Rome Part 3

CHAPTER IV

ROMAN REGIONS AND GUILDS

The regions and the guilds of Rome ill.u.s.trate two contradictory tendencies running parallel throughout the administrative history of the city, the one towards division and separation as first principles of organisation, the other towards union and centralisation as measures of strength. These antagonistic elements which we find at the very dawn of Roman history were at once utilised as factors in the new commonwealth.

It is the tradition that King Numa organised nine guilds of handicrafts amongst the Roman people that they might sink their race animosities in an ident.i.ty of interests. Similarly one of the first great works for the young community, the city wall projected by Tarquinius Priscus and built by Servius Tullius, was intended to produce a fusion of the tribes which inhabited the seven hills he thus physically linked together, and which he had already united under a common government. Another enterprise, the draining of the marshes and pools which made impa.s.sable barriers of the valleys between the hills, had the same aim and result--it was a levelling process, moral as well as physical, to minimise the separation between hill and hill, race and race.

On the other hand, Servius' division of the city into four regions, and these again into six parishes or _vici_, laid the seeds of an internal disunion which lasted throughout the centuries. These four regions (1) the Suburra or Caelian, (2) the Esquiline and its spurs, (3) the Collina, comprising the Viminal and Quirinal, which were called _colles_ in distinction to the other hills, the _montes_, and (4) the Palatine, persisted until the reign of Augustus. By that time the city had grown beyond its primitive limits, a thickly populated region had sprung up on the Esquiline beyond the walls and Augustus found a new division necessary. He increased the original number of regions to fourteen, and each of these he subdivided as before into parishes, the number in each region varying from seven to twenty-eight, making 265 in all. A magistrate or curator with a set of officials under him presided over each region. Each parish had its magistrate, its officers, its chapel built upon the boundary road for the public worship of the _lares compitales_, the protecting spirits of the district.

At this period the poorer quarters of the city--a network of narrow streets with high houses built of inflammable materials--had been again and again devastated by fire. At night the densest darkness descended upon the city, street lighting was unknown, shop doors were shut and barred, and it was unsafe to walk abroad; those who ventured carried lights, or were preceded by servants with staves and torches.

The ubiquitous beggars haunted the byways, and brigands raided the outskirts of the town.

As a remedy against these evils Augustus created a force of 7000 men who were to act both as police and firemen. The whole body he placed under the command of a prefect, who acted in conjunction with the curator of the regions in keeping order, and divided it into seven battalions or cohorts, each under a tribune, and so disposed in the city that one battalion watched over the safety of two regions. The cohorts were again subdivided into seven companies under a captain or centurion. The force was distributed over the town in seven different barracks, with outlying detached quarters or _excubitoria_.

The firemen's duty was to inspect public furnaces and private kitchens, the heating apparatus and the offices where the wardrobes were kept and warmed in the public baths. If a fire broke out in the town it was the subject of an official inquiry, just as it is to-day, and if arson or willful neglect were suspected, punishment was meted out by the proper authorities. Like the modern policeman in Rome, Augustus' _vigiles_ were not a popular force, and to make it more palatable he gradually increased its privileges. He built large and luxurious stations and _excubitoria_ which were beautifully decorated with precious marbles and statues. Members of the force were granted the coveted Roman citizenship, and the captains were permitted to serve _ex officio_ in the Praetorian guard.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FORUM OF NERVA

The picture represents a portion of the ornamental enclosure of the Forum built by Nerva, near Domitian's Temple of Pallas; she is represented on the entablature. This fragment is popularly known as _Le Colonacce_. See page 33.]

At a later period, perhaps sometime in the third century, the regions of Rome were reorganised on an ecclesiastical basis, and seven were formed out of the fourteen by the amalgamation of two into one, each being placed under one of the seven deacons of the city. It is not known at what precise date their number was again increased to fourteen, nor when they a.s.sumed their present names and distribution, but probably early in the middle ages. By the thirteenth century only thirteen regions are recorded, and it was not till the year 1586 that the conservators and senators of Rome and the captains of the regions consulted together and decided to include the Leonine city as a fourteenth region, granting it at the same time a captain, a standard, and an heraldic device of a lion upon a red field, his paw planted upon the three mounds of the coat of Sixtus V.

