summer days, when the cheeks of the nymphs were still round and young, and the composition of the caves told no secrets, the fountain may have been attractive from other points of view than that of the bather. It is, in truth, a chef d’œuvre of vulgarity. The lower fountain, built in what Paul V. believed to be mediæval style—the Fontana delle Torri—is not so bad. The towers which gave it its name have, at any rate, the merit of solidity, but are spoiled by the kind of esedra in the typical Cardinal’s style of architecture behind.

One gem there is in the Vatican Gardens, a source of unfailing delight, the casino erected for Pius IV., by Pirro Ligorio, in 1560. And that is because nearly all the materials are ancient Roman. The description of it forms one of the best passages in Hare’s Walks in Rome.

“The Casino del Papa, or Villa Pia, built by Pius IV., with material taken from the Stadium of Domitian (Piazza Navona), in the lower and more cultivated portion of the ground, is the chef d’œuvre of the architect, Pirro Ligorio, and is decorated with paintings by Baroccio, Zucchero, and Santi di Tito, and a set of terra-cotta reliefs collected by Agincourt and Canova. The shell decorations are pretty and curious. This villa gives an admirable idea of a small country house under the Roman Empire.

“During the hours which he spent daily in this Villa, its founder, Pius IV., enjoyed that easy and simple life for which he was far better fitted than for the affairs of government; but here, also, he received the counsels of his nephew, S. Carlo Borromeo, who, summoned by him to Rome in 1560, became for several succeeding years the real ruler of the state. Here he assembled around him all those who were distinguished by their virtues or their talents, and held many of the meetings which received the name of Notti Vaticane—at first employed in the pursuit of philosophy and poetry, but after the necessity of Church reform became apparent both to the Pope and S. Carlo, entirely devoted to the discussion of sacred subjects. In this Villa Pius VIII. and Gregory XVI. used frequently to give their audiences.

“The sixteenth century was the golden age for the Vatican, though a leaden one for the Forum. Then the luxurious court of Leo X. was the centre of artistic and literary life, and the witty and pleasure-loving Pope made these gardens the scene of his banquets and concerts; and beneath the shadow of these cypresses in a circle, to which ladies were admitted, as in a secular court, he listened to the recitations of the artificial poets who sprang up, like truffles, under his protection.”

Lanciani calls it “a perfect image of an ancient Roman country house.”

For those who are not privileged to enter the Pope’s Garden, I may say that the Casino Borromeo, or Casino di Pio Quarto, stands on an exquisite little amphitheatre, with an inlaid pavement and a graceful fountain in the centre, oval like itself. It is surrounded by a low parapet whose inner face has stone benches, like the presbytery of a basilica. Its oval form may have been suggested by the Stadium of Domitian, whence the beautiful masonry of which it is composed was taken. On the top of the parapet stand charming vases filled with fine aloes. The whole face of the casino and the alcove opposite are covered with sculpture and other decorations. The only building in Rome whose façade shows such beauty is the garden front of the great Villa Medici on the Pincian Hill, built for Cardinal Ricci da Montepulciano, twenty years earlier—soon likewise to pass into Medici hands; Pius IV. was a Medici. The whole conception of this casino of Pius IV. (which has just the right vegetation round it—solemn stone-pines, half-tropical shrubs) is exquisitely poetical and beautiful, but Leo XIII. considered it malarious, and built himself the new casino attached to the Leonine Tower, which I have described above. Mr. Marion Crawford, a Roman Catholic, and a resident in Italy for many years, writes thus of the old Pope in his garden: “At the last, opposite the iron turnstile by which visitors are counted, there is the closed gate of the garden. It is very hard to get admission to it now, for the Pope himself is often there when the weather is fine. In the Italian manner of gardening the grounds are well laid out, and produce the effect of being much larger than they really are. They are not, perhaps, very remarkable, and Leo XIII. must sometimes long for the hills of Carpineto and the freer air of the mountains as he drives round and round in the narrow limits of his small domain, or walks a little under the shade of the ilex trees, conversing with his gardener or his architect. Yet those who love Italy love its old-fashioned gardens, the shady walks, the deep box hedges, the stiff little summer-houses, the fragments of old statues at the corners, and even the ‘scherzi d’acqua,’ which are little surprises of fine water-jets, that unexpectedly send a shower of spray into the faces of the unwary. There was always an element of childishness in the practical jesting of the eighteenth century.”

The Giardino della Pigna, which forms the northern half of the vast courtyard projected by Bramante, which Sixtus V. cut in half with his building for the Vatican Library, is a cortile rather than a garden, though it contains some flower-beds. It is more interesting as containing the celebrated Niccio or esedra of Bramante, in front of which is mounted the great bronze Pigna, which gives the garden its name, and was the top of the fountain in the atrium of Old St. Peter’s. The bronze peacocks, which flank it, either came from the same fountain or from the western façade of the church. Professor Middleton, who is a very sound guide, gives this latter origin for the peacocks, and says: “This bronze fir cone was placed by Pope Symmachus (498-514) in the centre of a very handsome fountain which he had made to stand in the middle of the open atrium in front of the main entrances into Constantine’s Vatican Basilica of S. Peter. It is shown in this position in one of the frescoes in the Church of S. Martino ai Monti, and probably remained there till the old Basilica was destroyed by Pope Julius II., when he determined to build a new church of still greater magnificence to hold his tomb by Michel Angelo.”

There is no sufficient authority for the fresco which represents the Pigna inside the church. Hare says that Pope Symmachus removed it to the atrium from the Lake of Agrippa in the Campus Martius.

Here, too, is the Garden or Terrace of the Navicella, so called from the bronze ship which stands in it.

With this I must take leave of the Vatican Gardens. I cannot quite echo the enthusiasm of Hare when he wrote: “It is a most delightful retreat for the hot days of May and June, and, before that time, its woods are carpeted with wild violets, anemones, and squills. No one who has not visited them can form an idea of these ancient groves, interspersed with fountains and statues, but otherwise left to nature, and exemplifying sylvan scenery, quite unassociated with the English idea of a garden.” It may be that the gardens have been denaturalizing since his time, or that there was a certain baroquity in his taste, which made him a little undiscriminative.

But I can conceive that the Giardini Vaticani have been allowed to put off beauty from them like a garment since the days when Pius IX. rode on his white mule between these walls of clipped laurel under the canopy of stone-pines.

One feature of interest in the Vatican which practically all guide-books omit, is the Pope’s coach-house, underneath the long gallery of the Library, which faces the Vatican Gardens and connects the Sculpture Galleries in the converted Villa Belvedere of Innocent VIII. with the old part of the Vatican proper in which the Borgia Rooms are situated. The visitor passes it on his right as he ascends the hill to the Sculpture Gallery. Only once since Pius IX. was deprived of temporal power and shut himself up in the Vatican has one of these carriages been seen, with the Pope inside it, by the outside world, and that was on July 15, 1890, when Leo XIII. took a turn in his carriage on the road which divides St. Peter’s from the Zecca (Mint). The Mint is the one spot in the Vatican which was seized by the Italian Government, and, as I have explained elsewhere, Leo XIII. took this giro to show that this road was part of the Vatican precincts to which he limited himself.

There are a large number of Papal carriages, all of which have had the arms—first of Leo XIII. and then of Pius X., duly placed on their panels, though neither of these Pontiffs has ever used them. It has always been the custom for each succeeding Pope to have the arms of his predecessor removed from the coaches and his own substituted. Very few of the carriages go back beyond Pius IX., who liked to keep the fittings of his position at a high pitch of dignity and splendour. Probably many interesting old carriages were taken away in his time as shabby, or superannuated. A few of the carriages there belonged to the splendour-loving Cardinal Bonaparte, but all the others, which I saw, were Papal. The cicerone who shows the coach-house to the privileged persons who obtain the special order necessary to visit it, is admirably suited for the purpose. He is a portly, dignified, intelligent man, who was one of Pius IX.’s postillions, and has, I believe, the privilege of driving the present Pope.

He began by pointing out with special pride a plain black carriage, which looked like a station brougham with a stamped gilt luggage-tray on its roof. For this was the carriage which Leo XIII. always used. All Pius IX.’s carriages have the same peculiarity—a pair of gilt throne arms fixed on the middle of the back seat, so that this seat could only be used by one person. Their floors are almost as high above the ground as the floors of railway carriages. And as this Pope lived to be eighty-five, they have an elaborate arrangement for helping him to climb into the carriage: a sort of folding ladder of four steps, leather above and carpet below.

One or two of Pius IX.’s carriages are black; the rest rise in an increasing scale of splendour, chiefly achieved by scarlet and gold, to the mezzo-gala and the grand-gala coach. The last is a superb affair adorned with a couple of cherubs of the Bernini family in the attitude of running forward, and holding a tiara between them as if they were dancing Sir Roger de Coverley. The roof above them is decorated with eight golden pines. The carriage itself was covered with crimson velvet encircled with ormolu ornaments; it has olive branches in front. This carriage has no coach-box; its six horses had postillions.

On the occasions of state for which Pius IX. used his gala coach he was surrounded by his whole court of Cardinals and Noble Guards walking on foot. On the most ordinary occasions he drove out with two Cardinals sitting facing him. By his right hand was a sort of box which his ex-postillion, who was showing us round, told us he used for tobacco and so on.

This coachman quite saw the humour of the situation when he began to tell us about a Sultan of Turkey who wished to confer a splendid decoration upon the Pope for diplomatic reasons, as the Sultan Bajazet II. had presented the Pope of his time with one of the most precious relics in St. Peter’s—the Holy Lance. In the intervening centuries opinion had grown stricter; at the same time there was no wish to repel the Sultan’s advances, so a compromise was made, and the Grand Turk was allowed to confer a decoration upon the Pope’s mule. He sent his muleship a gorgeous crimson velvet saddle and a caparison covered with diamonds. There was further humour in the situation, for, although the Sultan was only allowed to confer the diamonds on the mule, the then Pope saw no harm in borrowing the diamonds from the mule for the decoration of his chalices, and replacing them with paste. It was certainly better for the grooms, who might have been tempted to try the same expedient without using the diamonds for chalices.

In a large glass case at the end are the gorgeous crimson velvet and ormolu trappings used for the six horses of the grand-gala coach. Here, too, is the superb saddle of crimson velvet and silver which was used for the white mule on which the Pope rode in state to take formal possession of the Lateran after his coronation. This, as the postillion declared, was to typify Our Lord’s entry into Jerusalem. Clement XIV. (1769-1774) was the last Pope who went through the ceremony on horseback, though Pius IX. had a cavalcata. Contrary to the usual custom he rode from the Quirinal and not the Vatican. He took the route by the Piazza of the SS. Apostoli, which was, and is still, surrounded by the palaces of the great nobles. Silvagni lays equal emphasis on the beauty and importance of Felicia Barberini, wife of Prince Corsini, the Princess Santa Croce, and Donna Ippolita Boncompagni Ludovisi, the eighteen-year-old wife of Prince Rezzonico, brother of the late Pope. He notes that the populace were very discontented because the Egyptian lions of the Capitol on this occasion did not pour wine instead of water, and because money was not thrown among them, though these practices always led to disorders and deaths. That sixty-six thousand orders for ten loaves of bread each fluttered among them did not at all compensate. Starvation they did not mind; dissipation they craved for. The decorations of the Capitol sound curiously like those of to-day, except that there was a throne covered with crimson damask, and a baldacchino containing a portrait of the Pope, for they consisted chiefly of the banners of the fourteen Rioni and the crimson standards of the Senate, bearing the armorial device of the city of Rome—the S.P.Q.R. in heavy letters of gold. While from all the windows of the three palaces round the Capitol hung superb tapestries and precious pieces of brocade and gold embroidery. You may see the same on any twenty-first of April still.

The route lay over the Capitol and along the Forum, practically reversing the order of a Roman Triumph along the Sacred Way. The Forum, then called the Campo Vacchino, with its broken elevations, was the principal point for the crowd to see the spectacle, and even there accidents occurred from crushing, in spite of the proverbial gentleness and good nature of an Italian crowd. Had they known that the spectacle would never be seen in all its splendour again what might not have happened? There are no such pageants nowadays.

First came the horsemen with brass helmets and gilt lances, dressed in crimson velvet and gold lace, who were supposed to clear the way; then came four gorgeous Lancie Spezzati, or Knights of the Guard, two of whom marshalled the procession while the other two patrolled it; then came two great Nobles, the Grand Herald and the Master of the Horse, followed by the valets and mace-bearers of the Cardinals, in scarlet cloaks embroidered with their masters’ arms in gold and silver, followed by their gentlemen-in-waiting and other members of their households, and the head-servants of the Quirinal in red cassocks. All of these were in front of the Papal litter, which was covered with gorgeous draperies of scarlet and gold, and drawn by ten white mules in trappings flashing with the same costly metal, attended by grooms in red coats with folded hoods. After the litter came four mounted trumpeters heading a procession of Chamberlains and Assistant-Chamberlains, and Honorary Chamberlains of various kinds (of whom there are hundreds), but all of them in scarlet cloaks and hoods, conspicuous among whom was the Maestro di Camera. Then came the great Roman Nobles, the heads of the princely houses of Odescalchi, Albani, Giustiniani, Mattei, Altemps, Fiano, Caffarelli, Salviati, and Anguillara, with their pages and servants in gala dress. These were separated from the Swiss Guard in their helmets and cuirasses, armed with great two-handed swords, by the four oldest Camerieri Segreti, who each carried a Papal hat of crimson velvet on a little spear with a velvet-covered shaft. A long train of dignitaries of the Church preceded Prince Colonna, Principe Assistente to the Papal Throne and Grand Constable of the Kingdom of Naples, who rode in flashing armour on a superb Andalusian charger. He was followed by the three Masters of Ceremonies in long mantles on mules with purple Papal trappings, and one of the Uditori of the Rota, carrying the Papal Cross, leading a double line of Papal grooms in red cassocks, armed with swords, between a double line of Swiss Guards in helmets and cuirasses and breeches and stockings of purple silk, some of them armed with their halberds and some with their two-handed swords.

This was to keep off the crowd, for here rode the Pope upon his white palfrey, covered with the gold-embroidered crimson velvet saddle cloth which was shown us in the Pope’s coach-house. The Pope wore a white cassock and rochet, and a mozzetta of crimson velvet edged with ermine. His stole was of gold bullion ornamented with huge pearls, and he wore his Papal hat over his skull-cap. He was attended by twenty-four pages dressed in cloth of silver with long white feathers drooping from their little skull-caps, and white silk stockings. Their hair fell in curls upon the shoulders; they were selected for their beauty and their birth; they carried various things for the use of the Pope, such as an extra Papal hat, which the Pope might well have required, as his horse fell with him just by the Arch of Septimus Severus; they were followed by masters of the streets in black gowns; by more Lancie Spezzati, and mace-bearers on horseback, and by the processional Papal umbrella.

Immediately behind them came the Cardinal Camerlengo, the famous Scipio Borghese, who built the Villa Borghese, riding on a mule with the purple Papal trappings, and wearing his Cardinal’s hat; followed by a throne for the Pope, carried by two splendid horses, and a Sedia Gestatoria borne on the shoulders of the Sediarii in their splendid scarlet liveries.

Then came the Cardinals riding two and two, gorgeous in their scarlet gowns, but their mules had scarlet trappings instead of purple; and they wore their caps instead of their Cardinal’s hats. Each of them was surrounded by gorgeous lackeys, two a little in advance of the others carrying gilt staves and the arms of their masters. The most interesting figure among them was the English Prince known as the Cardinal of York—and, after his death, called Henry IX. of England.

After the Cardinals came the Patriarchs, Archbishops, Bishops, and the great officers of the Papal Curia; and after them came the Papal carriage, all scarlet and gold, drawn by six great white horses ridden by postillions; followed by the great Nobles who were the Pope’s Captains of the Guard and Standard Bearer, and three companies of cavalry and cuirassiers; the procession was closed by another detachment of the Swiss Guard, with their glittering helmets and cuirasses.

A stately pageant, consisting of the entire chapter and clergy of the Lateran, with grand processional cross and canopies, was awaiting them in the Piazza of the Lateran, and a throne had been erected in its vestibule.

In Italy vestments and liveries are faithfully preserved; and if the Pope were to decide to come forth into the world and signalize it by a cavalcata to take possession of the Lateran, the pageant could be reproduced almost identically, though it is nearly a century and a half since that day.

Clement XIV.’s fall, which was considered very unlucky at the time, in spite of the witticism with which he turned it off, seemed prophetic, for only six years afterwards he died a terrible death, poisoned by some mysterious drug, the effects of which are thus described by Silvagni, translated by Mrs. Maclaughlin.

“Monsignor Caracciolo bears witness that, some few days before his end, his bones wasted and crumbled like the branches of a tree, which, attacked at its roots, dry up, and fall off. Doctor Derossi, and other medical men who assisted to embalm the body, found it—these are their exact words—‘with the face livid, the lips black, the abdomen swollen, and all the skin covered with purple blotches, the size of the heart greatly diminished, and the muscles about the backbone lacerated and decomposed.’ They used vast quantities of perfumes and aromatics, but could not subdue the unpleasant odours proceeding from the corpse. The entrails, which were enclosed in a casket, burst it open; and when the dead man, after lying in state, was divested of his Pontifical robes, great pieces of flesh adhered to them, his hair remained fixed on the cushion which supported his head, and all his nails dropped off.”

Before 1870, when the Pope was deprived of his temporal power and retired into the Vatican, he used to make state progresses to the Church of S. Carlo Borromeo on the fifteenth of November; to the Church of S. Filippo Neri on the twenty-sixth of May, which is the day of that saint, called the Apostle of Rome; to the Church of Santa Maria del Popolo on the eighth of September, which is the feast of the Nativity of the Virgin Mary; and to the Church of Santa Maria sopra Minerva on the twenty-fifth of March, which is the feast of the Annunciation of the Virgin Mary—our Lady-Day. The arms of Pius X., which appear on all the carriages, are an adaptation of the Lion of St. Mark’s, with a background of sea. He had no arms of his own, as he was of humble birth, and when he was told that he must use a coat of arms, wished it to be adapted from the arms of his beloved Venice. At the time of his election to the Papacy he was Patriarch of Venice.

Yet more difficult to see than the Pope’s coach-house is the Chapel of S. Pius V., which is behind the hall of the Christian paintings in the Vatican Library. I have not seen that.

Visitors are admitted to the Studio del Mosaico, where the famous mosaics of the Vatican are made, by an order. It is situated in the basement of the other long hall which leads from the Belvedere to the Borgia wing. Between it and the Pope’s coach-house, enclosed with these long arms, is the vast Cortile of Bramante, which Sixtus V. spoiled irremediably by building the Vatican Library across it. The Mosaic Factory of the Vatican, in which it is said that nearly thirty thousand different shades of the vitreous composition used are stored, has a unique place in the history of art. The lighting of the great oven used for manufacturing these mosaics is quite a function in the Vatican. It is not often lit, because enormous quantities of the various mosaics required are kept in store.

The artist stands in front of a frame on an easel and inserts a mosaic here and a mosaic there, in the portion of the picture he is executing, as a printer inserts a type. He has the picture he is copying by his side, and consults it very carefully all the time. The Pope is constantly having one or other of the Vatican masterpieces copied for presentation, say to a cathedral in Brazil. In the atelier they show you marvellously fine designs in mosaics, especially of flowers and fruit, which are hardly to be matched even by the famous Doves of the Capitol Museum. The mosaics in use are kept in desks with glass lids, but otherwise very like the trays in which printers keep their type. You have more respect for a mosaic picture when you have seen one manufactured; you realize the enormous labour and artistic skill required.

As is well known, most of the great Italian churches have some glorious paintings by the great masters; but all the great pictures in Rome would not be too many for decorating the altars of St. Peter’s, and even with the pictures which belong to various other churches, but were sent to the Pope by mistake when the sculptures which Napoleon had taken from him were restored from the Louvre by the pressure of the English after the battle of Waterloo, there were not nearly enough of the highest class and largest size for the adequate decoration of St. Peter’s. So the walls above the altars of St. Peter’s are not decorated with oil-paintings, but with the finest possible mosaic copies of them, each of which has taken from five to twenty years to make. The mosaic copies as pictures could not hope to rival the originals by painters like Raffaelle, but in some ways they are superior for the purpose they fulfil. In the first place they can be left open to the light: instead of the sunshine injuring them, in a matter of five hundred years or upwards, it improves them; and so St. Peter’s has none of the unsightly curtains which disfigure other churches. Instead, all its great pictures enter into the general scheme of decoration; and though isolated panels of mosaics cannot, like those of Monreale and S. Sofia at Constantinople, give the effect of the jewelled paradise described in the Revelation, the glitter of the mosaics of St. Peter’s is the crowning note in that pageant of flashing marbles.

In St. Peter’s also, thanks to the mosaics, one has, not only reproductions of the world’s greatest pictures which belong to the Pope, and could have been used in the absence of mosaics, but also of the world’s masterpieces in other cities, notably Florence.

The most ambitious work of the Mosaic Factory of the Vatican is the mosaic-lined chapel under the choir of S. Lorenzo fuori le Mura, where Pius IX. lies buried. But I have always thought that the deficiencies of the modern mosaicists, compared with the great mosaic masters of the Middle Ages, are more apparent where they are working from independent designs in this chapel than where they are making incredibly perfect copies of oil-paintings. The Mosaic Factory is entered from the far left-hand corner of the courtyard of S. Damaso, which you approach by the State Staircase on the right as you enter the Bronze Door. The permessi for entering it are obtained from the Maggiordomo, Monsignor Bisleti, or his secretary, whose office is at the top of these steps, before eleven in the morning. The factory takes commissions from outside; many churches have pictures from it. Those who have orders are allowed to see all the very interesting processes of the manufacture.

Another Vatican industry is the weaving of tapestries. Here, also, the atelier is allowed to take commissions from outside.

The so-called tapestries of Raffaelle are by some considered to be his masterpieces. Not by any means all of the tapestries hung in the Galleria degli Arazzi were designed by him. It is said that the designs which come from his hand were originally intended for the Scriptural panels in his Loggie, but that Leo X. had ten of them converted to this use.

Of the ten cartoons drawn by Raffaelle in 1515 and 1516, and executed in tapestry at Brussels, seven were purchased in Flanders by Charles the First of England, and are now in the South Kensington Museum. Baedeker says that the cost of weaving the whole ten tapestries came to seven hundred pounds,⁠[18] though before they were injured they must have been amongst the most beautiful tapestries ever executed. It is not surprising that they are damaged, for they have had more than their share of vicissitudes. They have been unlucky from the very beginning. They were first hung on the walls of the Sistine Chapel below the paintings of the great fifteenth-century masters in 1519; and had only been there eight years before they were torn off the walls in the sack of Rome by the Imperial Army under the Constable de Bourbon, and carried away. They were not recovered for twenty-six years. In 1798 the French seized them and sold them to a Genoese Jew, and it was another ten years before they were repurchased by Pius VII.

They are now hung in a gallery adjoining the Galleria dei Candelabri and are shown on Wednesdays. No order is necessary, but as those who are only in Rome for a short time have not always a Wednesday left free, these glorious tapestries are a good deal neglected.

And glorious they are beyond dispute; even now, when they are injured, their colouring is rich and exquisite, and in them Raffaelle reached his highest point in combining dignity with simplicity—sublimity with obviousness.

Their dignity, their majesty, their beauty, are beyond dispute, and if we except the beards which were, I suppose, ordinary in that fantastic age, the figures are as natural as if they had been taken by instantaneous photography.

The figure of Our Lord in the tapestry of the Calling of St. Peter must be reckoned with His figure in Masaccio’s Render unto Cæsar, in the Carmine at Florence, and His figure in Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supper, at Milan, as the three noblest conceptions in painting of the Son of God. Marvellous are the pathos, the humanity, and the wisdom in the Divine Countenance. It is hard to dispute the dictum of those who pronounce this wonderfully beautiful and majestically meditative figure Raffaelle’s masterpiece. The truthfulness of type in the disciples must also be acknowledged. They would be Salvationists to-day. You can see their goodness, their sympathy, their ardour, and in the background all the gentle picturesqueness, not of Palestine, but of Umbria.

In the Miraculous Draught of Fishes, the absurdities are miraculous. The cranes stand almost touching the boats; the boats are full of sea-fishes: they are not large enough to hold one man, let alone three. Your taste is not offended; it is not a real fishing scene: the accessories are a mere stage for the six figures, five of which are sublime.

Hardly any of the tapestries appeal more widely to the world than that of St. Peter healing the paralytic at the beautiful gate of the Temple. But the exquisite architectural conception of this picture is said to portray no gate and no temple, but the porch of the Old St. Peter’s, founded by Constantine the Great, which Raffaelle, the lover of antiquities, was privileged to predecease. He died before it was torn down by ruthless hands, after he had, in one of the finest and most poetical of his works, caught its immortal grace and imprisoned it in art. This is perhaps the most beautiful of the tapestries, though not the best.

If there be any more beautiful it is the utterly pagan Sacrifice of Lystra, with its vista of the world when it was young. As we look into it, if we have a spark of imagination, we are fellow-citizens of the Romans ere the old religion had begun to pass, giving place to new. If the ruins of Pompeii were suddenly recalled into existence as the dry bones in the Vision of Ezekiel were clothed with flesh, scenes such as these would be before our eyes. And there must be added the Areopagus, unconvincing in its architecture, but with the most devout figure in the whole of art claiming our attention in the centre. In the corner is that wonderful fair woman whose image is so stamped upon his masterpieces that we know, without any superscription of biographers, what she must have been in his life.

The Death of Ananias; St. Paul in Prison at Philippi during an earthquake; the Stoning of Stephen; the Massacre of the Innocents (with its wonderful woman’s head); and the Conversion of St. Paul, are the other tapestries from designs completed by Raffaelle. Tradition has it that the designs of his pupils for the other tapestries were in part due to him, but it is difficult to believe this. That the Christ personating a gardener, whose divinity is shown by the halo behind His hat, should be a conception of Raffaelle is incredible, though the gorgeous background and the charming Etruscan tomb might have been due to his suggestion. The Adoration of the Magi, however—especially in its treatment of the Virgin—is so beautiful that Raffaelle may well have inspired it. In most of the other tapestries there is some feature which jars, such as the grotesqueness in the Ascension, of which the colours are lovely; or the jumpiness and gaudiness of the figure in the Resurrection, which has such a beautiful city background. But I must not criticize in detail; indeed, I am not competent to do so. I only call upon the visitor to Rome not to miss this gallery—so seldom open—where he passes down between walls hung with some of the most majestic and human of the figures of Raffaelle. It is delightful to let one’s eyes rest on walls so mellow with the gentle fading of rich colours, and to picture the Sistine Chapel when these arrases hung down to the marble pavement from the frescoes of Ghirlandajo, Pinturicchio, Perugino, and Sandro Botticelli, while they were as fresh and perfect as the frescoes in the Library of the Cathedral of Siena. It is wonderful how the figures of Raffaelle stand out in these tapestries; they are almost like friends who come up and speak to one as one enters the gallery.

A word must be said for an art whose significance we are only just beginning to grasp: that of the designer of the little pictures which border great pictures, or, tangled in arabesques, are the sole ornament of a wall. We call these Pompeian, denying that Rome was the mother of any art but that of mosaic inlayers like the Cosmati. But when we look at the little tapestry pictures woven from the designs of Giovanni da Udine here, and his little frescoes and his reliefs in stucco in the Loggie of the Vatican and the vaults of the Villa Madama, we must allow them to be among the most beautiful productions of the art of his period, and since his inspiration came from the newly unearthed and yet undimmed arabesques in the Baths of Titus, we must allow the inspiration taken from ancient Rome to be Roman. The miniature art of Giovanni da Udine in painting is suggestive of the miniature art which Mino da Fiesole showed in his borders of sculpture. This Gallery of the Arazzi gives us delightful glimpses of this too little appreciated painter, who died in the same year as Michel Angelo and survived Raffaelle by half a century.

Adjoining the Galleria degli Arazzi is the Galleria dei Candelabri. This is a beautiful chamber, appropriately named, appropriately decorated, appropriately arranged. Leo XIII. had it newly decorated. There are many beautiful pieces of statuary in it, but I shall not attempt to discriminate between them here. I only pause to say that this is a gallery which no one should miss. The beautiful candelabri, with their exquisite bas-reliefs—many of them dating from ancient Roman times—are so charmingly displayed; and the room has wonderful vases of the choicest marbles and forms. The room has evidently been as much considered as the precious objects stored in it. In many ways it reminds one of some of the halls in the Villa Borghese, which do not look like portions of a museum at all, but like chambers in a rich man’s house, in which the pieces have been chosen from the point of view of decorativeness. The ceiling is painted with incidents in the Pontificate of Leo XIII. and his favourite St. Thomas Aquinas, by the hands of the artist Seitz, who restored the famous Borgia Apartments; and the pavement is also due to the late Pope’s munificence.

Out of this gallery opens the Galleria Geografica, the Gallery of the Maps, a hundred and sixty yards long, covered with maps of Italy and its islands, designed by a Bishop of Alatri in the days when he was a Dominican friar, Ignazio Dante, and painted by his brother, Antonio. The ceiling was painted by Tempesta, but neither it nor the maps are of a character to make you regret very much that you are unlikely to get leave to go into it.

The ordinary entrance to the Vatican is that known as the Bronze Doors at the end of the right-hand colonnade round the Piazza of St. Peter’s. This colonnade was the masterpiece of Bernini, one of the few classical works of the baroque period which really achieved their purpose of rivalling the glories of ancient Rome. The megalomania from which Bernini and his master suffered could not ruin this as it ruined most of his other works, for immensity is the chief element in its majestic beauty.

Worthy of proceeding from such a temple of the gods is the hill of stone called the Scala Regia—the Royal Staircase, which leads from the entrance to the Sala Regia, the Royal Hall. The staircase, too (one of the finest in the world), is Bernini’s work, and when carpeted and hung with crimson and lit with the huge gilt wall-piece candelabri, which can still be seen as you go to the Leonine Chapel, it formed a most appropriate setting to the brilliant pageants which used to pass up it when the Pope was holding high court.

The Sala Regia, from which you enter the Sistine Chapel, the Sala Ducale, the Paoline Chapel, and the Leonine Chapel, is a fine, well-proportioned, brilliantly coloured chamber built by Antonio da Sangallo, one of the architects of St. Peter’s. But its gigantic pictures do not rise above the level of good wall-paper. They represent various triumphs of the Catholic Faith, such as the Battle of Lepanto, by Vasari; the Absolution of the Emperor Henry IV., by Gregory VII., after his submission at Canossa, the work of the Zuccheri; the Triumph of the Church in the Massacre of St. Bartholomew, by Vasari; the Benediction of Frederick Barbarossa, by Alexander III. at Venice, painted by Giuseppe della Porta; and the removal of the Papacy from Avignon under Gregory XI. The ceiling was painted by Pierino del Vaga.

