IT IS STRANGE to leave the history of Rome at the climax to which the ablest and strongest of its modern masters had brought it, when it was the home of the highest ambition, and the loftiest claims in the world, the acknowledged head of one of the two powers which divided that world between them, and claiming a supreme visionary authority over the other also; and to take up that story again (after such a romantic episode as we have just discussed) when its rulers had become but the first among the fighting principalities of Italy, men of a hundred ambitions, not one of which was spiritual, carrying on their visionary sway as heads of the Church as a matter of routine merely, but reserving all their real life and energy for the perpetual internecine warfare that had been going on for generations, and the security of their personal possessions. From Innocent III. to such a man as Eugenius IV., still and always fighting, mixed up with all the struggles of the Continent, hiring Condottieri, marshalling troops, with his whole soul in the warfare, so continuous, so petty, even so bloodless so far as the actual armies were concerned — which never for a moment ceased in Italy: is a change incalculable. Let us judge the great Gregory and the great Innocent as we may, their aim and the purpose of their lives were among the greatest that have ever been conceived by man, perhaps the highest ideal ever formed, though like all high ideals impossible, so long as men are as we know them, and those who choose them are as helpless in the matter of selecting and securing the best as their forefathers were. But to set up that tribunal on earth — that shadow and representation of the great White Throne hereafter to be established in the skies — in order to judge righteous judgment, to redress wrongs, to neutralise the sway of might over right — let it fail ever so completely, is at least a great conception, the noblest plan at which human hands can work. We have endeavoured to show how little it succeeded even in the strongest hands; but the failure was a greater thing than any lesser success — certainly a much greater thing than the desire to be first in that shouting crowd of Italian princedoms and commonwealths, to pit Piccinino and Carmagnola against each other, to set your honour on the stake of an ironbound band of troopers deploying upon a harmless field, in wars which would have been not much more important than tournaments; if it had not been for the ruin and murder and devastation of the helpless peasants and the smitten country on either side.
But the pettier rôle was one of which men tired, as much as they did of that perpetual strain of the greater which required an amount of strength and concentration of mind not given to many, such as could not (and this was the great defect of the plan) be secured for a line of Popes any more than for any other line of men. The Popes who would have ruled the world failed, and gave up that forlorn hope; they were opposed by all the powers of earth, they were worn out by fictions of anti-Popes, and by real and continual personal sufferings for their ideal: — and they did not even secure at any time the sympathy of the world. But when among the vain line of Pontiffs who not for infamy and not for glory, but per se lived, and flitted, a wavering file of figures meaning little, across the surface of the world — there arose a Pope here and there, forming into a short succession as the purpose grew, who took up consciously the aim of making Rome — not Rome Imperial nor yet Rome Papal, which were each a natural power on the earth and Head of nations, but Rome the City — the home of art, the shrine of letters, in another way and with a smaller meaning, yet still meaning something, the centre of the world — their work and position have always attracted a great deal of sympathy, and gained at once the admiration of all men. English literature has not done much justice to the greater Popes. Mr. Bowden’s life of Gregory VII. is the only work of any importance specially devoted to that great ruler. Gregory the Great to whom England owes so much, and Innocent III., who was also, though in no very favourable way, mixed up in her affairs, have tempted no English historian to the labours of a biography. But Leo X. has had a very different fate: and even the Borgias, the worst of Papal houses, have a complete literature of their own. The difference is curious. It is perhaps by this survival of the unfittest, so general in literature, that English distrust and prejudice have been so crystallised, and that to the humbler reader the word Pope remains the synonym of a proud and despotic priest, sometimes Inquisitor and sometimes Indulger — often corrupt, luxurious, or tyrannical — a ruler whose government is inevitably weak yet cruel. The reason of this strange preference must be that the love of art is more general and strong than the love of history; or rather that a decorative and tangible external object, something to see and to admire, is more than all theories of government or morals. The period of the Renaissance is full of horror and impurity, perhaps the least desirable of all ages on which to dwell. But art has given it an importance to which it has no other right.
Curious it is also to find that of all the cities of Italy, Rome has the least native right to be considered in the history of art. No great painter or sculptor, architect or even decorator, has arisen among the Roman people. Ancient Rome took her art from Greece. Modern Rome has sought hers over all Italy — from Florence, from the hills and valleys of Umbria, everywhere but in her own bosom. She has crowned poets, but, since the days of Virgil and Horace, neither of whom were Romans born, though more hers than any since, has produced none. All her glories have been imported. This of course is often the case with her Popes also. Pope Martin V., to whom may be given the first credit of the policy of rebuilding the city, was a native-born Roman; but Pope Eugenius IV., who took up its embellishment still more seriously, was a Venetian, bringing with him from the sea-margin the love of glowing colour and that “labour of an age in pilëd stones” which was so dear to those who built their palaces upon the waters. Nicolas was a Pisan, Pope Leo, who advanced the work so greatly, was a Florentine. But their common ambition was to make Rome a wonder and a glory that all men might flock to see. The tombs of the Apostles interested them less perhaps than most of their predecessors: but they were as strongly bent as any upon drawing pilgrims from the ends of the earth to see what art could do to make those tombs gorgeous: and built their own to be glories too, admired of all the world. These men have had a fuller reward than their great predecessors. Insomuch as the aim was smaller, it was more perfectly carried out; for though it is a great work to hang a dome like that of St. Peter’s in the air, it is easier than to hold the hearts of kings in your hand, and decide the destiny of nations. The Popes who made the city have had better luck in every way than those who made the Papacy. Neither of them secured either the gratitude or even the consent of Rome herself to what was done for her. But nevertheless almost all that has kept up her fame in the world for, let us say, the last four hundred years, was their work.
