Chapter XI (2)

The "Acts of the martyrs Alexander, Eventius, and Theodulus," narrate that Severina buried the bodies of the first two martyrs in one tomb, and the third separately--"Theodulum vero alibi sepelivit." This is borne out by the discovery of a chapel opening from the nave, where the single word "martyri," is supposed to point out the grave of Theodulus. A baptistery has been found with its font, and another chapel adjoining is pointed out as the place where neophytes assembled to receive confirmation from the bishop. Among epitaphs laid bare in the pavement is one to a youth named Apollo "votus Deo" (dedicated to the priesthood?) at the age of 14. Entered from the church is the catacomb called "ad nymphas," containing many ancient inscriptions and a few rude paintings.

Mass is solemnly performed here by the Cardinal Prefect of the Propaganda on the festival of St. Alexander, May 3, when the roofless basilica--backed by the blue Sabine mountains and surrounded by the utterly desolate Campagna--is filled with worshippers, and presents a striking scene. Beyond this a road to the left leads through beautiful woods to _Mentana_, occupying the site of the ancient Nomentum, and recently celebrated for the battle between the papal troops and the Garibaldians on Nov. 3, 1867. The conflict took place chiefly on the hillside which is passed on the right before reaching the town. Two miles further is _Monte Rotondo_, with a fine old castle of the Barberini family (once of the Orsini), from which there is a beautiful view. This place was also the scene of fighting in 1867. It is possible to vary the route in returning to Rome from hence by the lower road which leads by the (now broken) Ponte Salara.

* * * * *

If we re-enter Rome by the Porta Pia, immediately within the gates we find another Villa belonging to the Torlonia family. The straight road from the gate leads by the Termini to the Quattro Fontane and the Monte Cavallo. On the left, if we follow the _Via de Macao_, which takes its strange name from a gift of land which the princes of Savoy made to the Jesuits for a mission in China, we reach a small piazza with two pines, where a gate on the left leads to the remains of the _Pretorian Camp_, established by Sejanus, the minister of Tiberius. It was dismantled by Constantine, but from three sides having been enclosed by Aurelian in the line of his city-wall, its form is still preserved to us. The Pretorian Camp was an oblong of 1200 by 1500 feet; its area was occupied by a vineyard of the Jesuits till 1861, when a "Campo Militare" was again established here, for the pontifical troops.

"En suivant l'enceinte de Rome, quand on arrive à l'endroit où elle
se continue par le mur du Camp des prétoriens, on est frappé de la
supériorité de construction que présente celui-ci. La partie des
murs d'Honorius qui est voisine a été refaite au huitième siècle.
Le commencement et la fin de l'empire se touchent. On peut
apprécier d'un coup d'œil l'état de la civilisation aux deux
époques: voilà ce qu'on faisait dans le premier siècle, et voilà ce
qu'on faisait au huitième, après la conquête de l'empire Romain par
les Barbares. Il faut songer toutefois que cette époque où l'on
construisait si bien a amené celle où l'on ne savait plus
construire."--_Ampère, Emp._ i. 421.

Hence a road, three-quarters of a mile long, leads--passing under an arch of Sixtus V.--to the Porta S. Lorenzo (Ch. XIII.).

The road opposite the gateway leading to the Camp is bordered on the left by the buildings belonging to the _Railway Station_, beyond which is the entrance to the grounds of the _Villa Massimo Negroni_, which possessed a delightful terrace, fringed with orange-trees--a most agreeable sunny walk in winter--and many pleasant shady nooks and corners for summer, but which has been mutilated and stripped of all its beauties since the Sardinian rule. In a part of this villa beyond the railway but still visible from hence, is a colossal statue of Minerva (generally called "Rome"), which is a relic of the residence here of Cardinal Felix Perretti, who as a boy had watched the pigs of his father at Montalto, and who lived to mount the papal throne as Sixtus V. The pedestal of the statue bears his arms,--a lion holding three pears in its paw. Here, with her husband's uncle, lived the famous Vittoria Accoramboni, the wife of the handsome Francesco Perretti, who had been vainly sought in marriage by the powerful and ugly old Prince Paolo Orsini. It was from hence that her young husband was summoned to a secret interview with her brothers on the slopes of the Quirinal, where he was cruelly murdered by the hired bravos of her first lover. Hence also Vittoria went forth--on the very day of the installation of Sixtus V.--to her strange second marriage with the murderer of her husband, who died six months after, leaving her with one of the largest fortunes in Italy--an amount of wealth which led to her own barbarous murder through the jealousy of the Orsini a month afterwards.