The Sala Regia derives its name from being used by the Pope to receive the ambassadors of foreign Kings.

At one end of the Sala Regia is the Cappella Paolina, built in 1540, also by Antonio da Sangallo; it, too, contains frescoes by Federigo Zucchero—good examples of that master. It is used for great ceremonies like those of Holy Week. It is very difficult for the tourist to get admission to this chapel; it can only be done through one of the priests attached to it, or by attending one of the lectures which are occasionally allowed by the Vatican authorities to be given on this group of chapels. And the Paoline Chapel is well worth visiting, because it contains two undoubted frescoes by Michel Angelo, of which Kugler, quoted by Hare, says: “Two excellent frescoes, executed by Michel Angelo on the side wall of the Paoline Chapel, are little cared for, and are so much blackened by the smoke of lamps that they are seldom mentioned. The Crucifixion of St. Peter, under the large window, is in a most unfavourable light, but is distinguished for its grand, severe composition. That on the opposite wall—the Conversion of St. Paul—is still tolerably distinct. The long train of his soldiers is seen ascending in the background. Christ, surrounded by a host of angels, bursts upon his sight from the storm-flash. Paul lies stretched on the ground, a noble and finely developed form. His followers fly on all sides or are struck motionless by the thunder. The arrangement of the groups is excellent, and some of the single figures are very dignified; the composition has, moreover, a principle of order and repose, which, in comparison with the Last Judgment, places the picture in a very favourable light. If there are any traces of old age to be found in these works, they are at most discoverable in the execution of details.” And Sir A. H. Layard, in the revised edition of Kugler, says: “In 1549-50, when seventy-five years old, Michael Angelo executed two frescoes in the Paoline Chapel in the Vatican. They have been utterly neglected, and so much effaced by the smoke of candles as to be almost forgotten. The Crucifixion of St. Peter under the window, though seen with difficulty, is a grand and stern composition. The Conversion of St. Paul on the opposite wall is better seen.” The ordinary visitor is not inspired with the same enthusiasm about these frescoes. Daniele di Volterra, the pupil of Michel Angelo who finished them, in touching up St. Paul’s face forgot that he must have been a young man at his conversion, and gave him the grey beard and narrow forehead of Michel Angelo’s Moses—a too sincere form of flattery. But the upper part of the Conversion of St. Paul is magnificent. The long narrow chapel is gracefully proportioned, and the plaster reliefs are unusually elegant for Rome, though not at all equal to the exquisite reliefs of the Sicilian Serpotta, the prince of workers in plaster. There is a pathetic little passage about these frescoes in Duppa’s Life of Michael Angelo:

“Near to the Chapel of Sixtus, in the Vatican, Antonio da San Gallo built another, by the order of Paul III., which in like manner is called after its founder, the Chapel Paolina; and the Pope, being solicitous to render it more honourable to his name, commissioned Michel Angelo to paint the walls in fresco. Although he now began to feel he was an old man, he undertook the commission, and on the sides opposite to each other painted two large pictures, representing the Conversion of St. Paul and the Crucifixion of St. Peter. These pictures, he said, cost him great fatigue, and in their process declared himself sorry to find that fresco-painting was not an employment for his years; he therefore petitioned His Holiness that Perino del Vaga might finish the ceiling from his designs, which was to be decorated with painting and stucco ornaments; but this part of the work was not afterwards carried into execution.”

On the way up to the Leonine Chapel one passes through various lumber-rooms, in which are kept the sumptuous gold candle-brackets designed by Bernini for the Scala Regia, and various tabernacles and so on, for use in processions, designed by him, all rather florid and baroque, but good for large effects. The Leonine Chapel, called also the Cappella della Beatificazione, and the Aula Dei, was converted into a chapel by Leo XIII.; it adjoins the Gallery of St. Peter’s, into which it opens on the right-hand side, while the windows on the left-hand side look out on to the Piazza. It was the custom of the Popes, until they lost their temporal sovereignty and ceased to appear outside the Vatican, to bless the people from one of the windows of this chapel on their election. The blessing is now delivered from the gallery to the people assembled in St. Peter’s. This Chapel of the Beatification has for its special functions the canonizations and beatifications of Saints. The decorations of the chapel are commonplace and not very high art. Most of the room is white, but the pilasters and ceiling are picked out richly with gilt. The whole effect is more that of a hall in a nobleman’s palace than of a chapel. Do not look at the gilt and white cornice and gilt and white ceiling of St. Peter’s from the gallery, although they are said to have been designed by Raffaelle. The cherubs, especially, need to be seen from the floor of the basilica, where distance gives them the requisite enchantment.

One does not regret the shortcomings of this chapel, which is the interior of the gallery over the portico of St. Peter’s, and hides all the beauty of the dome when you are in the Piazza (an architectural excrescence, erected by Maderna for Paul V., that should never have been permitted), because it will save an artistic Pope, who has the courage of his convictions, any qualms about taking it down and allowing the glorious dome to be properly seen.

The Sistine Chapel, which leads off from the Sala Regia, need not be described here: it is one of the first places visited by everyone who goes to Rome.

Opposite to the entrance of the Sistine Chapel is the entrance to the Sala Ducale—a low narrow corridor through which the Pope is carried in his Sedia Gestatoria for the great ceremonies in the Sistine Chapel, and formerly used for audiences to foreign princes. Once when I was passing through it there were Papal Guards being drilled in it. Its decorations are among the worst in the Vatican. Its ceiling is divided half-way up the room by an arch, designed by Bernini out of the bodies of two overgrown cherubs, and plaster curtains; and just under the ceiling the walls are decorated with a series of frescoes by a Fleming, called Paul Brill or Bril, who flourished in the last part of the sixteenth and the first part of the seventeenth century.

In the Sala Ducale we get a couple of familiar glimpses of the great Montaigne. In the Journal of his Travels, translated by Mr. W. G. Waters for Mr. John Murray, we read: “Thence he went down to the Vatican to inspect the statues set in the niches of the Belvedere, and the fine gallery, now almost completed, which the Pope is adorning with paintings of all parts of Italy. He lost his purse and all therein, and deemed this must have happened while he was giving alms—as he did twice or thrice; the weather was very rainy and unpleasant, and, instead of returning his purse to his pocket, he must have thrust it into the slashings of his hose. At this time he diverted himself entirely in studying Rome. He had at first engaged a Frenchman as guide, but this fellow took himself off in some ridiculous humour, whereupon M. de Montaigne prided himself on mastering by his own efforts the art of a guide. In the evening he would study certain books and maps, and next day repair to the spot and put in practice his apprenticeship, so that in a few days he could have shown his guide the way.”

It is to be noted that though the journal of Montaigne speaks of him in the third person, it was dictated by himself to his valet. Other parts of the journal are written in the first person.

At the end of the Sala Ducale you come to the Pope’s private tapestry rooms, which are back to back with the Borgia Apartments. There are two rooms, and the tapestries in the first are claimed by the Vatican authorities to be among the most valuable in the world. They fall into three lots. There are four large pieces with the arms of Paul III., the Farnese Pope (1534-1549), which have glorious colouring almost as rich as a picture of Ghirlandajo. Their subjects are “Esther and Ahasuerus”; “The Judgment of Solomon”; “The Story of Susannah”; and “Joseph and his Brethren.” Their titles are written under them. The richness of the tapestries is almost inconceivable.

On the window wall there are two tapestries not so good, one of them an Annunciation, which reminds you of a picture of Federigo Baroccio in the Vatican Gallery; the other is an Assumption.

On the wall to the right of the doorway where you go in is a tapestry which the custode claims to be the finest in the world. But to me it did not seem so good as the large Farnese tapestries mentioned above; it is mounted on a frame, because the late Pope always had it placed over the altar while he was saying Mass. It is executed from a Crucifixion, rather in the manner of Perugino, but spoilt by a touch of modernity. However, one must not be too critical over a work of art which was the inspiration of so great a man as Leo XIII.

Over the doors hang other tapestries which, the custode says, have been valued at over a million francs each—that is, £40,000. To me they did not appear so good as the tapestries of the same period which Mr. Joseph Whitaker, of Palermo, bought for less than a tenth of the price less than ten years ago. The custode did not seem to understand much about the tapestries, and I think he was more influenced by pride in his charge than by knowledge of it.

A door at the end of the chamber admits you into a second chamber, of which the walls are covered with the tapestries of his betrothal and marriage, presented by Louis XIV. of France to the then Pope. Here dine the fourteen officers of the Swiss Guard, and here Cardinal Merry del Val, the Pope’s Secretary of State, gives his state dinners. All the dinners are given on that long green baize table with a red silk valence, which makes such an effective feature in the room’s scheme of colour. Privates and non-commissioned officers dine below in the Belvedere.

The marriage tapestry bears the inscription: “The ceremony of the marriage of Louis XIV., King of France and Navarre, with the Most Serene Infante, Marie Thérèse of Austria, eldest daughter of Philip IV. of Spain.” Louis and his wife are almost smothered in blue robes powdered with fleur-de-lys.

Smaller tapestries separate this and the betrothal tapestry from the great tapestry on the end wall, representing the Baptism of Our Lord by John the Baptist. It has a lovely high, rich colouring, though the drawing is rather banal. In this room the Pope vests himself when he is going to officiate in a ceremony, under the baldachin, with all the Cardinals round him. The room is really a sort of annexe of the Borgia Apartments.

The ceiling of 1576 has in its centre a picture of the Pentecost, by Domenichino. Over the door is the name of Urban VIII., the Barberini Pope, in whose time, I suppose, the apartment was decorated. The whole effect of both these rooms is very rich. The room opens out into the long, crimson-upholstered smoking-room of the Cardinals, which has lounges along its walls like a Tunisian guard-room. Zola says that the Louis Quatorze tapestries are from designs by Audran.

If you have one of the Vatican servants with you, ask him to take you out through the Loggia of Giovanni da Udine, instead of returning the same way. Udine, a fellow-worker with Raffaelle, lived 1487-1564, and he derived the inspiration for the decoration of the Loggia from the then newly discovered Baths of Titus, which were wonderfully fresh and bright when they were first exhumed.

They are chiefly arabesques of the style we call Pompeian; and constantly repeated in them you have the curious figure which occurs again and again in the glorious stuccoes of the tombs of the Valerii on the Latin Way—that of a woman riding a sea-serpent or dragon with a horse’s head.

The Loggia of Giovanni da Udine is below Raffaelle’s Loggie and brings you out into the Court of S. Damaso, almost opposite to the entrance of the Pope’s private apartments.

The Vatican is full of treasures unsuspected by the sightseer, such as the Farnese Tapestries and the Treasury of the Sistine Chapel. So little is the latter known, that neither Baedeker, Murray, Macmillan, nor Chandlery mention it. But it is more interesting than the Treasury of St. Peter’s, because it is far more intimately connected with the Pope. The reason for the silence is that so few people have been permitted to see it. Its existence is practically a secret. You are shown over it by Don Giacomo, one of the Augustinian brothers who have charge of the Paoline Chapel, and from whom the Pope’s Sacrist is always taken. Leave having been obtained from the Papal authorities, you go to summon him in the little house occupied by the brothers at the back of the Loggia, frescoed by Giovanni da Udine, which is under Raffaelle’s Loggia. The door is always shut, but over it there is a square hatch about twelve or fifteen feet from the ground, and when you knock a smiling person puts his head out of it and talks in the Roman dialect to you. This is the cook of the brothers, who, after proper explanations, summons Don Giacomo.

Then you pass through the Sala Ducale, with its poor Pompeian frescoes by a painter named Bril or Brill—Paul Brill, a Fleming, who died in 1626—and its still poorer plaster arch by Bernini, into the Sala Regia. Bernini’s arch is made of the bodies of cherubs. The Sala Regia is huge and has huge frescoes of such subjects as the Battle of Lepanto. The colouring reminds you of the Duchess who is an artist and goes in for high living and high thinking—it is high rather than rich, and the painters have failed to invest the frescoes with any elegance. Rome abounds with vast sixteenth-century buildings, and their principal halls are apt to be given up to the Battle of Lepanto. One can see how the Battle of Lepanto woke Europe from the nightmare of a conquest by the Turks. The door opposite to the Sala Ducale admits to the Sistine Chapel. You pass through the exquisite white marble screen of Mino da Fiesole without looking at its lovely arabesques or gilded bars; you do not raise your eyes to the ceiling of Michel Angelo, though it is one of the wonders of the world. You do not glance right or left at the frescoes of Pinturicchio and Perugino, Sandro Botticelli and Ghirlandajo, though you thread your way between a hundred people who are straining their eyes over the faded glories. You may cast an eye on the tumultuous assemblage which Michel Angelo conceived for the Last Judgment, and which Daniele da Volterra was commissioned to provide with clothes, because you are admitted through a hole in its bottom blocked by a door which is kept always locked. Then, after a ramble through various anterooms and upstairs, you arrive at the Treasury, which fills several rooms. In the first is kept one of the greatest treasures, the grand old linen lace robe, overpoweringly heavy, worn in 1298 by Boniface VIII., the Caetani Pope. Though this is the oldest object in the collection, the Caetani are still the premier family in the Roman nobility. In the same case is kept a gold brooch several inches in diameter, with three golden and pearl bosses, made in the shape of a Papal tiara, presented to the Pope in 1888 to hold his cope together. All round this room, at the backs of the treasure cases, are hung the splendid gold embroideries which the Grand Duke of Tuscany gave to Clement VIII. In a drawer below are kept Pius IX.’s white full-dress shoes, heavily embroidered with gold, with four diamonds and a large emerald in the centre. They seem to be copied from the Rostrum in the Forum. Here, too, you see the exquisite collection of robes of all the famous kinds of lace, Genoese, Venetian, English, Irish, and so on, one of the most superb being the robe of Venetian point worn by the Pope for the first time at the recent consecration of fifteen French Bishops.

The most extraordinary object in the room is the tall hat of red velvet, edged with gold brocade, shaped like a Japanese Daimio’s hat, which the Pope used to send to favoured individuals, though none have been sent since 1837—the Cappello Ducale. It has a pearl and gold tiara at the top. In this chamber or the next is the tiara worn by Pius VII. in his captivity, when Napoleon had deprived him of all his jewels. It is made of cloth of silver stretched over paper or leather, like all the other tiaras, but instead of being encrusted with magnificent gems, it is decorated with films of precious stones as thin as paper, with a backing of tinsel. Don Giacomo calls it all paper, so as to make the most of the rigours of the captivity at Savona and Fontainebleau. The whole room is given up to gorgeous robes for Mass, some of the crimson robes, heavily embroidered with bullion, being absolutely lovely. In each case is kept a suite for the Cardinals who assist the Pope at the Mass, as well as for the Pope himself. The most peculiar objects are the Pope’s stockings, which look like the loose beef-boots worn by the French Canadians in the backwoods, only that they are made of crimson silk embroidered with gold. If Popes wore trousers they would go inside their stockings easily. Perhaps I should convey my meaning more clearly if I said that these full-dress Papal stockings were as wide as the mackintosh bottoms which London policemen wear over their trousers in wet weather. The Pope has red shoes to match, made like Pius IX.’s, but about two inches longer. They cannot fit, because the gloves of the suite, which are exactly like ladies’ riding gauntlets, also of crimson and gold, only look about six-and-a-halfs. Some zealots from Spain have also sent the Pope pairs of marvellously embroidered green satin shoes, and white satin shoes, quite irrespective of size. They would have done for Goliath, but are very gorgeous. It is a very odd thing that the shoes of the Pope and of Hadrian’s courtiers on the Rostrum in the Forum are of the same rude latchet pattern which were worn by working-men in England right into the nineteenth century. The likeness is, of course, accidental; the one being due to coarseness and cheapness, and the other to the preservation of an archaic type. In the case adjoining are two robes presented to Leo XIII. for his Jubilee—one of a lace of very fine silk braid, the other of fine silver and gold net. There is yet another of crimson silk, embroidered with real pearls, given by the Roman ladies, but the pearls are of the nouveau art grade.

Here, too, is the beautiful altar-front, of cloth of silver embroidered with gold, which is always laid on the altar in front of the Pope when he is celebrating at great functions.

The most peculiar things of all are the Cardinals’ robes, made of cloth of gold and black silk, which look like shot-brown silk. These they wear at a Mass for a dead Pope. The living Pope, for the time being, wears crimson; it would not be right for him to wear mourning. One large armoire is full of gorgeous cushions, mostly of rich white silk embroidered with gold, for the Pope to kneel on.

Then you go into another room, and, passing a large collection of stoles enriched with beautifully painted miniatures of Saints, come to the glass case which contains the famous Golden Rose. The Golden Rose is a complete rose-bush, a foot and a half high, with about a dozen blossoms of heavy, clumsy, not very well-made or natural roses; but the foliage is of thin gold leaf, like the garlands found in Etruscan tombs. The bush stands in a rich, odd-shaped, silver-gilt vase, as quaint as the vases of Tunis, two feet high. It is always kept here as the sample from which the Pope can order a copy on the very rare occasions when he wishes to bestow “the Golden Rose,” as our King bestows the Order of “the Garter.” The last person who received it is said to have been an American woman who had given two million dollars to the Pope.

The queer little silver boxes, mostly with conical tops, inscribed ol., like chemists’ jars, contain the chrism for (1) the sick; (2) catechumens; and (3) confirmation.

The Pope’s tiaras⁠[19] are made of cloth of silver stretched over some stiff substance. They are twelve or fifteen inches high, surrounded by three crowns of golden leaves rather like arum leaves, each with a costly gem in the centre, coming out of a band three-quarters of an inch wide, thickly studded with magnificent gems. There are two visible here, the present Pope’s and Pio Nono’s. Each is surmounted by a blue enamelled ball, like the ball of St. Peter’s, and a little diamond cross. Tiaras have strings like Glengarry caps. Here is kept the Venetian point robe given to Leo XII. for his Jubilee.

In this room is kept the faded scarlet hat worn by Pius VII. at Fontainebleau in his captivity, which has a long inscription devoted to it.

The first object which strikes you in the next room is a magnificent processional cross, seven feet high, made of silver gilt, adorned with figures, enamelling, etc., presented by the late Marquess of Bute. Here, too, is kept the magnificent silver-gilt altar service given by Queen Victoria to Leo XIII. for his Jubilee. Close by is a model of the famous Cellini brooch of gold, five inches in diameter, with a large diamond in the centre—a cope brooch. A Princess Corsini gave her wedding train, made of crimson velvet with gold embroidery, to the Pope for his exhibition. You live in an atmosphere of crimson silk and gold embroidery here. In this room are some wonderful pictures woven in silk. In an alcove opposite, fourteen feet by ten, are about twenty of the robes worn by the Pope on his Throne on the Sedia Gestatoria; each contains twenty-five metres of silk. They are about seven feet long, so they have to hang very high, but they are quite light compared with the embroidered copes.

There are said to be seventy rooms of plate. Everything here is plate, except Boniface VIII.’s lace robe. This is because Napoleon carried off all the Vatican treasures and only returned the church plate. The gems and gold and other jewellery disappeared.

Here I must point out the finger of Fate. When Paul III. was building the Sacristy, he came across the tomb of the Empresses Maria and Thermantia, the two wives of Honorius; their bodies were intact, and they still wore their pearl robes, and were surrounded by many costly feminine trinkets. Paul, one of the least saintly of the Popes, was feverishly building St. Peter’s to take the place of children as his posterity. He was vulgar enough to melt down the gold, forty pounds in weight, which he applied to the building, but he kept the gems and put them in his tiara. Napoleon cared nothing for Paul III.’s tiara; it was broken up too, whereas if they had been left in the Empress’s jewels, Napoleon would certainly have preserved them as wonders of the world, and they would have found their way back to the Vatican. Paul’s own tomb, too, in St. Peter’s—as if in retribution—has felt the hand of the spoiler; two of its statues are gone. There is nothing by Benvenuto Cellini in the Sistine Treasury, and there are very few other grand monstrances or crosses, but some of those in the Pitti Palace may have come from here, because the Papal plate there is so very splendid. It is a curious change to pass from this silent treasury of the dead Popes back into the Sistine Chapel, where you see a Roman crowd without a Roman in it, and are deafened by earth’s many languages.

I am not going to give a detailed account of the magnificent and imposing Sacristy of St. Peter’s, because it is open to anyone who cares to give the Sacristan a small fee. Nothing is more surprising to the untravelled Englishman than the way in which anyone who is not absolutely disreputable is allowed to stray into the sacristies of Italian churches and cathedrals, even when they are being used by robing and unrobing priests. The sacristy is almost as open to the public as the church itself. But I should be wrong if I did not point out briefly certain objects in the Sacristy of St. Peter’s which no one should omit to see. It is entered by a door in the left aisle; you go along an important-looking passage, where you imagine that you must be trespassing, until you reach the splendid octagonal Sagrestia Commune, embellished with fluted marble columns from Hadrian’s Villa. Four minor chambers lead off this: the Sagrestia dei Canonici, leading into the Stanza Capitolare—that is, the Chapter House, on the left; and on the right the Sagrestia dei Beneficiati, leading into the Treasury. In the Chapter House are the only valuable paintings left in St. Peter’s—namely, the panels executed by Giotto for the Confessio of Old St. Peter’s, and fourteen pieces of the celebrated frescoes by Melozzo da Forli, which were formerly, with some other pieces now in the Quirinal, in the cupola of the Church of SS. Apostoli. It must be remembered that until the loss of their temporal power the Popes had the Quirinal for their summer palace, so there is nothing unnatural in their sending to each palace part of the frescoes taken down in the rebuilding of the Church of SS. Apostoli. These frescoes of Melozzo da Forli⁠[20] consist of angels playing musical instruments, and heads of the Apostles. The angels are perhaps the most beautiful figures among all the paintings of Rome. They are very spirited and exquisitely lovely, and Melozzo is such a rare and magnificent master that no opportunity should be lost of examining his work. There are also a few pictures of later painters of note. The traveller should not fail to note the glorious Oriental alabaster in the Sacristy; hardly anywhere will he see pieces of such singular beauty. The Treasury of St. Peter’s is not so interesting as the Treasury of the Sistine Chapel, for the Popes, since 1870, have used the latter so much more intimately than the former; but there are certain objects of great beauty and interest in the St. Peter’s Treasury. The most beautiful, perhaps, are the silver-gilt candlesticks sculptured by Benvenuto Cellini, which are used for the Papal Altar of St. Peter’s upon great occasions. They are not examples of Cellini’s most delicate handiwork, of which there are far finer examples in the Pitti Palace at Florence; but one does not know how much of the best Cellini work at the Pitti ought not by rights to be in the Vatican. Michel Angelo, also, is said to be responsible for the designs of the candelabra in the Treasury. Here, too, notice the beautiful chalice decorated with precious stones, which was given by the last of the Stuarts, the Cardinal of York, who was Cardinal Priest of St. Peter’s for more than half a century. What is vulgarly called the Dalmatic of Charlemagne, and should be called the Dalmatic of San Leone, i.e. St. Leo III., who crowned this monarch, is, writes Hare, said to have been embroidered at Constantinople for the coronation of Charlemagne as Emperor of the West. But it is a production, in any case, of the Byzantine artists in their best period. The Holy Roman Emperors used to wear it while serving as deacons at the Pope’s Altar during their Coronation Mass. “It was,” says Lord Lindsay, in his Christian Art, “in this dalmatic—then semée all over with pearls and glittering with freshness—that Cola di Rienzi robed himself over his armour in the Sacristy of St. Peter’s, and then ascended to the Palace of the Popes, after the manner of the Cæsars, with sounding trumpets and his horsemen following him—his truncheon in his hand, and his crown on his head.” According to Lord Lindsay, the Saviour in glory is represented on the breast; the Transfiguration on the back, and Christ administering the Eucharist to the Apostles on the shoulders. It is quite stiff, almost like the hauberk of a knight, and not by any means so rusty or threadbare as one would expect. Here, too, are a ciborium by Donatello, and the Cross of the Emperor Justin, with whom Pope Hormisdas had the dramatic scene at the gates of Old St. Peter’s. The tiara of dull silver kept here belongs, not to the Pope, but to the miraculous image of St. Peter, whose foot is kissed by so many thousands annually in the nave of the cathedral. I have been unable to obtain definite information as to which tiara is alluded to by Hare in the following passage: “In the Papal tiara are set some of the jewels robbed in 1544 from the tomb and person of Maria, the wife of Honorius, daughter of Stilicho. Originally the Popes were only crowned with a low Phrygian mitre decorated with two peacock’s feathers, to which was added a single circlet of gold. Benedict XI. [sic]⁠[21] (at Avignon) (perhaps Boniface VIII.) added a second circlet, and Urban V. a third. The peacock’s feathers are of good omen, the flesh of this bird, according to S. Augustine, being held to be incorruptible.”

The attendants say that these jewels were carried off by the French and never returned. Paul III.’s treatment of the mausoleum of the wives of Honorius, when it was discovered in extending the foundations for the new cathedral, moves the indignation of even an ardent Roman Catholic like Mr. Marion Crawford: “In extending the foundations of the church, Paul the Third came upon the bodies of Maria and Hermania [sic], the two wives of Honorius, the Emperor who ‘disestablished’ paganism in favour of Christianity. They were sisters, daughters of Stilicho, and had been buried in their imperial robes, with many rich objects and feminine trinkets; and they were found intact, as they had been buried, in the month of February 1543. Forty pounds of fine gold were taken from their robes alone, says Baracconi, without counting all the jewels and trinkets, among which was a very beautiful lamp, besides a great number of precious stones. The Pope melted down the gold for the expenses of the building, and set the gems in a tiara, where, if they could be identified, they certainly exist to-day—the very stones worn by Empresses of ancient Rome.

“Then, as if in retribution, the Pope’s own tomb was moved from its place.”

The archives of St. Peter’s are kept above the Sacristy. All guide-books note, among many other manuscripts, the life of St. George, with admirable miniatures by Giotto, of which one is reproduced in this volume (see List of Illustrations).

I have only touched lightly on the Sacristy and the Treasury, and their principal objects of interest, because sightseers so often omit to visit them; not a few because they are unaware of the courtesy with which sacristies are shown.

Comparatively few people realize how easy it is to ascend the dome of St. Peter’s, and to obtain the necessary order for the ascent, which is given at the office of the works (Reverenda Fabbrica di San Pietro, via della Sagrestia, No. 8, on the first floor). There seems to be no reason for the formality of getting an order; it is given to any respectable person as a matter of course, for himself and party, not exceeding so many persons. The dome can only be visited from eight to eleven in the morning. You enter through a door by the tomb of Maria Clementina Sobieska, wife of the Pretender, which is almost opposite the monument of the last three Stuart Princes, and close to where you enter St. Peter’s. The first part of the ascent is up a spiral inclined plane, and it is very easy until you get to quite the end of the ascent. Indeed, it is easy to the extent of uninterestingness until you reach the roof of the church and that part of the ascent which is performed between the outer and inner shells of the dome. The dome rises three hundred and eight feet above the roof. It is four hundred and four feet from the ground to the top of the lantern; four hundred and thirty-five feet to the top of the cross. Its diameter is slightly less than that of the Pantheon; and the spire of Rouen Cathedral is seventy feet higher.

I made the ascent very early, so as to linger a long time upon the roof of the great church, with its bird’s-eye view of the Vatican and its superb panorama of Rome.

There was a lady with me who firmly believed in the San Pietrini—the children of St. Peter’s, who are supposed to live in houses on the roof, and who supply the steeple-jacks and the men who swing themselves about the ceiling cornices of St. Peter’s, making shots at the places they want to repair until they hang on to them like birds—a sight which makes you quite dizzy. These people are said to live on the roof of St. Peter’s all their lives, and hardly ever to leave it, except when they go to do their marketing and when they are plying their perilous trade. I have the highest authority for declaring the whole thing to be a myth. Moreover, there are no houses on the roof of St. Peter’s. I made a close examination when I was there last year. In fact, there is hardly a single building on the roof which is not an essential part of the church. That these steeple-jacks, and the men who work at a great height in the interior of St. Peter’s, are the sons and grandsons and great-grandsons of men who have served St. Peter’s in the same way is pretty sure to be true. For it is a business to which no one would be likely to aspire if it was not in his family and in his blood. And most of the people employed about the Vatican are apt to have a hereditary connection with it. But there are no San Pietrini living on the roof.

The roof of St. Peter’s makes quite a huge Piazza; and the views from it over Rome are very fine, especially that which carries the eye across the Piazza of St. Peter’s between Bernini’s superb colonnades to the Tiber and the Castle of Sant’ Angelo, and the crowded roofs of the great city, and the blue mountains behind. Yet how this view would be enhanced if, in place of the three mean streets which lead from the Tiber to the Cathedral, we still had the colonnade, many yards long, which led up to Old St. Peter’s. Perhaps some day the municipality of Rome will drive an avenue the whole width of the three streets from the river to the Piazza.

The plan of the Vatican itself is better seen from the gallery of the cupola. From it you realize the majestic size of the Pontifical Palace; the vastness of the original Cortile of the Belvedere; the magnificent proportions of the Cortile of San Damaso.

It is most eerie as you make the ascent to step into the gallery which runs all round the dome; unless you have a strong head you hardly dare to look over the railings into the abyss below, where Bernini’s swollen baldachin, which is nearly a hundred feet high, looks like a drawing-room clock. The mosaics of the dome look far better from the floor of the Cathedral, for which their effect was designed. Seen close to, they are coarse and flabby; but it is easier, of course, up here to study the way in which they fit in with the vast conception of St. Peter’s.

In one part of the ascent you climb straight up the inner dome—like a hill—up steps, of course. When you come out on the gallery from which you enter the staircase up to the cupola it is highly interesting to look out on the metalled surface of the dome, which has rows of knobs used in supporting scaffolding and illuminations. The great illuminations of the old days seem to have been erected by steeple-jacks without any thought of the risks arising from the immense height. There was, indeed, need of a hereditary caste of San Pietrini.

Only twenty people at a time are admitted into the cupola, which is a sort of hollow copper globe approached by a ladder-like staircase. When you are inside you feel as if you are in a great copper football with the seams showing, which sways about quite disagreeably. It requires strong nerves to stand on the floor of the cupola; you feel as if you were going to topple it over. Most people are quite glad when they get back to the little outside gallery from which they made the final ascent—seen from which the exterior of the Sistine Chapel looks as plain as a packing-case.