This period of the history of the great city began when Pope Martin V. concluded what has been called the schism of the West, and brought back the seat of the Papacy from Avignon, where it had been exiled, to Rome. We have seen something of the moral and economical state of the city during that interregnum. Its physical condition was yet more desolate and terrible. The city itself was little more than a heap of ruins. The little cluster of the inhabited town was as a nest of life in the centre of a vast ancient mass of building, all fallen into confusion and decay. No one cared for the old Forums, the palaces ravaged by many an invasion, burned and beaten down, and quarried out, by generations of men to whom the meaning and the memory of their founders was as nothing, and themselves only so many waste places, or so much available material for the uses of the vulgar day. Some one suggests that the early Church took pleasure in showing how entirely shattered was the ancient framework, and how little the ancient gods had been able to do for the preservation of their temples; and with that intention gave them over to desolation and the careless hands of the spoiler. We think that men are much more often swayed by immediate necessities than by any elaborate motive of this description. The ruins were exceedingly handy — every nation in its turn has found such ruins to be so. To get the material for your wall, without paying anything for it, already at your hand, hewn and prepared as nobody then working could do it — what a wonderful simplification of labour! Everybody took advantage of it, small and great. Then, when you wanted to build a strong tower or fortress to intimidate your neighbours, what an admirable foundation were those old buildings, founded as on the very kernel and central rock of the earth! For many centuries no one attempted to fill up those great gaps within the city walls, in which vines flourished and gardens grew, none the worse for the underlying stones that covered themselves thickly with weeds and flowers by Nature’s lavish assistance. Buildings of various kinds, adapted to the necessities of the moment, grew up by nature in all kinds of places, a church sometimes placed in the very lap of an ancient temple. Indeed the churches were everywhere, some of them humble enough, many of great antique dignity and beauty, almost all preserving the form of the basilica, the place of meeting where everything was open and clear for the holding of assemblies and delivery of addresses, not dim and mysterious as for sacrifices of faith.
So entirely was this state of affairs accepted, that there is more talk of repairing than of building in the chronicles; at all times of the Church, each pious Pope undertook some work of the kind, mending a decaying chapel or building up a broken wall; but we hear of few buildings of any importance, even when the era of the builders first began. Works of reparation must have been necessary to some extent after every burning or fight. Probably the scuffles in the streets did little harm, but when such a terrible inundation took place as that of the Normans, and still worse the Saracens, who followed Robert Guiscard in the time of Gregory VII., it must have been the work of a generation to patch up the remnants of the place so as to make it in the rudest way habitable again. It was no doubt in one of these great emergencies that the ancient palaces, most durable of all buildings, were seized by the people, and converted each into a species of rabbit-warren, foul and swarming. It does not appear however that any plan of restoring the city to its original grandeur, or indeed to any satisfactory reconstruction at all, was thought of for centuries. In the extreme commotion of affairs, and the long struggle of the Popes with the Emperors, there was neither leisure nor means for any great scheme of this kind, nor much thought of the material framework of the city, while every mind was bent upon establishing its moral position and lofty standing ground among the nations. As much as was indispensable would be done: but in these days the requirements of the people in respect to their lodging were few: as indeed they still are to an extraordinary extent in Italy, where life is so much carried on out of doors.
It is evident, however, that Rome the city had never yet become the object of any man’s life or ambition, or that a thought of anything beyond what was needful for actual use, for shelter or defence, had entered into the thoughts of its masters when the Papal Court returned from Avignon. The churches alone were cared for now and then, and decorated whenever possible with rich hangings, with marbles and ancient columns generally taken from classical buildings, sometimes even from churches of an older date; but even so late as the time of Petrarch so important a building as St. John Lateran, the Papal church par excellence, lay roofless and half ruined, in such a state that it was impossible to say mass in it. The poet describes Rome itself, when, after a long walk amid all the relics of the classical ages, his friend and he sat down to rest upon the ruined arches of the Baths of Diocletian, and gazed upon the city at their feet— “the spectacle of these grand ruins.” “If she once began to recognise of herself the low estate in which she lies, Rome would make her own resurrection,” he says with a confidence but poorly merited by the factious and restless city. But Rome, torn asunder by the feuds of Colonna and Orsini, seizing every occasion to do battle with her Pope, only faithful to him in his absence, of which she complained to heaven and earth — was little likely to exert herself to any such end.
This was the unfortunate plight in which Rome lay when Martin V., a Roman of the house of Colonna, came back in the year 1421, with all the treasures of art acquired by the Popes during their stay in France, to the shrine of the Apostles. The historian Platina, whose records are so full of life when they approach the period of which he had the knowledge of a contemporary, gives a wonderful description of her. “He found Rome,” says the biographer of the Popes, “in such ruin that it bore no longer the aspect of a city but rather of a desert. Everything was on the way to complete destruction. The churches were in ruins, the country abandoned, the streets in evil state, and an extreme penury reigned everywhere. In fact it had no appearance of a city or a sign of civilisation. The good Pontiff, moved by the sight of such calamity, gave his mind to the work of adorning and embellishing the city, and reforming the corrupt ways into which it had fallen, which in a short time were so improved by his care that not only Supreme Pontiff but father of his country he was called by all. He rebuilt the portico of St. Peter’s which had been falling into ruins, and completed the mosaic work of the pavement of the Lateran which he covered with fine works, and began that beautiful picture which was made by Gentile, the excellent painter.” He also repaired the palace of the twelve Apostles, so that it became habitable. The Cardinals in imitation of him executed similar works in the churches from which each took his title, and by this means the city began to recover decency and possible comfort at least, if as yet little of its ancient splendour.
“As soon as Pope Martin arrived in Rome,” says the chronicle, Diarium Romanum, of Infessura, “he began to administer justice, for Rome was very corrupt and full of thieves. He took thought for everything, and especially to those robbers who were outside the walls, and who robbed the poor pilgrims who came for the pardon of their sins to Rome.” The painter above mentioned, and who suggests to us the name of a greater than he, would appear to have been Gentile da Fabriano, who seems to have been employed by the Pope at a regular yearly salary. These good deeds of Pope Martin are a little neutralised by the fact that he gave a formal permission to certain other of his workmen to take whatever marbles and stones might be wanted for the pavement of the Lateran, virtually wherever they happened to find them, but especially from ruined churches both within and outside of the city.
Eugenius IV., who succeeded Pope Martin in the year 1431, was a man who loved above all things to “guerrare e murare” — to make war and to build — a splendid and noble Venetian, whose fine and commanding person fills one of his biographers, a certain Florentine bookseller and book-collector, called Vespasiano, with a rapture of admiration which becomes almost lyrical, in the midst of his simple and garrulous story.
