Rome Part 8

[6] The zone which supplies the maximum of crimes of violence is Lazio (Latium).

_Law and Justice_

Those who know what it is to feel "righteous indignation" must suffer in a country where justice is not understood and not appreciated by any one. The Italians still know how to make laws, and legislation here is ahead not only of the sentiment of the country but of the laws of most European peoples--what they have forgotten is how to administer them. It is no exaggeration to say that at present Italian tribunals exist for the sake of the criminal; absurd "extenuating circ.u.mstances," which can hardly be taken seriously, are always forthcoming, and as a distinguished Italian declared in the Senate the guilty man here must indeed be an unfortunate wretch (_un povero disgraziato_) if he cannot manage to escape a condemnation. In place of the inexorable penalty which would alone meet the case in a land where lawlessness has prescriptive rights and where capital punishment does not exist, there is a pleasing uncertainty about all penalties.

With a poor sense of humour as conspicuous as the poor sense of justice, a bench of judges will gravely listen to a succession of false witnesses, vulgar perjurers, mere play-actors, who spring up hydra-headed in support of every villain or rascal, be the matter a murder or an affair of two francs.

The terrorisation exercised by the knife and the _vendetta_ has caused the Roman for centuries to enter into a sh.e.l.l of reserve; if an a.s.sa.s.sination takes place--in broad daylight or in the dark, it does not matter--no one sees it; the _guardia_ arrives round the corner in time to make the "legal verifications" as soon as the misdeed is safely accomplished, and if the victim shrieked first neither he nor any one else happened to hear it. The desire to live in peace, seeing nothing, hearing nothing, making no enemies, has affected a whole people--with the result that the protected person is the malefactor.

The more audacious he is, the more he affects in the city the _allures_ of the brigand, the more successful he will be in evading the law, in gaining the support rendered by the silence or the false witness of all who encounter him. The people, writes Aristide Gabelli, "seek by silence and dissimulation their own safety rather than the public safety at their own proper peril." The consequence is, of course, that there is not the least co-operation with the law. The Roman, indeed, feels humiliated by the necessity for seeking its aid; government and law are abhorrent to him, and he alludes to the former as "_questo porco di governo_"--if you are unable to defend yourself the alternative is not the arm of the law but to stop at home.

The police service of Rome includes three corps--the carabineers, who hunt in couples, in three-cornered hat and cloak and sword; the munic.i.p.al guard who wear a c.o.c.ked hat, with c.o.c.ks' feathers on feast days, and a black uniform turned up with orange; the _Guardie di Pubblica Sicurezza_, in black piped with blue, and a _capote_. These last, called _questurini_ because they depend from the _Questura_, are disliked by all Romans who call them "_avanzi di galera_," gaolbirds and a.s.sa.s.sins. As a matter of fact it is difficult to find men of civil condition to enter the corps; such work is eminently distasteful to a Roman, and "set a thief to catch a thief" is the principle on which he supposes the _governo_ acts.

[Ill.u.s.tration: CHAPEL OF SAN LORENZO LORICATO AT S. BENEDICT'S, SUBIACO

See interleaf, page 86.]

Crispi tried to form one police force for the city; at present if you apply to a _guardia di P.S._ your business is sure to concern the absent munic.i.p.al guard, while the carabineers do nothing but support each other in the arduous task of standing at street corners watching the follies of men, criminals and victims.[7] To the munic.i.p.al guard--the popular force, called _pizzardoni_--is entrusted the maintenance of decency and order in the city, and they often brave the wrath of their fellow citizens in its accomplishment. All matters not connected with munic.i.p.al legislation pertain to the State police, who arrest thieves and act in criminal affairs. Soldiers, too, have certain civil duties; they are frequently called upon to act as police, they are called out to help if a house falls down, to form the _cordon_ in case of a fire, and may in certain circ.u.mstances arrest a malefactor.

[7] Very different is their role in the country districts, which they police entirely, and with courage and devotion.