Here, after the election of her brother to the papacy, lived Camilla, the sister of Sixtus V., whom he refused to recognise when she came to him in splendid attire as a princess, but tenderly embraced when she reappeared in her peasant's wimple and hood. From hence her two granddaughters were married,--one to Virginius Orsini, the other to Marc-Antonio Colonna, an alliance which healed the feud of centuries between the two families.

In later times the Villa Negroni was the residence of the poet Alfieri.

The principal terrace ends near a reservoir which belonged to the baths of Diocletian.

"As one looks from the Villa Negroni windows, one cannot fail to be
impressed by the strange changes through which this wonderful city
has passed. The very spot on which Nero, the insane emperor-artist,
fiddled while Rome was burning, has now become a vast
kitchen-garden, belonging to Prince Massimo (himself a descendant,
as he claims, of Fabius Cunctator), where men no longer, but only
lettuces, asparagus, and artichokes, are ruthlessly cut down. The
inundations are not for mock sea-fights among slaves, but for the
peaceful purposes of irrigation. In the bottom of the valley, a
noble old villa, covered with frescoes, has been turned into a
manufactory for bricks, and part of the Villa Negroni itself is now
occupied by the railway station. Yet here the princely family of
Negroni lived, and the very lady at whose house Lucrezia Borgia
took her famous revenge may once have sauntered under the walls,
which still glow with ripening oranges, to feed the gold fish in
the fountain,--or walked with stately friends through the long
alleys of clipped cypresses, or pic-nicked _alla Giornata_ on lawns
which are now but kitchen-gardens, dedicated to San
Cavolo."--_Story's Roba di Roma._

The lower part of the Villa Negroni, and the slopes towards the Esquiline, were once celebrated as the _Campus Esquilinus_, a large pauper burial-ground, where bodies were thrown into pits called _puticoli_,[246] as is still the custom at Naples. There were also tombs here of a somewhat pretentious character: "those probably of rich well-to-do burgesses, yet not great enough to command the posthumous honour of a roadside mausoleum."[247] Horace dwells on the horrors of this burial-ground, where he places the scene of Canidia's incantations:--

"Nec in sepulcris pauperum prudens anus
Novemdiales dissipare pulveres."
_Epod._ xvii. 47.

'Has nullo perdere possum
Nec prohibere modo, simul ac vaga luna decorum
Protulit os, quin ossa legant, herbasque nocentes.
Vidi egomet nigrâ succinctam vadere pallâ
Canidiam, pedibus nudis passoque capillo,
Cum Saganâ majore ululantem; pallor utrasque
Fecerat horrendas aspectu,

* * * * *

Serpentes atque videres
Infernas errare canes; lunamque rubentem,
Ne foret his testis, post magna latere sepulcra."
_Hor. Sat._ i. 8'

The place was considered very unhealthy until its purification by Mæcenas.

"Huc prius angustis ejecta cadavera cellis
Conservus vili portanda locabat in arcâ.
Hoc miseræ plebi stabat commune sepulcrum,
Pantolabo scurræ, Nomentanoque nepoti.
Mille pedes in fronte, trecentos cippus in agrum
Hîc dabat; heredes monumentum ne sequeretur.
Nunc licet Esquiliis habitare salubribus, atque
Aggere in aprico spatiari; quo modo tristes
Albis informem spectabant ossibus agrum."

_Hor. Sat._ i. 8.

"Post insepulta membra different lupi,
Et Esquilinæ alites."

_Hor. Ep._ v. 100.