As is well known, Michel Angelo did not conceive the dome in quite its present form; he completed its drum and left the drawings and models for carrying it up to the lantern. The dome was actually finished thirty-six years later by Giacomo della Porta; he changed the design of Michel Angelo, which was much lower, flatter, and heavier, like the dome of the Pantheon, to something more after the style of Brunelleschi’s beautiful dome on the Cathedral of Florence. It is considered the finest of all domes; not only for its gigantic size, but for its perfect proportions. And it is hardly less remarkable for the feverish haste with which it was built to gratify the restless ambition of Sixtus V. “The actual dome,” says Murray, “was begun on July 15, 1588, and completed in twenty-two months. The Pope was so anxious to see it finished that he devoted a hundred thousand gold crowns annually to the work; and employed eight hundred workmen upon it night and day.”

In that same month of July 1588, while the Pope was inaugurating the apex of his mighty Cathedral, Philip II. of Spain was inaugurating the parallel mighty project to restore heretic England to the Catholic Church. The Spanish Armada left Ferrol for the conquest of England within a week of the commencement of the dome of St. Peter’s. Sixtus and Philip were working together.

It was in the workmen’s haste to complete the building that the tomb of Urban VI. was violated, as told in another chapter. They wanted a receptacle to hold water, and blandly emptied his sarcophagus.

The ascent of the dome of St. Peter’s is a thing which no visitor to Rome, whose health allows of it, should omit. It is so gradual that it is no great physical effort; and the experience it has to offer one is unique. Though the first part of the ascent is ordinary, the last part is as curious as going down a mine: the views are astonishing, and those who are insensible to vertigo could not want a finer opportunity of testing their nerves than by looking down on the floor of the Cathedral from the highest point at which they can get a peep of the inside. Before 1870 the illumination of St. Peter’s at the close of Lent used to be one of the most splendid and animated spectacles in Rome. Story has immortalized it in his Roba di Roma.⁠[22]⁠

There are, as I have said, few parts of the Vatican about which the information to be found in English books is so incomplete and incorrect as the Borgia Apartments; most of them describe this splendid suite, which is the official residence of the Cardinal Secretary of State, as the Mediæval Museum of the Papacy, or the Armoury, or the Guard-Room of the Swiss Guard. What is more curious, hardly any of them make any allusion to its having been a library, though, from the days of Gregory XVI. to well on into the reign of Leo XIII., it was the Vatican Library as far as the printed books were concerned. The whole two hundred and fifty thousand of them were crowded into its narrow limits, and were so inconveniently crowded that students could not work at them properly. The walls up to the ceilings were blocked with bookcases, and the books of the various Collections, from which the great library was formed, had got hopelessly mixed as far as their source of origin was concerned, though they were arranged according to their contents.

It is difficult for anyone who visits these apartments in their present stately condition to realize that, up to May 1891, the printed books of the Vatican were all here.

Leo XIII., the most brilliant writer in Latin of the two hundred and sixty-four Popes, was a great lover of books, and wished to vie with his predecessors’ achievements in adding to the artistic glories of his palace. He listened eagerly to the petitions which reached him from art lovers begging for a restoration of the Borgia Apartments. The paintings of Pinturicchio, which had made their ceilings a blaze of beauty, had, since the days of Gregory XVI., experienced a great revival in popularity; in the last years of the nineteenth century his fame had almost rivalled that of Perugino.

These glorious works of art were completed, though there is such an incredible amount, not only of painting, but of stucco and papier-mâché work in them (papier-mâché four hundred years ago was turned to more architectural account than it is now), in less than three years, 1492-1494. And this, though Pinturicchio was under a contract at the time to the Canons of Orvieto Cathedral.

Alexander VI. was most anxious to occupy the rooms which he had chosen for his apartments in the old Papal Palace on the north side of the quadrangle framed by the Sistine Chapel on the south, and to which he was building a most important addition, the Borgia Tower, where the Hall of the Credo and the Hall of the Sibyls are situated. This was, of course, to be his place of refuge in case of the wars into which his imperious and outrageous acts hurried him. It was Alexander VI. who put the passage between the Vatican and the Castle of Sant’ Angelo into its present fortified condition, and, indeed, who converted the Castle of Sant’ Angelo into a first-class mediæval fortress.

But at the same time, says Ricci, he wished everything to be of unparalleled grandeur and brilliance. In which he succeeded, for Charles VIII., King of France, a monarch of extravagant notions, who dined with the Pope in these rooms immediately after their opening, said he had never seen their equal in palace or castle.

Of course, Pinturicchio, accustomed as he was to working with feverish enthusiasm, could never have accomplished such a magnum opus with his own hands in two or three years. But he was assisted by a number of pupils, including the unidentified disciple of Perugino, who, after himself, did the best work. Also, he did nothing to the first and largest room, and is only partly responsible for the fifth and sixth, the two tower rooms. But the second, third, and fourth, which present some of the most glorious masses of colour in Italy, were entirely of his conception and design, from the cornice upwards, and the most beautiful of the great pictures, which fill the lunettes, were painted by his hand. The Dispute of St. Catherine with the Philosophers is declared to be Pinturicchio’s masterpiece.

The beauty and gorgeousness of these rooms completely satisfied the splendour-loving Pope, as he himself acknowledged in the grant of lands he made Pinturicchio in payment for them. He gave him to understand, says Ricci, that he was to consider the Apostolic Camera not a little in his debt for the paintings in the Palace and the Castle of Sant’ Angelo. “Industria et maximo sumptu factis.”

But they proved an ill-omened acquisition, for they were of the era when the French King, Charles VIII., who alone could have checkmated the ambitions of the vigorous Borgia, was invading Italy. And the crowning tragedies of the reign were interwoven with them, for it was here that the pleasure-loving Pontiff heard of the murder of his eldest son, Giovanni, by a younger son, the monster Cesare Borgia; and it was here that he heard of the savage attacks of Savonarola; and it was here, says Ricci, that they must have trembled at his death-rattle, when, poisoned, perhaps dying, he measured in his heart the abyss that was to swallow up his evil house. It was here certainly that the old legend of the devil coming for his soul was located.

In the centuries following the Middle Ages at Rome, people seemed to have had no reverence for monuments, however splendid, unless they had built them themselves. Everyone knows how Julius II. tore down Old St. Peter’s, and half a hundred Cardinals tore down old basilicas to replace them with baroque monstrosities. Considering all things, it was a mercy that Julius II. did not reduce the Borgia Rooms to a scrap-heap the moment he came to the throne, so bitter was his hatred of the Borgia Pontiff who meant to encompass his death and had driven him into exile.

Their neglect and abuse must have set in early, for Alexander VI. only died in 1503, and we find Pius IV., when he was elected in 1559, rescuing the Borgia Rooms, which had been terribly knocked about; the Popes were using Raffaelle’s Stanze on the floor above to get more light and air, and these rooms were given up to the Cardinal Nephews. After Sixtus V. had completed the suite of apartments at the eastern end of the Vatican, which are now occupied by the Pope, the Borgia Rooms were abandoned altogether except for emergencies. They suffered still more in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, when they were used for erecting the cells in which Cardinals were confined when they were in Conclave to elect a new Pope. And they were also used for the meals of the various officials assembled in the Vatican for the great ceremonies of Holy Week.

In 1816 they suffered fresh violence when Pius VII. drove nails into their walls to hang the pictures returned from Paris, which had no proper places of their own, because they did not belong to him, but to various Italian churches. He did not, of course, touch the great frescoes; since they were painted on vaults of the ceiling they were, fortunately, of no use for his purpose. The rooms were of little enough use as it was, they were so dark, although the marble Guelph crosses and bars were removed from the windows. After five years the pictures were removed and the apartments became a museum of statuary; the walls again suffered, for brackets were nailed up on them. But the most mischief was done when the apartments were turned into the Vatican Library, to receive all the printed books, by Gregory XVI.

Monsignor Ugolini, senior Scrittore of the Vatican Library, who wrote the excellent monograph on the transference of the books from the Borgia Apartments to the Leonine Library, to which the books have been taken, gives this date for the turning the Borgia Rooms into a library, and he must be better informed than Ricci on such a point. Ricci says that it was Pius IX. who turned the rooms into a library to receive the books of Cardinal Mai. When Leo XIII. had the rooms cleared of the books and their shelves, he found that the room was “greatly damaged by old scratches, by the fastening up of pictures in 1816, by the insertion of brackets supporting busts and statuettes in 1821, by the fastening up of the bookcases put up by Pius IX., by the opening up of new doors, and by the closing up of old ones” (Ricci).

The architect employed in the restoration was the Conte Francesco Vespignani. The painter was Commendatore Ludovico Seitz, the art director of the Vatican Galleries. Nothing was done that was not necessary; the repairs were chiefly confined to the injuries on the walls, the plaster, the frescoes, and the stucco. Former renovations were allowed to stand. In some parts of the roofs of Rooms V. and VI. the painting was detached, the wall and plaster restored, and the painting put on again with such accuracy as to leave no mark except a faint white line, “which at once disappeared at a light touch of the brush.” No other retouching was allowed, so as not to interfere with the authenticity of the work. Most of the earlier retouching, according to Ehrle and Stevenson, was done in the time of Pius VII., though some was done when the rooms were occupied by the Cardinal Nephews, especially in the time of Pius IV. and Gregory XIII. Ehrle and Stevenson claim that it is better to have such restoration, because it covers the worst damages in the original frescoes; for to take them away would damage the frescoes still further, and leave bare places; because, being so old, they have their place in the artistic records of the frescoes in the rooms, and because they are recognizable at a glance, and, therefore, do not interfere with the authenticity of the pictures. The only considerable alteration of the pictures in Seitz’s restoration was the painting over the scratch on the Pope’s chin in the magnificent portrait of Alexander VI., in the Sala dei Misteri, which changed the whole character and effect of the portrait.

Ricci strongly disagrees with most of their opinions, though he admits the skill with which Seitz executed his work.

In his superb book on Pinturicchio, published by Heinemann at five and a half guineas, he gives a most interesting account, translated from Ehrle and Stevenson, of the way in which the restorers got over the most difficult part of their work, in making the lower walls, which had sustained all the damage, decorative enough to allow the apartments to be used for State purposes. They are now occupied by the Cardinal Secretary of State, as they were occupied in the sixteenth century by the Cardinal Nephews who performed the duties of that high office. Their side walls had not only been knocked about, but had been covered with whitewash, which had to be removed throughout. When it was removed, it was discovered that, while in the first four rooms there were considerable remains of the old decorations, in the fifth and sixth there were no outlines of any kind except the slightest possible trace by the north window of the former. In the third room there were only slight traces of decorations, just enough to enable the main portions of the design and colouring to be distinguished. In the first room the remaining fragments were not in a condition to be completed, nor to be left in situ as they were found, without disturbing the whole effect. In the second and fourth rooms the ornaments of the walls were in moderately good condition and afforded sufficient scope for the completion of the missing portions.

In these two rooms, known as the Sala dei Misteri and the Sala delle Arti Liberali respectively, the bare walls have been restored with the original designs throughout. But in order to distinguish between the original and the restored parts, the latter have been sketched in much more brightly, or in neutral tints.

In the third room the remaining parts of the old decorations, say these authors, sufficed for the restoration of the principal parts of the design and colouring, while the secondary parts were left entirely to the restorer; the lower part was throughout covered with panels of intarsia work, almost contemporary with Pinturicchio, and made for the rooms immediately below the Borgia Rooms (said to have been used for the Vatican Library by Sixtus IV.); the upper part was covered with canvases, on which what was left of the original decorations was imitated and completed as well as could possibly have been done.

In the first room canvases were employed in the same way, and by a brilliant conception the huge expanses of its walls were relieved by hanging them with a superb series of large tapestries. The walls of the fifth and sixth rooms were also covered with canvases of the same description, but here the painters had a more formidable task before them, for all the original decorations had perished; they had to devise designs in harmony with the ceilings, with the few remnants of painting round the north window, and with the splendid old tiles left here and there on the floor, made in the Spanish style so common in Sicily, with the Borgia arms—the ox and raying crown, for the motives.

It is not my intention in describing the Palace rooms, which are among the most delightfully gay and gorgeous of the world’s monuments, to pause to inquire if Pinturicchio painted the whole of the Pope’s mantle in that wonderful kneeling figure of Alexander VI., or to discuss technicalities at all. That is for artists to propound to artists, a very small and depreciative audience. I am not capable of writing for them, and I do not wish to write for them; most of them go through galleries looking out for faults, not beauties, and though the chance of the humblest living depends on it, they nearly always fail to remember that art was made for mankind, not for rival artists. I have a melancholy example before me of the dangers of a little knowledge of art. Writing about the Borgia Rooms, which form admittedly one of the most beautiful ensembles in the whole of art, it is only occasionally that the author vouchsafes a saltspoonful of praise; he is afraid of devoting one word to enthusiasm.

That is not the way to write about the Borgia Rooms. The ordinary visitors who go there do not want to know if Pinturicchio and his school drew hands well; they want to rise on stepping-stones to higher things.

The first room, it must be admitted, leaves you a little cold: but then it is not by Pinturicchio; the designs on the roof are little mythological plaques by two pupils of Raffaelle—Pierino del Vaga and Giovanni da Udine, both good humanists, however, who in other places had delightful inspirations from the Classic world with which they created late-born and lovely visions of “Olympus’ faded hierarchy.”

The large noble tapestries round the walls, with trophies of shining armour hanging between, I take to be of the sixteenth century; they are very fine and delicate, both in design and colouring; they have just the faded reds and blues which you get in the wonderful fifteenth-century tapestries in the Musée Cluny, which have established them as the tints par excellence for tapestry. The faces are a little fuller than you get in pictures and tapestries of the true Gothic feeling. They have more of beauty and less of romance in them, and, of course, have no suggestion at all of the atmosphere of the story of Cephalus and Procris, which they represent. But they have the sumptuous beauty of their great century, and play their part well in making the first of the Borgia Rooms look essentially the antechamber of a palace.

Then you step through a door into a second room, the fine applicability of whose title you recognize before your foot is off the threshold: the Sala dei Misteri—the Hall of the Mysteries. You are in Aladdin’s cave. There is nothing like it in Rome outside of these precincts. The Garden of Paradise in the ancient basilica of S. Prassede is likewise all gold and colour, with its mosaics of a thousand years ago, but it is small, and its figures are cramped, almost grotesque; the roof of the Farnesina, with Raffaelle’s Cupid and Psyche spread over it, lacks the richness of setting which these great frescoes of Pinturicchio have in the moulding and gilding of the Gothic ribs of the Borgias’ pleasure-house. There may be this or the other fault to find with the work of Pinturicchio; the faults need little finding in the work of most of his pupils; but the fact remains that, if one suddenly became a fairy prince and had the choice of all the frescoes in the world for the decoration of one’s pleasure-house, these are the frescoes one would choose,—before the more serious frescoes of the Library of Siena; before the nobler frescoes of Raffaelle in the rooms exactly above (the Stanze), which contain the School of Athens, and the other tableaux of that glorious suite; before the frescoes of the Farnesina, more perfect, but with less to nourish the eyes.

The frescoes in the second, third, and fourth Borgia Rooms are not even rivalled by those which make gems of the Chapel of Nicholas V., painted by Fra Angelico for the Vatican, and the chapel painted for the Riccardi Palace at Florence, by Benozzo Gozzoli. These, perhaps, come nearest the Borgia Rooms among paintings, but they are small, and lack the splendour of the setting which the magnificent Borgia gave to the frescoes of Pinturicchio. Perhaps a better parallel could be found in the mosaics of St. Mark’s, Venice, or the Royal Chapel at Palermo.

For here in these Borgia Rooms I had, when I visited him there, an overpowering feeling of sensuous beauty curiously mingled with the atmosphere of awe which emanated from the residence of the highest personage but one in Roman Catholic Christendom. I used to wonder what the effect must be on his mind of constantly regarding such wonderful beauty. One day I met him and asked him. He parried the question with equal simplicity or skill: “I never have any time to look up.”

To imagine this second room, the Sala dei Misteri, you must picture to yourself a room of fair size, almost square, with a tiled floor and a rich cornice running round it at about half its height. Below the cornice the walls are decorated with skilfully restored arabesques, and their conventional patterns in fresco are broken by sculptured Renaissance ornaments. From the cornice springs an elaborate system of intersecting vaults whose lunettes are filled with glorious frescoes by Pinturicchio; the ribs are moulded in gilt, with wonderful richness, and the intervening spaces have little pictures, together forming a blaze of gold and colour. The large frescoes in this room are the Annunciation, the Nativity, the Adoration, the Resurrection, the Ascension, the Descent of the Holy Spirit, and the Assumption of the Virgin. The finest of them all is the Resurrection, in which there is a superb figure of Alexander VI., the wicked Borgia Pope, for whom these rooms were decorated, regarding the Resurrection, a topic upon which you would not have expected him, of all men, to dwell with much satisfaction.

The portrait is a marvellous one; the very hands speak. They are folded in the attitude of prayer, but not of meekness; the whole anatomy of the figure speaks, though it is swathed in a great cloak stiff with gold and gems; and though the head is bald and the face fat, with double chin, long upper lip, and parrot-like nose, the impression you get is of calm strength, of a man who saw his end clearly and grasped it without allowing his attention to be drawn off by any conventions or excuses. In his portrait the man who flung conventionalities to the winds, and brooked no obstacle to his projects for providing for his children, does not look bad or merciless; it is true that to represent him as such might not have been pleasant for Pinturicchio. Here he looks only a man not to be deterred. He was at all events a wise patron of the arts, and he steered his ship in the troubled sea of Italian civil wars and intrigues with a manfulness which any civil Prince of his time might have envied. After all, he was quite up to the moral standard of the gods of Greece—was very much the Jupiter of the Vatican.

Were it only for this portrait of Alexander VI., a visit to the Borgia Rooms would be worth making. But the three charming, youthful figures kneeling below the broken marble sarcophagus from which Our Lord rises, are of the highest interest, for they are believed to represent the three sons of Alexander VI., Jofre, born in 1481, being the exquisite sleeping figure in front. As Ricci points out, the halberd head with the broken point beside him, and the gash in the cuirass, broken across the chest, containing the figure of a youth with a cap on his head and his garments fastened with lacets, must typify one of the many mysteries of the Borgias. Pier Luigi, the eldest of the Pope’s sons, had been dead for some years, so Ricci suggests that it may signify that Jofre was broken-hearted for his loss, and that the Pope wished all four of his sons to come into the picture. The beautiful boy with long golden hair who kneels, holding a halberd, on the opposite side of the sarcophagus to balance the figure of the Pope, is the terrible Cesare Borgia, who had not yet begun his murderous career. The even more beautiful figure in ancient Roman dress turning round is Giovanni Borgia, whom Cesare murdered in 1497.

After the great portrait of Alexander VI., the most notable feature in the Sala dei Misteri is the Annunciation. Notice in it the exquisite peace and humility in which Pinturicchio excelled, and the wonderfully rich and elegant Renaissance archway which encloses the vista behind. The few technical faults the picture may have do not detract from the main fact that here you have a picture full and typical of the loveliness of fifteenth-century Italy.

The figures in the Nativity, which, with singular inappropriateness, is divided by the Borgia Bull from the Annunciation, are to me less beautiful. The Virgin has not to such a high degree the wonderful grace of anatomy which Pinturicchio contrives to suggest through the rich clothing of his figures. But it has one of his beautiful Umbrian landscapes behind the classic porch with a thatched roof, which is his conventional way of expressing the stable.

The Adoration of the Magi is not the work of Pinturicchio. In the lunette of the Coming of the Holy Ghost, though it is condemned by art critics, and though much of it is the work of another hand, is one of Pinturicchio’s purely lovely conceptions. I do not venture to criticize the art; I look for the beauty in these rooms. And in the group to the spectator’s left are two perfectly exquisite figures: the boy just appearing in the centre and the boy with the outstretched left hand; and what grace, what lovely repose there are in the background!

In the lunette of the Assumption, beside the empty sarcophagus full of flowers, which Pinturicchio, Perugino, and Raffaelle used almost identically, is a beautiful figure by the unidentified disciple of Perugino. The Madonna, seated in a mandorla, is surrounded by charming Pinturicchio angels.

This room, which is called the Sala delle Vite dei Santi, is even more glorious than the preceding, for it contains the Disputa of St. Catherine, which Ricci, with Italian cynicism, suggests may have been selected by the Pope because she was the protectress of illegitimate children, and, as such, of great importance to him. It is more certain that the subject was chosen because St. Catherine came from Alexandria, and his name was Alexander. The Pope had the ceiling of this very room decorated with the superbly painted story of Isis and Osiris, because it pleased him to identify the Bull Apis with the ox of the Borgias. This wonderful ceiling is so rich and beautiful that it is almost impossible to look into it properly. Your eyes lose themselves in the richness of the general effect, as they do when you are inspecting a rich Byzantine paliotto. But the details are exquisite; the child-figures especially are purely lovely. All sorts of scenes will be recognized, from the marriage of Isis and Osiris, in the orthodox Christian fashion, to David and Goliath, and Judith and Holofernes. Ricci draws attention to the beautiful figure of a putto riding a swan, and to the representation of little field industries, such as ploughing and the culture of apples, which Osiris taught, given at the sides of his temple. The most striking subject is the hewing of Osiris to pieces. The ox in a litter, shaped like a temple, and carried upon the shoulders of four men, is the triumph of Osiris changed into the God Apis. Very much of this glorification of the Borgia ox is from the hand of the great master himself, and its splendour is almost inconceivable; in fact, some of the little pictures contained in it are among the most beautiful creations of Pinturicchio, who was one of the most prodigal creators of beauty.

I will leave the St. Catherine to the end; it would be an anticlimax to talk of the other pictures after that.

I will commence with St. Sebastian, because it is to me the most unattractive picture in the room, with an interest chiefly antiquarian. It has a beautiful background, remarkable as giving a picture of the Colosseum, very much out of drawing, but in much more its present condition than one would have imagined. The oddest thing about it is that, to make it “group” better, Pinturicchio makes it appear to be standing upon the Palatine, which he has introduced so as to include the Church of St. Sebastian on the Palatine. The picture has a beautiful background, and artists point out that Pinturicchio was more careful than usual of the rules of composition.

The first picture you notice when you enter is the Susanna and the Elders. This is a most beautiful picture. The figure of Susanna is chaste, humble, graceful, shrinking; and behind the charming fifteenth-century Renaissance fountain by which she stands is an equally charming landscape. The monkey and the rabbit sitting up in front give a little cynical touch. The group in the background on one side represent Susanna pinioned, being led to execution; and, on the other side, the Elders bound back to back being stoned. The landscape is perfectly beautiful. The next picture to the Susanna is the famous Santa Barbara escaping from the tower in which she had been imprisoned by her father. Here again is one of Pinturicchio’s lovely backgrounds, with a river running through it like the Thames below Richmond Hill. The whole centre of the picture is occupied by a tower in the style of the Venetian Renaissance. The treatment of the picture is allegorical. There is a split in the tower to show how Barbara escaped; and though she and her father are apparently only a yard or two apart, their attitudes tell us that she has already escaped, and that he is going, sword in hand, on the wrong track. The delightful young soldier in front of the tower is likewise symbolic. The ordinary visitor does not trouble about the symbolism: he is content that the fleeing figure of Santa Barbara is one of exquisite beauty and grace, and full of motion; and that the landscape behind, in which she appears again at a distance, is so beautiful. The Visitation, in this room, is another delightful fresco; the Virgin is one of his most beautiful figures, and the background is incomparably lovely; for in it we have an ancient Roman house, made up of loggias, and from the little terrace on the top of one of them an old woman and a fair-haired girl are looking down upon the scene. In the distance, throwing up the extraordinary richness of the architecture, is one of those fair Umbrian backgrounds; but after taking in all these distant beauties one harks back to the grace and exquisite humility of the Virgin. There are few more gracious pictures in existence. The child, in the corner behind Elisabeth and the maidens, gives fresh proofs, which were not needed, of the absolute lovableness of Pinturicchio at his best. This picture is considered to be wholly his own work. The Temptation of St. Anthony, which comes between this and the great picture, cannot be compared with this as a whole; though the figures of the two hermits and the three beautiful she-devils are all considered to be by Pinturicchio. Of these last Ricci says: “But we believe that Pinturicchio is responsible for these three—at all events for the design, if not for the execution—so clearly are they creations of the master, alike in attitude, costume, and arrangement of the hair. It is true that the technical details, from the hook-like curves in the folds to the tone of the colours, differ from his, and are more in the manner of Perugino. The three demon-women have gentle and beautiful faces, with lips tight shut and pouting as if to dart out kisses, dresses varied and vivid of colour and rich in ornament, the delicate hands of fine ladies, stretched out with grace, one holding a little box; but instead of feet they have the talons of birds of prey; from their heads spring twisted horns; from their shoulders green bats’ wings (the emblem of vice ever since the time of Giotto). They come, fawning and alluring, taking counsel together as to their mode of attack, while St. Anthony, turning his back upon them, calmly talks of divine things with his companion.”

We now come to the great Disputa of St. Catherine, which is considered Pinturicchio’s masterpiece. I do not propose to enter into the controversy as to which figure is supposed to represent Prince Djem, the brother of the Sultan Bajazet II., whom the Pope obligingly, and in consideration of a large annual subscription, kept a sort of prisoner in the Vatican, though I should like to believe that he is the superb figure on the white horse, as striking as the figure of Aeneas Sylvius on the white horse in the first of Pinturicchio’s frescoes in the Library of Siena, and Benozzo Gozzoli’s figure of Lorenzo de’ Medici in the Riccardi Chapel. Few ordinary visitors will be interested in the argument whether the other Greeks and Turks are or are not derived from Gentile Bellini’s studies: they will be satisfied with the magnificent grouping of the picture; the gorgeous Renaissance arch, adapted from the Arch of Constantine, which fills the centre, and the very peaceful and soft outlines of the landscape. The colouring of the picture is immeasurably rich; it is a regular feast of beauty. In front of the Royal figure of the Emperor Maximian is the youthful figure of Catherine, modest, but fortified with innocence, making the points against the fifty philosophers on the fingers of her hands, which have much-faded golden fetters linking them together. She is said to represent the Pope’s daughter, the lovely Lucrezia Borgia, though Lucrezia was very young at the time for a figure on the borderland of girlhood and womanhood, which has hardly any superior in the whole of Italian painting.

Over the door by which you enter this room from the third room, is the Madonna with the Child, which is supposed to represent Giulia Farnese, the mother of Alexander VI.’s youngest son. The attitudes of mother and child have rather a Byzantine stiffness, but their faces, like those of the cherubs round them, are sweet and gracious. The frame is of the gilded papier-mâché, which so offended Vasari’s sense of fitness. Ricci calls it one of the most lovely Madonnas which Pinturicchio ever painted. With regard to the question of the identity, Ricci says: “Was Vasari alluding to this Virgin when he said that Pinturicchio painted Giulia Farnese over the door of a room, in the form of Our Lady? Some are of that opinion. But in this case, where is ‘the head of Alexander adoring her’? And if the Madonna really represents the fair friend of the Pope, how easy it must have been for the painter to portray a face which is one of the most usual types of Umbrian beauty, and particularly characteristic of his own art.”

The Sala dei Santi is a noble room: the designs of the canvas screens, painted to cover its perished walls, and the fifteenth-century intarsia work brought up from Sixtus IV.’s Library, harmonize well with the superb frescoes and the gorgeous ceiling, from which they are divided by a cornice of white marble, conventionalizing the Borgia ox; which is supposed, like the other white marble work of these apartments, to have come from the atelier of Andrea Bregno.

No reproduction of the pictures in these apartments, unless they are coloured like Ricci’s great work, can do them justice; for it is the glow of the gold, and the rich red raiment, and the flowers on the sward, and the sky, which constitute their chief marvel.

This room is known as the Sala delle Arti Liberali, or the Sala delle Arti e Scienze, and I cannot say that it is as attractive to me as the second and third rooms for its frescoes; though its wall-decorations are remarkable, alike for their intrinsic beauty and the large amount of the original decorations which are retained. But the great old fifteenth-century mantelpiece which decorates them did not originally belong to this room; it came from the Castle of Sant’ Angelo, and was executed by Simon Mosca, although it was designed by the great Sansovino. This handsome room has rightly a palatial effect, for it is here that the Cardinal Secretary of State used to receive the ambassadors of the Princes twice a week. The left-hand corner of the room farthest from the window is where the Cardinal sat, with his visitors seated along the two walls of the angle.

Some of the old tiles of the floor are exhibited in the cabinet of choice pottery in the right-hand corner; the blocked-up door in the corner beside it is said to lead to the room in which Alexander VI. died, and which is now occupied by the Noble Guard. The ceiling of this room is not to be compared with that of the last in richness: its decorations are conventional, but the frescoes contain some lovely figures. Cut on the walls by some servant is “W. Paulus III. Pont. Max. e W. Farnesia Proles.” V V is the Italian way of writing Viva (Long life); and Ricci points out that the inscription must have been cut by some member of the Conclave of October 1534, which elected Paul III., the Farnese Pope. There is a rich stucco cornice. In this room, more than any other, the critics engage in a battle royal as to the authorship of the various frescoes. The reader will not thank me for attempting to judge between them, nor have I the audacity to attempt it. I shall only point out some of the features which I have enjoyed in the various lunettes which derive their subjects from the Trivium, i.e. Grammar, Rhetoric, and Dialectics; and the Quadrivium—Astronomy, Arithmetic, Geometry, and Music, which were the foundations of learning in the Middle Ages. The Dialectics have a very rich architectural background; notice the lovely figures, especially on the left-hand side. Geometry has exquisite figures on her right hand of the kind which give Pinturicchio such a place in our affections. And Rhetoric, which holds a sword in the right hand and a glove in the left, has, as Ricci points out, the best and the most delicate figure, by virtue both of the beauty of her face with its opaline and roseate colours and the grandiose simplicity of her pose. One can see Pinturicchio’s hand here. Arithmetic is very youthful and lovable; she has such a pathetic droop of the mouth that she looks like a sorrowful child. Is this to typify that arithmetic is the science which we take at the earliest age? She holds in her hand an elegant Renaissance slate with figures, which is well worthy of imitation for our own writing-tablets. She is surrounded by fine groups of figures, though not so fine as Ghirlandajo would have made them; and is seated on a remarkable throne with a sounding-board above it and a landscape behind. The Grammar is not so good as the others; it is supposed to be by the same hand as the lunettes in the Hall of the Sibyls, the sixth apartment. To me the other three lunettes are still more striking. Astronomy, much attacked by the critics, will appear to the ordinary visitor a very noble conception. She is enthroned on a little hill, which might well be the outside of our globe; on either side of which, situated against a bright landscape and sky, are tall pines and cypresses. The youthful figures on each side are of remarkable beauty, and like the figures of Raffaelle in the School of Athens. The Music is another delightful fresco. The figure of the harper on her right must linger in the memory; it is so graceful and romantic. But the background is not good. Astrology, the remaining lunette, has charming and sumptuous figures.