The soldiers form the most respectable and the only disciplined part of the male population in a city like Rome. One often sees, of course, battalions of men from all the Italian provinces, youths of twenty just enrolled, and among them there is seldom a vicious face. For these are the mothers' sons, and they compare very favourably with our "Tommies." The same cannot be said of the other youths who throng the city. Perhaps seven-tenths of the crime is committed by lads in their teens and early twenties; I have heard a Senator declare that there are boys of twelve in the prisons who are already _perfetti criminali_; and surely nowhere in Europe are boys and youths worse trained. The most appalling phenomenon, however, is the existence of a degraded type, of all and every age, usually belonging to the decently-clothed cla.s.ses, whose outrages on decency were described by an Italian in a Roman newspaper as "enough to sicken the coa.r.s.est navvy." These practices, according to some old Romans, are one of the results of the French occupation, but such an explanation of occurrences which are to be met with nowhere else in Europe or out of it, must be taken with all reserve. Gaolbirds like these molest women with impunity; and the _amor proprio_ of the vile nature awakes just in time to heap further outrage when this molestation is resented.

Women have always been hustled in the Roman streets, and as Italian ladies are only now beginning to walk unaccompanied, the foreign visitors bear the brunt of the amiable practice still in vogue of not moving on the narrow pavements, but leaving the lady to take the gutter. Such conduct from men to women contrasts strangely with the courtesy so often extended even to beggars; and a woman of the people, a servant or a porteress, will invite the beggar who is interrupting your conversation to desist, with such phrases as: "Move aside a little; Do me this pleasure."

_Courtship and Marriage_

It will be astonishing to many, no doubt, to hear that courtship in Italy is a prosaic affair. Of pa.s.sion there is plenty and to spare, but the tragic element does not enter every day, and then no sentiment comes in to disturb matters. After the first _etiquette_ of the situation is over, and the letters vowing that you have _il paradiso nel cuor_--which are duly discounted by the peasant _fiancee_--have been written, things run uneventfully enough. A young Abruzzese servant--from the most saving population of Italy--became enthusiastic when recounting the virtues of his proposed bride to his mistress, which culminated with: "Signorina mia, _e piena di biancheria_"--"she is full of house linen."

There is among all Italian women more dignity in their relations with men than there is among English women. The Italian woman has a n.o.ble reticence, a power of self-protection, which imposes itself on lover and husband. She is not accustomed, as we are in modern times, to walking abroad unaccompanied, and there is no doubt that here the Englishwoman shows a self-respecting demeanour which is everywhere recognised as ent.i.tling her to all the respect she feels for herself.

What I speak of is the Italian woman's att.i.tude towards the man to whom she is engaged or married, in comparison with the Englishwoman's.

The former will not serve her husband as an English or German _frau_ will; nor, before marriage, will she lay herself out to keep the man at any cost as the English girl of the servant cla.s.s will do. Here Italian self-respect is greater than English. The Roman woman of the lowest cla.s.s habitually displays this personal dignity and reticence in the streets; and nowhere in Rome will you see such scenes as are to be witnessed on any bank holiday at a seaside place in England, on Sat.u.r.day evenings in London, or in country towns after dark, among men and women of the lower middle cla.s.s.

The Italian woman will avoid scandal to herself and hers at whatever cost; she will suffer any deprivation or loss to compa.s.s this, to keep her trouble from the eyes of the curious world. There is none of that vulgarity of soul--consummated in modern times among Anglo-Saxon peoples--which hastens to wash dirty linen in public. This is one reason why divorce is so distasteful in Italy, and especially to the women, who would one and all suffer individually in order to bind the man, to preserve the family and its honour, in preference to the enjoyment of the personal freedom which the looser bond implies.

[Ill.u.s.tration: STEPS OF THE DOMINICAN NUNS' CHURCH OF SS. DOMENICO AND SISTO

This and the church of Santa Caterina da Siena form a Dominican corner of Rome on a spur of the Quirinal. The garden of Palazzo Aldobrandini is seen in the background. See pages 6, 171.]

A traditional characteristic of the Roman is that he has always given a fairer share of life to women than other Italians. Since the day when Romulus called the Roman _curiae_ after the thirty Sabine women who had thrown themselves into the breach for the Romans, and conferred on them special privileges, the Roman woman has played a dignified part in the life of the city. As priestesses the vestals possessed privileges shared by none but the emperor; and the idea of the Roman matron, the wife not "in the hand" of her husband, was a Roman contribution to social ethics two thousand years before the idea occurred to Englishmen. There is nothing that antiquity has handed down to us more dignified than the seated female figures in Roman museums. These views of women ceased, naturally enough, when Rome which had been the greatest political became the greatest clerical city in the world; but the Roman tradition was handed on in the Italian universities outside Rome, which admitted women five hundred years before they were allowed to share in the benefits of those colleges of Cambridge and Oxford which their money and influence had done so much to endow.