These fourteen regions do not correspond in position, name, or extent with those of Augustus except that the present thirteenth, Trastevere, is identical with the ancient fourteenth, Transtiburtina. The names that they bear to-day represent either their position or some characteristic feature within their limits. Thus the first and largest region, the _Monti_, formed from the union of the fifth and sixth of Augustus, the _Esquilina_ and the _Alta Semita_, is so called from the hills, the Esquilina Viminal and Caelian, within its boundaries; the second the _Trevi_, derives its name from the famous fountain in its midst; the third, _Colonna_, from the column of Marcus Aurelius; the fourth, _Campo Marzo_, covers this historic ground; the fifth, _Ponte_, is named from the old _Pons Triumphalis_, that united Rome with the Vatican region; the sixth or _Parione_ comprises the ground of which the Chiesa Nuova is the centre, and the name was derived from the ancient wall and tower which stood close to it; the seventh, _Regola_, inhabited by some of the most wretched of the population, is a corruption of Arenula, the drift sand of the river near which this region lies; the eighth, _S. Eustachio_, behind the university, takes its name from a parish church; the ninth, _Pigna_, from the bronze pine cone now at the Vatican and which was once supposed to adorn the Pantheon (this region corresponds to a certain extent with the ancient Via Lata); the tenth region, _Campitelli_, includes the Capitol and Palatine hills and the Forum; the eleventh, the _S. Angelo_ district, a region inhabited by the very poor, by tanners, and formerly the Jews' quarter, is named after the church of S. Angelo in Pescheria; the twelfth is the _Ripa_ or river bank; and the thirteenth and fourteenth, as we have seen, are _Trastevere_ beyond the river and the Leonine city or _Borgo_.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FOUNTAIN OF TREVI

One of the numberless fountains of the city; built by Clement XII.

in 1735. The red house is the _palazzo_ of the celebrated art jeweller Castellani. Visitors leaving Rome who throw a _sou_ into this fountain are sure to return to the eternal city. See pages 22, 55, 227.]

Each region became a little civic and social centre complete in itself. Each had its captain, its sub-officers, its religious organisations, its separate funds for charities and dowries, its separate police and militia recruits. And the importance that accrued to these regions lay in the fact that they represented the _plebs_, the democracy of Rome. With a people so incapable of co-operation for a common end as the Roman, the spark of their civic liberties would have been trodden out or have remained for ever dormant but for this administrative setting which kept it alive and through which, given the opportunity, it could become once more a living force.

The heads of the regions, the _caporioni_, heirs to the position of Augustus' tribunes but without their discipline, were the people's leaders and spokesmen, their representatives and the guardians of their liberties. They were elected by ballot and the ballot urn was carried in procession to the Capitol, where the chosen captains received their invest.i.ture at the hands of the Senate. In times of difficulty they a.s.sembled for consultation in that council chamber of the people, the church of Ara Coeli, but their counsels seldom led to measures of conciliation which were uncongenial to their fierce independence and to the arbitrary authority they a.s.sumed. In peace or in war, in sanguinary insurrections or in national rejoicings, the _caporioni_ were always to the front, their banners with the regional device upon a coloured field fluttering in the breeze. It was to them that Cola di Rienzo looked for a.s.sistance and support. When a royal visitor or one of the German Emperors of Rome entered the city in state, the _caporioni_ were amongst the officials who received them, their banners carried by their pages on horseback, and themselves clad in their gala tunics of crimson velvet, cloaks of cloth of gold, white stockings and shoes, and black bonnets jewelled and feathered. When Pope Gregory XI. returned to Rome, restoring the papacy to the land of its birth after an exile of seventy years, the _caporioni_ rode in procession to give him welcome, and at his death they hurried to the cardinals a.s.sembling in conclave at the Vatican to implore them at all costs to elect a Roman pope, and they emphasised their pet.i.tion with a fierce menace which would a.s.suredly have been carried through to its sanguinary end but for the intervention of the Colonna forces.

In the carnival processions of the fifteenth century which issued from the Capitol to perambulate the city, the _caporioni_, surrounded by fifty mounted grooms wearing their distinctive livery, preceded the Senators. Representatives from each region marched with them in the order of their precedence carrying halberds, banners, and lances, and shields emblazoned with their arms, and escorted by grooms on horseback. In the same procession, in front of the regions, were delegates from all the handicraft and trade guilds in the city, shoe-makers, hatters, apothecaries, tavern keepers, and many others, each with their banners captains and sergeants; the guild of ironworkers alone numbered 300, in the midst of whom a team of horses were harnessed to a cannon of their own making. The procession was headed by munic.i.p.al officers and soldiers, and as an emblem of law and justice a wretched criminal was driven along with blows.