“He was tall in person, beautiful of countenance, slender
and serious, and so venerable to behold that there was no
one, by reason of the great authority that was in him, who
could look him in the face. It happened one evening that an
important personage went to speak with him, who stood with
his head bowed, never raising his eyes, in such a way that
the Pope perceived it and asked him why he so bowed his
head. He answered quickly that the Pope had such an aspect
by nature that none dared meet his eye. I myself recollect
often to have seen the Pope with his Cardinals upon a
balcony near the door of the cloisters of Sta Maria
Novella (in Florence) when the Piazza de Sta Maria
Novella was full of people, and not only the Piazza, but
all the streets that led into it. And such was the devotion
of the people that they stood entranced (stupefatti) to
see him, not hearing any one who spoke, but turning every
one towards the Pontiff: and when he began according to the
custom of the Pope to say the Adjutorium nostrum in nomine
Domini the Piazza was full of weeping and cries, appealing
to the mercy of God for the great devotion they bore
towards his Holiness. It appeared indeed that this people
saw in him not only the vicar of Christ on earth, but the
reflection of His true Divinity. His Holiness showed such
great devotion, and also all his Cardinals round him, who
were all men of great authority, that veritably at that
moment he appeared that which he represented.”
There is much refreshment to the soul in the biographies of Vespasiano, who was no more than a Florentine bookseller as we have said, greatly employed in collecting ancient manuscripts, which was the special taste of the time, with a hand in the formation of all the libraries then being established, and in consequence a considerable acquaintance with great personages, those at least who were patrons of the arts and had a literary turn. Pope Eugenius is not in ordinary history a highly attractive character, and the general records of the Papacy are not such as to allure the mind as with ready discovery of unknown friends. But the two Popes whom the old bookman chronicles, rise before us in the freshest colours, the first in stately serenity and austerity of mien, dazzling in his aspetto di natura, as Moses when he came from the presence of God — moving all hearts when he raised his voice in the prayers of the Church, every listener hanging on his breath, the crowd gazing at him overwhelmed as if upon Him whom the Pope represented, though no man dared face his penetrating eyes. It is a great thing for the most magnificent potentate to have such a biographer as our bookseller. Eugenius was as kind as he was splendid, according to Vespasiano. One day a poor gentleman reduced to want went to the Pope, appealing for charity “being in exile, poor, and fuori della patria,” words which are more touching than their English synonyms, out of his country, banished from all his belongings: an evil which went to the very hearts of those who were themselves at any moment subject to that fate, and to whom la patria meant an ungrateful fierce native city — never certain in its temper from one moment to another. The Pope sent for a purse full of florins, and bade the exile take from it as much as he wanted. “Felice, abashed, put in his hand timidly, when the Pope turned to him laughing and said, ‘Put in your hand freely, I give it to you willingly.’” This being his disposition we need not wonder that Vespasian adds:— “He never had much supply of money in the house; according as he had it, quickly he expended it.” Remembering what lies before us in history (but not in this broken record of men), soon to be filled with Borgias and such like, the reader would do well to sweeten his thoughts on the edge of the horrors of the Renaissance, with Vespasian’s kind and humane tales. Platina takes up the story in a different tone.
“Among other things Eugenius, in order that it might not
seem that he thought of nothing but fighting (his wars were
perpetual, guerrare winning the day over murare; he
built like Nehemiah with the sword in his other hand),
canonized S. Nicola di Tolentino of the order of S.
Augustine, who did many miracles. He built the portico
which leads from the Church of the Lateran to the Sancta
Sanctorum, and remade and enlarged the cloister inhabited
by the priests, and completed the picture of the Church
begun under Martin by Gentile. He was not easily moved by
wrath, or personal offence, and never spoke evil of any
man, neither by word of mouth nor hand of write. He was
gracious to all the schools, specially to those of Rome,
where he desired to see every kind of literature and
doctrine flourish. He himself had little literature, but
much knowledge, especially of history. He had a great love
for monks, and was very generous to them, and was also a
great lover of war, a thing which seems marvellous in a
Pope. He was very faithful to the engagements he
made — unless when he saw that it was more expedient to
revoke a promise than to fulfil it.”
Martin and Eugenius were both busy and warlike men. They were involved in all the countless internal conflicts of Italy; they were confronted by many troubles in the Church, by the argumentative and persistent Council of Bâle, and an anti-Pope or two to increase their cares. The reign of Eugenius began by a flight from Rome with one attendant, from the mob who threatened his life. Nevertheless it was in these agitated days that the first thought of Rome rebuilt, as glorious as a bride, more beautiful than in her climax of classic splendour, began to enter into men’s thoughts.
The reign of their immediate successor, the learned and magnificent Nicolas V., who was created Pope in 1447, was, however, the actual era of this new conception. It is not necessary, we are thankful to think, to enter here into any description of the Renaissance, that age so splendid in art, so horrible in history — when every vice seemed let loose on the earth, yet the evil demons so draped themselves in everything beautiful, that they often attained their most dangerous and terrible aspect, that of angels of light. The Renaissance has had more than its share in history; it has flooded the world with scandals of every kind, and such examples of depravity as are scarcely to be found in any other age; or perhaps it is that no other age has commanded the same contrasts and incongruities, the same picturesque accessories, the splendour and external grace, the swing of careless force and franchise, without restraint and without shame. To many minds these things themselves are enough to attract and to dazzle, and they have captivated many writers to whom the brilliant society, the triumphs of art, the ever shifting, ever glittering panorama with its startling succession of scenes, spectacles, splendours, and tragedies, have made the more serious and more worthy records of life appear sombre, and its nobler motives dull in comparison. When Thomas of Sarzana was born in Pisa — in a humble house of peasants who had no surname nor other distinction, but who managed to secure for him the education which was sufficiently easy in those days for boys destined to the priesthood — the age of the Renaissance was coming into full flower. Literature and learning, the pursuit of ancient manuscripts, the worship of Greece and the overwhelming influence of its language and masterpieces, were the inspiration of the age, so far as matters intellectual were concerned. To read and collate and copy was the special occupation of the literary class. If they attempted any original work, it was a commentary: and a Latin couplet, an epigram, was the highest effort of imagination which they permitted themselves. The day of Dante and Petrarch was over. No one cared to be volgarizzato — brought down in plain Italian to the knowledge of common men. The language of their literary traffic was Latin, the object of their adoration Greek. To read, and yet to read, and again to go on reading, was the occupation of every man who desired to make himself known in the narrow circles of literature; and a small attendant world of scribes was maintained in every learned household, and accompanied the path of every scholar. The world so far as its books went had gone back to a period in which gods and men were alike different from those of the existing generation; and the living age, disgusted with its own unsatisfactory conditions, attempted to gain dignity and beauty by pranking itself in the ill-adapted robes of a life totally different from its own.