The women of the people still, however, enjoy in Rome "an almost unlimited liberty." The Roman man shares his recreations with his wife, and the wife-kicking which is such a plague spot in the life of the common people in England, is not one of them. English fair-play to women is indeed merely a matter of cla.s.s; it has never penetrated to the lower strata, and in the English middle as in the English lower cla.s.s the men are still "the lords of creation." This conjugal relation in fact remains a bulwark of a certain coa.r.s.eness which no one can deny to the Englishman, and which is registered in the Italian's firm opinion that English wives are bought and sold in open market. In other parts of Italy, however, in Calabria and the Abruzzi (even Piedmont is conspicuous for want of gallantry), the wife is regarded simply as a chattel, and the brutal husband aims his blow at his wife's face in order that the neighbours may recognise _il segno del marito_. The sufficient explanation _e suo_ (it is his own) is the same which will be given you if a youth maltreats a dog; and in both cases the moral quality of the argument is as ign.o.ble as it can be.

Socially, the talents of the Romans are not higher than our own. The Italian people have not the social gifts which are the _privilegium_ of their Latin neighbour. On the society of ancient Rome was superimposed clerical Rome--a city where the s.e.x which makes society was nowhere, where the _pezzo grosso_ in every drawing-room was a Roman cardinal, not a great lady; and there can be little doubt that this has not proved a civilising influence on the Roman. But in natural gifts of disposition the Italian greatly excels us; and in no English gathering can the charm be approached which Italians will impart to an _alfresco_ party, an impromptu _festa_--often including a great mixture of cla.s.ses--when the simplicity, the unfailing good humour, and the successful efforts to please are a lesson to the Englishman. The Italians by gathering together make a natural _festa_, as by walking they make a natural procession--something that is graceful and unselfconscious, absolutely simple without missing stateliness.

_The Romans and Art_

The art history of Rome is as distinct from that of the rest of Italy as is its social, its religious, or its political history. We look in vain to Rome for a first-rate picture, a first-rate poem, even--with the exception of Palestrina--for a first-rate composer.[8] The fatal facility which hampers all Italians, who can achieve with little labour what less gifted peoples travail to attain, meets in the Roman that curious inconclusiveness, that strange universal sterility, which begins with the character itself. Nevertheless the Roman has not failed to give us what it is his function to give--he has always been a fine-art critic; every great thing has come before him, and of all he has been an incorruptible judge, seldom deceived, using all the powers of _finezza_, of ridicule, of satire, and of fine judgment at his command, to raise or to create a standard of fine work. If there is one art which may be said to be not only the gift of Italy but to have remained Italian, it is singing; and here the Roman has kept in the forefront both as critic and executant. The Italian really _loves a voice_--the Englishman loves the sentimental rendering of a theme; and the criterion of vocal sound which the Italian possesses, he finds, perhaps, in his own throat. "Roman throats and chests must, in some particular way, be differently constructed from those of other people" wrote Walter Pater; and the resonant voices of Italians may be due to the absence of the protruding German and English chin which captures and m.u.f.fles so many of our vocal tones.

[8] _Clementi_, indeed, was a Roman, and a Roman buried in the cloisters of Westminster Abbey.

The cla.s.sical Roman had no taste: we wonder to-day that the Roman, dazzled with rich marbles, should adopt the expedient of painted columns in a scheme of decoration; but he did the same in the house of Germanicus on the Palatine. That there is a distinction between taste and artistic sensibility there can be no doubt whatever, and it is equally true that the former is often mistaken for the latter. The subject is an interesting one; but here we can only record the two facts--that the Roman all through the centuries has been a sensitive to artistic impressions, and a fine judge of the arts, and that he has never possessed that gift of a certain refinement of sentiment--taste.

After all that has been said of the Romans, it is sad to have to record that it will soon be difficult to find genuine Roman families.