The fifth and sixth rooms are in the Torre Borgia, the tower built by Alexander VI., doubtless as a refuge. Number V., which is approached from Number IV. by a flight of about a dozen steps, was used by Cardinal Merry del Val as his study, and, as I have said above, is entirely redecorated with skilfully made canvas screens, so that the original walls have not been interfered with in case a fresh examination of their perished decorations should appear to be desirable. These two rooms were not shown except by the Cardinal himself to an occasional privileged visitor. On the floor are some well-preserved specimens of the old Borgia tiles with the ox and the raying crown. Here, too, the ceiling has conventional decorations as in the second room. “In the tower room,” says Ricci, “Bernardino (i.e. Pinturicchio) is only seen as a directing influence.” In each lunette, with its yellow border and many-coloured ornaments, is the half-length figure of a Prophet or an Apostle.

According to a mediæval legend, the Creed was composed by the Apostles before they separated to preach the Gospel throughout all the world, each writing an article. So to each is attributed his own verse, which is inscribed on broad, fluttering streamers. Ricci says that they were painted by the same hand as the Grammar and the Sibyls.

Sala VI. has a richer ceiling. Two of the Sibyls have considerable charm, but they are obviously not the work of Pinturicchio, and the visitors are not likely to care for them.

In the story of the Torre Borgia above them is the famous bathroom of Cardinal Bibiena, wrongly called, says Layard, “Il Retiro del Giulio II.” A former Pope is understood to have had it bricked up on account of the amatory nature of its charming mythological compositions; and though they are said to have been opened again under the more liberal régime of the present Pontiff, certainly no visitor has been permitted to see them; and it is said that not even have any of the Cardinals seen them. But Kugler had evidently seen it, for he gives this description of it: “This room was decorated in the antique taste—the walls of a dark red ground, and with seven gracefully designed compartments, each containing subjects alluding to the power of Love. These were designed by Raffaelle and executed by his scholars. The birth of Venus, Venus and Cupid on dolphins, and Cupid complaining to Venus of his wound, are the most graceful. Beneath them, on a black ground, are figures of Amorini, exemplifying the various devices and varying progress of Love—one, in a shell, drawn by butterflies; another in a shell drawn by tortoises; a third harnessing a pair of snakes; a fourth drawn by snails, etc. On the ceiling are numerous designs, most of them so injured as to be hardly visible. Cupid wrestling with Pan, a charming conceit, is still seen. Repetitions of these designs are found in a villa erected on the ruins of the Palace of the Cæsars, known as the Villa Spada (also as the Villa called Santini, Magnani, Mills, etc., according to its successive owners).” There are paintings by Raffaelle in the Vatican yet more invisible, for all trace of them has been lost. I refer to the famous Hours of Raffaelle, of which garbled copies are sold on postcards. No tenable theory has been advanced as to where they may be.

The Borgia Apartments of the Vatican, for so many years the library of the Vatican printed books, are the chief rival of that other library frescoed by Pinturicchio, the immortal Library of Siena.

The Borgia Rooms are among the brightest gems in the tiara of art which encircles the Vatican, of which the Sculpture Gallery, with its masterpieces of antiquity, the Sistine Chapel, with its frescoes by Michel Angelo, and the rooms which contain the frescoes of Raffaelle may claim to be the three crowns.

Certainly none of these latter made such a royal impression on my senses, as I entered them, as the late official residence of the Cardinal Secretary of State. It breathed the air of a presence. Only five of us were admitted at a time, and we were frozen into court manners by chilling servants, who did not take our wraps, but motioned us to deposit them in a corner. Then we moved gently round, drinking in the superb proportions of the room, examining its noble tapestries, the elegant scholarship and manipulation of its ceiling; this was the Sala dei Pontefici—the Hall of the Popes.

Amazing as was the coup d’œil when I entered the second room with its superb ceiling and frescoes, I still had only an adequate conception of the full effect of the ceiling when I had been at one of the Cardinal’s receptions, where the curtains are drawn and the whole blaze of electric light is thrown upon the ceiling, bringing out every facet of that jewel-like decoration.

Certainly the Borgia Rooms are the most Royal in the Vatican; they were the fine flower of the Pagan Renaissance in Rome.

Note by Professor Tani, the Principal Italian Authority on the Antiquities of Rome.

22nd November 1913.

Corrado Ricci, in the Italian edition of his Pinturicchio, demonstrates that Antonio del Massaro da Viterbo, better known by the name of Il Pastura, was the principal collaborateur of Pinturicchio in the frescoes of the Borgia Apartments, and the following are the noteworthy parts of the frescoes due to Il Pastura (Il Pattura): “The Descent of the Holy Ghost,” in the Hall of Mysteries; “The Assumption of the Virgin” and the allegorical figures of Music and Rhetoric, in the Hall of the Liberal Arts.

The armour of Julius II. and of the Bourbon have been removed to other places in the Vatican, and neither is on view. No furniture is left in the Borgia Apartments, but in the first room there is a marble bust of Leo XIII., and in the second, a bronze gilt bust of Pinturicchio.

The Etruscan Museum of the Vatican is not a forbidden land to which access can only be had by influence; but as it is only open once or twice a week, and is entered by an inconspicuous side-door at the top of the stairs near the Sala della Biga, it is to most people a terra incognita.

A vast pity this, for the Etruscan cities are to Rome what Pompeii is to Naples. The Etruscans themselves lost their separate existence in some unmarked century between the reigns of Romulus and Augustus; as the Celts lost their separate existence in England at some unknown period since the Norman Conquest: they melted into Latins, and the Latins melted into Italians. But in the hills, where nothing quite dies, the genius of the race lived long and flowered in the artists of Umbria and Tuscany; not only must those who were born in Fiesole, like Fra Angelico and the sculptor Mino, be accredited to Etruscan Fæsulæ, but those who were born on the hills around, or in the City of the Lilies in the Arno Valley below—immortal Florence. Michel Angelo was an Etruscan, if ever there was one; his gloomy imagination, his love of the immense, were essentially Etruscan. Etruscans would have revelled in the Last Judgment. He was almost as fond of Sibyls and Prophets as they were of genii and augurs. Long after Etruscan nationality was dead we find the augur who bade Cæsar beware of the Ides of March bearing the pure Etruscan name of Spurina; Perusia (Perugia), Arretium (Arezzo), Cortona (always Cortona), and Volaterræ (Volterra), all reflowered in art, especially the first; illuminated by the great names of Perugino and his pupil Raffaelle, and Pinturicchio.

And if the Etruscan genius failed to reflower at places like Tarquinii (Corneto), Caere (Cerveteri), and other cities in the Roman Maremma, and the cities of Etruscan birth round Viterbo, it is because they were cities of the plain exposed to the invasions of change.

It is the Etruscan Museum of the Vatican which corresponds more than anything in Rome to the Pompeian Museum at Naples. And the numerous Etruscan cities round Rome can be visited with very little more effort than Pompeii.

There are few cities in southern Etruria which the railway service does not permit you to visit in the day from Rome, and most of them make delightful picnics. Veii is only a walk from La Storta Fornella Station, twelve miles from Rome. Caere, which gives us our word ceremonies, is about an hour’s drive from the Palo Station, between Rome and Civita Vecchia. Tarquinii is less than an hour’s drive from the Corneto Station, just beyond Civita Vecchia. Vulci is near the next station, Montalto di Castro. Norchia and Bieda, though nearer Vetralla, must, like Castel d’Asso, be visited from Viterbo; each is within a drive. There are three Etruscan cemeteries within a walk of Orvieto, but it is unnecessary to multiply examples. Norchia, Bieda, and Castel d’Asso have their cliffs cut into temple-like tombs; and Norchia has, unlike most of the cities, considerable Etruscan remains other than tombs and city walls. Many of the cities in the Maremma have fine Etruscan walls, some with gates; but the best Etruscan tombs are at Tarquinii and Cerveteri, and it is to their subterranean tombs that we have to go for an intimate acquaintance with the Etruscans. In Rome there are other Etruscan Museums besides the Museo Gregoriano at the Vatican—the Museo Kircheriano and the Museum of the Capitol both have fine Etruscan pieces; and the Villa Papa Giulio is entirely devoted to an Etruscan Museum. But the Museo Gregoriano is the best and the most complete in Rome. And outside Rome there are splendid Etruscan Museums at Florence, Corneto, Volterra, and Chiusi, the Volterra Museum being an especially interesting one, for the light that its alabaster sarcophagi throw upon the religion of the Etruscans. The Etruscans seem to have been a far more serious people than the Romans and the Greeks; their minds ran much on the lot that awaited the dead. Devils and angels seem to have received from them the forms they have retained through the subsequent stages of art. Death, with his hammer, is frequently portrayed on the tombs of Volterra: the dead are often being conducted by a black or red genius with wings and human limbs ending in claws: sometimes he has an eagle beak. There are also good genii, with wings; doubtless the originals of our angels, though the supreme beauty of the Winged Victory of the Greeks eventually made it the standard type of angel. The Etruscans had their Charon ferrying souls across the river of death. One very curious feature of their sarcophagi is that the presence of a horse or a cart shows the passage of a soul. Hooded carts, almost exactly like the carriers’ carts that ply in out-of-the-way parts of England, still appear in the funeral scenes.

The Roman Museums are not so rich in Etruscan sarcophagi as those, for example, of Corneto and Volterra; but they have sufficient to show the essential peculiarity, that the tombs were bought ready-made except their lids. The ready-made part seems to have been imported from Greece, as London imports ready-made tombstones from Tuscany nowadays. These are frequently of beautiful execution, and more often than not represent scenes from Greek mythology or history. They are not, of course, so interesting as the sarcophagi carved by native workmen from the native designs, which deal mostly with Etruscan religious subjects, such as the after life, or funeral ceremonies, and tell us much about the customs of that dead mysterious race. The lids are, as a rule, of very inferior workmanship: the head is sometimes almost as big as the body; and they seldom have any sort of elegance. Nor do they look like portraits, though they were executed as such; so many of them have the same round, expressionless face and goggle eyes. There are, of course, some splendid portrait effigies on Etruscan tombs, of life size, as suggestive of portraiture as a photograph, minute in details of costume; but they are rare. Nearly all are suggestive to us of levity, for the dead Lucumo will either be petting his wife, or holding out a wine-bowl, or sleeping off the drowsiness of a feast, with an air of gorged content. The figures are nearly always reclining on their elbows in the attitude in which the ancients reclined at their feasts; they used couches, not chairs.

Etruscan sarcophagi are generally made of the brown volcanic stone called Nenfro, or of alabaster, or of terra-cotta, the last two being most frequent at Volterra and Toscanella respectively. There is a laundry at Toscanella which has about twenty splendid terra-cotta sarcophagi, with life-size figures, lying about its yard. This was the famous garden of the Campanari, the excavators and dealers who supplied most of the objects which are in the Etruscan Museum in the Vatican. The Campanari are dead, and their heir did not take the trouble to remove the sarcophagi before he let the property for its present homely use. The gardens of Toscanella are full of Etruscan tombs, brought to them as ornaments from the cemeteries outside.

But to return to the Gregorian Museum. One of its most interesting exhibits is the model of an Etruscan tomb which contains three of the stone couches characteristic of them; generally about eighteen inches high, two or three feet wide, and six or seven feet long. Where a tomb has not been disturbed, armour, jewels, even the soles of shoes, which are made of wood with bronze casings, are found, lying just as they have sunk when the body they contained mouldered away. Sometimes the bones are left. All sorts of articles of domestic use are found either on the couch or on the ground within reach of it, or suspended by nails from the walls and roof, as we hang articles from a kitchen dresser. There was a tomb belonging to Signor Mancini at Orvieto, which has been left with everything lying and hanging just as it was found, as an exhibit to make money out of tourists. Signor Mancini owned an Etruscan cemetery, and whenever he made five hundred francs out of admissions, or selling Etruscan curios, he excavated another tomb. He had turned his curious little palace into a curio shop, though, like the best ladies’ hat shops, there was nothing to reveal its business outside.

The Etruscans might have given the Early Victorian builder his idea for pretentious imitations in stucco. One of the finest tombs at Cerveteri has imitations of shields, and caps, and various utensils, on its walls, which on examination proved to be stucco. This was, perhaps, the dernier cri at Cerveteri before the Etruscans left off being a nation.

The tombs of Norchia and Castel d’Asso have noble exteriors; their façades are like Egyptian temples cut out of the cliff, but their interiors are of minor interest and importance compared to those of Cerveteri and Corneto, the former relying chiefly upon sculpture and architectural ornaments, the latter upon painting. It is computed that there yet remain more than a hundred thousand tombs of the city of the Tarquins, the noble Etruscan family which gave kings to Rome. A vast number of them remain undisturbed and unexplored. The tombs of Caere and Tarquinii (Cerveteri and Corneto) are not easy to find unless they have tumuli over them, for they are deep down in the earth, and the stairways cut in the rock which lead down to them have long since been filled with earth by the elements, if, indeed, they were not filled in by their owners, like the tombs of Carthage. The Etruscans, like the Romans, seem to have buried their dead outside their cities.

The tombs of Cerveteri concern us here, because one of them, the famous Regulini-Galassi tomb, yielded the golden treasures which are the glory of the Gregorian Museum; they are, some of them, extremely fine and among the most striking monuments of prehistoric Italy. When I say prehistoric I do not mean that they antedate the history of Rome, but that no history has survived about them. Except for the absence of paintings, they are far more imposing than the tombs of Corneto, both within and without. Above the soil many of them have well-marked tumuli, here and there with their bases encased in low walls. Underground they frequently have more than one chamber. Some have columns and arches cut in the rock like the wonderful gallery of tombs at Palazzolo Acreide in Sicily. Others have regular houses in them, with rooms and door-holes, and window-holes cut in the rock. Some have more than one story; some are surrounded by tiers or niches like a theatre, on which fine sarcophagi are still standing to show the uses to which they were put. One tomb contains beautiful sarcophagi; one described above has its walls covered with stucco reliefs of the bronze articles used to furnish earlier tombs. Some are like chapels in the Catacombs. There is a marked likeness between the pagan rock tombs of Sicily and the rock tombs of Etruria.

The painted tombs of Corneto give us the most interesting pictures which have come down to us in Italy or Greece, for they are not only mythological, but the best of them are taken up with the life of the Etruscans. It is conjectured that the banqueting and dancing, and horse races and athletic sports, all of them, formed part of funeral ceremonies. If this is so, it increases the impression of the Etruscan levity about death to which I alluded above. But there are also fishing and hunting scenes, from one of which we know that the Etruscans used birds in fishing as the Chinese use cormorants to-day.

Some of the most famous paintings in the Corneto tombs have fortunately been reproduced on the walls of the Gregorian Museum; I say fortunately, because they have begun to fade since they have been freed from the soil.

At least twenty of the painted tombs of Corneto (Tarquinii) have been cleared out; they have the stones which used to close them in Biblical fashion replaced by a locked iron door, whose key is kept by a Government custode: there are innumerable others which have not been cleared out. It is only the earth which has been cleared out; the scorpions and serpents remain. I counted thirty scorpions, looking like black, baby land-lobsters, in one tomb; they were hibernating in sight—serpents hibernate out of sight. But the custode told us that they always take refuge in the tombs from the heat of the summer days. He described the tombs as being alive with them. Timid people can avoid this by visiting the tombs in winter, which is really the best time, as the grass is short; in the early summer it comes up past your knees, thickly spangled with the most glorious wild flowers; and then, if it rains, nothing can keep you dry.

When you go down into a Corneto tomb there are steps which lead you twenty or thirty feet underground. The custode unlocks the door and lights an acetylene flare: it does not look so well in keeping with the tombs as the torches or tapers, or Pompeian lamps, employed in other tombs, but it is much more effective, for by its glare you can see every inch of these long, low, oblong chambers in which you can barely stand upright.

They are cut out of the rock with slightly concave ceilings, down the centre of which a ridge in the shape of a beam is left. Only a few of the Corneto tombs have any other attempt at architectural ornaments, such as piers or arches. For the most part the walls are left perfectly flat and covered with frescoes like Giotto’s chapels. The banqueting scenes are the most interesting, for they have more of a concerted picture about them; besides the warrior who reclines on a couch caressing a beautiful woman, there may be various attendants, and all the paraphernalia of a feast. The women have white flesh, the men red. You are left in no doubt that women entered much more publicly into the lives of the Etruscans than into the lives of the Greeks.

Here in the museum you see a sick man being waited upon, and the ceremonies being paid to a corpse, with boxers, wrestlers, horse-racers, and many men and women. But the splendid figures of gods in the Grotto del Orco, the finest of all Etruscan frescoes, are not reproduced. The best of these Etruscan pictures show the beauty of the women as the Pompeian frescoes never succeed in doing.

There is one point at which the Etruscans fire the most commonplace imagination—their working in gold: there is no jewellery so beautiful, apart from the effects produced by costly gems, like diamonds, emeralds, rubies, and pearls, as the typical Roman jewellery, which is a direct imitation of the Etruscan. The stones it employs are usually opaque stones of moderate value, like lapis-lazuli, malachite, and coral; it relies for its effects on fine, bright gold with Etruscan chasing, and encrusted ornamentation of roses, and so on, each made separately, and delicately soldered on. Or it sometimes abandons stones altogether, and reproduces, with exquisite art, natural objects like rams’ heads, crawling snails, or oak leaves and acorns.

The golden objects in the centre case of the Gregorian Museum, like many of the finest bronzes in the room, came from the Regulini-Galassi tomb at Cerveteri, which Dennis, in his Cities and Cemeteries of Etruria,⁠[23] calls the remarkable Pelasgic tomb at Cerveteri. The most striking object in the case is a large gold breastplate embossed with twelve bands of figures—sphinxes, goats, flying horses, panthers, deer, and winged demons; it suggests the sacred breastplate of Aaron, the High Priest, described in the Bible, which was to be “four square, measuring a span each way.” It is an exquisite piece of antique work in beaten gold. Its low reliefs belong to the earlier Pelasgic, or Tyrrhene style of Etruscan jewellery, which Signor Castellani would not allow to be Etruscan, because it was also found at Palestrina, Cumae, and elsewhere in Italy, and in Egypt, Assyria, Phœnicia, and the Crimea. Dennis, in his immortal book on Etruria, says: “The materials employed in this ‘Tyrrhene’ style are gold, silver, bronze, amber, ivory, and variegated glass. The style is easily recognized by its elegant form, the harmony of its parts, and the purity of its design, but chiefly by the marvellous fineness and elaboration of its workmanship. The patterns, which are always simple yet most elegant, and admirably harmonious, are wrought by soldering together globules or particles of gold, so minute as hardly to be perceptible to the naked eye, and by the interweaving of extremely delicate threads of gold; and are sometimes, but sparingly, interspersed with enamels. Tiny figures of men, animals, or chimeras, exquisitely chased in relief or in the round, form another and favourite feature in the ornamentation. On a close inspection, this jewellery astonishes and confounds by its wonderful elaboration; at a little distance it charms the eye by its exquisite taste and the graceful character and harmony of its outlines. In fact, it is the perfection of jewellery, far transcending all that the most expert artists of subsequent ages have been able to produce.

“To this style belongs the most beautiful jewellery discovered in Etruria, and elsewhere in Italy, such as the gold ornaments from the Regulini-Galassi tomb, now in the Museo Gregoriano, and those, still more beautiful, recently found at Palestrina, and now exhibited at the Kircherian Museum at Rome.

“Signor Castellani points out that the Hindoo jewellery, even of the present day, bears no slight resemblance to this ancient style. Though inferior in execution, and betraying a decline of taste, the method of soldering minute grains or fine threads of gold, mixed with enamels, to the object, is precisely that employed by the Tyrrhenes of old.

“The genuine Etruscan jewellery, says Signor Castellani, is very inferior both in taste and execution to that of the Tyrrhene style, of which it is a corruption. There is the same sort of relation between these styles that the works of the great painters of the cinquecento bear to those of the following centuries. The mode of workmanship is the same, yet the style is so degenerated that it may be pronounced barocco. No longer are there the minute granulations, the delicate thread work, the charming simplicity in form and design which mark the earlier style. These are exchanged for forms of greater breadth and fulness; the purity of the lines gives place to the artificial and turgid, and the whole, though it makes a more striking appearance, has far less elegance, harmony, and elaboration.

“Etruscan jewellery is of two descriptions, domestic and sepulchral: the former most substantial and durable, the latter very light and flimsy—witness the wreaths of gold leaves found encircling the helmets of illustrious warriors. The amber, coloured glass, enamel, and ivory used in the preceding style are rare in this, and give place to gems—chiefly garnet, onyx, and cornelian. Among the ornaments for personal use are ear-rings of various forms and dimensions, large fibulae and brooches, massive gold rings, lentoid or vase-shaped bullae, agate scarabæi; but in all these productions an inflated and artificial style, marking the decline of the art, is conspicuous.”

He mentions a curious fact, that the manufacture of this jewellery has never ceased to go on in a little town of the Umbrian Marshes, called S. Angelo in Vado. Its manufacture in Rome probably had not begun in Dennis’s day; but now it is one of the chief minor industries of Rome, and in the last year or two the manufacture of Etruscan tiaras of golden oak leaves, or rose leaves, has, at any rate, spread to England and America, and become quite a feature of the season’s fashions. In this very treasure there is a remarkable head-dress composed of two oval plates united by broad bands, richly embossed, and decorated with minute appliqué figures of birds and lions. There are also massive gold chains, necklaces, bracelets, ear-rings, and fibulae, decorated with extraordinarily delicate Tyrrhenian work; many rings, and a portion of a gold veil or dress. Most of the fibulae on brooches are in the form of gliding snails. Rings with revolving scarabæi of engraved cornelian were popular among the Etruscans. Marvellous is the glitter of this treasure buried for two or three thousand years. Here, too, are many silver cups, saucers, and bowls from the same tomb; some of them are gilt inside, some are quite plain; others have relief in repoussé work of processions and hunting, pronounced to be a Phœnician imitation of Egyptian work, but bearing Etruscan inscriptions. From the same tomb came the bronze couch near the door, doubtless used for a corpse; four tripods, each supporting a huge caldron of bronze with dragon’s head handles; six large and four smaller shields, embossed with reliefs; a huge incense burner, and other objects.

I do not remember if any of the splendid mirrors preserved in the museum were found in this tomb. Roughly speaking, they are almost identical with the mirrors of silvered bronze used by the ancient Greeks, Romans, and Carthaginians, and the modern Japanese. In other words, they are like circular hand-glasses with a long handle at the bottom. Some of them still retain traces of their silvering, but in most cases the bronze is too much eaten away to show it. The backs and edges are more important than the fronts. The edges are generally embossed in some way, or surrounded with reliefs; the backs have either an incised decoration of pictures cut in outline, like those of the famous Præneste casket in the Kircherian Museum at Rome, or reliefs; some, of course, are plain. In one instance in this museum the handle consists of a nymph who is holding a smaller glass in her hand.

The mirror ornamented with a relief of Aurora carrying the body of her son Memnon is interesting, because some take it to be the original of the Pietà of the Virgin holding the Body of Our Lord.

But the crowning glory of Gregory XVI.’s museum for the real antiquary lies in its matchless collection of Greek vases and bowls. The wealthy Etruscans, especially those of Vulci, seem to have spent immense sums on importing the finest products of the potteries of Athens and Corinth. There are unique Corinthian pieces here, and many gems from the potteries of the Ceramicus. I shall not attempt to catalogue even the most famous of them: I will only say that for the study of Greek painting one can find no more wonderful treasure-trove than the vessels for water and wine of the Museo Gregoriano; while for the study of forms of perfect grace created by the potter, the Cylices, or drinking-cups, in this collection are absolutely matchless.

There are, of course, many vases of Etruscan manufacture, imitating the Greek both in form and decoration, but singularly inferior in grace.

I must confess that I have never been able to properly appreciate Greek vase-paintings. But of their importance what student could be insensible? For, until the discovery of the hoards of terra-cotta statuary at Tanagra and Myrina, vase-paintings and a few reliefs in marble were all we had to go upon for our knowledge of Greek domestic life. Painting is not like literature: in books the good writer omits the obvious; in painting the good artist must introduce the obvious or his picture is untrue. The artist has to present the whole picture: the author often only mentions exceptions. The Greeks were especially liable to ignore domestic details, because the men were so undomesticated; they spent their entire day in public. They lived at their gymnasium and dined at their club; they were almost as averse as Arabs to talking about the women of their family. Except those of the Homeric age, you might study all the Greek authors necessary for public school and Oxford examinations without coming across a single description of the plan or etiquette of a Greek home. Nor did the vase-painters consciously portray the domestic life around them; but they constantly represented the domestic life of their gods, and they drew it from their own. I should have mentioned the cinerary urns, some of which in bronze, a foot or two long and high, give faithful representations of Etruscan temples and houses, especially interesting because those who are familiar with Japan cannot fail to be struck with the resemblance of the Etruscan temples to those Shinto temples, which preserve the primitive type, while one urn in the form of an Etruscan house found at Chiusi might stand for the representation of a Japanese residence of to-day.

* indicates Martyr

NOTES TO LIST OF POPES:

FOOTNOTES TO MAIN TEXT:

