Chapter X: Other Buildings in the Town (2)

Following the street by the Casa di Metastasio, we get into delightful lanes above the town and reach another little confraternity, the oldest of all, _San Rufinuccio_.[110] Its small chapel, built of alternate layers of pink and white Subasian stone, is a very characteristic example of an Umbrian way-side sanctuary, always open in the olden days for the peasants to come into for rest and prayer. It is worth a visit, not only because the way there is beautiful, but also for the grand Crucifixion painted above the altar by the decorator of St. Nicholas' Chapel in San Francesco. It is a strong and splendid composition, which even much repainting has been unable to destroy. Unfortunately the scenes at the sides can only just be seen. Below, the half-length Madonna and angels by another artist recall the Annunciation of S. Pietro, in the marked outline of their pale faces and the rainbow colour of clothes and wings.

Turning off from the Via Nuova to the left we mount still higher through the olive groves along a path possessing no name, but which is the nicest way to the heights above the town. We come in a few minutes to the confraternity of _San Lorenzo_, standing somewhat below the level of the castle. It has nothing of interest inside, but behind the wooden covering of the gateway at the side is a fresco by an unknown Umbrian artist, an Assisan perhaps, who above the Virgin's throne signs himself "Chola Pictor." He paints the faces of his saints with a smooth surface, betraying the influence of Simone Martini which he felt together with many of his fellow Umbrian artists. The Virgin's throne is full of wonderful ornaments; unfortunately the fresco has suffered from a large crack across the wall. Very quaint is a group of hooded members of the confraternity at her feet, and there is a charming figure of St. Rufino, young, with an oval face and brown eyes, but to be seen only from the top of a ladder as he is painted in a corner of the arch. It has been suggested to remove this much-ruined painting to the safer custody of the Municipio, but we hope this will not occur, for, taken away from its gateway on the hillside, where the redstarts build their nests and the evening sun lights up the colour in the Virgin's face, its interest and charm would be lost.

THE CASTLE OR "LA ROCCA D'ASSISI"

Within her city walls Assisi possesses nothing wilder or more beautiful than the undulating slopes which rise from the city up to the Castle, where wild orchises grow among the grass, and the hedges of acacia wind around the hill. The town lies so directly below, that by stepping to the edge and looking across the white acacias, we can only see a mass of brown roofs all purple at sundown, the tops of towers and the battlements of gateways. Then there are places where the grassy hillocks stand up so high that they hide the town altogether, and we seem to be looking out upon the broad vista of the valley from an isolated peak. At all times it is beautiful; but choose a stormy day in springtime, when the clouds are driving upwards from the plain only lately covered with mist, and the nearer hills are dark their cities catching the late evening sunshine as it breaks through the storm, while wind-swept Subasio looks bleak in the white light showing here and there patches of palest green. And behind us, cresting the hill, so near the town yet seen absolutely alone and clear against the sky, rise the tower and the vast walls of the Rocca d'Assisi, looking, not like a ruin crumbling beneath the constant driving of wind and rain, but as though torn down in war-time, grand in its destruction. It stands upon the site of an ancient burial ground, where in remote times the Umbrian augurs came to watch for omens from the heights of a tower that is said to have crowned the summit. The legend of this building gave rise to the belief that a castle stood here in very early times which was taken by Totila when he besieged Assisi. But it is more probable that when Charlemagne rebuilt the town in 733 after it had been destroyed by his army, he also erected a castle to enable the Papal emissaries to keep the people in subjection; or perhaps the citizens themselves may have wished to protect themselves more securely from passing armies (see p. 16). It ended by becoming, much to the displeasure of the people the residence of whoever held Assisi for the time, and in the twelfth century they experienced the despotic rule of Conrad of Suabia, who lived here with his young charge, Frederic II. When, by the superior power of the Pope, Conrad was driven out of Umbria, the citizens did their best to destroy the walls which had harboured a tyrant, and to avoid further tyranny they obtained an edict forbidding the erection of another fortress. But promises such as these were vain indeed, for when, in 1367, escaping from the hated yoke of the Perugians Assisi welcomed Cardinal Albornoz in the Pope's name as her ruler, she lent a willing ear to his plans for rebuilding the castle. The people were well satisfied as they watched the improvements he made in the town, and two centuries had so dimmed the remembrances of Conrad's tyranny, that they gladly assisted him, little deeming that they were giving away their liberty. Albornoz, not slow to perceive what a valuable possession it would prove to the rulers of Assisi, spared neither money nor efforts to make it large and strong. By his orders the castle keep, which we see to this day, called the "maschio," and the squarely-set walls enclosing it were erected, and in a very few years the Rocca again rose proudly on its hill, warning the Umbrian people of its newly-found importance, and enticing passing _condottieri_ to lay siege to a town that offered so fine a prize. Albornoz also rebuilt most of the city walls which had been so battered during the Perugian wars; we can trace them from gateway to gateway encircling the city, and it is curious to see how in the upper portion near San Rufino large open spaces exist, as if in those active days when the Assisans had hopes of becoming powerful, they purposely set the walls far back to provide for a large and flourishing town. The feeling of arrested growth is one of the most mournful spectacles, and we half wonder if the great castle dominating the heights was not in part the cause of it. There was war enough at the time, inevitable among the restless factions of a people groping towards freedom and power, but here above the town was placed a fresh cause of dissension and struggle against perpetual bondage through varied tyrannies.