Between the classical ages and the Christian there must always be the great gulf fixed of this complete difference of sentiment and of atmosphere. And the wonderful contradiction was more marked than usual in Rome of a world devoted outside to the rites and ceremonies of religion, while dwelling in its intellectual sphere in the air of a region to which Christianity was unknown. The routine of devotion never relaxing — planned out for every hour of every day, calling for constant attention, constant performance, avowedly addressing itself not to the learned or wise, avowedly restricting itself in all those enjoyments of life which were the first and greatest of objects in the order of the ancient ages — yet carried on by votaries of the Muses, to whom Jove and Apollo were more attractive than any Christian ideal — must have made an unceasing and bewildering conflict in the minds of men. No doubt that conflict, and the evident certainty that one or the other must be wrong, along with the strong setting of that tide of fashion which is so hard to be resisted, towards the less exacting creed, had much to do with the fever of the time. Yet the curious equalising touch of common life, the established order whatever it may be, against which only one here and there ever successfully rebels, made the strange conjunction possible; and the final conflict abided its time. Such a man as Nicolas V. might indeed fill his palace with scholars and scribes, and put his greatest pride in his manuscripts: but the affairs of life around were too urgent to affect his own constitution as Pope and priest and man of his time. He bandied epigrams with his learned convives in his moments of leisure: but he had himself too much to do to fall into dilettante heathenism. Perhaps the manuscripts themselves, the glory of possessing them, the busy scribes all labouring for that high end of instructing the world: while courtiers never slow to catch the tone that pleased, celebrated their sovereign as the head of humane and liberal study as well as of the Church — may have been more to Nicolas than all his MSS. contained. He remained quite sincere in his mass, quite simple in his life, notwithstanding the influx of the heathen element: and most likely took no note in his much occupied career of the great distance that lay between.
Nicolas V. was the first of those Pontiffs who are the pride of modern Rome — the men who, by a strange provision, or as it almost seems neglect of Providence, appear in the foremost places of the Church pre-occupied with secondary matters, when they ought to have been preparing for that great Revolution which, it was once fondly hoped, was to lay spiritual Rome in ruins, at the very moment when material Rome rose most gloriously from her ashes. But, notwithstanding that he was still troubled by that long-drawn-out Council of Bâle, it does not seem that any such shadow was in the mind of Nicolas. He stood calm in human unconsciousness between heathendom at his back, and the Reformation in front of him, going about his daily work thinking of nothing, as the majority of men even on the eve of the greatest of revolutions so constantly do. Nicolas was, like so many of the great Popes, a poor man’s son, without a surname, Thomas of Sarzana taking his name from the village in which he was brought up. He had the good fortune, which in those days was so possible to a scholar, recommended originally by his learning alone, to rise from post to post in the household of bishop and Cardinal until he arrived at that of the Pope, where a man of real value was highly estimated, and where it was above all things important to have a steadfast and faithful envoy, one who could be trusted with the often delicate negotiations of the Holy See, and who would neither be daunted nor led astray by imperial caresses or the frowns of power.
“He was very learned, dottissimo, in philosophy, and master of all the arts. There were few writers in Greek or in Latin of any kind that he had not read their works, and he had the whole of the Bible in his memory, and quoted from it continually. This intimate knowledge of the Holy Scriptures gave the greatest honour to his pontificate and the answers he was called upon to make.” There were great hopes in those days of the reunion of the Greek Church with the Latin, an object much in the mind of all the greater Popes: to promote which happy possibility Pope Eugenius called a Council in Ferrara in 1438, which was also intended to confound the rebellious and heretical Council of Bâle, as well as to bring about, if possible, the desired union. The Emperor of the East was there in person, along with the patriarch and a large following; and it was in this assembly that Thomas of Sarzana, then secretary and counsellor of the Cardinal di Santa Croce — who had accompanied his Cardinal over i monti on a mission to the King of France from which he had just returned — made himself known to Christendom as a fine debater and accomplished student. The question chiefly discussed in the Council of Ferrara was that which is formally called the Procession of the Holy Spirit, the doctrine which has always stood between the two Churches, and prevented mutual understanding.
“In this council before the Pope, the Cardinals, and all
the court of Rome, the Latins disputed daily with the
Greeks against their error, which is that the Holy Spirit
proceeds from the Father only not from the Son: the Latins,
according to the true doctrine of the faith, maintaining
that He proceeds from the Father and the Son. Every morning
and every evening the most learned men in Italy took part
in this discussion as well as many out of Italy, whom Pope
Eugenius had called together. One in particular, from
Negroponte, whose name was Niccolo Secondino: wonderful was
it to hear what the said Niccolo did; for when the Greeks
spoke and brought together arguments to prove their
opinion, Niccolo Secondino explained everything in Latin
de verbo ad verbum, so that it was a thing admirable to
hear: and when the Latins spoke he expounded in Greek all
that they answered to the arguments of the Greeks. In all
these disputations Messer Tommaso held the part of the
Latins, and was admired above all for his universal
knowledge of the Holy Scriptures, and also of the doctors,
ancient and modern, both Greek and Latin.”
Messer Tommaso distinguished himself so much in this controversy that he was appointed by the Pope to confer with certain ambassadors from the unknown, Ethiopians, Indians, and “Jacobiti,” — were these the envoys of Prester John, that mysterious potentate? or were they Nestorians as some suggest? At all events they were Christians and persons of singularly austere life. The conference was carried on by means of an interpreter, “a certain Venetian who knew twenty languages.” These three nations were so convinced by Tommaso, that they placed themselves under the authority of the Church, an incident which does not make any appearance in more dignified history. Even while these important matters of ecclesiastical business were going on, however, this rising churchman kept his eyes open as to every chance of a new, that is an old book, and would on various occasions turn away from his most distinguished visitors to talk apart with Messer Vespasiano, who once more is our best guide, about their mutual researches and good luck in the way of finding rare examples or making fine copies. “He never went out of Italy with his Cardinal on any mission that he did not bring back with him some new work not to be found in Italy.” Indeed Messer Tommaso’s knowledge was so well understood that there was no library formed on which his advice was not asked, and specially by Cosimo dei Medici, who begged his help as to what ought to be done for the formation of the Library of S. Marco in Florence — to which Tommaso responded by sending such instructions as never had been given before, how to make a library, and to keep it in the highest order, the regulations all written in his own hand. “Everything that he had,” says Vespasian in the ardour of his admiration, “he spent on books. He used to say that if he had it in his power, the two things on which he would like to spend money would be in buying books and in building (murare); which things he did in his pontificate, both the one and the other.” Alas! Messer Tommaso had not always money, which is a condition common to collectors; in which case Vespasian tells us (who approved of this mode of procedure as a bookseller, though perhaps it was a bad example to be set by the Head of the Church) he had “to buy books on credit and to borrow money in order to pay the scribes and miniaturists.” The books, the reader will perceive, were curious manuscripts, illustrated by those schools of painters in little, whose undying pigments, fresh as when laid upon the vellum, smile almost as exquisitely to-day from the ancient page as in Messer Tommaso’s time.