The old "_Romano de Roma_"--the man whose ancestors, like himself, were born _all' ombra del Cupolone_, under the shadow of the great cupola--is disappearing, giving place to more successful, more industrious, and 'cuter men--preserving up to the last moment of his life those habits and customs which cause him and his house to suggest Noah and his ark to the more modern Italian; but also learning up to the last hour of his life new ideas, such as must also have importuned the patriarch and his family when the waters receded leaving him and the ark high and dry on Ararat, and the daughters of men began to weave their toils round the sons of G.o.d.

[Ill.u.s.tration: PORTA SAN PAOLO

Gate in the Aurelian wall rebuilt by Belisarius. This is the gate of the Ostian Way leading to the basilica of S. Paul's--one of the seven great pilgrimage churches--of which the Kings of England were Protectors.]

CHAPTER VIII

ROMAN PRINCELY FAMILIES

To be a patrician of Rome is to possess one of the proudest of t.i.tles, and from the senator of the ancient city to the prince of to-day the aristocracy of Rome has been one of its most vital and characteristic inst.i.tutions.

Though the Roman cardinal as a prince of the Church has always been admitted, whatever his origin, within the pale, the Roman n.o.bility with the rarest exceptions has never swelled its ranks with newcomers owing their tides to acquired wealth or successful public life, but, conservative and exclusive, preserves the traditions of the past and forms a society unlike any other in Europe.

The greater number of the princely families whose names are familiar to every sojourner in Rome date their connection with the city from the fifteenth century and onwards, when the popes ceased to be chosen from among the Romans, and a new aristocracy grew up, the creation of successive pontiffs, who, themselves reigning but not hereditary sovereigns, wished to raise their relatives to a rank second only to their own.

Others trace their descent from some mediaeval chieftain, or are feudal in origin, and these alone are indigenous to the city and its surroundings, and their history is indissolubly woven into the records of Rome's past. For many dark centuries, during a barbarous period of bloodshed crime and cruelty, the history of Rome was what her great n.o.bles made it; and they in their turn rose to fame and power or sank into oblivion, leaving no traces or but the scantiest records of their fate. The great mediaeval family of Conti, Counts of Segni, whose race gave four popes to Rome, among them the great Innocent III., have disappeared from history, leaving as a magnificent monument to their greatness the huge tower which bears their name.

In the twelfth century, the Sabine Savelli and the Jewish Pierleoni were great and prominent. Streets and piazzas called after them in the region near the crowded little Piazza Montanara testify to their importance. The Savelli dwelt in a castle in the Via di Monserrato. It was afterwards turned into a prison, the _Corte Savella_, and here for a time the unhappy Beatrice Cenci and her accomplices were confined.

Both Savelli and Pierleoni successively occupied a stronghold erected within the ancient walls of the theatre of Marcellus, and a fortified palace which stood against it, now Orsini property. One of the Savelli popes, Honorius IV., built himself a castle on the Aventine, and at one period the whole of the hill was entrenched and fortified, the ancient temple of _Libertas_ on its summit being transformed into a citadel. These immense buildings have crumbled away, and the sole monuments that remain to record the past greatness of this family are the tombs of Pope Honorius, of his father and mother, and of other Savellis in their chapel in the church of Ara Coeli on the Capitol.

The Pierleoni, a rich and prolific race, descendants of a learned Jew convert of the time of Pope Leo IX., filled important posts and made alliances with the great houses of Rome, and in 1130 a member of this Jewish family was elected and reigned several years in the Vatican as the antipope Anacletus--an event unparalleled in history. After the thirteenth century this name also slips out of historical records and is heard of no more.

The ancient consular race of the Frangipani have left to Rome some fine monuments in the church of San Marcello in the Corso, and the name is still borne by a Marquess in Udine, but they are no longer numbered amongst the princely houses. They earned their appellation of _bread-breakers_ from having distributed bread in a great famine, but in the middle ages their name spelt terror rather than benevolence.