Albornoz, in planning out the city walls, discovered that the part between Porta Cappuccini and Porta Perlici, where the hill descends towards the ravine, needed protection, so he built the strong fortress of San Antonio known as the Rocca Minore. It had a separate governor or Castellano, and though of minor importance, proved very efficient in repelling the attacks of besieging armies. The principal tower, though somewhat ruined, still looks very fine within its square enclosure of massive walls, now covered in places with heavy curtains of ivy, the home of countless birds. A pious Castellano in the fifteenth century left a fresco of the Crucifixion in the chapel with his portrait at the foot of the Cross, and as we look at it through the wooden gateway we are reminded of what otherwise from the deserted look of the place it is easy to forget, that people once lived and prayed at the Rocca as well as fought.

Cardinal Albornoz left the castle in charge of two Assisan captains, but from 1376 an uninterrupted line of governors received their salaries from whoever was master of Assisi at the time. Always chosen from other towns their privileges were quite distinct from those of the civil governors; but in the fifteenth century, owing to the weakness of the Priors, who failed to keep order among the lawless nobles of the town, their power increased. The Papal Legate then gave into the hands of the Castellano authority to issue edicts which the Priors had to obey, and in 1515 he was invested with the title of Podesta and Pretor of Assisi. But none of these governors seems to have misused their power over the town, probably because their rule was of too short a duration to carry out any ambitious scheme. And when the despot for the time being of Assisi came to stay, he took up his quarters in the castle, ruling governors, magistrates and people alike. In the time of the despot Broglia di Trino, we hear of the Priors wearily toiling up the steep ascent to place before him the acts they had passed in the municipal palace. He received them always in the open air, holding his councils either in the first enclosure by the well, or in the second by the castle keep, where many important conclusions were arrived at, and plans for the city's dominion laid out.

So perfect is the harmony of the castle from wherever it is seen, that it is difficult to realise how many hands have formed it, how many times its walls have been battered down and rebuilt at different periods by popes, cardinals, and passing _condottieri_, who have nearly all left their arms upon its walls as a record of their munificence. After Albornoz had built the principal mass of fortifications little was done until 1458, when Jacopo Piccinino, the son of the great general, entered Assisi as master, and obtained immediate possession of the Rocca. His reign was short, but with the quick eye of a soldier he soon discovered the weakness of the western slope, and seeing that it might be carried by assault from Porta San Giacomo, he laid the foundations of a polygonal tower and a long wall connecting it with the main building. The Comacine builders established in Assisi were employed and left their sign, the rose between the compass and the mason's square, upon its lower walls. But long before the work was half completed Piccinino sold the city to the Pope, and it was AEneas Piccolomini, Pius II, who, when he visited Assisi in 1459, ordered it to be brought to a termination; within a year the wall was raised to its full height, the tower received its battlements and the arms of the Piccolomini were placed above those of Piccinino. The covered gallery, running along the top of the wall from the castle, still leads the visitor to the giddy heights of the tower whence he obtains truly a bird's-eye view of all the country round, from Spoleto to Perugia, across range upon range of hills towards Tuscany, and from Bettona to the wild tract of mountainous country leading to Nocera, Gualdo and Gubbio.