There is an enthusiasm of the seller for the buyer in Vespasian’s description of the dignified book-hunter which is very characteristic, but at the same time so natural that it places the very man before us, as he lived, a man full of humour, facetissimo, saying pleasant things to everybody, and making every one to whom he talked his partisan.
“He was a man open, large and liberal, not knowing how to
feign or dissimulate, and the enemy of all who feigned. He
was also hostile to ceremony and adulation, treating all
with the greatest friendliness. Great though he was as a
bishop, as an ambassador, he honoured all who came to see
him, and desired that whoever would speak with him should
do so seated by his side, and with his head covered; and
when one would not do so (out of modesty) he would take one
by the arm and make one sit down, whether one liked or
not.”
A delightful recollection of that flattering compulsion, the great man’s touch upon his arm, the seat by his side, upon which Vespasian would scarcely be able to sit for pleasure, is in the bookseller’s tone; and he has another pleasant story to tell of Giannozzo Manetti, who went to see their common patron when he was Cardinal and ambassador to France, and tried hard, in his sense of too much honour done him, to prevent the great man from accompanying him, not only to the door of the reception room, but down stairs. “He stood firm on the staircase to prevent him from coming further down: but Giannozzo was obliged to have patience, being in the Osteria del Lione, for not only would Messer Tommaso accompany him down stairs, but to the very door of the hotel, ambassador of Pope Eugenius as he was.”
We must not, however, allow ourselves to be seduced into prolixity by the old bookseller, whose account of his patron is so full of gratitude and feeling. As became a scholar and lover of the arts, Nicolas V. was a man of peace. Immediately after his elevation to the papacy, he declared his sentiments to Vespasian in the prettiest scene, which shines like one of the miniatures they loved, out of the sober page.
“Not long after he was made Pope, I went to see him on
Friday evening, when he gave audience publicly, as he did
once every week. When I went into the hall in which he gave
audience it was about one hour of the night (seven o’clock
in the evening); he saw me at once, and called to me that I
was welcome, and that if I would have patience a little he
would talk to me alone. Not long after I was told to go to
his Holiness. I went, and according to custom kissed his
feet; afterwards he bade me rise, and rising himself from
his seat, dismissed the court, saying that the audience was
over. He then went to a private room where twenty candles
were burning, near a door which opened into an orchard. He
made a sign that they should be taken away, and when we
were alone began to laugh, and to say ‘Do the Florentines
believe, Vespasiano, that it is for the confusion of the
proud, that a priest only fit to ring the bell should have
been made Supreme Pontiff?’ I answered that the Florentines
believed that his Holiness had attained that dignity by his
worth, and that they rejoiced much, believing that he would
give Italy peace. To this he answered and said: ‘I pray God
that He will give me grace to fulfil that which I desire to
do, and to use no arms in my pontificate except that which
God has given me for my defence, which is His cross, and
which I shall employ as long as my day lasts.’”
The cool darkness of the little chamber, near the door into the orchard, the blazing candles all sent away, the grateful freshness of the Roman night — come before us like a picture, with the Pope’s splendid robes glimmering white, and the sober-suited citizen little seen in the quick-falling twilight. It must have been in the spring or early summer, the sweetest time in Rome. Pope Eugenius had died in the month of February, and it was on the 16th of March, 1447, that Nicolas was elected to the Holy See.
A few years after came the jubilee, in the year 1450, as had now become the habit, and the influx of pilgrims was very great. It was a time of great profit not only to the Romans who turned the city into one vast inn to receive the visitors, but also to the Pope. “The people were like ants on the roads which led from Florence to Rome,” we are told. The crowd was so immense crossing the bridge of St. Angelo, that there were some terrible accidents, and as many as two hundred people were killed on their way to the shrine of the Apostles. “There was not a great lord in all Christendom who did not come to this jubilee.” “Much money came to the Apostolical See,” continues the biographer, “and the Pope began to build in many places, and to send everywhere for Greek and Latin books wherever he could find them, without regard to the price.
“He also had many scribes from every quarter to whom he
gave constant employment; also many learned men both to
compose new works, and to translate those which had not
been translated, making great provision for them, both
ordinary and extraordinary; and to those who translated
books, when they were brought to him, he gave much money
that they might go on willingly with that which they had to
do. He collected a very great number of books on every
subject, both in Greek and Latin, to the number of five
thousand volumes. These at the end of his life were found
in the catalogue which did not include the half of the
copies of books he had on every subject; for if there was a
book which could not be found, or which he could not have
in any other way, he had it copied. The intention of Pope
Nicolas was to make a library in St. Peter’s for the use of
the Court of Rome, which would have been a marvellous thing
had it been carried out; but it was interrupted by death.”
Vespasian adds for his own part a list of these books, which occupies a whole column in one of Muratori’s gigantic pages.
Another anecdote we must add to show our Pope’s quaint ways with his little court of literary men.
“Pope Nicolas was the light and the ornament of literature,
and of men of letters. If there had arisen another Pontiff
after him who would have followed up his work, the state of
letters would have been elevated to a worthy degree. But
after him things went from bad to worse, and there were no
prizes for virtue. The liberality of Pope Nicolas was such
that many turned to him who would not otherwise have done
so. In every place where he could do honour to men of
letters, he did so, and left nobody out. When Messer
Francesco Filelfo passed through Rome on his way to Naples
without paying him a visit, the Pope, hearing of it, sent
for him. Those who went to call him said to him, ‘Messer
Francesco, we are astonished that you should have passed
through Rome without going to see him.’ Messer Francesco
replied that he was carrying some of his books to King
Alfonso, but meant to see the Pope on his return. The Pope
had a scarsella at his side in which were five hundred
florins which he emptied out, saying to him, ‘Take this
money for your expenses on the way.’ This is what one calls
liberal! He had always a scarsella (pouch) at his side
where were several hundreds of florins and gave them away
for God’s sake, and to worthy persons. He took them out of
the scarsella by handfuls and gave to them. Liberality is
natural to men, and does not come by nobility nor by
gentry: for in every generation we see some who are very
liberal and some who are equally avaricious.”