They were a power not lightly to be reckoned with. Great allies of the papal party, they more than once gave sanctuary to fugitive popes in their strong _Turris Cartularia_, the ruins of which can still be seen near the church of S. Gregory. In the thirteenth century this tower fell into the hands of the Imperialists, and was utterly destroyed with all the archives which had been stored there for safety. It formed an outpost in a chain of fortifications with which the Frangipani and their allies the Corsi enclosed a large portion of the city. Their main stronghold was built amongst the ruins of the Palatine, with flanking towers on the Colosseum and on the triumphal arches of Constantine, t.i.tus, and Ja.n.u.s. From this dominating position they could take the field or rush upon their foes in the city at the head of hundreds of armed retainers. Another mediaeval family, the Anguillara, has been merged in the Orsini, leaving a solitary tower in Trastevere to commemorate a once great and powerful race.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE COLOSSEUM IN A STORM]

But of all the feudal princes of Rome none played so conspicuous a part as the Orsini and Colonna, and this not alone in the history of their own city, for their names were famous throughout Europe for many centuries. These two great families were hereditary enemies and belonged to rival factions. The Colonna were Ghibellines, Imperialists, the Orsini Guelphs, supporters of the papacy, and when they were not fighting in support of their political parties they were engaged in private feuds on their own account. While in other cities of Italy feudal tyranny was gradually giving way before the more enlightened government of independent republics, Rome was too weak to struggle against her oppressors. Deserted and neglected for nearly a century by her lawful sovereigns the popes, at best ruled by a vacillating and disorderly government, the city lay at the mercy of her great barons who scorned all law and authority and a.s.serted and maintained their complete personal independence at the point of the sword, while they swelled the ranks of their retainers with bandits and cut-throats to whom they gave sanctuary in return for military service. Great and prosperous Rome had become a small forsaken town within a desolate waste, surrounded by a girdle of ancient walls far too large for the city it protected. Amphitheatres, mausoleums of Roman Emperors, temples, theatres, were converted into strongholds.

Such of the churches as were not fortified were crumbling into ruin, and everywhere bristled loop-holed towers from which the n.o.bles could defy one another, and which commanded the entrances to dark filthy and winding streets. At frequent intervals the despondent apathy of the citizens would be rudely disturbed by a call to arms, and to the sound of hoa.r.s.e battle-cries, the clashing of weapons upon steel corslet and helmet, and the waving of banners with the rival Ghibelline and Guelph devices of eagle and keys, bands of Orsini and Colonna would rush fighting through the narrow streets and across the waste s.p.a.ces of the city, would fall back and advance to fight again until, with the darkness, they would retire behind their barred gateways, leaving their dead as so much carrion in the streets.

These two families divided the greater part of Rome between them. The Orsini held the field of Mars and the Vatican district from their fortress in the ruins of the theatre of Pompey and their castle on Monte Giordano. This is now Palazzo Gabrielli, and it retains its portcullis and much of its mediaeval appearance. Tor di Nona and Tor Sanguigna were flanking towers to the Orsini stronghold. The Quirinal hill was occupied by the Colonna, their great castle standing almost on the same ground as their present palazzo, and they had an outlying fortress in the mausoleum of Augustus near the river.

Occasionally a truce was patched up between the two families that they might unite against a common enemy, and for a period they agreed that two senators, one from each family, should be appointed to govern Rome in the pope's absence. But these peaceful intervals were short lived.

On the slightest provocation, barricades would be run up, new entrenchments dug, and civil war would break out afresh.

Again and again in their conflict with the Church the Colonna were worsted in the struggle, their estates confiscated, and themselves, root and branch, beggared and exiled; but there was a strength and vitality about the race that no adversity could subdue. Pope Boniface VIII., whose displeasure they had incurred, oppressed them for a while. Six Colonna brothers were exiled, and their ancestral town of Palestrina was razed to the ground by the Caetani, Boniface's relatives and adherents, and a plough was driven over the site to typify its permanent devastation. But a few years later the reckless Sciarra Colonna broke into the Pope's castle at Anagni, and made him prisoner with bitter taunts and reproaches. Later, Sciarra played a conspicuous part in the coronation of Lewis the Bavarian, and in grat.i.tude for his services the Emperor allowed the single column of the family coat of arms to be surmounted by a golden crown.

Greatest amongst the six brothers of this period was Stephen, Petrarch's friend, an able man and good soldier who met prosperity and adversity, poverty banishment and danger, throughout a long troubled life, with the same calm resolution and intrepid courage. This Stephen survived the last of his line--his two sons Stephen and Peter with two grandsons being ma.s.sacred after an unsuccessful skirmish against Rienzo.

After Boniface's death, the Colonna came into their own again and received one hundred thousand gold florins in compensation for their losses, but Palestrina, which was later rebuilt, suffered again the same fate and was torn down by order of Eugenius IV. within one hundred and fifty years.