To recount the full history of the castle needs a book to itself, and would include not only the history of Assisi but almost of all Umbria.[111] The possession of the Rocco Maggiore entailed that of the Rocca Minore and gave undisputed sway over Assisi, so that the desperate efforts made to hold it can be understood. During the intervals when Papal authority was relaxed, we find the names of many famous people whose armies fought for this much contested prize. Biordo Michelotti, Count Guido of Montefeltro, the two Piccininos, Francesco Sforza and Gian Galeazzo Visconti, were in succession its owners. Cosmo de' Medici obtained it from Pope Eugenius IV, in payment of a bad debt, and a Florentine governor ruled over it for a year. It even, together with the town of Assisi, became the property of Lucrezia Borgia, who received it from Alexander VI, as part of her dower on her marriage with Giovanni Sforza, Lord of Pesaro. Sometimes it happened that a private citizen of Perugia conceived the ambitious scheme of making himself master of the castle, and by fraud the Castellano would be enticed outside the gates and murdered with his family. But it always ended by Perugia, fearing the wrath of the Pope, or not liking one of their own citizens to gain so much power, sending an army to dislodge the tyrant, who soon lost his head. Sometimes criminals were kept imprisoned in the castle; we can still see the room in the keep where they scratched their names upon the wall, with many references to their horror of the place, and a roughly traced heart pierced with an arrow. Ordinary malefactors were shut up in a dark cell on the stairs. When their crimes merited death they were executed on the Piazza della Minerva, or if time pressed, the Castellano hanged them from the battlements of the fortress or threw them out of a window into the ravine below. The governors had a difficult and not a very peaceful time, for they had not only to guard against outside foes, but occasionally against a faction who attempted to get possession of the castle, and great on those occasions was the fight outside its walls. It was in vain that they took every precaution for the general safety, that a night guard walked up and down the Assisan streets playing his castanets to warn off all evil-doers, or that men-at-arms watched incessantly from the castle battlements. In the sixteenth century the castle became a prey to the rival families of the Nepis and the Fiumi who divided Assisi between them. First it fell into the hands of Jacopo Fiumi and the Pope, Alexander VI, furious when he heard of this citizen's audacious act, wrote that "by love or by force" he would have his fortress back again; but Jacopo remained impervious to threats or promises and held out for another year, until the Priors fearing the anger of the Pope came to an agreement with him. Some thirty years later the Nepis obtained possession of it by treachery and violence, and it required all the astuteness of Malatesta Baglione, who was fighting for Clement VII, to dislodge them, while the Pope branded them and their adherents as "sons of iniquity" for having dared to wrest from the Papacy the castle of Assisi.