But the literary aspect of Pope Nicolas’s character, however delightful, is not that with which we are chiefly concerned. He was the first Pope to conceive a systematic plan for the reconstruction and permanent restoration of Rome, a plan which it is needless to say his life was not long enough to carry out, but which yet formed the basis of all after-plans, and was eventually more or less accomplished by different hands.
It was to the centre of ecclesiastical Rome, the shrine of the Apostles, the chief church of Christendom and its adjacent buildings that the care of the Builder-Pope was first directed. The Leonine city, or Borgo as it is more familiarly called, is that portion of Rome which lies on the left side of the Tiber, and which extends from the castle of St. Angelo to the boundary of the Vatican gardens — enclosing the church of St. Peter, the Vatican Palace with all its wealth, and the great Hospital of Santo Spirito, surrounded and intersected by many little streets, and joined to the other portions of the city by the bridge of St. Angelo. Behind the mass of picture galleries, museums, and collections of all kinds, which now fill up the endless halls and corridors of the Papal palace, comes a sweep of noble gardens full of shade and shelter from the Roman sun, such a resort for the
“learnèd leisure
Which in trim gardens takes its pleasure”
as it would be difficult to surpass. In this fine extent of wood and verdure the Pope’s villa or casino, now the only summer palace which the existing Pontiff chooses to permit himself, stands as in a domain, small yet perfect. Almost everything within these walls has been built or completely transformed since the days of Nicolas. But then as now, here was the heart and centre of Christendom, the supreme shrine of the Catholic faith, the home of the spiritual ruler whose sway reached over the whole earth. When Nicolas began his reign, the old church of St. Peter was the church of the Western world, then as now, classical in form, a stately basilica without the picturesqueness and romantic variety, and also, as we think, without the majesty and grandeur of a Gothic cathedral, yet more picturesque if less stupendous in size and construction than the present great edifice, so majestic in its own grave and splendid way, with which through all the agitations of the recent centuries, the name of St. Peter’s has been identified. The earlier church was full of riches, and of great associations, to which the wonderful St. Peter’s we all know can lay claim only as its successor and supplanter. With its flight of broad steps, its portico and colonnaded façade crowned with a great tower, it dominated the square, open and glowing in the sun without the shelter of the great existing colonnades or the sparkle of the fountains. Behind was the little palace begun by Innocent III. to afford a shelter for the Popes in dangerous times, or on occasion to receive the foreign guests whose object was to visit the Shrine of the Apostles. Almost all the buildings then standing have been replaced by greater, yet the position is the same, the shrine unchanged, though everything else then existing has faded away, except some portion of the old wall which enclosed this sacred place in a special sanctity and security, which was not, however, always respected. The Borgo was the holiest portion of all the sacred city. It was there that the blood of the martyrs had been shed, and where from the earliest age of Christianity their memory and tradition had been preserved. It is not necessary for us to enter into the question whether St. Peter ever was in Rome, which many writers have laboriously contested. So far as the record of the Acts of the Apostles is concerned, there is no evidence at all for or against, but tradition is all on the side of those who assert it. The position taken by Signor Lanciani on this point seems to us a very sensible one. “I write about the monuments of ancient Rome,” he says, “from a strictly archæological point of view, avoiding questions which pertain, or are supposed to pertain, to religious controversy.”
“For the archæologist the presence and execution of SS.
Peter and Paul in Rome are facts established beyond a
shadow of doubt by purely monumental evidence. There was a
time when persons belonging to different creeds made it
almost a case of conscience to affirm or deny a priori
those facts, according to their acceptance or rejection of
the tradition of any particular Church. This state of
feeling is a matter of the past at least for those who have
followed the progress of recent discoveries and of critical
literature. There is no event of the Imperial age and of
Imperial Rome which is attested by so many noble
structures, all of which point to the same conclusion — the
presence and execution of the Apostles in the capital of
the empire. When Constantine raised the monumental
basilicas over their tombs on the Via Cornelia and the Via
Ostiensis: when Eudoxia built the Church ad Vincula: when
Damasus put a memorial tablet in the Platonia ad
Catacombos: when the houses of Pudens and Aquila and Prisca
were turned into oratories: when the name of Nymphæ Sancti
Petri was given to the springs in the catacombs of the Via
Nomentana: when the 29th June was accepted as the
anniversary of St. Peter’s execution: when sculptors,
painters, medallists, goldsmiths, workers in glass and
enamel, and engravers of precious stones, all began to
reproduce in Rome the likeness of the apostle at the
beginning of the second century, and continued to do so
till the fall of the Empire: must we consider them as
labouring under a delusion, or conspiring in the commission
of a gigantic fraud? Why were such proceedings accepted
without protest from whatever city, whatever community — if
there were any other — which claimed to own the genuine
tombs of SS. Peter and Paul? These arguments gain more
value from the fact that the evidence on the other side is
purely negative.”
This is one of those practical arguments which are always more interesting than those which depend upon theories and opinions. However, there are many books on both sides of the question which may be consulted. We are content to follow Signor Lanciani. The special sanctity and importance of Il Borgo originated in this belief. The shrine of the Apostle was its centre and its glory. It was this that brought pilgrims from the far corners of the earth before there was any masterpiece of art to visit, or any of those priceless collections which now form the glory of the Vatican. The spot of the Apostle’s execution was indicated “by immemorial tradition” as between the two goals (inter duas metas) of Nero’s circus, which spot Signor Lanciani tells us is exactly the site of the obelisk now standing in the piazza of St. Peter. A little chapel, called the Chapel of the Crucifixion, stood there in the early ages, before any great basilica or splendid shrine was possible.