• Ablutions, 107.
• Abraham, sacrifice of, 150.
• “Acqua alle Funi!”, 74.
• Acqua Paola Fountain, 287.
• Acts of the Apostles, 229.
• Acts of the Church, 94.
• Adam and Eve and the Serpent in Paradise, 155.
• “Ad Caput Beati Petri,” 145.
• Adolphus, Gustavus, library of, 180, 218.
• Adoration of the Magi, The (fresco), not the work of Pinturicchio, 367, 370.
• Ælian Bridge, 86, 101.
• Agrippa, Lake of, in the Campus Martius, 292.
• Agrippina, 47, 49.
• Alagna (Anagni), 168.
• Alatri, Bishop of, 316.
• Alba Longa, 281.
• Alban Lake, 281.
• Albani Giovanni Francesco (Pope Clement XI.), 78.
• Albani, Prince, 300.
• S. Albano, 173.
• Alberti, Leon Battista, Florentine architect, 115, 141, 199, 212;
• his book on Florentine architecture, 115;
• why he wished Nicholas V. to destroy Old St. Peter’s, 115.
• Albigenses, 135.
• Alcuin, 119.
• Aldobrandini, Cardinal Cinzio, 238;
• garden of the Villa, 279, 282;
• Ippolito (Pope Clement VIII.), 75.
• Alexander, Czar, 226.
• Alexander the Great, 239.
• Alexander III., 106, 166, 318.
• Alexander VI. (Rodrigo Borgia), 7, 16, 51, 61, 92, 134, 173, 175, 182, 269, 279, 354, 367, 377;
• death of, 357;
• letter to Pinturicchio, 355;
• portrait by Pinturicchio, 173, 360, 363;
• room in which he died, 379;
• portraits of his sons Giovanni, Cesare, and Jofre in the Sala dei Misteri, 368.
• Alexander VII. (Chigi), 20, 77, 100, 126, 129, 218, 269, 309;
• patron of Bernini, 77;
• monument to contain St. Peter’s Chair, 126.
• Alexander VIII. (Pietro Ottoboni), 78, 219, 248.
• Alexandrine art, 240.
• Alexandrine collection, 36, 224.
• Alfred the Great of England, 103, 109;
• the effect of Rome on his child’s mind, 104;
• in Rome twice, 103.
• Algardi, 20.
• Alla Veneziana, 255.
• Alma Roma, 182.
• Aloes, 290.
• Altar of Clement VIII. in the Chapel of St. Peter’s Tomb in the Crypt, 132.
• Altar front for Papal functions, 334.
• Altemps, Prince, 300.
• Altieri, Emilio (Pope Clement X.), 78.
• Ambassadors to the Holy See, 11, 35, 318;
• Spanish, 50.
• S. Ambrogio at Milan, Paliotto of, 109.
• Ambrosian Library of Milan, 271.
• Amianto, 223.
• Anacletus, Pope, 54, 140.
• Anagni, Cathedral of, 168.
• Anagni, Grand Old Man of, 168.
• Ancona, 172.
• S. Andrea delle Valle, 193.
• S. Andrew, head of, 121, 183, 193;
• preserved in one of the piers of the dome, 183;
• its reception when brought to Rome, 183;
• a new protector to Rome, 183.
• Anemones, 3, 293.
• Angelico, Fra, 6, 17, 31, 59, 199, 207, 210, 386;
• his masterpiece, 210;
• his tomb in S. Maria sopra Minerva, 211;
• Michel Angelo, Mino da Fiesole, all from Etruscan cities, 386.
• Angelo, Michel, 7, 34, 60, 65, 71, 229, 292, 315, 319, 320, 330, 331, 349, 384, 387;
• conversion of St. Paul by, 320;
• crucifixion of St. Peter, 320;
• Etruscans would have revelled in his Last Judgment, 387;
• Etruscan in his gloomy imagination, 387;
• Etruscan in his love of the immense, 387;
• as fond of Sibyls and Prophets as the Etruscans of genii and augurs, 387;
• Last Judgment of, 34, 65, 229, 331, 387;
• says he is too old to fresco, 321.
• Angelo, Sant’, castle of (see Sant’ Angelo).
• S. Angelo in Vado, 401.
• Anguillara, Prince, 300.
• Anicii the first senatorial family to embrace Christianity, 100, 125;
• sarcophagus of, 100, 125.
• Anicius Probus, four times Prefect of Rome, 100, 125.
• “Annunciation” of the Borgia Rooms, The, 27, 367, 369.
• St. Anthony, temptation of, 374.
• Anticamera d’Onore, 23;
• of the Pope, 23;
• Segreta, 23.
• Antinous, 41.
• Antonelli, Cardinal, 225.
• Antoniano, Cardinal, 89, 148.
• Antonina, novel of Rome, by Wilkie Collins, xv.
• Apollo Belvedere, 8, 41, 65.
• Apollo Sauroctonus, 41.
• Apollo, temple of, 51, 95.
• Apostle, body of the, 141.
• Apostle of Learning (Nicholas V.), ix.
• Apostles, miniatures of the, 229.
• Apostles’ Creed, legend of the, painted in the Borgia Rooms, 382.
• Apostles, Prince of the, 183;
• statue of, 137.
• Apostle’s tomb, 143, 144, 148;
• objects blessed by touching the, 146.
• SS. XII. Apostoli, 128, 340;
• piazza of, 217.
• Apostolic simplicity, 12.
• Appartamenti Borgia. See Borgia Apartments.
• Aquila, Fontana dell’, 287.
• Aquileia, Patriarch of, 162.
• Aquinas, S. Thomas, 230, 265, 316;
• “Angelic Doctor,” 265;
• statue of, 256.
• Aracœli Library. See Libraries.
• Arazzi, 43.
• Arazzi, Galleria degli. See Galleries.
• Arcades, Bramante’s, 21.
• Arch of Gallienus, 238.
• Archi-Ospedale di Santo Spirito, 102.
• Archives, 4, 37, 40, 217, 221, 223, 253, 257, 259, 261, 266, 267, 269, ix;
• of the Apostolical Secretaries, 268, 269;
• left at Assisi, 267;
• taken to Avignon, 267;
• of the Camera Apostolica, 268;
• of the Cancelleria, 268;
• of Clement VIII., 268;
• of the Dataria, 270;
• of the Gardaroba, 268, 269;
• of the Lateran, 266;
• Leo XIII.’s addition to the, 270;
• of the letters of Cardinals, Princes, etc., 269;
• of the Nuncios, 269;
• order preserved by Marini of the, 270;
• of St. Peter’s, 344;
• recovered from Avignon by Pius VI., 269;
• restored through England, 270;
• at Sant’ Angelo, 267, 268, 270;
• none sent to Sant’ Angelo after Paul V.’s time, 268;
• of the Secretariat of the Briefs, 269;
• of the Secretariat of State, 269;
• transfer by Napoleon to Paris of the, 270.
• Archivio. See Archives.
• Argenti, 156.
• Ariadne, 41, 65.
• Aristide. See Aristides.
• Aristides, 243, 246;
• statue of, 236.
• “Arithmetic,” 380.
• Ark presented to Pius IX. by French clergy, 30.
• Armeria, 44.
• Armouries, 221, 254, 353.
• Arnold of Brescia, 173, 177.
• Arnolfo di Lapo or Arnolfo di Cambio. See Lapo.
• Arretium (Arezzo), 387.
• Art of the Vatican, The, by Mary Knight Potter, xii.
• Artists as critics, 363.
• “Ascension, The” (fresco), 367.
• Assertio Septem Sacramentorum adversus Martinum Lutherum, 234.
• Assisi, one of Nicholas V.’s fortresses, 164, 267.
• “Assumption of the Virgin,” The (fresco), 367, 370.
• Assyria, 398.
• “Astrology,” 381.
• “Astronomy,” 381.
• Athens, pottery of, 403.
• Atrium of Old St. Peter’s. See Old St. Peter’s.
• Atrium Vestæ, Peter’s Pence found in the, 105.
• Attila, repulse of, 31, 120.
• Audience, Papal, 23.
• Audience Room. See Galleriola.
• S. Augustine’s Commentary on the Psalms, 271.
• Augustinians, 329.
• Augustus, 142.
• Aula della Beatificazione, 33.
• Aula Dei, 321.
• Aula Magna, 32.
• Aula Minor, 33.
• Aurelio, Cesare, 256.
• Aurelius, Marcus. See Marcus.
• Austria, Emperor of, 235, 259;
• Francis Joseph of, 235;
• Maria Thérèse of, 326.
• Author, the, his attitude to the Church of Rome, x;
• the Middle Ages his favourite study, xi;
• not a Roman Catholic, x.
• Autograph of Henry VIII., 229, 234, 244.
• Autographs of Petrarch and Tasso, 228;
• of S. Thomas Aquinas, 228, 230.
• Avignon, 4, 58, 136, 267, 269, 318;
• palace of, 10, 16, 188.
• Avignon Popes, see list of popes.
• Baden, Duke of, 259.
• Bajazet II., Sultan, 62, 127, 182, 187, 297, 376.
• Balcony, 41.
• Baldachin, 348.
• Baldachin of St. Peter’s. See St. Peter’s Baldachin.
• Baldachin over the Volto Santo, 188.
• Baptism of Our Lord, 151.
• Baracconi, 343.
• S. Barbara of the Borgia Rooms, 28, 373.
• Barbarians, The, 141.
• Barbarossa, Frederick, 102, 106, 173, 318.
• Barberini bees, 222.
• Barberini, Cardinal Francesco, 77.
• Barberini, librarian, 220, 222.
• Barberini Library, 77, 220, 221.
• Barberini, Maffeo (Urban VIII.), 76.
• Barberini Palace, 76, 220.
• Barbo, Marco, Patriarch of Aquileia, 162.
• Barbo Pope, The. See Paul ii.
• Baroccio, Federigo, 288, 325.
• Bartholomew, massacre of, 318.
• Bartoli, Taddeo, 236.
• Basil, Emperor, 228, 246;
• conqueror of the Bulgarians, 231.
• Basilicas, ciborium a feature of, 108;
• what constitutes a, 108;
• have high altars at the west end, 108;
• Roman, destroyed by the Cardinals, 357.
• Basle, Council of, 171, 201.
• Bas-reliefs from the Garden of Nero, 136;
• of Our Saviour blessing the Innocents, 184.
• Bassus, Junius, the family of, 153;
• sarcophagus of (see Junius Bassus).
• Bathroom of Cardinal Bibiena, 29, 382.
• Baths of Titus. See Titus.
• Baths of Trajan. See Trajan.
• Bavaria, Duke Maximilian of, 218.
• Bavaria, Louis of, 190.
• Beatifications, 322.
• Beccadelli’s Livy cost 120 ducats, 201.
• Bellarmin, Cardinal, 89, 148.
• Bellini, Gentile, 376.
• Belvedere, Bramante’s, 63, 324;
• Cortile del (see Cortile);
• of Innocent VIII., 37, 40;
• why so called, 18.
• Bembo, Cardinal, 227.
• Benedict XII., 136, 267;
• founded the Palace of Avignon, 188;
• statue of, 137, 188;
• and Urban V. add a crown to the Papal tiara, 167, 343;
• throne the most beautiful in Rome, 137, 188.
• Benedict XIII. (Vincenzo Maria Orsini), 78, 269.
• Benedict XIV. (Prospero Lambertini), 78, 179, 219, 222.
• Benediction of Frederick Barbarossa by Alexander III. at Venice, painted by Giuseppe della Porta, 318.
• Berlin, pottery of, 226.
• Bernardino. See Pinturicchio.
• Bernini, 10, 20, 29, 32, 77, 78, 110, 129, 317, 323, 330, 347;
• baldachin of, 348;
• candelabri of, 317, 321;
• colonnade of, 10, 77, 281, 317, 348.
• Berthier, General, 81.
• Bessarion, Cardinal, 165, 183, 206, 271;
• career of, 206;
• palace, a refuge for Greek scholars exiled by the fall of Constantinople, 206.
• Beza, Theodore de, 251.
• Bibiena, Cardinal, patron of Raffaelle, 29, 309;
• bathroom of, 29, 382.
• Bible, German, assumed to be in Luther’s own hand, 249, 251;
• discredited by its scurrilous prayer, 153.
• Bible, Hebrew, from the Library of the Dukes of Urbino, 228, 234.
• Bible (manuscript), 25 to 40 gold ducats for, 201.
• Bible, with miniatures by Pinturicchio, 229.
• Biblioteca, or Sala di Consultazione, 258, 260;
• Alexandrina, 218;
• Leonina (see Leonine Library);
• Palatina (see Palatine Library);
• Segreta at Sant’ Angelo, 267;
• Vaticana (see Vatican Library);
• Urbina, founded by the Duke Frederick of Montefeltro, 218.
• Bieda, 388.
• Bisleti, Monsignor, 138, 308.
• Bizamanus, 237.
• Blessing, the Papal (Urbi et Orbi), 322.
• Bodleian Library, 235.
• Boleyn, Anne, 234.
• Bolsena, Mass of, 30.
• Bonaparte, Cardinal, 295.
• Boniface IV., 185;
• gives S. Veronica’s handkerchief a shrine in the Pantheon, 123.
• Boniface VIII., 9, 92, 137, 160, 166, 167, 169, 279;
• a Caetani, 167, 331;
• captured at Anagni by the Colonna, 168;
• Chapel of, 113;
• adds second crown to the Papal tiara, 167, 343;
• Bull of Unum Sanctum, 170;
• Dante’s allusion to his indignity at the hands of the Colonna, 168;
• destroys Palestrina, 168;
• discovery of his body in the reign of Paul V., 167;
• enemy of the Colonna, 168;
• excommunicates Philip the Fair of France, 170;
• Gregorovius’ mistake about tomb of, 166;
• instituted the Jubilee, 168, 169;
• mausoleum of, 166;
• mock crucifixion of, 168;
• patron of art and literature, 168;
• picture of, by Giotto, 167, 169;
• Pope who canonized St. Louis, 168;
• portraits of, several, 169;
• representative of the age of Dante, 169;
• revives the struggle between the Church and State, 170;
• said, “If I die, I will die a Pope,” 168;
• sarcophagus of, 166;
• statue of, in the cathedral at Anagni, 169;
• tomb of, 113, 166, 169.
• Boniface IX., Sacramentary of, 229.
• Books, price of, 201.
• Bordighera provides Easter palms, 74.
• Borghese, Camillo (Pope Paul V.), 75;
• Scipio, 302;
• Villa, 302, 316.
• Borgia Apartments (Rooms), 7, 11, 16, 18, 25, 26, 29, 39, 61, 84, 173, 187, 209, 260, 261, 262, 277, 294, 316, 327, 353-385;
• among the brightest gems in the Vatican, 384;
• the armoury, 353;
• built by Nicholas V., 59;
• canvas used in restoration of, 362, 381;
• character of the restoration of, 360;
• cleared by Leo XIII., 359;
• compared to the Chapel of Nicholas V., Riccardi Chapel, St. Mark’s, and Cappella Reale, 366;
• damage done to them, 361;
• the difficulties of a library in, 258, 353;
• the fine flower of the Pagan Renaissance in Rome, 385;
• full effect only seen at night, 385;
• the Guard-Room of the Swiss Guard, 353;
• given up to the Cardinal Nephews, 360;
• how the books were removed from, 260, 261, 262;
• in the seventeenth and eighteenth century, 358;
• information very incorrect about the, 353;
• Mediæval Museum of the Papacy, 353;
• the most royal in the Vatican, 384;
• neglected very early, 357;
• panels of intarsia work almost contemporary with Pinturicchio, 362;
• pictures blocked up—books hopelessly choked and confused, 353;
• official residence of the Cardinal Secretary of State, 353, 361, 384;
• restoration of the, 253, 360, 362;
• restoration under Pius VII., 360;
• restored by architect Vespignani and the painter Seitz, 359;
• Spanish tiles, old, 379, 382;
• condition when bookcases were first removed, 359;
• stucco and papier-mâché work, 354;
• too dark for picture gallery, 358;
• used for meals of officials in Holy Week, 358;
• used by Pius VII. for picture gallery, 358;
• used for museum of statuary, 358;
• used for Vatican Library of Printed Books by Gregory XVI., 358;
• used to receive books of Cardinal Mai, 359;
• Vatican Library of Sixtus IV., 362;
• formerly Vatican Library, 27, 84, 258, 353, 384.
• Borgia arms, 28.
• Borgia bull, 370, 371, 378.
• Borgia, Cesare, 173, 356, 369.
• Borgia, Giovanni, 356, 369;
• murder of, 356.
• Borgia, Jofre, 368.
• Borgia, Lucrezia, 173, 279, 376.
• Borgia, Palace of the, 10.
• Borgia, Pier Luigi, 369.
• Borgia Popes, 7, 10, 12, 61, 92, 134, 173, 175, 182, 356;
• Popes buried in S. Maria di Montserrato, 175.
• Borgia tomb, 173.
• Borgia tower. See Torre Borgia.
• Borgo to become a gigantic Papal city, 59.
• Borgo, fire in the, 30.
• Borromeo, S. Carlo. See Carlo.
• Boscareccio, 278, 285.
• Bottari, 210.
• Botticelli, Sandro, 60, 314, 330.
• Bourbon, Constable of, 8, 70, 214, 310;
• sack of Rome by, 70, 214, 310.
• Box hedges, 291.
• Braccio Nuovo, 18, 40, 63, 82.
• Bracciolini, Poggio, 6, 165, 201, 202, 206;
• career of, 201;
• Facetiæ of, 203;
• tribute to Jerome of Prague of, 202.
• Bramante, 21, 25, 37, 63, 72, 75, 96, 142, 156, 254, 291;
• cortile of, 305;
• death of, 26;
• Niccio, or esedra of, 291;
• Tempietto of, 50, 175.
• Braschi, Angelo (Pope Pius VI.), 78.
• Braschi, Jean, who followed the profession of “Pontiff,” 79, 81.
• Breakspear, Nicholas, of St. Albans (Hadrian IV.), 173.
• Bregno, 60;
• screen of, 378.
• Bresca, a sailor from Bordighera, 74.
• Brescia, 173, 177.
• Breviary of Matthias Corvinus, King of Hungary, 227.
• Briefs, 269.
• Brill, or Bril, Paul, 323, 330.
• Brittany, Anne of, 63.
• Bronze gate. See Portone di Bronzo.
• Bruno (Gregory V.), 176.
• Bull, 139.
• Bull Apis, 28, 371.
• Bull, registered, “par voie sécrète,” 269.
• Bunsen, 120.
• Buoncompagni Pope (see Gregory xiii.), 72.
• Bussola, 22.
• Bussolanti, 22.
• Busts, Hall of the. See Sala dei Busti.
• Bute, Marquess of, 336.
• Byzantine embroideries, 341;
• manuscript, 228.
• Byzantium, 165, 172.
• Cabinet of the Papiri, 236.
• Cadwalla, King of the West Saxons, baptized at Old St. Peter’s, 103.
• Caere (Cerveteri), 387.
• Caere, tombs deep in the earth, 393.
• Cæsar, Julius, 49, 387;
• tomb of, 74, 282.
• Caetani, 158, 331.
• Caffarelli, Prince, 300.
• Calendar, 72, 228, 229, 237.
• Caligula, circus of, 38, 47, 48, 54, 64, 95.
• Caligula and the Vatican, 283.
• Calixtus III., 62, 134, 156, 171, 174, 183, 214;
• and the Vatican Library, 214;
• not Alexander VI., the effigy on the Borgia Tomb, 174;
• lovely fragments of tomb of, 183.
• Camera Apostolica, archives of, 268.
• Camera delle Arti e Scienze, 28, 378, 379, 380.
• Camera della Vita della Madonna, 27.
• Camera della Vita dei Santi, 27.
• Camerieri d’Onore, 23.
• Camerieri Segreti, 23, 300.
• Campanari Brothers, 33, 391;
• supplied most objects in Etruscan Museum in the Vatican, 391;
• garden, 391.
• Campo Vacchino, the old name for the Forum, 299.
• Cancelleria, Archives of the, 268.
• Candelabri, Galleria dei. See Galleria Candelabri.
• Candelabri, exquisiteness of, 315.
• Canonization, 322.
• Canossa, 135;
• Castle of, 181.
• Canova, statues of, 41.
• Canova’s Stuart monument, 91, 180.
• Canute, 103, 105;
• visits St. Peter’s, 105.
• Capanna, 236.
• Capellari, Cardinal Mauro (became Gregory XVI.), 83.
• Capitol, decorations, the same as to-day, 299.
• Cappella della Beatificazione, 321.
• Cappella Clementina, 126.
• Cappella Gregoriana, 125.
• Cappella Leonina. See Chapel, Leonine.
• Cappella di Niccolò V. See Chapel of Nicholas v.
• Cappella Paolina. See Chapel, Paoline.
• Cappella della Pietà of St. Peter’s, 100.
• Cappella Reale. See Palermo, Royal Chapel of.
• Cappella Sistina. See Chapel, Sistine.
• Cappello Ducale, 332.
• Capponi Collection, 36, 219, 224.
• Caprina, 102.
• Caracalla, 141, 282;
• baths of, 141.
• Caracciolo, Monsignor, 303.
• Caraffa, Pope, 71.
• Cardinal Camerlengo, 302.
• Cardinal Nephews, 357, 360.
• Cardinals, 22, 23;
• destruction of the Roman basilicas, 357;
• gardens of, 278, 279;
• robes for Mass for dead Pope, 334;
• smoking-room of, 25;
• style of architecture, 288.
• Cardinals’ hat, 302.
• S. Carlo Borromeo, 2, 288, 304.
• Carmine of Florence, 211, 311.
• Carnot, President, 226.
• Carpegna Collection, 223.
• Carthage, 106;
• tombs of (tombs spared by the Romans), 55, 393.
• Casino Borromeo. See Pius iv. (Casino of).
• Casino of Leo XIII., 61, 283.
• Casino del Papa, 288.
• Casino Pio. See Pius iv.
• Castel d’Asso, 388;
• tombs at, 392.
• Castel Gandolfo, 44.
• Castellani, Signor, 398, 399.
• Castiglione, Conte Baldassare, 66.
• Castiglione, Francesco Saverio (afterwards Pius VIII.), 83.
• Castle of Sant’ Angelo. See Sant’ Angelo, Castle of.
• Catacombs, antiquities from, 7, 236.
• St. Catherine, came from Alexandria, 371;
• of the Borgia Rooms, 28, 372;
• the Disputa of, 28, 356, 371, 375;
• lovely figure of, 375.
• St. Catherine, Lucrezia Borgia, 376.
• Cavalcata, 298, 303;
• description of a, 299, 303;
• the last, 299.
• S. Cecilia, 90.
• Cefalù, 184.
• Celestine III., 57.
• Cellini, Benvenuto, 9, 236, 341;
• brooch of gold, 336;
• candlesticks of, 341;
• casket of, 121.
• Cenci, Beatrice, 75.
• Censer, 146.
• Cephalus and Procris, 26, 364.
• Ceramicus, potteries of, 403.
• Certaldo, Johannes di, 228.
• Cerveteri, 387, 388;
• tombs at, 388, 393;
• tombs of, their characteristics, 393;
• remarkable Pelasgic tomb at, 398.
• Cervini, Pope (Marcellus II.), 159.
• Cestius, pyramid of Caius, 51, 52.
• Chamberlains, 300;
• assistant, 300;
• honorary, 300.
• Chandlery, Father, Pilgrims’ Walks in Rome, xv.
• Chapel of the Anicii, mortuary, 100.
• Chapel of St. Blaise, 156.
• Chapel, Colonna-Caetani, in the Crypt of St. Peter’s, 158.
• Chapel of the Holy Sacrament, 125, 131, 181.
• Chapel of John VII., mosaic in, 117.
• Chapel, Leonine, 33, 309, 321, ix.
• Chapel of S. Maria della Bocciata, 94, 184, 187, 189.
• Chapel of S. Mary of the Women with Child (S. Maria Pregnantium), 184, 187.
• Chapel of Nicholas V., 6, 18, 31, 58, 190-212, 366.
• Chapel, Paoline (built by Antonio da Sangallo), 34, 44, 71, 73, 317, 318, 319, 320, 321;
• what used for, 318.
• Chapel of St. Peter’s Tomb, 54, 75, 94, 133, 140, 143.
• Chapel of the Tomb of St. Peter, the second cradle of Christianity, 133.
• Chapel of St. Petronilla, 57, 100.
• Chapel of the Pietà, 125.
• Chapel of S. Pius V., 35, 223, 305.
• Chapel of the Pope, private, 22.
• Chapel of the Presentation, 126.
• Chapel of SS. Processus and Martinian, 121.
• Chapel Riccardi at Florence, 210, 366, 376.
• Chapel Salvatorino, 189.
• Chapel, Sistine, 8, 10, 14, 33, 34, 35, 60, 65, 125, 215, 246, 259, 261, 310, 314, 318, 323, 338, 355, 384, viii;
• exterior as plain as a packing-case, 349;
• Last Judgment in the, 34, 60, 71;
• photographing the, 260;
• Steinmann’s work on the, 259;
• treasury of (see Sistine Treasury).
• Chapel of the Tomb in the Crypt, 144, 145;
• description of, 146.
• Chapel of the Volto Santo, 117, 181;
• mosaic in, 117.
• Chapter House, 340.
• Charlemagne, 30, 101, 118, 119;
• coronation of, 30, 341;
• epitaph on Hadrian I. of, 101, 118, 119.
• Charles VIII., King of France, on the Borgia Rooms, 356.
• Charles the Bald, 105.
• Charles Edward, born at Rome, 179;
• buried first at Frascati, 180;
• a drunkard for forty years, 179;
• remains of, transferred to St. Peter’s, 180;
• White Rose Society keeps fresh flowers on his grave, 180.
• Charles III. (Young Pretender), 91, 178.
• Charles X., 226.
• Charlet, Cardinal, 245.
• Charlie, Bonnie Prince, 91.
• Charlotte of Cyprus, 92, 134, 181, 229.
• Chiaramonti, Pope (see Pius vii.), 25, 81.
• Chigi (see Alexander vii.), 20, 77.
• Chigi, Prince, 309.
• Chiusi, Etruscan house at, 405;
• museum of, 389.
• Choir of the Canons, 126.
• Christ represented as a young and beardless man, 150.
• Christian, paintings in the Vatican Library, 305;
• remains in the Crypt, Early, 152;
• sufferings of, 48.
• Christians, Early, did not erect tombs in the churches themselves, 111.
• Christianity’s Holy of Holies, 113.
• Christina of Sweden, 92, 180, 218, 248;
• bequeathed Gustavus Adolphus’s library to the Vatican, 180, 227, 248;
• buried in the Crypt of St. Peter’s, 180.
• Ciborium of Innocent VIII. for the Holy Lance, 156;
• for Volto Santo, 136, 151.
• Ciborium of Sixtus IV., 157.
• Ciborium which contained the shroud that wrapped Our Lord’s Body, 188.
• Cicero, 48, 201;
• Letters Ad Familiares of, cost ten ducats, 201.
• Cicero’s Republic, palimpsest of, 227, 264, 271.
• Cigala, Abbé, a noble of Turin, xvii.
• Cincinnatus, Lucius Quinctius, 45, 47, 282, viii.
• Circus of Caligula. See Caligula.
• Circus of Nero. See Nero.
• Civita-Castellana, fortress of, 64.
• Classic Ages, paintings of, 7.
• Classical authors, original manuscripts of, 17.
• Classici Scriptores ex codicibus Vaticanis editi, 273.
• Clement I., 123.
• Clement VII., 31, 70, 234.
• Clement VIII. (Ippolito Aldobrandini), 75, 77, 89, 94, 132, 146.
• Clement VIII., altar of, 146;
• Archivio of, 268.
• Clement IX. (Giulio Rospigliosi), 78.
• Clement X. (Emilio Altieri), 78.
• Clement XI. (Giovanni Francesco Albani), 78, 269.
• Clement XII. (Lorenzo Corsini), 78.
• Clement XIII. (Carlo Rezzonico), 78, 219.
• Clement XIV. (Lorenzo Ganganelli), 24, 78, 79, 219, 303;
• was he poisoned? 79, 303;
• body after death, 79, 303;
• last Pope who rode in Cavalcata, 298;
• falls in his Cavalcata, 303.
• Cloister and the Hearth, Nicholas V. in the, xv.
• Clovio, Giulio, 228, 230, 234.
• Coach-house of the Popes. See Popes’ Coach-house.
• Codex Purpureus, 229.
• Codex Romanus of the Vatican Library, has it been inked over? 249.
• Codex Septuagint, 248.
• Codex Vatican, 7, 227, 273.
• Collegio Romano, 76.
• Cologne, Archbishop of, 234.
• Colonna family, 168.
• Colonna, Mark Antonio, 72.
• Colonna, Prince, 300.
• Colonna, Santa, 124.
• Colonna-Caetani, Donna Agata, the only woman not a sovereign buried in St. Peter’s, 93, 134, 158.
• Colosseum, 372.
• Columbus, Christopher, 6.
• Columella, 201.
• Conclave, Le, book by Lector, xvii.
• S. Congregazione de Propaganda Fide, 272.
• Conrad, Emperor, 105.
• Constance, Council of, 201.
• Constantine, Basilica of, 86, 94, 107, 158, 181, 292, viii;
• lasts till Reformation, 96.
• Constantine the Great, 89, 112, 128, 143, 163, 312, viii;
• carried twelve basketsful of earth at foundation of his basilica, 94;
• battle between Maxentius and, 31;
• decree on the peace of the Church of, 52;
• donation of, 110, 205;
• the six basilicas attributed to, 94;
• inscription on the supremacy of St. Peter of, 112;
• makes Christianity the official religion of the world in 324 A.D., 96, 113;
• turns first sod of Old St. Peter’s, 94.
• Constantine, Grand Duke, 226.
• Constantinople captured by the Turks under Mahomet II., 62;
• Patriarch of, 206.
• Conti, Michel Angelo de’ (Pope Innocent XIII.), 78.
• Corinth, pottery of, 403.
• Corinthian vases, 403.
• Corneto, 387.
• Corneto (station for Tarquinii), 387;
• painted tombs of, 393, 394, 395;
• painted tombs of, how they are kept, 395;
• painted tombs of, their characteristics and subjects, 396;
• Etruscan museum of, 389.
• Cornwall, Delabole, quarries at, 284.
• Corps-de-garde, 35.
• Corsini, Lorenzo (see Clement xii.), 78.
• Corsini, Prince, 298.
• Corsini, Princess, 336.
• Corte e Società Romana XVIII e XIX Secoli, xvi.
• Cortile del Archivio, 18.
• Cortile del Belvedere, 18, 21, 37, 40, 63, 75, 218, 221, 223, 254, 291, 305, 347.
• Cortile di S. Damaso, 15, 19, 23, 26, 31, 63, 84, 308, 328, 348.
• Cortile dei Falegnami, 19.
• Cortile del Forno, 19, 35.
• Cortile (Giardino) della Stamperia, 40, 261.
• Cortile del Maggiordomo, 18.
• Cortile del Maresciallo di Conclave, 18, 33.
• Cortile dei Palafrenieri, 16.
• Cortile del Pappagallo, 16, 36.
• Cortile del Portone di Ferro, 16, 36, 261.
• Cortile della Sentinella, 16, 35, 261.
• Cortona, 387.
• Corvinus, Breviary of Matthias (King of Hungary), 227.
• Cosmati, art of the, not the only Roman art, 315.
• S. Costanza, church of, 163.
• Council of Trent. See Trent.
• Councils, General, 171.
• Court of the Tournaments. See Tournaments.
• Courts and courtyards. See Cortile.
• Crawford, Mr. Marion, 290.
• Creighton, Bishop, 216.
• Crescentius, 127, 176, 177;
• consul or senator of Rome, 127;
• expels Gregory V., 177;
• the font of St. Peter’s is part of sarcophagus of, 127, 176;
• put to death by Otto III., 127, 177.
• Crimea, 398.
• Cross, processional, presented by Marquess of Bute, 336.
• Crusades, 62.
• Crux hastata. See Papal Cross.
• Crypt of St. Peter’s. See St. Peter’s Crypt.
• Crypt, New. See Grotte Nuove.
• Crypt, Old. See Grotte Vecchie.
• Cryptes Vaticanes, xviii.
• Cumae, 398.
• Curia, 59, 268.
• Curia, Papal. See Papal Court.
• Cyclamens, 3, 282.
• Cylices or drinking-cups in Gregorian Museum, 403.