But the days of the great military importance of the Rocca were fast drawing to a close; Assisi, no longer oppressed by the nobles, harassed by the armies of Perugia, or alarmed by the coming of the despots whose power was on the wane all over Italy, lost her character of individuality as a fighting and turbulent city, and sank beneath the wise and beneficent government of the Papacy. With the arrival of Paul III, in 1535, the final blow was given to mediaeval usages of war and scheming in Umbria. The great Farnese Pope was building his fortress at Perugia to finally crush that hitherto indomitable people, and fearing the Assisans might yet give trouble in the future to his legates as they had so often done in the past, he gave orders that the fortress should be repaired, and a bastion suitable for the more modern methods of warfare be built to the right of the castle keep. This is now the best preserved portion of the building. For some time a Castellano still remained in command of the castle but his title was purely a nominal one, and his chief duty seems to have consisted in guarding prisoners. Its political need having disappeared the popes thought less of their Assisan fortress, the one lately erected at Perugia being more efficient as a safeguard of their interests, and gradually its walls showed signs of decay, but no papal legates were sent to see to their repair. So terribly did it suffer during the years that followed the reign of Paul III, that in 1726 we read of the governor of the city sending an earnest supplication to the Pope that "this strong and ancient castle of Assisi, which had always been the chief fortress of Umbria, should be saved from ruin." The Pope, he tells us in another letter, had already sent Count Aureli, the military governor of Umbria, to inspect it, who declared it was "one of the strongest and most splendid fortresses of the ecclesiastical states, and as fine as any he had seen in France or in Flanders, when as head page he had accompanied Louis XIV." In the same document there is mention also of beautiful paintings in the chief rooms, and of a miraculous Crucifixion in the chapel, but these decorations, needless to say, have long since disappeared. Entreaties were vainly sent to Rome; the castle was so utterly abandoned that its gates stood open for all to roam in and out as they pleased, pulling down the ancient arms of the popes, and vying with the storms to complete its ruin and destruction. Such was its strength that it endured the ill-treatment of seasons and of men, and people now alive remember in their youth to have seen it still roofed in and possessing much of its former magnificence. A little money might have restored it to its pristine state, but during those years of struggle for the Unity of Italy the general fever of excitement invaded the quiet town, and as if remembering all the tyrants their castle walls had harboured, and the skirmishes their ancestors had fought beneath them, the citizens continued its destruction with renewed vigour. It was no uncommon thing to see cartloads of stones being taken down the hill for the construction of some modern dwelling, or boys amusing themselves by throwing down portions of the walls, and trying who could succeed in making great blocks of masonry reach the bed of the torrent below. Luckily the government gave it over to the commune of Assisi in 1883 and they did something towards its repair, though within certain limits, for a large sum would have been necessary to complete its restoration.

But it still remains a very wonderful corner of Assisi, and delightful hours may be passed sitting in the castle keep and looking out of the large windows upon a land so strangely peaceful, with little cities gathered on the hills or lying by some river in the plain. We see the battered walls around us bearing traces of ancient warfare, and wonder at the power which made the mediaeval turmoil so suddenly subside. In vain we scan the valley for the coming of a warlike cardinal with glittering horsemen in his rear, or look for Gian Paolo Baglione riding hastily through the town upon his swift black charger. The communal armies met for the last time by the Tiber many centuries ago; popes, emperors, _condottieri_ and saints have passed like pageants across Umbria, and as if touched by a magician's wand have as suddenly vanished, leaving her cities with only the memories of an active and glorious past. Thus Assisi, with the rest of the smaller towns, gradually sank as a prosperous and governing city though decidedly not as a place of pilgrimage and prayer, into that deep sleep from which she has never again awakened.

FOOTNOTES:

[103] Bernhard Berenson, "Central Italian painters of the Renaissance," p. 86.

[104] Goethe's Werke, _Italiaenische Reise_, I., vol. 27, pp. 184, _et seq._, J. G. Cotta, 1829.

[105] The key is obtained from the Canonico Modestini's house, No. 27a Via S. Paolo.

[106] The legend that St. Francis was born in a stable only dates from the fifteenth century and arose out of the desire of the franciscans to make his life resemble that of Christ. The site of this stable, which is now a chapel, is of no interest whatever.

[107] See _Story of Perugia_ (mediaeval series), p. 211, for the legend of their origin in that town.

[108] The chapel is also called the _Chiesa di S. Caterina_ because the members of that confraternity have charge of it. It is often open, but should it be closed, there is always some one about ready to obtain the key from the house in the same street Via Superba, now Via Principe di Napoli, No. 12, opposite Palazzo Bernabei.

[109] See Signor Alfonso Brizi's _Loggia dei Maestri Comacini in Assisi_, No. 1, April 185, of the _Atti dell' Accademia Properziana del Subasio in Assisi_.

[110] Both the key of _San Rufinuccio_ and _San Lorenzo_ can be obtained through the sacristan of the Cathedral.

[111] This work has been admirably done by Signor Alfonso Brizi. In his _Rocca d'Assisi_, published in 1898, he has given a very interesting account of its many rulers and vicissitudes, and a full description of the building, together with all the documents relating to it.