This sacred spot, and the church built to commemorate it, were naturally the centre of all those religious traditions which separate Rome from every other city. It was to preserve them from assault, “in order that it should be less easy for the enemy to make depredations and burn the church of St. Peter, as they have heretofore done,” that Leo IV., the first Pope, whom we find engaged in any real work of construction built a wall round the mount of the Vatican, the “Colle Vaticano” — little hill, not so high as the seven hills of Rome — where against the strong wall of Nero’s circus Constantine had built his great basilica. At that period — in the middle of the ninth century — there was nothing but the church and shrine — no palace and no hospital. The existing houses were given to the Corsi, a family which had been driven out of their island, according to Platina, by the Saracens, who shortly before had made an incursion up to the very walls of Rome, whither the peoples of the coast (luoghi maritimi del Mar Terreno) from Naples northward had apparently pursued the Corsairs, and helped the Romans to beat them back. One other humble building of some sort, “called Burgus Saxonum, Vicus Saxonum, Schola Saxonum, and simply Saxia or Sassia,” it is interesting to know, existed close to the sacred centre of the place, a lodging built for himself by Ina, King of Wessex, in 727. Thus we have a national association of our own with the central shrine of Christianity. “There was also a Schola Francorum in the Borgo.” The pilgrims must have built their huts and set up some sort of little oratory — favoured, as was the case even in Pope Nicolas’s day, by the excellent quarry of the circus close at hand — as near as possible to the great shrine and basilica which they had come so far to say their prayers in; and attracted too, no doubt, by the freedom of the lonely suburb between the green hill and the flowing river. Leo IV. built his wall round this little city, and fortified it by towers. “In every part he put sculptures of marble and wrote a prayer,” says Platina. One of these gates led to St. Pellegrino, another was close to the castle of St. Angelo, and was “the gate by which one goes forth to the open country.” The third led to the School of the Saxons; and over each was a prayer inscribed. These three prayers were all to the same effect— “that God would defend this new city which the Pope had enclosed with walls and called by his own name, the Leonine City, from all assaults of the enemy, either by fraud or by force.”
This was then from the beginning the citadel and innermost sanctuary of Rome. It was not till much later, under the reign of Innocent III., that the idea of building a house for the Pope within that enclosure originated. The same great Pope founded the vast hospital of the Santo Spirito — on the site of a previous hospice for the poor either within or close to its walls. Thus it came to be the lodging of the Sovereign Pontiff, and of the scarcely less sacred sick and suffering, as well as the most holy and chiefest of all Christian sanctuaries. Were we to be very minute, it might be easily proved that almost every Pope contributed something to the existence and decoration of the Leonine city, the imperium in imperio; and specially, as was natural, to the great basilica.
The little Palazzo di San Pietro being close to St. Angelo, the stronghold and most safe resort in danger, was occupied by the court on its return from Avignon, and probably then became the official home of the Popes; though for some time there seems to have been a considerable latitude in that respect. Pope Martin afterwards removed to the Palace of the Apostles. Another of the Popes preferred to all others the great Palazzo Venezia, which he had built: but the name of the Vatican was henceforth received as the title of the Papal court. The enlargement and embellishment of this palace thus became naturally the great object of the Popes, and nothing was spared upon it. It is put first in every record of achievement even when there is other important work to describe. “Nicolas,” says Platina, “builded magnificently both in the Vatican, and in the city. He rebuilt the churches of St. Stefano Rotondo and of St. Teodoro,” the former most interesting church being built upon the foundations of a round building of classical times, supposed, Mr. Hare tells us, to have belonged to the ancient Fleshmarket, as we should say, the Macellum Magnum. S. Teodoro is also a rotondo. It would seem that there were different opinions as to the success of these restorations in the fifteenth century such as arise among ourselves in respect to almost every work of the same kind. A certain “celebrated architect,” Francesco di Giorgio di Martino, of Sienna, was then about the world, a man who spoke his mind. “Hedifitio ruinato,” he says of St. Stefano, with equal disregard to spelling and to manners. “Rebuilt,” he adds, “by Pope Nichola; but much more spoilt:” which is such a thing as we now hear said of the once much-vaunted restorations of Sir Gilbert Scott. Our Pope also “made a leaden roof for Sta. Maria Rotonda in the middle of the city, built by M. Agrippa as a temple for all the gods and called the Pantheon.” He must have been fond of this unusual form; but whether it was a mere whim of personal liking, or if there was any meaning in his construction of these round temples, we have no information. Perhaps Nicolas had a special admiration of the solemn and beautiful Pantheon, in which we completely sympathise. The question is too insignificant to be inquired into. Yet it is curious in its way.
These were however, though specially distinguished by Platina, but a drop in the ocean to the numberless undertakings of Pope Nicolas throughout the city; and all these again were inferior in importance to the great works in St. Peter’s and the Vatican, to which his predecessors had each put a hand so long as their time lasted. “In the Vatican,” says Platina, “he built those apartments of the Pontiff, which are to be seen to this day: and he began the wall of the Vatican, great and high, with its incredible depth of foundation, and high towers, to hold the enemy at a distance, so that neither the church of St. Peter (as had already happened several times) nor the palace of the Pope should ever be sacked. He began also the tribune of the church of St. Peter, that the church might hold more people, and might be more magnificent. He also rebuilt the Ponte Molle, and erected near the baths of Viterbo a great palace. Having the aid of much money, he built many parts of the city, and cleansed all the streets.” Great also in other ways were his gifts to his beloved church and city— “vases of gold and silver, crosses ornamented with gems, rich vestments and precious tapestry, woven with gold and silver, and the mitre of the Pontificate, which demonstrated his liberality.” It was he who first placed a second crown on the mitre, which up to this time had borne one circlet alone. The complete tiara with the three crowns was adopted in a later reign.
The two previous Popes, his predecessors, had been magnificent also in their acquisitions for the Church in this kind; both of them being curious in goldsmiths’ work, then entering upon its most splendid development, and in their collections of precious stones. The valuable work of M. Muntz, Les Arts à la cour des papes, abounds in details of these splendid jewels. Indeed his sober records of daily work and its payment seem to transport us out of one busy scene into another as by the touch of a magician’s wand, as if Rome the turbulent and idle, full of aimless popular rushes to and fro, had suddenly become a beehive full of energetic workers and the noise of cheerful labour, both out of doors in the sun, where the masons were loudly at work, and in many a workshop, where the most delicate and ingenious arts were being carried on. Roman artists at length began to appear amid the host of Florentines and the whole world seems to have turned into one great bottega full of everything rich and rare.
The greatest, however, of all the conceptions of Pope Nicolas, the very centre of his great plan, was the library of the Vatican, which he began to build and to which he left all the collections of his life. Vespasian gives us a list of the principal among those 5,000 volumes, the things which he prized most, which the Pope bequeathed to the Church and to Rome. These cherished rolls of parchment, many of them translations made under his own eyes, were enclosed in elaborate bindings ornamented with gold and silver. We are not, however, informed whether any of the great treasures of the Vatican library came from his hands — the good Vespasian taking more interest in the work of his scribes than in Codexes. He tells us of 500 scudi given to Lorenzo Valle with a pretty speech that the price was below his merits, but that eventually he should have more liberal pay; of 1,500 scudi given to Guerroni for a translation of the Iliad, and so forth. It is like a bookseller of the present day vaunting his new editions to a collector in search of the earliest known. But Pope Nicolas, like most other patrons of his time, knew no Greek, nor probably ever expected that it would become a usual subject of study, so that his translations were precious to him, the chief way of making his treasures of any practical use.