• Cyprus, Charlotte of. See Charlotte of Cyprus.
• S. Cyril, 129.
• Cyrillus, Patriarch, 249.
• Dalmata, Giovanni, 133, 156, 184;
• “Hope” of, 156.
• Dalmatic worn by Charlemagne, 9, 341;
• of San Leone, 341.
• S. Damaso (S. Damasus), Archives of, near Theatre of Pompey, 217, 266;
• baptistery of, 93, 100, 132;
• court of (see Cortile);
• date of, 183;
• his drain under the Cortile di S. Damaso, 93;
• under the Cortile di S. Damaso still in use, 93;
• his inscription the most beautiful in the crypts, 93, 136, 183;
• library of, 217, ix;
• loggie of, 65.
• Daniel between the lions, 151.
• Daniele da Volterra. See Volterra.
• Dante, Ignazio, afterwards Bishop of Alatri, 316.
• Dante’s Divine Comedy, with miniatures by Giulio Clovio, 228, 234.
• Dante’s MS., writing of Boccaccio, 228.
• Dark Ages, 176.
• Dataria, Archives of the, 270.
• Death with his hammer on the Etruscan tombs at Volterra, 389.
• Decembrio, 206.
• Defender of the Faith. See Fidei Defensor.
• “Delenda est Columna,” 168.
• Demidoff, Prince, 225.
• Dennis’s Cities and Cemeteries of Etruria, 397, 398, xii.
• Descent of the Holy Spirit, The, 367, 370.
• Devils and Angels on Etruscan tombs, 389.
• “Dialectics,” 380.
• Diocletian, baths of, 76, 141.
• Disputa of St. Catherine, The. See S. Catherine.
• Djem, Prince, 62, 187, 376;
• one of the most notable figures in the frescoes of the Borgia Apartments, 187.
• Dogmatica Panoplia, 232.
• Dome of the Cathedral at Florence, 349;
• of Michel Angelo, 349;
• of the Pantheon, 349;
• of St. Peter’s (see St. Peter’s).
• Domenichino’s “Pentecost,” 327.
• Domitian, Stadium of, 38, 288, 290.
• Donatello, ciborium by, 342.
• Donizo, 228, 233.
• Donus, Pope who paved the Atrium of St. Peter’s with marble from Meta Romuli, 120.
• Doria Gallery, 146.
• Doria Villa, 287.
• “Duae Metae,” in a picture by Giotto, 50.
• Dufresne, Père, 144, 156, 162, xviii.
• Duns Scotus, the Realist, 256.
• Duppa’s Life of Michel Angelo, 320.
• Dux Plebis, 113.
• Edward I. of England, 135.
• Egypt, 398.
• Egyptian Museum. See Museum.
• Ehrle and Stevenson, 359, 360, x;
• on Seitz’s restoration of the Borgia Rooms, 360, xvi.
• Eighteenth century, practical jokes of the, 291.
• Elagabalus releases thousands of poisonous snakes on the Vatican Hill, 54, 283.
• Éléments d’Archéologie Chrétienne, xvii.
• Emperor, the Holy Roman, 341.
• Emperors, the successors of Constantine, 96.
• England, pilgrims from, 102;
• tomb inscribed with the Conversion of, 113.
• English Catholic books, 259.
• English Library at Rome, 138.
• English School at Rome, 105.
• Episcopia, 56.
• Eroli, fragments of the mausoleum of Cardinal, 159, 184;
• tomb of, 156, 159.
• Esedra, 38, 291.
• Ethelwulf, King, 104, 109;
• crowned by the Pope, 104.
• Etruria, likeness between rock tombs and pagan rock tombs of Sicily, 394.
• Etruscan augur who bade Cæsar beware the Ides of March, 387.
• Etruscan bronzes in Gregorian Museum, 403.
• Etruscan cemeteries near Orvieto, 388.
• Etruscan cities, ix;
• are to Rome what Pompeii is to Naples, 386;
• in the Roman Maremma, 387;
• round Rome, which can be visited with very little more
• effort than Pompeii, 387;
• round Viterbo, 388;
• South, can mostly be visited by rail in one day from Rome, 387;
• which reflowered in art, 387.
• Etruscan frescoes, the best show beauty of the women as the Pompeian never do, 397.
• Etruscan funeral scenes, 390, 394.
• Etruscan genii, 387, 389;
• good—with wings—doubtless the origin of our angels, 389.
• Etruscan house found at Chiusi, like a Japanese house, 405.
• Etruscan imitations in stucco, 392.
• Etruscan inscriptions, 402.
• Etruscan jewellery, domestic and sepulchral, 400;
• genuine, inferior in taste and execution to Tyrrhene style, 400;
• in Gregorian Museum, 403;
• manufacture has never ceased to go on of, at S. Angelo in Vado, 401;
• carried on in Rome now, 401;
• Pelasgic or Tyrrhene style of, 398;
• style of, 397-402;
• tiaras coming in again, 401.
• Etruscan mirrors like Greek, Roman, Carthaginian, Egyptian, and Japanese, 402.
• Etruscan museums in Rome, 389.
• Etruscan race flowered in artists of Umbria and Tuscany, 387.
• Etruscan sarcophagi, carved by native workmen from native designs, deal mostly with religious subjects, 389.
• Etruscan sporting, scenes of, 395.
• Etruscan temples, faithful representation on cinerary urns, 404;
• like the temples of Japan, 404.
• Etruscan tombs, banqueting scenes on, 396;
• best at Tarquinii and Cerveteri, 388;
• characteristics of, 391;
• levity of their general subjects, 394;
• lids often of inferior workmanship, 390;
• model of, 391;
• portrait effigies on, 390;
• presence of a horse and cart marks the passage of a soul, 389;
• ready-made, 390;
• scenes from Greek mythology or history, 390;
• subterranean, give an intimate acquaintance with the race, 388;
• tell us much of the customs of that dead mysterious race, 390;
• views of Future State on the, 390;
• to visit, winter the best time, 395.
• Etruscan or Tyrrhene treasures in the Gregorian Museum, 398.
• Etruscans, women entered more publicly into the lives of the, than into the lives of the Greeks, 396.
• Etruscans, 83, 386-405;
• had their Charon ferrying souls across the river of Death, 389;
• melted into Latins: Latins melted into Italians, 386;
• more serious people than the Romans and Greeks, 389;
• like Romans, seem to have buried their dead outside their cities, 393;
• used birds in fishing, like the Chinese of to-day, 395;
• vases imitated from the Greek by the, 403;
• when wealthy, imported potteries of Athens and Corinth, 403.
• Eugenius IV., 53, 171, 205;
• made Bessarion a Cardinal, 206.
• Exarchs, 112.
• Fabriano, Fortress of, 164.
• Fabriano, Gentile da, 237.
• Fabriano, Nuzi of, 236.
• Facchinetti, Pope (Innocent IX.), 159.
• Farnese, Alessandro (Paul III.), 9, 25, 71, 325.
• Farnese, Giulia, 377.
• Farnese tapestries, 329.
• Farnesina, roof of the, 365.
• Feast of the Virgin, collection of sermons for, 233.
• Felix V., Anti-pope, 171.
• Fenestella Confessionis, 108.
• Ferrante, King, 217.
• Fiano, Prince, 300.
• Fibulae, 400.
• Fidei Defensor (“Defender of the Faith”), 234, 251.
• Fiesole, 211.
• Fifteenth-century parts of the Vatican, 16, 35, 377.
• Filarete, 53, 120.
• Filelfo, 202, 204;
• career of, 203, 204;
• determines not to visit Nicholas V., 204;
• at Rome under Sixtus IV., 204.
• S. Filippo Neri, 304.
• Fleury, MSS. of the Library of, 218.
• Florence, Carmine at, 211, 311.
• Florence, Cathedral of, 349;
• Etruscan Museum of, 389;
• Riccardi Chapel at (see Chapels);
• Santa Croce at, 97.
• Flos Etruriae—flower of Etruria (Florence), 211.
• Fonseca, Cardinal, his tomb, 159.
• Font used for baptizing the Prince Imperial, 225.
• Fontainebleau, captivity of, 332.
• Fontana, architect, 49, 73, 218, 226.
• Forli, Melozzo da, 128, 216, 340;
• frescoes of, 216 (note 14), 340;
• fresco of the Vatican Library by, 216.
• Forum, The, 299.
• Frari, The, at Venice, 221.
• Frascati, 179, 279, 282.
• Frascati, Cardinal York, Bishop of, 179.
• French Revolution, 79.
• French tapestries, 25.
• Frescoes, 292, 379;
• in the Borgia Rooms, authorship of various, 379;
• from Ostia, 240;
• of shrines of Old St. Peter’s, 187.
• Frisians, Church of the (S. Michel in Sassia), 106.
• Fronto, Julius, 276.
• Gabinetto delle Maschere, 41.
• Gaetani, Scipione, 226.
• Gall, St., 201.
• Galleria degli Arazzi, 43, 66, 220, 309, 315;
• dei Candelabri, 8, 43, 220, 310, 315;
• Geografica, by Ignazio Dante and his brother, 43, 220, 316.
• Galleria Lapidaria. See Gallery of Inscriptions.
• Galleria delle Muse, 79;
• delle Statue, 41.
• Galleriola, 25, 327.
• Gallery of Inscriptions, 11, 24, 39, 82, 220, 223, 235.
• Gallienus, Arch of, 238.
• Gandolfo, Castel, 281.
• Ganganelli, Lorenzo (Clement XIV.), 78.
• Gardaroba, Archives of the, 268, 269.
• Garden, or terrace, of the Navicella, 292;
• of the Pope, 1, 10, 16, 37, 278, 280.
• Garden, Vatican. See Vatican Gardens.
• Garden of the Villa Lante, fountain in the, 278.
• Gaza, Theodore of, 165, 206.
• Genga, Annibale della (Pope Leo XII.), 83.
• Genius of the Vatican, The, 41.
• Genoa, 6.
• “Geometry,” 380.
• St. George, life of, with miniatures by Giotto, 344.
• George IV., 91.
• Geracé, Marquis of, 153.
• German MSS. in Vatican Library, 219.
• Ghini, Simone, 53, 120.
• Ghirlandajo, 60, 314, 325, 330, 380.
• Giardino della Pigna, 18, 38, 40, 42, 99, 291;
• della Stamperia, 18, 255;
• Vaticano (see Vatican Gardens).
• S. Giorgio in Velabro, 107.
• Giotto, 117, 128, 169, 185, 340, 344, 396;
• mosaic angel by, 185;
• Navicella of, 117.
• S. Giovanni dei Fiorentini, 48.
• Fra Giovanni da Firenze (Fiesole). See Angelico, Fra.
• Fra Giovanni da Roma, 209.
• Giulio Clovio, 228, 230, 234.
• Giustiniani, Prince, 300.
• Gobelins, 8.
• Gods of Greece, moral standard of the, 368.
• Gold breastplates, 398.
• Golden Rose, 9, 34, 334.
• Gothic tombs in St. Peter’s Crypt, 214.
• Gouvernement de l’Église, xvii.
• Goyau, xvii.
• Gozzoli, Benozzo, 31, 207, 210;
• his figure of Lorenzo de’ Medici in the Riccardi Chapel, 378.
• “Grammar,” 380.
• Grand gala coach, 296, 297.
• Grand Herald, 299.
• Gratian, Emperor, 100.
• Greece, ancient clay statuettes of, 239;
• ancient paintings of, 239;
• writers of, 6.
• Greek Calendar. See Menologium Grecum.
• Greek home, 404;
• MSS., 218;
• vases, 42, 403.
• Greeks as averse as Arabs to talking about the women of their family, 404;
• have left us hardly any real portraits, 404;
• undomesticated, 404;
• liable to ignore domestic details, 404.
• Gregorian Calendar, 72.
• Gregorian Museum, matchless collection of Greek vases and bowls of, 403.
• Gregorovius’ History of Rome in the Middle Ages, xi;
• Tombs of the Popes, xii.
• S. Gregory the Great, 113, 144;
• tomb of, 126.
• Gregory II., 121.
• S. Gregory III., 56, 186.
• Gregory V., 134, 177;
• epitaph of, 177;
• tomb of, 176, 177.
• Gregory VII., 135, 166, 181, 229, 318.
• Gregory XI., 318.
• Gregory XII. fortified himself in the Vatican against Louis of Anjou, 58.
• Gregory XIII., 72, 76.
• Gregory XIV., 29, 75.
• Gregory XV. (Alessandro Ludovisi), 75.
• Gregory XVI. (Mauro Capellari), 42, 83, 219, 272, 289, 353, 358;
• founds the Museo Etrusco, 83, 403;
• makes a new waterfall at Tivoli, 83.
• S. Gregory Nazianzen, 229, 246;
• his career, 246.
• Gregory of Trebizond, 165.
• Grévy, President, 226.
• Grisar, Père, 144.
• Grotte Nuove, 93, 132, 136, 140, 142, 182;
• corridor of, 148.
• Grotte Vaticane, 80, 90, 142, 166.
• Grotte Vecchie, 90, 91, 117, 134, 142, 158;
• is Old St. Peter’s, 142.
• Grotto dell’ Orco, splendid figures of gods in (finest of all Etruscan frescoes), 397.
• Gualdo, fortress of, 164.
• Guarino, 206.
• Guglia, 49.
• Hadrian I., 101, 118, 119.
• Hadrian IV., 92, 152, 173;
• first Pope to hold court at Orvieto, 173;
• name was Nicholas Breakspear, 173;
• only English Pope, 92, 173;
• put down Arnold of Brescia, 173;
• refused to crown Frederick Barbarossa, 173;
• his sarcophagus, 173.
• Hadrian VI., 70;
• not an Italian at all, 70.
• Hadrian, Emperor, the font of St. Peter’s not the lid of his sarcophagus, 127;
• tomb of, 47, 99;
• villa of, 339.
• Hall of Aristides, 36, 236.
• Hall of the Beatifications (see Sala Della Beatificazione), 11.
• Hall of the Bonaventura, 36, 236.
• Hall of the Bussolanti, 22.
• Hall of the Busts, 41.
• Hall of the Christian Paintings, 36.
• Hall of the Conclave, 59.
• Hall of the Consistory, 12.
• Hall of the Credo, 11, 28, 355, 382.
• Hall of the Grooms, 22, 31.
• Hall of the Lives of the Saints, 11, 371, 372, 377.
• Hall of the Madonna, 11, 27.
• Hall of the Mysteries, 27, 360, 365, 367, 368, 369, 370.
• Hall of the Obelisk, 36, 236.
• Hall of the Papal Audiences, 43.
• Hall of the Papiri, 36, 40.
• Hall of the Paramenti, 25, 33.
• Hall of the Parrot, 25, 33.
• Hall of the Popes, 11, 26, 27, 355, 381, 382, 384.
• Hall of the Porphyry Columns, 222.
• Hall of the Sibyls, 11, 29, 355, 380, 382.
• Hall of the Vatican Manuscripts, 36, 224.
• Hamilton, Mrs. Gustavus W., xi.
• Handbook to Christian and Ecclesiastical Rome, xiii.
• Hare’s Walks in Rome, xiv.
• Harrison’s, Frederic, Theophano, xvi.
• Head of St. Andrew. See Andrew.
• Head of Our Lord from Eroli’s tomb, 185.
• Heidelberg, 218, 219, 257;
• MSS. restored to, 219.
• Helena, gold cross of the Empress, 89, 143.
• Heliodorus, expulsion of, 30.
• Henry IV., Emperor, 135, 181;
• absolution of, by Gregory VII., 229;
• at Canossa, by Zuccheri, 318;
• repentance of, 229.
• Henry VIII. of England, 229, 250;
• autograph inscription to Leo X., 234;
• letters to Anne Boleyn by, 234, 250;
• pamphlet against Luther, 234, 244.
• Henry IX. (Stuart) (Cardinal of York), 91, 178, 302;
• archpriest of St. Peter’s for fifty-six years, 180;
• bequeathed Crown jewels to the Prince Regent (afterwards George IV.), 180;
• Bishop of Frascati, 179;
• created Cardinal by Benedict XIV., 179;
• created Duke of York by his father, 179;
• “King of England by the grace of God, but not by the will of men,” 179;
• Cardinal of York pensioned by the Prince Regent, 179;
• record of longevity, 180;
• relieved the necessities of Pius VI., 179.
• Heraclius, Emperor, 101.
• Herculaneum, 238.
• Hercules, labours of, 131.
• Hermania. See Thermantia.
• Hildebrand (Gregory VII.), 135.
• Hildebrandine reforms, era of the, 176.
• Holy Lance, 63, 121, 136.
• Holy Office, Palace of the, 44.
• Holy See, 135, 194.
• Honorius, mausoleum of the wives of the Emperor, 100, 342.
• Honorius, Pope, 112.
• Hormisdas, Pope, 185, 342;
• inscription of, 185;
• united Eastern and Western Churches, 185.
• Hortensius, 142.
• Humboldt, 219.
• Hypsistarians, sect of the, 247.
• Ilex trees, 291.
• Illuminations, 348, 351.
• Immaculate Conception, 30.
• Index Expurgatorius, 264.
• Infessura, 217.
• Innocent III., 56, 108, 114, 121, 146, 166;
• monuments in bronze and mosaics, 114.
• Innocent IV., 57.
• Innocent VII. (Migliorati Pope), 159.
• Innocent VIII. (Cibò Pope), Belvedere of (see Belvedere);
• ciborium for the Holy Lance of, 156, 183, 187;
• ciborium for the Volto Santo, 136, 151;
• tomb of, 126, 183;
• villa of, 7, 14, 18, 25, 37, 40, 43, 61, 63, 75, 126, 229, 294.
• Innocent IX. (Facchinetti), 75, 159.
• Innocent X. (Giambattista Pamfili), 77, 146;
• portrait by Velasquez in the Doria Gallery, 146.
• Innocent XI. (Benedetto Odescalchi), 78, 152.
• Innocent XII. (Antonio Pignatelli), 78.
• Innocent XIII. (Michel Angelo de’ Conte), 78.
• Inquisition, the Holy Roman and Universal, 44, 71.
• Inscriptions, Gallery of (see Galleries);
• of the twelfth century, 184.
• Inscriptiones Christianæ of G. B. de Rossi, 260.
• Intarsia work, 209, 377.
• Inter duas Metas, 50, 51, 52, 53.
• Ippolito d’Este, Cardinal, his garden, 279.
• Isis and Osiris ceiling of the Borgia Rooms, 28, 371.
• Isis and Osiris, marriage of, 371.
• St. James the Less, 189.
• James II., 178.
• James III. of England, 91;
• fainéant, dissolute, prayerful life at Rome of, 179;
• had the longest reign in English history—sixty-four years, 91, 178;
• what he gave up for his faith, 178.
• Janiculum, 50, 51.
• Janus, 11.
• Jerome of Prague, 202;
• his letters cost one hundred gold ducats, 201.
• Jerusalem, 151, 181.
• Jesuits, 75, 79.
• Jesus, magician named, 122.
• “Jesus riding on an ass,” 151.
• John of Austria, Don, 72.
• John VII., 124, 136;
• his chapel of the Volto Santo, 136, 186;
• mosaic portrait of, 186;
• oratory of, 188.
• John XIII., 86.
• John XVI., Anti-pope, 176.
• John XXIII., united the Vatican with Sant’ Angelo by walled-in passage, 58.
• Joshua, Vatican Library Book of, 231.
• Jousting, 38.
• Jubilee, 9.
• Judith and Holofernes, 371.
• Julian the Apostate, 246, 247.
• Julii, Porticus. See Porticus.
• Julius II. (Juliano della Rovere), 7, 25, 30, 38, 61, 63, 64, 65, 141, 165, 292, 357;
• abolished the old basilica, 172;
• founder of the Vatican Museum, 65;
• his hatred of Alexander VI., 357;
• like Caracalla and Diocletian in his megalomania, 141;
• like Nero in his megalomania, 115;
• the real founder of the New St. Peter’s, 125, 141;
• the tomb of, 125.
• Julius III. (the del Monte Pope), 161.
• Junius Bassus, inscription of, 153;
• a Prefect of Rome, 153.
• Junius Bassus, sarcophagus of, 100, 124, 133, 148, 149, 150, 152;
• its ends, 152;
• figures allegorized as sheep or lambs on, 151;
• Job’s wife on, 151, 152;
• Job’s wife is holding her nose, 152;
• John the Baptist is represented as a sheep on, 152;
• is the only tomb which contains bones of the original occupant, 152;
• subjects on, 150.
• Jupiter of the Vatican, 368.
• Justel, Mr., of the Royal Library in London, 248.
• Justin II., Emperor, 128;
• cross of, 342.
• Khedive Ibrahim Pasha, 225.
• Klimax of Johannes Klimakus, 233.
• Knights of the Guard. See Lancie Spezzati.
• Kugler, 210, 230, 237, 319, 383.
• Lace in the Sistine Treasury, 331.
• Laestrygonians, 240.
• Lambertini, Prospero (Pope Benedict XIV.), 78.
• Lanciani, xiii.
• Lancie Spezzati, or Knights of the Guard, 299.
• Landsberg (Jesuit) maintains that the portrait of Christ on St. Veronica’s handkerchief is true to life, 123.
• Laocoön, The, 41, 65.
• Lapo, Arnolfo di, 114, 137, 166.
• Last Judgment, The, of Michel Angelo, 34, 60, 71, 331, 387;
• of Mino da Fiesole, 154, 156.
• Lateran, The, 3, 94, 205, 298;
• the library of the, 266;
• the Mother Church of the Papacy, 58.
• Latin MSS., 218.
• Latin Way, tombs of the, 328;
• genius of the tombs of the, 328.
• Laurana, Francesco, 184.
• Laurel, clipped, 293.
• Layard, Sir A. H. (revised edition of Kugler), 230, 320, 382.
• Lazarus, resurrection of, 151.
• Lector, M., xvii.
• St. Leo the Great, 120.
• Leo the Isaurian, 121.
• St. Leo’s repulse of Attila, 31, 120, 186.
• St. Leo I., St. Leo II., St. Leo III., St. Leo IV., 186.
• St. Leo III., justifying himself before Charlemagne, 30;
• his dalmatic, 341;
• crowns Charlemagne, 341.
• St. Leo IV., 57, 104, 109, 186, 285;
• builder of the Leonine City, 186;
• old towers and walls of, 285.
• Leo IX., Bull of, 49.
• Leo X. (Giovanni de’ Medici), 8, 26, 62, 65, 234, 244, 267, 309;
• a Mæcenas, 65.
• Leo XI. (Alessandro de’ Medici), 75.
• Leo XII. (della Genga), 83, 219;
• jubilee robe of, 336.
• Leo XIII. (Gioacchino Pecci), 7, 34, 39, 50, 77, 84, 88, 219, 222, 225, 253, 255, 257, 258, 259, 270, 284, 285, 291, 315, 322, 325, 354;
• his aim in choosing a site for his library, 258;
• brougham of, 294;
• buildings in the Vatican gardens of, 284;
• Casino of, 61, 283, 290;
• carried out Nicholas V.’s plans for making the Vatican Library the focus of European scholarship, 253;
• converted the Hall of Canonizations into a chapel, 85;
• defines the Vatican precincts, 294;
• did he go outside the Vatican in July 1890? 294;
• favourite tapestry of, 325;
• founded the Leonine Library, 84;
• in his garden, 291;
• in the old Tower, 285;
• jubilee of, 235;
• jubilee presents of, 238, 336;
• most brilliant writer in Latin of all the Popes, 354;
• opens the Vatican MSS. and Archives to the world, 253;
• pergola of, 285;
• restores the Borgia Apartments, 84, 253, 354, 359;
• restores the Galleria degli Arazzi, 85;
• restores the Galleria dei Candelabri, 85;
• robe presented for his jubilee to, 333;
• statue of, 256;
• villa of, 61.
• Leonine City, 186.
• Leonine Library. See Library, New Leonine.
• Leonine Wall, 283, 284.
• Lepanto, battle of, 72, 330;
• frescoes by Vasari of, 72, 318, 330;
• awakened Europe from the nightmare of the Turks, 330.
• Liber Pontificalis, 51, 95, 267.
• Liberal Arts, The Seven, 28.
• Librarian’s room, Vatican Library, 40.
• Library, Aracœli, 40, 257, 260.
• Library, Barberini. See Barberini.
• Library of Biblical Studies, 256, 263.
• Library, Bodleian, 235.
• Library of the Canons of St. Peter’s, 344.
• Library of Cardinal Mai, 257, 260, 264, 271, 277.
• Library of Christina of Sweden. See Christina.
• Library of the Dukes of Urbino, 228.
• Library, New Leonine, 4, 40, 220, 221, 223, 253, 254-265, 270, 277, ix;
• all printed books in the Vatican transferred to the, 255, 358;
• books of Italian antiquities in the, 260;
• books of Popes, Cardinals, and Rome in the, 260;
• books, special boxes for transporting them, 262;
• building alterations for the, 254, 255;
• card catalogue system, 257;
• foreign governments send books to the, 258;
• formation of the, 254;
• modern arrangement of, 256;
• order of books preserved, 262, 263;
• reference library, 258;
• reference room in the, 258;
• route to, from the Borgia Rooms, 261;
• transporting of books from the Borgia Rooms, 262;
• transporting of books from the Borgia Rooms takes only a fortnight, 263;
• under the Sala Sistina, 254.
• Library, long gallery of, 14.
• Library, Montefeltro, 229.
• Library, Palatine, 40, 257, 260.
• Library of Printed Books, 39, 258.
• Library, Ruland, 256.
• Library of Siena. See Siena.
• Library of Sixtus IV., 61.
• Library, Vatican. See Vatican.
• Library, visit of Montaigne and Misson, 242-252.
• Library, Zelada, 40, 257, 260.
• Ligorio, Pirro, 72, 288.
• Lindsey, Lord, in his Christian Art, 342.
• Linus, 54, 140.
• Livy, palimpsest of Book IX. from Christina of Sweden’s library, 228.
• Loggie. See Raffaelle and Udine.
• Lonigo, Michel, 268.
• Lorenzetti, Pietro, 236.
• S. Lorenzo in Damaso, the site of Pope Damaso’s library, 217.
• S. Lorenzo fuori le Mura, 94, 210, 308.
• Louis XIV., 8, 26;
• tapestry of his betrothal and marriage, 326.
• St. Louis of France, last testament of, 106.
• Lourdes’ offering to the Pope, 285.
• Louvre, 306.
• Loyola, S. Ignatius, 75.
• Lucretius, 201.
• Lucumo, 390.
• Ludovisi, Alessandro (Pope Gregory XV.), 75.
• Ludovisi, Cardinal Ludovico, 76.
• Ludovisi, Donna Ippolita Boncompagni, 298.
• Ludovisi, Juno, 76.
• Lugari, Monsignor, 51.
• Lusignans, 134.
• Luther, Martin, 174, 229, 234, 244, 250, 251, 268;
• letters of, 268;
• prayer a forgery, 251.
• Maclaughlin, Mrs. Frances, xvi.
• MacMahon, Maréchal, 226.
• Maderna, Carlo, 33, 281, 322.
• Madonna with the Child, 377.
• Madonna della Colonna from Old St. Peter’s, 126.
• Madonna di Soccorso from Old St. Peter’s, 126.
• Maestro della Camera, 300.
• Maestro, office of the Pope’s, 19.
• Maggiordomo, 8, 138;
• office of the, 19.
• Mai, Cardinal Angelo, 6, 40, 219, 227, 235, 257, 260, 271, 274, 275, 277, 359;
• career of, 264, 271;
• decorated by our Royal Society of Literature, 273;
• discovers Cicero’s Republic, 271;
• “the discoverer and restorer of Palimpsests,” 274;
• how he discovered ancient classics, 277;
• his library, how he bequeathed it, 277;
• librarian of the Vatican, 271, 273;
• MSS. all bequeathed to the Vatican, 277;
• prints Codex Vaticanus, 273;
• reestablishes the Vatican Press, 272;
• secretary of the Congregation of the Propaganda, 272;
• his table bequeathed by de Rossi to the Vatican Library, 264;
• Wiseman’s description of, as librarian, 271, 272, 273.
• Mainardi, 236.
• Maldaichini, Olimpia, 77.
• Mancini of Orvieto, Signor, 392.
• Mancini’s excavations and shop at Orvieto, 392.
• Manetti, 194, 195, 196, 198.
• Mantegna, 61.
• Manuscripts of the Vatican. See Vatican Manuscripts.
• Maps, Gallery of the. See Galleria Geografica.
• Maratta, Carlo, 30.
• SS. Marcellino e Pietro, 94.
• Marcellus II. (Cervini), 71, 159;
• keeper of the Vatican Library, 159;
• one of the presidents of the Council of Trent, 159.
• S. Marco, palace of (now Palazzo di Venezia), 161, 163.
• Marcus Aurelius, 2, 276;
• discovery of letters of, 276.
• Maremma, Roman, Etruscan cities in the, 387;
• some have fine Etruscan walls, some gates, 388.
• Margaritone, 236.
• Maria (wife of Honorius), 100.
• S. Maria della Bocciata, miraculous image of, 137, 187, 189.
• S. Maria in Cosmedin, 117;
• mosaics in, 117.
• S. Maria delle Febbri, 175.
• S. Maria sopra Minerva, 211, 304.
• S. Maria di Montserrato, 174.
• S. Maria del Popolo, 304.
• S. Maria Traspontina, 51, 53.
• S. Maria in Trastevere, 111, 156.
• S. Maria in Turri, 106.
• Marie Thérèse of Austria, 326.
• Marini, 268, 269.
• Marinus II., 105 (note 8).
• St. Mark’s, Venice, 98, 112, 305, 366.
• Martial, 48.
• St. Martin, oratory of, 121.
• Martini, Simone, 236.
• S. Martino ai Monti, frescoes of Old St. Peter’s in, 292.
• Martyrdom of St. Peter and St. Paul, 134, 148.
• Martyrdom of St. Peter and St. Paul on the Bronze Doors, 120.
• Marucchi, Commendatore Orazio, 50, 120, 128, 130, 132, 181, xvii.
• Masaccio, 211.
• Masaccio’s “Render unto Cæsar” in the Carmine at Florence, 311.
• Maschere, Cabinetto delle, 41.
• Massacre of St. Bartholomew by Vasari. See Bartholomew.
• Massimi claim to be the oldest family in Rome, descended from Fabius Maximus, 192.
• Massimi, first patrons of printing in Rome, 165, 193.
• Mastai-Ferretti (Pope Pius IX.), 84.
• Master of the Horse, 299.
• Masters of Ceremonies, Papal, 301.
• Matilda of Tuscany, Castle of Canossa belonged to, 181;
• donation of, 135, 181;
• fate of monument of Countess, 125;
• remains removed to St. Peter’s by Urban VIII., 125;
• and the Papacy, 135, 181;
• poem in praise of, 228, 233.
• Mattei, Prince, 300.
• Maximilian, Duke of Bavaria, 218.
• Medici, Giovanni de’ (Leo X.), 65.
• Medici Popes, 75, 290.
• Medici, Villa, 290.
• Megalomaniac Popes, 76.
• Meleager, Vestibule of the. See Vestibule.
• Melozzo. See Forli.
• Menologium Grecum, or Greek Calendar (tenth century, executed for the Emperor Basil), 228, 231.
• Menologium of the Vatican, 231.
• Mercia, Coenred of, 103.
• Merry del Val, Cardinal Raffaele, Secretary of State. See under Secretary of State.
• S. Methodius, 129.
• Mexican Calendar, 229.
• Mezzofanti, Cardinal, 273.
• Mezzo-gala coach, 296.