After the Renaissance the _caporioni_ degenerated into mere regional captains, retaining only a shadow of their former power and jurisdiction, and the present government has abolished the office altogether. The organisation and the spirit of the regions are, however, by no means dead.

[Ill.u.s.tration: COLUMN OF MARCUS AURELIUS, PIAZZA COLONNA

The only work of the time of the emperor-philosopher which has come down to us. The column is now crowned by a colossal bronze statue of S. Paul. See pages 32, 55.]

Until the racing of riderless horses down the Corso was forbidden, each region entered a horse for the race which was decked in the regional colour, and its success or failure aroused a perfect pa.s.sion of rivalry between region and region--an antagonism as old as the age of Plutarch, who relates that in the month of October chariot races were run in the Campus Martius; the victorious horse was sacrificed to the G.o.d Mars, but its head was borne in procession to the Forum, all the regions fighting for possession of the trophy until nothing was left of it, and the combatants themselves were wounded and disabled.

To this day, on occasions of popular rejoicing or in patriotic demonstrations, representatives from each region form into procession, the regional banner carried by _vigili_, who march surrounded by a group of the so-called _fedeli_, inhabitants of the little town of Viturcchino, who for good services rendered to Rome in the past have earned special consideration at the hands of the Roman munic.i.p.ality.

Such processions are headed by the standard of the Commune, S.P.Q.R.

upon a red and yellow ground, and immediately behind follows the banner of the Monti, the first region, three green hills on a white field.

The different devices of the regions, carved upon marble shields, were affixed to house walls in many parts of the city to mark the boundaries, by order of Benedict XIV., and can still be seen in position. All those who know Rome at all are probably familiar with the Monti escutcheon upon the wall of the Aldobrandini palace, and with the Campo Marzo crescent on a house wall at Capo le Case.

The pa.s.sage of time has not wholly wiped out the fierce and hereditary enmity between the inhabitants of one portion of the city and another, which has been always fostered and encouraged, though unintentionally, by the regional system.

The Monticiani and the Trasteverini were the most irreconcilable of foes. The Monti was the first region to be inhabited after the barbarian invasions, but it was left in comparative isolation and neglect when the Campo Marzo became the busy centre of papal Rome, and its people have retained something of their untamed native independence. They are proud and pa.s.sionate, are the quickest with the knife in a quarrel, and will not stoop to domestic service or to menial trades. They choose husbands and wives amongst their own people--they believe S. Maria Maggiore to be the most beautiful church in the world, and will brook no dissent on the subject. Even to-day they will not speak willingly to a Trasteverino. The enmity between these two may have had a Guelph and Ghibelline origin. Certainly Trastevere was a stronghold of the Ghibellines as is shown by an episode which occurred on the day of Pope Callistus III.'s coronation in 1445. A groom in the employ of the Orsinis came to words about a girl with a groom of a rival house, the Anguillara. From words they came to blows, and quickly the quarrel became general, until in a few hours 3000 men were under arms ready to fight in an Orsini cause. The inhabitants of Trastevere, separated from the rest of Rome by the river and comparatively far from its centre, have retained to the present day much of their individuality, their habits, character, and appearance. The sight of a Monticiano arouses in them all the evil pa.s.sions. Even as late as the year 1838, it was their habit on every holiday to meet the Monticiani for a stoning match on the green swards of the Forum--"the field of cows" as it was then called--the historic fragments lying about serving as missiles of war. Such matches were not to revenge any particular wrong but merely for honour and glory, the victorious region bearing off the palm in triumph until the next occasion. Sometimes they met at the Navicella, sometimes in the ruined courts of Diocletian's baths; sometimes a champion from each side came forward for the contest, sometimes it was a general scrimmage, members of other regions looking on and encouraging their allies. Sometimes when the matches fell upon a market day--a market was held once a week in the Campo Vaccino--the crockery stalls were requisitioned for ammunition, and earthenware pans and pipkins flew across the Forum in company with fragments of cla.s.sic statues and marble friezes. Only when heads were broken in plenty, and blood poured from wounded faces and limbs, did these fighters desist, or when the cry "al fuoco"

warned them of the tardy arrival of the _sbirri_. Even these agents of law and order were powerless to separate the combatants unless they had had enough, and during Napoleon's occupation of Rome the cavalry had to be called out to disperse them, the gendarmes having entirely failed to do so. These stoning matches between Monticiani and Trasteverini were so recognised an inst.i.tution in Rome, that the poet Berneri writing two centuries ago, sums up the Forum Romanum in the words:

Campo Vaccino Luogo dove s'impara a fare a sa.s.si.