The greater part, alas! of all this splendour has passed away. One pure and perfect glory, the little chapel of San Lorenzo, painted by the tender hand of Fra Angelico, remains unharmed, the only work of that grand painter to be found in Rome. If one could have chosen a monument for the good Pope, the patron and friend of art in every form, there could not have been a better than this. Fra Angelico seems to have been brought to Rome by Pope Eugenius, but it was under Nicolas, in two or three years of gentle labour, that the work was done. It is, however, impossible to enumerate all the undertakings of Pope Nicolas. He did something to re-establish or decorate almost all of the great basilicas. It is feared — but here our later historians speak with bated breath, not liking to bring such an accusation against the kind Pope, who loved men of letters — that the destruction of St. Peter’s, afterwards ruthlessly carried out by succeeding Popes was in his plan: on the pretext, so constantly employed, and possibly believed in, of the instability of the ancient building. But there is no absolute certainty of evidence, and at all events he might have repented, for he certainly did not do that deed. He began the tribune, however, in the ancient church, which may have been a preparation for the entire renewal of the edifice; and he did much towards the decoration of another round church, that of the Madonna delle Febbre, an ill-omened name, attached to the Vatican. He also built the Belvedere in the gardens, and surrounded the whole with strong walls and towers (round), one of which according to Nibby still remained fifty years ago; which very little of Nicolas’s building has done. His great sin was one which he shared with all his brother-Popes, that he boldly treated the antique ruins of the city as quarries for his new buildings, not without protest and remonstrance from many, yet with the calm of a mind preoccupied and seeing nothing so great and important as the work upon which his own heart was set.
This excellent Pope died in 1455, soon after having received the news of the downfall of Constantinople, which is said to have broken his heart. He had many ailments, and was always a small and spare man of little strength of constitution; but “nothing transfixed his heart so much as to hear that the Turk had taken Constantinople and killed the Europeans, with many thousands of Christians,” among them that same “Imperadore de Gostantinopli” whom he had seen seated in state at the Council of Ferrara, listening to his own and other arguments, only a few years before — as well as the greater part, no doubt, of his own clerical opponents there. When he was dying “being not the less of a strong spirit,” he called the Cardinals round his bed, and many prelates with them, and made them a last address. His pontificate had lasted a little more than eight years, and to have carried out so little of his great plan must have been heavy on his heart; but his dying words are those of one to whom the holiness and unity of the Church came before all. No doubt the fear that the victorious Turks might spread ruin over the whole of Christendom was first in his mind at that solemn hour.
“‘Knowing, my dearest brethren, that I am approaching the
hour of my death, I would, for the greater dignity and
authority of the Apostolic See, make a serious and
important testament before you, not committed to the memory
of letters, not written, neither on a tablet nor on
parchment, but given by my living voice that it may have
more authority. Listen, I pray you, while your little Pope
Nicolas (papa Niccolajo) in the very instant of dying makes
his last will before you. In the first place I render
thanks to the Highest God for the measureless benefits
which, beginning from the day of my birth until the present
day, I have received of His infinite mercy. And now I
recommend to you this beautiful spouse of Christ, whom, so
far as I was able, I have exalted and magnified, as each of
you is well aware; knowing this to be to the honour of God,
for the great dignity that is in her, and the great
privileges that she possesses, and so worthy, and formed by
so worthy an Author, who is the Creator of the Universe.
Being of sane mind and intellect, and having done that
which every Christian is called to do, and specially the
Pastor of the Church, I have received the most sacred body
of Christ with penitence, taking from His table with my two
hands, and praying the Omnipotent God that he would pardon
my sins. Having had these sacraments I have also received
the extreme unction which is the last sacrament for the
redeeming of my soul. Again I recommend to you, as long as
I am able, the Roman Church, notwithstanding that I have
already done so; for this is the most important duty you
have to fulfil in the sight of God and men. This is that
true Spouse of Christ which He bought with his blood. This
is that robe without seam, which the impious Jews would
have torn but could not. This is that ship of St. Peter,
Prince of the Apostles, agitated and tossed by varied
fortunes of the winds, but sustained by the Omnipotent God,
so that she can never be submerged or shipwrecked. With all
the strength of your souls sustain her and rule her: she
has need of your good works, and you should show a good
example by your lives. If you with all your strength care
for her and love her, God will reward you, both in this
present life and in the future with life eternal; and to do
this with all the strength we have, we pray you: do it
diligently, dearest brethren.’
“Having said this he raised his hands to heaven and said,
‘Omnipotent God, grant to the Holy Church, and to these
fathers, a pastor who will preserve her and increase her;
give to them a good pastor who will rule and govern thy
flock the most maturely that one can rule and govern. And I
pray for you and comfort you as much as I know and can.
Pray for me to God in your prayers.’ When he had ended
these words, he raised his right arm and, with a generous
soul, gave the benediction — Benedicat vos Deus, Pater et
Filius et Spiritus Sanctus — speaking with a raised voice
and solemnly, in modo Pontificale.”
These tremulous words, broken and confused by the weakness of his last hours, were taken down by the favourite scribe, Giannozzo Manetti, in the chamber of the dying Pope: with much more of the most serious matter to the Church and to Rome. His eager desire to soften all possible controversies and produce in the minds of the conclave about his bed, so full of ambition and the force of life, the softened heart which would dispose them to a peaceful and conscientious election of his successor, is very touching, coming out of the fogs and mists of approaching death.
In the very age that produced the Borgias, and himself the head of that band of elegant scholars and connoisseurs, everything but Christian, to whom Rome owes so much of her external beauty and splendour, it is pathetic to stand by this kind and gentle spirit as he pauses on the threshold of a higher life, subduing the astute and worldly minded Churchmen round him with the tender appeal of the dying father, their Papa Niccolajo, familiar and persuasive — beseeching them to be of one accord without so much as saying it, turning his own weakness to account to touch their hearts, for the honour of the Church and the welfare of the flock.