• Michel Angelo. See under Angelo.
• St. Michele in Sassia, 106.
• Migliorati, Pope (see Innocent vii.), 159.
• Milan, 311;
• Ambrosian Library at (see Libraries), 271.
• Minerva, Temple of, 287.
• Mino da Fiesole, 60, 92, 116, 134, 148, 154, 161, 162, 315, 386.
• Mino da Fiesole’s “Charity,” 134, 154;
• “Creation of Woman,” 155;
• “Faith,” 93, 134, 154, 155;
• “God the Father,” 155;
• “Last Judgment,” 154, 155, 162;
• masterpiece, 154, 161;
• “Original Sin,” 134;
• the Raffaelle of the Sculptors of the Middle Ages, 148;
• “Resurrection of Our Saviour,” 154, 162;
• “Temptation in the Garden,” 155.
• Mint, The, 35, 44, 294;
• the only spot in the Vatican seized by the Italian Government, 294.
• Mirror with Relief of Aurora carrying the body of her son, the original of the Pietà of the Virgin with the Body of Our Lord, 403.
• Misson, author of The New Voyage to Italy, 15, 139, 158, 247, 249;
• impressions of, 249;
• his visit to the Vatican Library, 248.
• Monreale, 184.
• Mons Vaticanus, 278, 282.
• Montaigne, 242, 246;
• criticizes Henry VIII.’s book, 244;
• describes Vatican Library of his day—probably under Sistine Chapel, 243;
• his journey to Italy, 243;
• his Journal of Travels, 243, 323;
• and the MSS. of gold letters, 246;
• and the Sculpture Galleries, 324;
• sees a Chinese book, 243;
• sees Henry VIII.’s book against Luther, 244;
• studying guide-books and maps, 324;
• treated with courtesy at the Vatican Library, 244;
• what he saw in the Vatican Library, 243, 245;
• on the Vatican Virgil, 245;
• visited Rome in 1585, 242.
• Montalto di Castro (station for Vulci), 388.
• Monte, del (see Julius iii.), 161.
• Montefeltro, Duke Frederick, 218.
• Montefeltro Library, 229.
• Montepulciano, Cardinal Ricci da, 290.
• Montfort, Amory de, 135.
• Montfort, Simon de, 135.
• Monuments, destruction by Romans in the Middle Ages, 357.
• Morgan, Lady, says the inscription on St. Peter’s Chair is Arabic, 131.
• Mosaic Chapel over tomb of Pius IX. at S. Lorenzo fuori le Mura made by Vatican Factory, 308.
• Mosaic Christs of Palermo, Monreale, and Cefalù, 184.
• Mosaic pictures required for Altar of St. Peter’s, 307.
• Mosaic of the Weeping Virgin, 156.
• Mosaics, 24, 117, 121, 134, 136, 146, 178, 184, 185, 305;
• Byzantine, 148.
• Mosaics on Otto’s tomb, 93.
• Mosaics of St. Peter’s contrasted with those of Sicily and S. Sofia, 307;
• of St. Peter and St. Paul in the Chapel of the Tomb, 147.
• Mosaics which came from the Oratory of St. John VII., 186.
• Mosaics, Vatican Factory of. See Studio del Mosaico.
• Mozzetta, 301.
• “Multiplication of the Loaves,” 151.
• Museo Chiaramonti. See Museum, Chiaramonti.
• Museo Cristiano, 11, 36, 222, 223, 236, 237.
• Museo Egiziano, 42.
• Museo Etrusco-Gregoriano. See Museum, Etruscan.
• Museo Kircheriano, 388, 402.
• Museo di Leone XIII., 27.
• Museo Pio-Clementino, 79, 80, 82.
• Museo Profano, 11, 36, 222, 223.
• Museum of the Capitol, 388.
• Museum, Chiaramonti, 24, 41, 81.
• Museum of Christian Antiquities. See Museo Cristiano.
• Museum, Egyptian, 42, 82.
• Museum, Etruscan, 19, 42, 161, 386, 387, 404.
• Museums, Etruscan, at Florence, Corneto, Volterra, Chiusi, 389, ix.
• Museum, Mediæval, of the Papacy. See Museo di Leone xiii.
• Museum, Sculpture, 7, 10, 14, 16, 18, 35, 40, 42, 99, 126, 261, 270, 280, 294, 384, viii.
• “Music,” 381.
• Myrina, sculptors of, 240;
• terra-cotta statuettes of, 404.
• Myron, 40.
• Napoleon, 42, 337;
• depredations of, 82;
• tried to purchase a new Concordat, 82.
• Napoleon I., 226.
• Napoleon III., 225.
• Narni, fortress of, 164.
• National Museum, 76.
• “Nativity” (fresco), 367, 370.
• Naumachia, near the, 51.
• Navicella of Giotto, 117;
• garden or terrace of the, 292.
• Nazianzen, S. Gregory. See Gregory.
• Negri, Gaetani, 247.
• Nenfro, 391.
• Neri, S. Filippo, 304.
• Nero, bas-reliefs from the garden of, 93, 187;
• are they from the site of St. Peter’s execution? 187;
• were they the inspiration of Mino da Fiesole? 187.
• Nero, 95;
• Christianity under, 95;
• circus of, 38, 47, 48, 50, 53, 54, 64, 95, 115, 282;
• condemning the Apostles, 185;
• gardens of, 51, 115, 136, 140, 282;
• Golden House of, 5;
• Palace of, 48.
• Nerva, Forum of, 287.
• Nicholas I. (Czar), 225.
• Nicholas III. (Gian Gaetani Orsini), 56, 161.
• Nicholas V., Thomas of Sarzana (Parentucelli), 4, 5, 6, 16, 17, 31, 39, 58, 59, 62, 64, 92, 134, 190, 212, 213, ix;
• absence of scheming or intrigue, 191;
• “Apostle of Learning,” ix;
• appointed Filelfo Papal Secretory, 204;
• begins New St. Peter’s, 115, 141;
• blamed for his ambition, 212;
• books of, 17, 207;
• bookseller of, 200;
• chapel of (see Chapels);
• collection of manuscripts of, 214;
• conception of making the Vatican Hill rival the Palatine, 58, 165;
• his court, true explanation of the splendours of, 194, 198, 200;
• death-bed speech of, 164, 194;
• his destruction of Old St. Peter’s, 199;
• epitaph by, on Fra Angelico, 211;
• famous as a lover of art and antiquities, 163;
• father of the Vatican Library, 57, 163, 165, 206, 214, 217, ix;
• first of all the Popes to appreciate the antiquities of Rome, 163;
• founder of archæology, 115, 166;
• founder of first manufactory of tapestries, 200;
• fragments of his tomb in St. Peter’s Crypt, 165, 214;
• had been a librarian and copyist of manuscripts, 191, 209;
• how he silenced Valla, 204;
• his idea of the Renaissance of the world by learning, 190;
• a keen lover of antiquities, 141;
• kept staff of translators, 206;
• knew no Greek, 205;
• liberality to scholars of, 191, 206;
• library of, 163, 208;
• library chests, 246;
• “little scholar of Sarzana,” 208;
• the Mæcenas of the Papacy, ix;
• the magnificence of his Church services, 200;
• offers five thousand gold ducats for MS. of St. Matthew in the original Greek, 191;
• offers ten thousand gold ducats for translation of Homer, 191;
• palace of, 16, 59;
• paid Fra Angelico only fifteen ducats a month, 207;
• paid Guarino one thousand crowns for translation of Strabo, 191;
• paid Perotti five hundred ducats for translation of Polybius, 207;
• paid Valla five hundred gold scudi for translation of Thucydides, 206;
• paid greatest painters from seven to fifteen ducats a month, 191;
• particular about his manuscripts, 209;
• a patron of great artists, 199;
• a patron of the minor arts, 199;
• peace during his Pontificate, 164;
• plan for rebuilding the Leonine City, 195, 196;
• plan for fortifying the Vatican, 198;
• portrait by Fra Angelico, 211;
• printers did not come to Rome till after his death, 192;
• printing made its appearance in his time, 165;
• his reign, supreme events happened in it, such as the Fall of Constantinople, and the invention of printing, 191;
• said he wished to spend all he possessed on books and buildings, 193;
• said “A priest who was only good for ringing bells has been made Pope,” 200;
• sarcophagus of, 166, 214;
• his scheme for a Papal city, 59, 165, 195, 197;
• his scheme for a new St. Peter’s, 59;
• the scholar Pope, 164;
• scholarship never had such a Mæcenas as, 191;
• sends for Poggio Bracciolini, 202;
• splendid vestments and church jewels of, 200;
• stained glass of, 199, 209;
• study of, 199, 209;
• thinks of a secular theatre in the Vatican, 64;
• Thirty-Line Indulgence of, 134, 192, 213;
• Thirty-One-Line Indulgence of, 134, 192, 213;
• tried to preserve the ancient buildings, 58;
• tried to raise Christendom against the Turks by Indulgences, 193;
• tomb of, 137, 166, 183, 214;
• unexpectedly raised to the Papacy, 193;
• when a poor priest always in debt for manuscripts, 207;
• wished to make St. Peter’s the mightiest temple in the world, 165;
• wished to make Rome the centre of learning, 207;
• wished to make the Vatican the astonishment of the world, and the Holy See secure from enemies, 193, 194, 198;
• world owes much to, 213.
• Nielsen’s History of the Papacy in the Nineteenth Century, xii.
• Noble Guards, 22, 23, 36, 323.
• Nola, S. Paulinus of, 99.
• Nominalists, 256.
• Norchia, 388, 392;
• had other Etruscan remains besides tombs and city walls, 388.
• Norris, Father, 248.
• Northumberland, Duke of, 225.
• Nova Patrum Bibliotheca, 273.
• Nozze Aldobrandini, 7, 28, 36, 82.
• Numa Pompilius, 2.
• Nuncios, Archives of, 268, 269.
• La Nuova Biblioteca Leonina nel Vaticano, 260.
• Nuzi of Fabriano, Allegretto, 236.
• Obelisk, 49, 73.
• Odescalchi, Benedetto (Pope Innocent XI.), 78.
• Odyssey, paintings from the, 240.
• Offa, King of the East Saxons, 103.
• Office of the Pope’s Maestro de Camera, 19;
• Maggiordomo, 19.
• Old St. Peter’s, 1, 17, 42, 53, 86-116, 125, 126, 128, 132, 133, 134, 137, 140, 148, 181, 185, 189, 214, 340, viii;
• aggregating buildings round it, 111;
• arch of triumph of, 102, 112;
• atrium of, 96, 98, 99, 103, 106, 107, 111, 113, 117, 120, 292;
• atrium of, colonnade leading to the, 86;
• atrium of, paved with marble from Meta Romuli by Pope Donus, 120;
• atrium of, use of, 107;
• basilica of, 86, 96, 100, 148;
• basilica, what it was like, 96;
• Bishop’s throne of, 107;
• built out of and on Nero’s Circus, 95;
• its bronze doors still used, 119;
• Campanile of, 56, 98;
• Cantharus of, 99;
• the Cathedral of Old Rome, 87;
• ciborium of, 109;
• ciborium of Sixtus IV., 189;
• cloister of, 111;
• colonnades of, 347;
• column from Confessio, 124;
• condemned by Nicholas V., 115;
• Confessio of, 53, 87, 93, 107, 121, 124, 125, 128, 133, 185, 340;
• cradle of Christendom for twelve hundred years, 113, 115, 140;
• cross from the gable of, 137, 189;
• Crypt of, 138-189;
• in the Crypt of St. Peter’s, 137, 181;
• dedicated to St. Paul as well as St. Peter, 133;
• destroyed by Julius II., 115, 172, 357;
• destruction of, 115, 142, 199;
• eighty-six Popes buried in, 96, 142, 159;
• eighty-six tombs of the Popes destroyed by Bramante, 142, 159;
• epitaph of Charlemagne over the tomb of Hadrian I., 118, 119;
• epitaph of Hadrian I., not written by Charlemagne, 119;
• erected by Constantine the Great, 140;
• the façade of, 98, 187;
• the façade of, painting of, 187;
• its floor intact in Grotte Vecchie, 117, 181;
• first rumoured to be dangerous under Nicholas V., 141;
• foundation of the present church, 142;
• the fountain (Cantharus), 86, 99, 107, 111;
• frescoes of the old basilica, 93;
• frescoes of, in S. Martino ai Monte, 292;
• frescoes of shrines preserved in the Crypt of, 136, 187;
• its garden, 111;
• gold and silver treasures given by Hadrian I. in, 101;
• had five gates, 112;
• incongruity of its materials, 97;
• interior as indicated by Giulio Romano’s “Donation of Constantine,” 110;
• inscriptions from, 117;
• inscriptions of Boniface VIII. on the occasion of the first jubilee (1300 A.D.), 118;
• inscriptions of Gregory II., 118;
• like S. Clemente, 96;
• the Madonna della Colonna from, 126;
• the Madonna di Soccorso, from, 126;
• the model of, 88;
• more like St. Ambrogio at Milan, 96;
• mosaics of, 98, 111, 113, 134, 188;
• the most important remains are to be seen in the Crypt, 132;
• the museum of, 88;
• the museum is the Crypt of the present church, 88;
• narthex, use of, 107, 111;
• the only undisturbed remains, 107;
• an original Constantinian church, 97;
• the outward and visible sign of the Apostolic Succession, 114;
• paintings of, 88;
• the peacocks of, 98, 291;
• the Pigna, 99;
• the Pigna, compared by Dante to Nimrod’s head, 99;
• porch of, 312;
• Porta Argentea, 112;
• Porta Guidonea, 112;
• Porta Judicii or Janua Judicii, 112;
• Porta Romana, 112;
• Porta Ravignana, or Ravennata, 112;
• its portico from the Ælian Bridge, 101;
• portico from the Tiber to, 102;
• its precious marbles, 97;
• in Raffaelle’s tapestries, 111;
• its relics, 113, 121;
• its great relics—Head of St. Andrew, Holy Lance, relics of St. Peter and St. Paul, Volto Santo, 121;
• remains of, 117;
• its sanctity, 114;
• on the site of the execution of St. Peter, 95;
• the Tabernacle of Christendom, 116;
• Temple of Christianity, 189;
• tombs of the Popes, 159;
• its treasures, 105, 109, 113;
• treasures given by Pope Honorius, 113;
• treasures given by Leo IV., 109;
• its venerableness, 113, 114;
• vestibule of, 287.
• Old St. Peter’s and St. Peter’s Crypt, 88.
• Oliphant, Mrs., 215, 217.
• S. Optatus of Milevum, 130.
• Oratory of SS. Sudario. See John vii.’s Chapel of the Volto Santo.
• Oratory of S. Veronica. See John vii.’s Chapel of the Volto Santo.
• Oriental alabaster, 340.
• Orosius, Bishop, 123.
• Orsini, Cardinal, 124.
• Orsini, Gian Gaetani (Pope Nicholas III.), 57, 161.
• Orsini, Vincenzo Maria (see Benedict XIII.), 78.
• Orvieto, 164, 173;
• Cathedral of, 354;
• Etruscan tomb, with all its properties untouched, 392;
• fortress of, 164;
• full of old Romanesque houses, 173.
• Osiris changed into the god Apis, 372.
• Ostia and Velletri, frescoes from castle of, 240.
• Otranto School, 237.
• Otto, 86.
• Otto II., Emperor, 92, 93, 134, 175, 176, 184;
• font not the cover of the sarcophagus of, 127, 175;
• tomb of, 127, 175, 176, 184;
• tomb said to be a fountain at the Quirinale, 176.
• Otto III., Emperor, 127, 176;
• buried in Cathedral of Aix-la-Chapelle, 128.
• Ottoboni, Cardinal, 227.
• Ottoboni Collection, 36, 219, 224.
• Ottoboni, Pietro (Pope Alexander VIII.), 78.
• Pagan Emperors, legends connecting Christianity with, 123.
• Pagan sarcophagi, often used for Christians, 152.
• Painting is not like literature, 404;
• the three noblest conceptions of the Son of God in, 311.
• Paintings, ancient, 239;
• from the Odyssey, 240;
• from Villa at Tor Marancia, 240.
• Palæologus, Thomas, 172, 193.
• Palafrenieri, 301.
• Palatina, Biblioteca, 77, 218, 219.
• Palatine, The, 6, 13, 17, 38, 39, 105, 372.
• Palatine Guards, 22.
• Palatine Library. See Biblioteca Palatina.
• Palatine MS. of Seventh-Century Virgil, 230.
• Palazzo di Venezia, 60, 154, 161.
• Palazzolo Acreide in Sicily, 394.
• Palermo, Royal Chapel of, 98, 112, 184, 366;
• Spanish fortifications at, 284.
• Palestrina, 168, 279, 399.
• Palimpsests, 218, 227, 228, 264, 271, 272;
• from the Benedictine Library of Bobbio, 218.
• Paliotto, 109;
• of the high altar, 185.
• Pallavicino, Cardinal, 310.
• Pallium, 121, 144, 145.
• Palo (station for Caere), 388.
• Pamfili, family of, 77, 146;
• Giambattista (Pope Innocent X.), 77.
• Pantheon, The, 106, 185, 346, 349;
• granted by Phocas to Boniface IV., 185;
• consecrated to S. Maria ad Martyres, 185;
• spurious chest of S. Veronica’s Handkerchief, 124;
• thirty waggon-loads of martyrs’ bones brought here from the Catacombs, 185.
• Panvinio, 215.
• Papal carriages, arms of the new Pope placed on all the, 295;
• very few of them go back beyond Pius IX., 295.
• Papal Court, 3, 8, 23, 268, 302.
• Papal Cross, 301.
• Papal Curia. See Papal Court.
• Papal Gendarmes, 323.
• Papal Guards. See Noble Guards, Swiss Guard, Papal Gensdarmes.
• Papal grooms. See Palafrenieri.
• Papal hat, 300, 301.
• Papal litter, 300.
• Papal pages, 301.
• Papal Palace, old, 355.
• Papal printing-press. See Vatican Press.
• Papal States, 335.
• Papal territory, 281.
• Papal umbrella, 302.
• La Papauté et la Civilization, xvii.
• Papier-mâché work, 354.
• Papiri, Cabinet of the, 236.
• Papiri of the Vatican Library, 246.
• Papyrus, 243.
• Paradise, Adam and Eve and the Serpent in, 151.
• Parentucelli, Tommaso (Pope Nicholas V.), 13, 163, 191.
• Paride de Grassi, 310.
• “Parnassus,” The, 30.
• Paschal II., 181.
• Paschal III., 107.
• Pasha, Khedive Ibrahim. See Khedive.
• Passeggiata Margherita, 50.
• St. Paul, execution of, 148;
• of the late Roman frescoes and Byzantine mosaics, 148;
• martyrdom of, 133;
• of Pollaiuolo, 148;
• traditional portrait of, 148.
• Paul II. (Barbo), 59, 92, 96, 148, 161, 214;
• collection of classical and mediæval antiquities of, 163;
• desired to be buried in the sarcophagus of S. Costanza, which he had removed to the Palazzo di Venezia, 163;
• had the finest tomb of the Middle Ages, 92, 134, 154, 161;
• the handsomest of the Popes, 162;
• sarcophagus of, 92, 163;
• mausoleum of, 134, 154, 161, 163;
• re-creating tomb of, 154, 155, 162;
• wishes to take the name of Formosus (The Beautiful), 162;
• taste for dress and jewels, 163;
• vanity of, 162.
• Paul III. (Alessandro Farnese), 9, 32, 57, 71, 321, 325, 337, 343, 344, 379;
• and the building of St. Peter’s, 337;
• melts the ancient jewels of Thermantia, 337, 343;
• tomb of, destroyed, 337.
• Paul IV. (Giovanni Pietro Caraffa), 71, 204;
• has clothes painted round figures in Michel Angelo’s “Last Judgment,” 72.
• Paul V. (Camillo Borghese), 75, 78, 121, 167, 266, 268, 286, 323;
• fountains in the Vatican Gardens of, 286.
• St. Paul’s Without the Walls, 94.
• S. Paulinus of Nola on the Fountain of Old St. Peter’s, 99.
• Pavilion, Hill of the, 16.
• Pavilion of Pius IV. See Pius IV., Casino of.
• Pecci, Cardinal Joachim (Pope Leo XIII.), q.v.
• Pelasgic style of Etruscan jewellery, 398.
• Pentecost by Domenichino, 327.
• Peonies, wild, 282.
• Pepin the Short, King, 173.
• Peretti, Felice (Pope Sixtus V.), 73.
• Perotti, 207.
• Perotto, Nicola (same as above), 165.
• Perugino, 30, 60, 314, 325, 330, 370, 375, 387;
• his frescoes over altar of Sistine Chapel, 60, 71, 314, 330, 370;
• unidentified disciple of, 355.
• Perusia (Perugia), 387.
• St. Peter, buried in the place of his martyrdom, 50;
• denying Christ, 150;
• epistle of, 55;
• execution of, 38, 47, 133, 136, 148;
• site of execution of, 47-55, 64, 73, 148, 175, 282;
• execution of, site of, not at S. Pietro in Montorio, 50, 175;
• founds the Roman Church, 55;
• holding three keys is significant of Church triumphant, militant, and suffering, 184;
• liberation of, 30;
• martyrdom of (see St. Peter, execution of);
• sarcophagus under the Papal altar, 146;
• sarcophagus not under the exact centre of the basilica, 146;
• shrine of, in the crypt, 94, 102;
• superstition about disturbing the grave of, 89, 116, 144;
• throne of, 160.
• St. Peter, chair of, 100, 126, 129, 130, 131, 132;
• bronze, made by Bernini for Alexander VII., 131;
• description of, 131 et seq.;
• exhibited by Pius IX. in the Chapel of the Holy Sacrament, 131;
• in the baptistery, 132;
• Labours of Hercules on, 131;
• not the Sedia Curulis, 132;
• not his seat in the House of Pudens, 130;
• not in the form of a curule chair, but Byzantine, 131;
• sixth century, 131;
• where his original chair is kept, 130.
• St. Peter, statue of, 120, 129, 342;
• afterwards in the Chapel of SS. Processus and Martinian, 121;
• in crypt once a Consul, 137, 155, 188;
• stood formerly in the Oratory of St. Martin, 121.
• St. Peter, tomb of, 89, 94, 95, 96, 109, 121, 130, 132, 140, 146;
• below level of Old St. Peter’s, 141;
• Clement VIII. thinks of opening it, 90, 143;
• closed by Clement VIII., 90, 108, 144, 145;
• erected by Linus and Anacletus, 140;
• examined by Père Grisar, 144;
• in the Via Cornelia, 140;
• its gold cross given by the Empress Helena, 89, 143;
• not sacked by the Saracens, 145;
• present condition of, 145;
• seen by Clement VIII., 89, 143, 146;
• walled over, 141, 144.
• St. Peter in mosaics, 148.
• St. Peter and St. Paul, 148, 150;
• relics of, 121;
• traditional portraits of, 148.
• Peter’s Pence, institution of, 104.
• St. Peter’s tomb as arranged by Constantine the Great, 108.
• St. Peter’s, 9, 19, 33, 101, 102, 140, 141, 261, 294, 322, 337, 339;
• altar of, 102, 306;
• altar of S. Mary of the Column, 186;
• anarchist outrage in, 89;
• archives of, 344;
• baldachin of, 348;
• baldachini, 110;
• baptistery of, 127;
• basilica of Constantine in, 146;
• Confessio of, 107, 133, 139, 144, 145;
• Confessio of, paving of chamber of, 144;
• seventeenth-century mosaic in Confessio of, 146;
• thirteenth-century mosaic in Confessio of, 146;
• date of founding, 94;
• in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, 106;
• Ethelwulf’s gifts to, 104;
• font of, 127, 175, 176;
• Klaczko wrong about font of, 175;
• finest mediæval monument in, 126;
• gallery of, 33, 322;
• high altar of, 110;
• high altar erected by Sixtus IV. over the Confessio, 133;
• the hive of Christendom, 286;
• Illumination of, 351;
• little above the level of the Tiber, 142;
• nave of, 91;
• Needle (“Aguglia di S. Pietro”), 74;
• New, 141, 154;
• New, foundation laid by Julius, 11, 141;
• Old (see Old St. Peter’s);
• Papal altar of, 102, 109, 110, 341;
• Papal entrance from the Vatican to, 125;
• Piazza of, 10, 20, 49, 59, 73, 75, 78, 281, 317, 322, 347;
• view of, from the Piazza of St. Peter’s, 281;
• porch of, 33, 102; roof of, 346;
• roof of, makes a huge Piazza, 347;
• no houses on roof of, 346;
• sacristy of, 9, 52, 57, 73, 125, 339, 340, 342, 344, ix;
• sacristy contains celebrated Vatican cross, 128;
• site of, 115;
• Tesoro of (treasure) (see Treasury);
• tomb, chamber of, 144;
• tomb of Innocent VIII., 126;
• tribune of, 100, 126;
• view of, from garden of Pope, 280, 286.
• St. Peter’s, bronze statue of St. Peter in, 129;
• not the statue of Jupiter of Capitolinus, 120;
• may have been made from Jupiter’s statue, 120;
• may be fifth-century, but more probably sixth-century work, 120;
• is twelve hundred years old, 129.
• St. Peter’s, Crypt of, 1, 88, 90, 92, 93, 117, 132, 133, 134, 136, 137, 138-189, viii;
• early Christian remains in the, 152;
• entrances to, 139;
• faith as well as monuments in the, 137;
• lectures on, 90, 138;
• part of the old basilica, 132;
• seen by torchlight till Pius X.’s time, 90.
• St. Peter’s, dome of, 345-352, ix;
• ascent of, by spiral plane, 345, 348;
• ascent should not be missed, 350;
• cost and number of people employed on, 349;
• cupola of, 349;
• diameter of, 346;
• exterior of, 348;
• height of, 346;
• finished by Giacomo della Porta, 349;
• finished in twenty-two months, 349;
• gallery running round the, 349;
• Michel Angelo’s dome, 349;
• mosaics of, 348;
• permission to ascend, 345;
• must be visited between 8 a.m. and 11 a.m., 345;
• and Spanish Armada begun almost simultaneously, 350;
• view of mountains from, 347.
• Petrarca, 271.
• Petrarch, autograph of, 228.
• Pharos, Great, 102.
• Phidias, 40.
• Philip le Bel of France, 168, 170.
• Philip IV., of Spain, 326.
• Phocas grants the Pantheon to Boniface IV., 185.
• Phœnicia, 398.
• Piccolomini, Æneas Sylvius (Pius II.), 61, 92, 170, 376.
• Piccolomini, Francesco (Pius III.), 62.
• Picture gallery, 7.
• Pictures, mediæval, in the Vatican Library, 236.
• Pier, 139.
• San Pietrini, or steeple-jacks of St. Peter’s, 346, 347;
• do not live on roof of St. Peter’s, 347.
• S. Pietro, Church of, 54.
• S. Pietro e Marcellino, 94.
• S. Pietro in Montorio, 50, 175;
• is under the protection of Spain, 50.
• Pigna, 42, 99, 291, 292.
• Pigna, Giardino della. See Giardino.
• Pignatelli, Antonio (Pope Innocent XII.), 78.
• Pilate, 122, 150.
• Pilgrims, 56, 147, 284;
• sometimes hold special services in the Chapel of the Tomb in the Crypt, 147;
• offerings of the, 106.
• Pinacoteca, 31, viii.
• Pincian Hill, 290.
• Pinturicchio, 7, 27, 28, 60, 61, 84, 170, 229, 236, 314, 330, 354, 362, 363, 365-383, 385;
• Alexander VI.’s letter to, 356;
• beautiful backgrounds of, 369, 373, 374;
• frescoes by, 170, 173, 314, 330;
• frescoes in the library of Siena by, 170, 314, 376;
• his increasing popularity, 354;
• his pupils, 355;
• masterpiece by, 355, 375;
• paintings in the Castle of S. Angelo by, 356;
• paintings in the Vatican by, 355;
• school of, 363;
• splendour of his Borgia Apartments’ paintings, 356.
• Pistolesi’s Il Vaticano Descritto ed Illustrato, xviii.
• Pitti Palace at Florence, 341;
• monstrances in the, 338.
• Pius II. (Æneas Sylvius Piccolomini), 61, 92, 152, 170, 171, 172, 192, 376;
• and Pius III., their bodies transferred to S. Andrea della Valle, 172;
• his career, 171, 172;
• did nothing to the Vatican Library, 215;
• in his reign the Head of St. Andrew brought to Rome, 172, 182;
• has an ancient sarcophagus, decorations on it, 170;
• his passion to destroy Turkish power, 172.
• Pius III. (Francesco Piccolomini), 62, 152, 172;
• the last Pope buried in Old St. Peter’s, 172;
• sarcophagus of, 172;
• his work as a Pope, 172.
• Pius IV. (Giovanni Angelo de’ Medici), 268, 288, 357;
• Casino of, 2, 61, 72, 288, 289, 290;
• brilliant soirées in the Casino of, 289;
• description of Casino of, 289;
• rescued the Borgia Rooms, 357.
• S. Pius V. (Michele Ghislieri), 72, 268.
• Pius VI. (Angelo Braschi), 24, 78, 79, 81, 179, 219, 222, 269, viii;
• builds the Vatican Sculpture Gallery, 79;
• no tomb in St. Peter’s, 80;
• a prisoner, 80;
• statue of, in Confessio of Vatican, 80, 144, 146.
• Pius VII. (Chiaramonti Pope), 24, 25, 40, 42, 81, 82, 219, 226, 235, 238, 310, 332, 358, 360, viii;
• founder of the Egyptian Museum, 82;
• founder of the Gallery of Inscriptions, 82, 235;
• founder of the Museo Chiaramonti, 81;
• a great embellisher of the Vatican, 81;
• a prisoner in France, 82, 332;
• visits France in 1804 to crown Napoleon, 82.
• Pius VIII. (Francesco Saverio Castiglione), 83, 289.
• Pius IX. (Giovanni Maria Mastai-Ferretti), 3, 19, 21, 30, 39, 84, 130, 219, 226, 277, 293, 294, 295, 296, 297, 298, 308, 359, viii;
• all his carriages have the same peculiarity, 295;
• beloved of the Romans, 84;
• buys library of Cardinal Mai, 277;
• driving out in state, 296;
• drove in a cavalcata, 298;
• first Pope to “pass the years of St. Peter,” 84;
• his postillion the cicerone of the coach-house, 295;
• Sultan confers a diamond order on the mule of, 297;
• his use of tobacco, 296;
• præcordia of, 178;
• præcordia of, buried near the three Stuarts, 178;
• tiara of, 335.
• Pius X., 88, 89, 280, 285;
• arms of, 304;