Field of cows The place where one learns to throw stones.

The movement towards a.s.sociation between members of a craft or of persons of identical interests, seems to be, as we have seen, as old as Rome herself. Whether or no King Numa gave it its first impulse, it is certain that throughout the first years of the Republic trade corporations were multiplied in the city without let or hindrance, and only when their number and importance seemed to menace the tranquillity of the State were measures taken for their control.

The wave of prosperity which spread over the Roman provinces during the early Empire gave a further impetus to trade in every branch, and an industrial cla.s.s which had been long in the making amongst the people of Rome, awoke to its own interests and claimed if not sympathy at least recognition from the aristocratic ruling caste which held all _plebs_ in contempt.

[Ill.u.s.tration: PANTHEON, A FLANK VIEW

Designed as a Hall of the Baths of Agrippa the contemporary of Augustus, but appears to have been at once dedicated as a temple.

The Black Confraternity of S. John Beheaded are seen pa.s.sing the building, their cross bearer preceding them. See pages 30, 56, 67, 86; [see also pp. 8, 77, 143].]

The only response given however was to prohibit the formation of trade guilds, exception only being made in favour of a few of the most ancient, and those devoted to purposes of religion and burial. They continued nevertheless to multiply under cover of this latter clause until under Marcus Aurelius and Alexander Severus they received final encouragement and recognition. At this time they had increased enormously in number wealth and importance throughout Rome and the provinces. Every group of merchants and all those engaged in handicrafts banded themselves together to form a _college_ or _university_ as they were called in Rome, as much for the social pleasures to be derived from such a.s.sociation as for the mutual support and protection afforded against the impositions and aggressions of outsiders. Charioteers, gladiators, disbanded soldiers, itinerant merchants, seamen, Tiber boatmen, grain weighers at Ostia, palace servants, carters and coachmen founded corporations equally with the bakers and innkeepers, dyers weavers and tanners.

Every young community sought a rich patron willing to give a plot of land or the funds necessary for the building of a club-room, promising in return certain anniversary banquets in his honour, or commemorative reunions to keep his memory green after death. Each corporation placed itself under the protection of a G.o.d whose name it adopted, and as its wealth and importance increased, by members' testamentary bequests or by gifts from patrons, the club premises were increased, and shrines and chapels were built in honour of the t.i.tular deity. Some of the corporations rose to such a position of importance that senatorial and consular families sprang from them; they supported colleges of doctors sculptors and painters of their own, they contributed to the building of public monuments and made loans to the State, while on special occasions the emperor's retinue was increased by a hundred standards and five hundred lances contributed by the trade colleges of Rome from amongst their own retainers.

Although democratic in const.i.tution, in so far as every member, however humble, could serve as one of its officers, the college was founded on the civic pattern, with president, curators, fiscal officer and all the grades of rank down to its slave members. Thus each unit represented in miniature the Roman commune and contributed to its consolidation. Unlike some of the guilds of the North however which became the nurseries of civic freedom, the Roman Colleges were too ready to subject their individuality to the spirit of civil discipline which was characteristic of Roman organisations and we find them submitting to one Imperial decree after another, losing one after another of their rights until they fell altogether under State patronage and became a mere portion of State machinery, a petrifying slavery being thus imposed upon their members whose liberties they were founded to safeguard.

As an integral portion of the administrative life of the State, they proved of the greatest use, not only as adding to its stability and prosperity but as affording a sort of scaffolding upon which to build its complicated daily life. To them was given the collection of taxes, the superintendence of public buildings, the development of the military system, the clothing of the militia, the provisioning of the citizens and the supplying of all their daily necessities.

[Ill.u.s.tration: SILVERSMITHS' ARCH IN THE VELABRUM

This arch stands against the Arch of Ja.n.u.s, and was erected to the Emperor Septimius Severus, his wife Julia Pia, and his sons, by the guilds of silversmiths and cattle merchants. When Caracalla murdered his brother the name of the murdered prince was removed from the inscription. The arch, as the inscription proves, is on the site of the _Forum Boarium_.]