• tiara of, 335.
• Plantin printing-press at Antwerp, 244.
• Platina, the famous librarian of the Vatican, 161, 215, 216.
• Platner, 120.
• Pliny, illustrated MS. of, 227.
• Plutarch, with notes by Grotius, from Queen Christina’s library, 227.
• Poggio Bracciolini. See Bracciolini.
• Pollaiuolo, Antonio, 61, 125, 126.
• Pollaiuolo, Matteo, 53, 93, 133, 148, 149, 185;
• and the screen for the old Confessio, 93, 185;
• as an artist, 93;
• Confessio of, 93, 133, 148;
• his “St. Paul,” 148;
• not to be confused with Antonio and Pietro, 148.
• Pollaiuolo, Pietro, 126.
• Polycletus, 44.
• Pompeii, 238, 314.
• Pompey, Theatre of, 217.
• Pompilius, Numa, 2, 282.
• Pons Neronianus, 48.
• Pons Triumphalis, 48.
• Pons Vaticanus, 48.
• Ponte Molle, 161.
• Pontifical of Cardinal Ottoboni, 227.
• Pontifical registers, 267.
• Pontificalis, Liber, 51, 95, 267.
• Pope, the, 22;
• apartments of, 12, 19, 21, 43, 73, 74, 328, 357;
• apartments of, founded by Urban VIII., 77;
• chrism boxes of, 335;
• coach-house of, 4, 37, 294-308;
• garden of the, 1, 10, 16, 37;
• classical garden of the, 280, 281;
• garden, oranges in, 280;
• who saw St. Peter’s tomb (see Clement VIII.), 89, 94;
• private tapestries of, 8, 325, ix;
• riding in the cavalcata, the, 298;
• Sacrist of, 329;
• shoes of, 331;
• stockings of, 332;
• vesting chamber of, 327;
• temporary tomb of the late, 126;
• tiara of (see Tiara).
• Pope-King, 11.
• Popes, list of, xix-xxiv;
• English, 92, 173;
• departure of to Avignon, 267;
• in exile, viii;
• of fifteenth and sixteenth century, generous embellishers of the Vatican, 62;
• palace of (see Vatican);
• tombs from Old St. Peter’s, 159, viii;
• white mule, harness for, 297;
• triple crown of the, 136, 335, 343.
• Pope’s entrance to St. Peter’s from the Vatican, 125;
• four state progresses before 1870, 304;
• Mass, 23;
• palace at Castel Gandolfo, 281;
• Secretary of State, Cardinal Merry del Val (see Secretary of State and Merry del Val).
• Porphyry, 127, 180.
• Porta, Giuseppe della, 318.
• Porta, S. Paolo, 51.
• Porta Viridaria, 58.
• Porticus Julii, 38.
• Portone di Bronzo, 10, 15, 20, 32, 119, 308, 317.
• Portone di Ferro, 10.
• Potter, Miss Mary Knight, xii.
• Pottery, Berlin, 226;
• Swiss, 224, 226.
• Pozzolana, Romans destroyed ancient buildings for their, 68.
• Præneste casket, 402.
• Præneste, collection in the Museo Kircheriano, 402.
• Prague, 218.
• Praxiteles, 40.
• Preachings, 23.
• Pretender, Old, 91, 345.
• Pretender, Young, 91.
• Prignano, Bartolommeo (Urban VI.), 160, 161.
• Prime Minister, Pope’s, 26.
• Principe Assistente al Soglio, 158.
• Principi Assistenti of the Papal Throne, 301.
• Printed Books, Library of. See Library.
• Printing, discovery of, 134.
• S. Priscilla, Catacomb of, 130.
• Propaganda, 76.
• Protestant Germans in 1527, destruction done by, 70.
• Prudentius, poem of, 100.
• Pudens, House of, 131;
• magisterial chair of, 131.
• Pyramid of Caius Cestius, 51.
• Quadrivium, 380.
• Quintian meadows, viii, 46.
• Quintilian, 201.
• Quirinale, 176, 300, 340.
• “Quod non fecerunt Barbari, fecerunt Barberini,” 76.
• Raccolta, Prima, Seconda, Terza, 256.
• Raffaelle, 5, 21, 26, 29, 43, 60, 309-316, 327, 328, 370, 381, 387;
• appointed architect of St. Peter’s by Leo X., 66;
• Apostles of the type of the Salvationists of to-day, 311;
• Bible of, 23;
• calls the Romans more destructive than the Goths, 68;
• “Hours” of, 26, 384;
• laments destruction of ancient Rome, 68, 69;
• and his pupils, charming frescoes by them in the bathroom of Cardinal Bibiena, 29, 382.
• Raffaelle’s cartoons bought by Charles I., in Flanders, 309;
• “Cupid and Psyche,” 365;
• illustrated plan of Rome, 66;
• letter to Leo X., 66, 67;
• Loggie, 7, 12, 23, 31, 65, 73, 235, 328, ix;
• masterpiece, 66, 311;
• “Miraculous Draught of Fishes,” 312;
• pupils, 31, 364, 383;
• “School of Athens,” 365, 381;
• Stanze, 7, 30, 31, 71, 357, 365, 384;
• “St. Peter healing the Paralytic at the Beautiful Gate of the Temple,” 312.
• Raffaelle’s tapestries, 60, 65, 111, 309-316, ix;
• “The Adoration of the Magi,” 313;
• bought by Pius VII., 310;
• of the “Calling of St. Peter,” 311;
• the cartoons originally intended for the Loggie, 309;
• “Conversion of St. Paul,” 313;
• cost of, according to Lanciani, 309;
• “Death of Ananias,” 313;
• first hung in the Sistine Chapel, 60, 310;
• glorious in colour and dignity, 311;
• inferiority of those designed by his pupils, 313;
• injured in the Constable of Bourbon’s sack of Rome, 310;
• “Massacre of the Innocents,” 313;
• the most beautiful, 312;
• not to be missed, 314;
• “The Sacrifice of Lystra,” 312;
• sold by the French to a Genoese Jew, 310;
• “The Stoning of Stephen,” 313;
• “St. Paul in Prison at Philippi,” 313.
• Raffaelle’s “Transfiguration,” 32.
• Ravenna, 236;
• inhabitants of Trastevere sprung from, 112.
• Reading-rooms, 39.
• Red Sea, passage of, 151.
• Regulini-Galassi tomb yielded the golden treasures which are the glory of the Gregorian Museum, 393, 397, 399.
• Remus, Meta of, 51.
• Renaissance, 72, 190;
• most classical work of, 72;
• object of the Earlier Italian, 202.
• “Resurrection, The” (fresco), 367.
• “Il Retiro del Giulio II.,” 382.
• Reverenda Fabbrica di S. Pietro, 309, 345.
• Rezzonico, Carlo (Pope Clement XIII.), 78.
• Rezzonico, Prince, 298.
• Rhampsinitus (Rameses), 212.
• “Rhetoric,” 380.
• Rhodes, Knights of St. John at, 62.
• Riario, Cardinal, 216, 217;
• extravagance of, 217;
• garden of, 278.
• Riccardi Chapel. See Chapels.
• Ricci, Corrado, 355, 356, 359, 360, 377, 378, 379, 380, x;
• admits the skill with which Seitz worked, 360;
• his book on Pinturicchio, 360, xvi;
• his coloured reproductions of Pinturicchio, 378;
• disagrees with Ehrle, 360.
• Rienzi, Cola di, 177, 342.
• Ristori, Fra, 58.
• Robes of Popes and Cardinals, 332.
• Robes presented to Leo XIII. for his Jubilee, 333;
• worn by the Pope on his throne on the Sedia Gestatoria, 336.
• Robing-rooms, Cardinals’, 8, 25;
• Pope’s, 8, 26, 327.
• Rochet, 301.
• “Roma caput mundi regit orbis frena rotundi,” 190.
• Roman art, little pictures which border great pictures, 314.
• Roman frescoes, 148.
• Roman portrait busts, 150.
• Roman Triumph, 299.
• Romano, Giulio, 30, 228.
• Romano, MS. sixth-century Virgil, 230.
• Romano, Paulo, 156, 184.
• Romans, ancient, did not allow burials in the city grounds, 111;
• tombs spared by the, 55.
• “Rome centre de la Renaissance, et mère de toute civilization!” 190.
• Rome, decorations for birthday of, 298;
• founders of, 281;
• panorama of, from the dome of St. Peter’s, 346;
• sack of, 113;
• sack of, by the Constable of Bourbon, in 1527, 70, 214.
• Romescot, 105.
• Romulus, birthday of, 280;
• meta of, 52, 120;
• and Remus, tombs of, 51, 120.
• Room of the Papiri. See Hall of the Papiri.
• Rospigliosi, Giulio (Pope Clement IX.), 78.
• Rosselli, Cosimo, 60.
• Rossellino, Antonio, the heavenly sculptor, 141.
• Rossellino, Bernardo, 141.
• De Rossi, 130, 260, 264;
• of the day, xvii, 128;
• permitted by Pius IX. to see the Chair of St. Peter, 130.
• Rotonda, 79.
• Rouen Cathedral, spire of, 346.
• Rovere, M. Bartolommeo della, 69.
• Rovere, Count Girolamo, 216, 217.
• Rovere, Cardinal Giuliano della, 216, 217.
• Rovere, Francesco della, 65.
• Roveres, della, 10, 12, 60.
• “Il Rovinante,” 96, 142.
• Rudolf of Burgundy, 105.
• Ruland, bibliophile Canon, Antonio, 256.
• Russian Calendar, 237.
• Sacramentary of Boniface IX., 229.
• Sacred Way, 3, 299.
• Sacristan, 339.
• Sacristies, their accessibility, 339, 344.
• Sacristy of St. Peter’s. See St. Peter’s, Sacristy of.
• Sacristy, Sistine, 9.
• Sagrestia Commune, 339.
• Sagrestia dei Beneficiati, 340.
• Sagrestia dei Canonici, 339.
• Sala degli Animali, 41, 79.
• Sala delle Arti Liberali, 361, 378.
• Sala delle Arti e Scienze, 28, 378, 379, 380, 381.
• Sala della Beatificazione, 11.
• Sala della Biga, 19, 42, 79, 386.
• Sala dei Bussolanti, 22.
• Sala dei Busti, 41.
• Sala Clementina, 22.
• Sala del Concistorio, 12.
• Sala di Consultazione, 258, 260.
• Sala di Costantino, 31.
• Sala del Credo, 11, 28, 355, 382.
• Sala a Croce Greca, 41, 79.
• Sala Ducale, 11, 16, 18, 25, 33, 78, 323, 324, 330, ix;
• arch of, 339.
• Sala dell’ Immacolata, 29.
• Sala dei Misteri, 27, 360, 361, 365, 367, 368, 369, 370;
• its frescoes, 365.
• Sala delle Muse, 41, 79.
• Sala dei Palafrenieri, 22, 31.
• Sala del Pappagallo, 25, 33.
• Sala dei Paramenti, 25, 33.
• Sala dei Pontefici, 11, 26, 27, 277, 355, 381, 382, 384;
• its tapestries, 384.
• Sala Regia, built by Antonio di Sangallo, 11, 12, 16, 32, 71, 73, 317, 318, 330, ix.
• Sala Rotonda, 41, 79.
• Sala delle Sibylle, 11, 29, 355, 380, 382;
• not the work of Pinturicchio, 382.
• Sala Sistina, 5, 38, 39, 220, 223, 236, 254, 255, 256, 258, 260, 261.
• Sala della Vita Madonna, 11, 27.
• Sala delle Vite dei Santi, 11, 27, 371, 372, 377.
• Salviati, Prince, 300.
• Sancta Sanctorum, 161.
• Sangallo, Antonio da, 32, 71, 318, 321.
• Sano di Pietro, 236.
• Sansovino, 378.
• Sant’ Angelo, Bridge of, 101, 197.
• Sant’ Angelo, Castle of, 2, 71, 177, 267, 355, 356, 378;
• converted into a first-class mediæval fortress, 355;
• passage from the Vatican to, 355.
• Santa Croce, Princess, 298.
• Santi di Tito, 288.
• Santo Spirito, 48.
• Saracens, 102, 109, 283;
• defeat of at Ostia, 30;
• sack of the ninth century, 109.
• Sarcophagus, the finest Christian Roman, 152;
• open, full of flowers—design used by Pinturicchio, Perugino, Raffaelle, 370.
• Sarzana, 6, 17, 57, 163, 165, 191, 200, 214.
• Sarzana, Thomas of, 57, 165, 191, 200, 214.
• Savonarola, 174, 356.
• Saxon china, 235.
• Saxon kings, 103;
• become monks, 103;
• urns of, 110.
• Saxon schools, 105.
• Saxons had a church, the, 106.
• Scala Nobile, 19, 41, 42, 79.
• Scala Pia, 15, 19, 21.
• Scala Regia, by Bernini, 11, 19, 29, 32, 77, 78, 317, 321.
• Scala Santa, 161.
• Scarabæi, agate, 400;
• revolving, 401.
• “Scherzi d’acqua,” 291.
• Schism, Great, 268.
• “School of Athens,” 30, 365, 381.
• Scipio, tomb of, 120.
• Scorpions and serpents in Cerveteri tombs, 395.
• Scrinium, 267.
• Scriptorum veterum nova collectio, 273.
• Scrittori, 221, 358.
• Sculpture, fragments of pagan, 97, 98.
• Sculpture Gallery. See Museum of Sculpture.
• San Sebastian of the Borgia Rooms, 28, 372.
• S. Sebastian, Church of, on the Palatine, 373.
• Secretary of State, Cardinal, 7, 15, 26, 27, 28, 326, 379;
• reception rooms of, 8, 379.
• Sedia Curulis, 132.
• Sedia Gestatoria, 9, 132, 302, 323, 336.
• Segretario della Reverenda Fabbrica di S. Pietro, 138.
• Seitz, Commendatore Ludivico, art director of the Vatican, 221, 316, 359, 360;
• his restoration of the Borgia Rooms, only one considerable alteration of the pictures in, 360.
• Seneca, 228.
• Sermonetti, 81.
• Serpotta, Giacomo, 320;
• exquisite stucchi of, 320.
• Sèvres vases, 39, 225.
• Sicily, a sarcophagus used three times in, 153.
• Siena, 170.
• Siena, Cathedral Library of, frescoes of, 27, 61, 84, 170, 210, 314, 365, 384.
• Signorelli, Luca, 30, 60.
• Silius Italicus, 201.
• Silvagni, 343 (note 21), xvi.
• S. Silvester, Pope, 180.
• Sistine Chapel. See Chapels.
• Sistine Treasury. See Treasury, Sistine.
• Sisto, Fra, 58.
• Sixte-Quint, 236.
• Sixtus, 11, 211.
• Sixtus IV. (della Rovere), builder of the Sistine Chapel, 16, 53, 60, 102, 125, 133, 204, 215, 216, 267, 269, 362, 378;
• appointed Platina director of the Vatican Library, 215;
• ciborium of, 157, 189;
• ciborium of, all its Twelve Apostles preserved, 189;
• nephews of, 217;
• his Vatican Library (now the Floreria), 216 (note 14).
• Sixtus V. (Felice Peretti), 31, 38, 49, 73, 74, 218, 226, 242, 248, 266, 305, 349, 357;
• builds Library of Vatican across Cortile del Belvedere, 64;
• Library of, ix.
• Small Cabinets, Room of, 36.
• Sobieska, tomb of Maria Clementina, 345.
• Sodoma, 30.
• Solomon, Temple of, 124.
• Sophia, Hagia, 87.
• Soracte, Bernard of, 129.
• Soutane, kept ready for the new Pope, 286.
• Spada e cappa, 23.
• Spicilegium Romanum, 273.
• S. Spirito, 106.
• Spogliatoio, 25.
• Spoleto, fortress of, 164.
• S.P.Q.R., 299.
• Spurina, 387.
• Squills, 3, 293.
• Stables, 37.
• Stadium of Domitian. See Domitian.
• Staircase to the Museo Pio-Clementino, 19.
• Staircase from the Vatican to St. Peter’s, 34.
• Staircases, 15, 19.
• Stamperia, or printing-house, 255.
• Stanza Capitolare. See Chapter House.
• Stanza d’Eliodoro, 30.
• Stanza dell’ Incendio, 30.
• Stanza dei Papiri, 36, 236.
• Stanza della Segnatura, 30.
• Stanze. See Raffaelle.
• State banquets, 326.
• Statue, Galleria delle. See Galleria.
• Steeplejacks. See Pietrini, San.
• Stefaneschi, Cardinal, 128.
• Steinmann, 259.
• Stephania, widow of Crescentius, kills Otto, 128.
• Stephen II., 100.
• Stilicho, 100, 282, 343.
• Stone on which the bodies of St. Peter and St. Paul were divided, 134, 180.
• Stone-pines, 3, 290, 293.
• La Storta Fornella (station for Veii), 388.
• Story, Mr. W. W., xvi.
• St. Peter’s. See Peter’s, St.
• Strada di Monte Mario, 48.
• Stuart Princes, last three, 91;
• monument of the, 345;
• tomb of the, 91.
• Stucchi, 24, 33, 34, 321, 328.
• Students, 24, 254.
• Studio del Mosaico (Mosaic Factory of the Vatican), 254, 305, 306, 307, 308;
• permessi required to see it, 308.
• Summa Theologiæ, 265.
• S. Susanna and the Elders, 373.
• Sweden, Christina of. See Christina.
• Swiss Guard, 8, 10, 16, 22, 26, 35, 300, 303, 323, 326, 353.
• S. Swithin, 104.
• Sylvester, Bishop, 95.
• Symmachus, Pope, 56, 292, viii.
• Symonds, John Addington, 201.
• Tacitus, 48.
• Tanagra, sculptors of, 239.
• Tanagra and Myrina, terra-cotta statuary of, 404.
• Tapestries, 8, 324, 326, 329;
• Pope’s private, 8, 324;
• in the Sala dei Pontefici, 362, 364;
• of Mr. Joseph Whitaker, of Palermo, 326.
• Tarquinii (Corneto), 387, 393;
• acetylene flare at tombs of, 396;
• more than a hundred thousand tombs deep down in the earth, 393.
• Tasso, autograph of, 228;
• MSS. of Gerusalemme Liberata, 228.
• Tempesta, 316.
• Temple of Fortune, 168, 279.
• Temple of Venus and Rome, gilt tiles, 101.
• Templum Probi, 100, 125.
• Temporal power, 10, 17, 34, 135, 304, 340;
• its abolition, vii.
• Temporal sovereignty, 322.
• Terence of the ninth century, 227.
• Terence of the fourth century, the oldest known, 227.
• Terra-cottas, Room of the, 36.
• Terza Raccolta, 256.
• Tesoro of St. Peter’s. See Treasury.
• Theodore de Beza, 251.
• Theodore de Gaza, 165, 206.
• Theodosius, 95.
• Theophylactus, first great Pontifical Librarian, 267.
• Thermantia (wife of Honorius), 100, 337, 343;
• treasure in her tomb, 337, 343.
• Thirty-Line Indulgence. See under Nicholas v.
• Thirty-One-Line Indulgence. See under Nicholas v.
• Thirty Years’ War, 180, 218.
• Throne, Papal, 23.
• Throne in the Chapel of S. Maria della Bocciata, 94.
• Tiara, the Papal, 167, 211, 335;
• how the three crowns were added, 335, 343;
• origin of the Papal, 342.
• Tiara of the Popes, 34, 335.
• Tiara of Paul III., 337.
• Tiara of St. Peter’s statue, 342.
• Tiara worn by Pius VII. in his captivity, 332.
• Tiara, triple-crowned, 211, 343.
• Tiber, 347.
• Tiberius, 121, 122;
• becomes a tyrant on refusal of Senate to enroll Christ among the gods, 123;
• miraculous cure of, 122.
• Tibur of Horace, 83.
• Tiles, old Borgia, 382.
• Tilly, 218.
• Titus, Baths of, 315, 327.
• Tivoli, Villa d’Este at, 279.
• Tolentino, Treaty of, 81.
• Tomb of Maria Clementina Sobieska, 345.
• Tomb paintings, 393 et seq.
• Tomb of Popes, temporary. See Popes, Temporary Tomb of.
• Tomb of St. Stephen and St. Lawrence, 210.
• Tomb of the wives of the Emperor Honorius, 57, 337, 342.
• Tombs, classical, 53.
• Tombs of Popes destroyed by Julius II., 115.
• Tor Marancia, paintings from Villa at, 240.
• Torre Borgia, 16, 29, 36, 355, 381, 382.
• Torri, Fontana della, 287.
• Torso of Hercules, 41, 65;
• Vestibule of the (see Vestibule).
• Toscanella, Etruscan terra-cotta sarcophagi, 391;
• gardens are full of Etruscan tombs, 391.
• Tournament ground, 63.
• Tournaments, 64.
• Tournaments, courts of, 38.
• Trajan, Baths of, 38.
• Treasury of St. Peter’s, 9, 329, 340, 344.
• Treasury, Sistine, 9, 34, 100, 329, 331-338, 340, ix;
• seventy rooms of plate in the, 337.
• Trebizond, Gregory of, 165, 204.
• Trent, Council of, 244, 247.
• Treves, Archbishopric of, 234.
• Triregno. See Tiara, Triple.
• Triveth, English Dominican, 228.
• Trivium, 379.
• Tuker and Malleson, xiii.
• Turks, 72, 182, 183, 192, 330.
• “Turris unde mare prospicitur,” 284.
• Tuscany, 386;
• London imports ready-made tombs from, 390.
• Tusculum, 282.
• Tyrrhene style of Etruscan jewellery, 398.
• Tyrrhene treasures in the Gregorian Museum, 399.
• Udine, Giovanni da, 5, 21, 24, 25, 315, 327, 364;
• arabesques of, 327;
• Loggia of, 25, 235, 315, 327, 329, ix;
• Pompeian paintings of, 315;
• stuccoes of, 315.
• Uditori of the Rota, 301.
• Ugolini, Monsignor, Scrittore of the Vatican Library, 221, 261, 263, 358.
• Ulphilas, Gothic version by, 276.
• Umbria, artists of, 386.
• Università Gregoriana, 76.
• University, Roman, 160.
• Urban V., or Benedict XII. adds third crown to the Papal Tiara, 167, 343.
• Urban VI. (Prignano Pope), 350;
• cruelty of, 160;
• epitaph of, 161;
• sarcophagus of, 160;
• lions from his tomb adorn the Throne of St. Peter, 160, 188;
• sarcophagus emptied by the workmen building the Dome, 160, 350.
• Urban VII., 75.
• Urban VIII. (Maffeo Barberini), 20, 76, 125, 220, 222, 269, 284, 327;
• ramparts of, 284.
• “Urbi et orbi.” See Blessing of the Popes.
• Urbino Bible, 234.
• “Urbino, A History of the Dukes of,” with miniatures by Giulio Clovio, 230.
• Urbino Library. See Library.
• Vaga, Pierino del, 26, 33, 318, 321, 364.
• Valence, 80, 81.
• Valerii, tombs of the, on the Latin Way, 328.
• Valerius Flaccus, 201.
• Valla calls on Eugenius IV. to abdicate, 205.
• Valla, Lorenzo, 165, 202, 204;
• establishes the spuriousness of the Donation of Constantine, 205;
• his strictures on the Papacy, 205.
• Vandals, 165.
• Varese, Antonio da, 31.
• Varia Politicorum, 269.
• Vasari, 33, 73, 310, 318, 377.
• Vase paintings, their value in study of Ancient Greek life, 403.
• Vase, Vestibule of the. See Vestibule.
• Vases, collection of, 39;
• Greek, 42, 403.
• Vatican, armoury founded by Urban VIII., 77;
• astronomers, work allotted to, 284;
• banquets, 326;
• basilica in the sixth century, 56;
• basilica in the tenth century, what it was like, 86;
• bird’s-eye view of, from Dome of St. Peter’s, 346;
• builders of the: Popes Symmachus, Innocent III. and Nicholas III., 135;
• brick-fields, 284;
• Codex, 7;
• collections of the, 78;
• compared to a beehive, 286;
• the conception due to Nicholas III. and Nicholas V., 57;
• Crypt, 80, 90, 142, 143, 166;
• easternmost portion, 23;
• entrance to the, 19;
• entrance (ordinary) to the, 317;
• genius of the, 41;
• Golden Age of the, 289;
• had its inspiration of the Renaissance from Florence, 190;
• Hall of Conclave, 59;
• to have Imperial Coronations, 59;
• to have Triumphal Gate, 59;
• the Italian Nüremberg, 112;
• the “Light of the World,” 4, 17, 39;
• Loggie of the, 315;
• and the Louvre, dimensions of, 14;
• manuscripts, 38, 234;
• manuscripts, reprints of, 221;
• measurements of the, 14;
• Menologium of the, 231;
• Mosaic Factory (see Studio del Mosaico);
• mosaics: how they are made, 305;
• nomenclature, 11;
• not like a Palace, 12;
• not one of the hills of Rome, 47;
• officials, 28;
• old castle of the Popes, 112;
• oldest part of the, 16;
• origin of name, 282; as a Palace, vii;
• Papal Palace of the, 15, 61, 63, 342, vii;
• Papal residence taken up there after the return from Avignon, 58;
• patronage of scholarship, 17;
• pictures restored by France by mistake to the, 306;
• plan of the, 347;
• Press, 4, 40, 255;
• principal residence of the Popes since thirteenth century, 58;
• quarter, no building in till time of the Emperors, 47;
• sacristy of the, 57;
• sculptures, 82;
• secret places of the, 7;
• statues and pictures taken by Napoleon to Paris, 24, 81;
• tapestries, atelier of, 308;
• treasures returned by the good offices of the English, 83;
• wine, 48, 286.
• Vatican, Art of the, xii.
• Vatican Cross, 128;
• not given by Constantine the Great, 128;
• is Slavonic, presented by S. Cyril and S. Methodius, 129.
• Vatican Gardens, 40, 57, 241, 260, 261, 270, 282, 294, viii;
• audiences in the, 289;
• birds in the, 285;
• boschetto in the, 281;
• characteristics of the, 290;
• fountain in the, 75;
• gem of the, 288;
• general description of the, 278;
• garden-house of the, 72;
• known as the Boscareccio, 278;
• in May and June, 292;
• not wilder than the Bois de Boulogne, 283;
• restrictions of the, 281;
• sylvan, 293;
• wolves killed in the, 58.
• Vatican Hill, 6, 17, 25, 35, 75, 284;
• drainage of the, 93;
• tombs of the, 282.
• Vatican Library, 5, 7, 10, 16, 17, 24, 29, 36, 38, 43, 58, 77, 181, 213 et seq., 242, 253, 256, 257, 266, 305, 358, ix;
• Calixtus III. and the, 214;
• closed season of the, 241;
• Christian paintings in the, 305;
• English books in the, 259;
• founded by Nicholas V., 214, 215;
• Great Hall of the, 74, 242;
• ground plan of the, 223;
• long gallery of the, 14, 220, 223, 236, 294;
• most famous in the world, 213;
• MSS. of, 227, 234, 249;
• MSS. of gold letters described by Montaigne, 245;
• MSS. kept in presses, 224;
• MSS. published by Cardinal Mai, 276;
• not founded by Sixtus IV., 216;
• Paul II. did nothing to the, 215;
• Pius II. did nothing to the, 215;
• proper, 223;
• readers, 258;
• reading-room, 258;
• Sixtus IV. located it under the Sistine Chapel, 215;
• Sixtus IV.’s, now the Floreria, 216;
• started in time to receive first printed books, 214;
• unsatisfactory way in which people are shown over it, 224;
• view of garden from the windows of, 241;
• visitors to, 241;
• what it consists of, 218;
• when open, 241.
• Vatican Palace, the beginnings almost lost in antiquity, 56;
• the largest in the world, 14, 281, 347;
• origin of, 63;
• size of the, 348.
• Vatican Picture Gallery, 216;
• founded out of pictures returned by the French which did not belong to the Pope, 306.
• Vaticane, Notti, 289.
• Vaticinium, 282.
• Velasquez, 146.
• Venetian Archives, 221.
• Venezia, Palazzo di. See Palazzo.
• Venice, Patriarch of, 305.
• S. Veronica, 123;
• a corruption of Vera Icon, 123;
• of the Hagiology, 124;
• handkerchief first mentioned by Bernard of Soracte in eleventh century, 129;
• pier of, 139, 189.
• S. Veronica’s handkerchief (see Volto Santo), 121-124, 139, 151, 185, 186;
• John VII. builds a shrine for it in St. Peter’s, 124;
• story of, 121.
• Vespai, 255.
• Vespasiano da Bisticci (Nicholas V.’s bookseller), 200;
• Nicholas V.’s biographer, 200.
• Vespignani, Count, architect of the Vatican, 221, 255, 359.
• Vestibule of the Meleager, 41.
• Vestibule of the Torso, 41.
• Vestibule of the Vase, 41.
• Vestments, Cardinals’, 34;
• Pope’s, 34.
• Vetralla, 388.
• Via di Aracœli, 138.
• Via Aurelia Nova, 48.
• Via Cornelia, 48, 53, 111, 130.
• Via delle Fondamenta, 35.
• Via Triumphalis, 48.
• Vialone di Belvedere, 35, 36.
• Victoria, Queen, gave Leo XIII. altar service for his Jubilee, 336.
• Vicus Curialis, 59.
• Vie Intime de Pie X., xvii.
• Villa Aldobrandini at Frascati, garden of, 279, 282.
• Villa Belvedere, 61, 75, 82.
• Villa Borghese, 302, 316.
• Villa Doria, 287.
• Villa d’Este at Tivoli, 279.
• Villa Innocent VIII. See Innocent viii.
• Villa Lante, beyond Viterbo, fountain garden in, 278.
• Villa of Leo XIII. See Leo xiii.
• Villa Madama, 315.
• Villa Medici, 290.
• Villa Mills, 383.
• Villa Papa Giulio, 161, 388.
• Villa Pia, a perfect image of an ancient Roman country house, 289.
• Villa Pius IV. See Pius iv.
• Villani, Giovanni, 169.
• Vinci, Leonardo da, 212, 311;
• “Last Supper” at Milan of, 311.
• Violets, 3, 293.
• Virgil of the fourth century, reproduction of the, 260.
• Virgil of the Vatican, 227, 231, 245.
• Virgil, Palatino, MS. of, 230.
• Virgil, Romano, MS. of, 230.
• Virgin, collection of sermons for the feast of the, 233;
• mosaic of the Weeping, 156.
• Viridarium Novum, 58.
• “Visitation, The” (fresco), 374.
• Viterbo, 106, 164, 278, 387;
• fortress of, 164;
• station for Castel d’Asso, Norchia, Bieda, 387.
• Vitruvius, 201.
• Vogüé, xvii.
• Volaterræ (see Volterra), 387.
• Volterra, Daniele da (a pupil of Michel Angelo’s), 33, 320, 331.
• Volterra, Etruscan Museum at, 389;
• interesting for its alabaster sarcophagi, 389.
• Volterra, Etruscan tombs at, 390, 391;
• alabaster, Etruscan, tombs at, 389.
• Volto Santo, 121-124, 129, 136.
• Volusian, 122;
• sends portrait of Jesus to Tiberius, 122.
• Vulci, 43, 388, 403.
• Walls of Rome repaired by Urban VIII., 76, 77.
• Waters, Mr. W. G., 323.
• Watson, Mr. R. W. Seton, 118, 126, 140, 160, 162, 165, 169, 171, 174, 178, xii.
• West Saxons, King of the, 103.
• Whitaker, Mr. Joseph, of Palermo, 326.
• Wilhelm I. of Prussia, 226.
• William, Emperor, 259.
• Wilson, Miss Heath, her library, xviii.
• Winged “Victory” of the Greeks made the standard of our angels through its beauty, 389.
• Wiseman, Cardinal, Recollections of the Last Five Popes and of Rome in their Time, xvi.
• “Wonder of the World, The,” 128.
• “W. Paulus III. Pont. Max. e W. Farnesia Proles,” 379.
• Writers of Greece, 6.
• Writers’ Room (Vatican Library), 39.
• Würzburg, 218, 256.
• Xavier, St. Francis, 75.
• York, Cardinal of. See Henry Stuart.
• Zacagna, Abbot Laur., 249.
• Zacosta, Raymond, 176.
• Zecca, 44, 294.
• Zelada, Cardinal, Library of (see Libraries), 40, 220, 257.
• Zeuxis, 239.
• Zola’s Rome, xv.
• Zuccheri, 33.
• Zucchero, 31, 73, 288, 318.