In return for these services they were exempt from all other obligations to the State. The livelihood and wellbeing of members of colleges were thus ensured but at the cost of their liberty. Every member was obliged to sink a portion of his estate in the funds of the college, and to contribute another to its expenses. He was forbidden to will away the remainder except to his sons or nephews who in their turn were bound to enter the same trade; no member could change his own trade for any other, the priesthood alone excepted, in which case he must furnish a subst.i.tute. The goods of the corporations were thus inalienable, and whole families were bound to the same occupation in perpetuity.

During the civil wars, barbarian invasions and general disunion following upon the decadence of the Empire, the Roman colleges are lost sight of, but there seems little doubt that their privileges were left intact by the foreign conquerors of Rome and that it was their direct descendants that we find flourishing once more as trade corporations in the middle ages. As early as the eighth century, the Lombards, Saxons and Franks had formed _scholae_ for members of these nationalities resident in Rome, and a little later trade guilds, founded for the mutual support and protection of their members against oppression, had already grown prosperous and strong enough to take an active part in insurrections and civil wars.

We find history repeating herself. The guilds placed under the protection of a Christian saint were const.i.tuted with the obligations to bury their dead, to succour the widows and orphans of poorer members, to lend them funds in case of need and to offer ma.s.ses for their benefactors. All members swore to the articles of enrolment, the statutes were formally drawn up, and many of them are preserved to this day. As funds increased, hospitals were built for sick brethren, and schools for the children; dowries were given to the daughters, and the guild standard-bearers and men-at-arms swelled the ranks of mediaeval processions just as those of their pagan predecessors had done. The colleges kept great feasts and festivals, and their messengers paraded the streets two and two bidding householders deck their windows with bunting for the coming festivities. They endowed convents and hospices and built churches, many of which still bear the name of their founders. S. Giuseppe _de' Falegnami_ was built by the carpenters' guild; S. Caterina _de' Funari_ by the ropemakers'; S.

Lorenzo in Miranda in the Forum belonged to the apothecaries; S. Maria dell' Orto to the fruiterers and cheesemongers; S. Barbara to the librarians; S. Tommaso a' Cenci to the coachmen. Streets called after the cloakmakers, the ropemakers, the watchmakers and other craftsmen still mark the districts given over to these different industries.

The regulations imposed within the guilds pressed heavily upon the poorer members. The chief of each guild, the _Capo d'arte_ exacted implicit obedience. He was the sole arbiter on all trade questions, on the opening of every new shop, and the examination of every new worker, and played the part of a petty tyrant. An arduous apprenticeship of seven years from the age of thirteen was followed by two or three years as worker, and the payment of heavy fees, before the position of master-worker was reached.

These powerful guilds hampered the development of trade by the establishment of monopolies, and they were more than once suppressed, and finally abolished in the seventeenth century. Many of them, however, survived, taking on the form of religious confraternities.

These had coexisted with the trade guilds throughout the later middle ages. They were founded with a purely religious object, were a more spontaneous creation and were not under any State control. One confraternity was founded for succouring the sick, another for feeding pilgrims three days gratuitously, a third begged about the town for the benefit of prisoners, and a fourth prayed with condemned malefactors. Up to the beginning of the nineteenth century, this confraternity had the right to liberate one prisoner each year, who was afterwards taken in triumph round the town. Another gave dowries to deserving girls, and to this day the chapter of S. Peter's conducts a procession of the _zitelle_ or maidens round the basilica on the octave of Corpus Christi. At the head of the procession the capitular umbrella is carried; those girls who are destined to a convent life wear a crown of flowers, and those to be married are accompanied each by her _fiance_.

The confraternity of blacksmiths had the privilege of blessing animals on S. Antony's day (January 17) and the s.p.a.ce before their church of S. Eligio, patron of blacksmiths, used to be crowded with horses, mules, dogs, sheep and oxen brought for the purpose. The owners paid large sums to the confraternity, and the Pope's horses and the equipages of Roman patricians arrived decked in flowers, the Piombino and Doria coachmen driving eighteen pairs in hand to the admiration of the crowds.

Since 1870 the confraternities have lost their importance and much of their ama.s.sed wealth, while such of the trade guilds as have not become purely religious confraternities, have resolved themselves into the modern trades unions and beneficent clubs.