"The Campus Esquilinus, between the roads which issued from the
Esquiline and Viminal gates, was the spot assigned for casting out
the carcases of slaves, whose foul and half-burnt remains were
hardly hidden from the vultures. The _accursed field_ was enclosed,
it would appear, neither by wall nor fence, to exclude the
wandering steps of man or beast; and from the public walk on the
summit of the ridge, it must have been viewed in all its horrors.
Here prowled in troops the houseless dogs of the city and the
suburbs; here skulked the solitary wolf from the Alban hills, and
here perhaps, to the doleful murmurs of the Marsic chaunt, the
sorceress compounded her philtres of the ashes of dead men's bones.
Mæcenas (B.C. 7) deserved the gratitude of the citizens, when he
obtained a grant of this piece of land, and transformed it into a
park or garden.... The Campus Esquilinus is now part of the gardens
of the Villa Negroni."--_Merivale, Romans under the Empire._

Within what were the grounds of the Villa Negroni until they were encroached upon by the railway, but now only to be visited with a "lascia passare" from the station master, are some of the best remains of the _Agger of Servius Tullius_. In 1869--70, some curious painted chambers were discovered here, but were soon destroyed,--and the foolish jealousy of the authorities prevented any drawings or photographs being taken. The Agger can be traced from the Porta Esquilina (near the Arch of Gallienus), to the Porta Collina (near the Gardens of Sallust). In the time of the empire it had become a kind of promenade, as we learn from Horace.[248]

Opposite the station are the vast, but for the most part uninteresting, remains of the _Baths of Diocletian_, covering a space of 440,000 square yards. They were begun by Diocletian and Maximian, about A.D. 302, and finished by Constantius and Maximinus. It is stated by Cardinal Baronius, that 40,000 Christians were employed in the work; some bricks marked with crosses have been found in the ruins. At the angles of the principal front were two circular halls, both of which remain; one is near the modern Villa Strozzi, at the back of the Negroni garden, and is now used as a granary, the other is transformed into the Church of S. Bernardo.

The Baths are supposed to have first fallen into decay after the Gothic invasion of A.D. 410. In the sixteenth century the site was sold to Cardinal Bella, ambassador of Francis I. at Rome, who built a fine palace among the ruins; after his death, in 1560, the property was re-sold to S. Carlo Borromeo. He sold it again to his uncle, Pope Pius IV., who founded the monastery of Carthusian monks. These, in 1593, sold part of the ruins to Caterina Sforza, who founded the Cistercian convent of S. Bernardo.

About 1520, a Sicilian priest called Antonio del Duca came to Rome, bringing with him from Palermo pictures of the seven archangels (Michael, Gabriel, Raphael, Uriel, Santhiel, Gendiel, and Borachiel), copied from some which existed in the Church of S. Angiolo. Carried away by the desire of instituting archangel-worship at Rome, he obtained leave to affix these pictures to seven of the columns still standing erect in the Baths of Diocletian, which, ten years after, Julius II. allowed to be consecrated under the title of Sta. Maria degli Angeli; though Pius IV., declaring that angel-worship had never been sanctioned by the Church, except under the three names mentioned in Scripture, ordered the pictures of Del Duca to be taken away.[249] At the same time he engaged Michael Angelo to convert the great oblong hall of the Baths (Calidarium) into a church. The church then arranged was not such as we now see, the present entrance having been then the atrium of the side chapel, and the main entrance at first by what is now the right transept, while the high altar stood in what is now the left transept. In 1749, the desire of erecting a chapel to the Beato Nicolo Albergati, led to the church being altered, under Vanvitelli, as we now see it.

The _Church of Sta. Maria degli Angeli_, still most magnificent, is now entered by a rotunda (Laconicum) which contains four monuments of some interest; on the right of the entrance is that of the artist Carlo Maratta, who died 1713; on the left that of Salvator Rosa, who died 1673, with an epitaph by his son, describing him as "Pictorum sui temporis nulli secundum, poetarum omnium temporum principibus parem!" Beyond, on the right, is the monument of Cardinal Alciati, professor of law at Milan, who procured his hat through the interest of S. Carlo Borromeo, with the epitaph "Virtute vixit, memoria vivit, gloria vivet,"--on the left, that of Cardinal Parisio di Corenza, inscribed, "Corpus humo tegitur, fama per ora volat, spiritus astra tenet." In the chapel on the right are the angels of Peace and Justice, by _Pettrich_; in that on the left Christ appearing to the Magdalen, by _Arrigo Fiamingo_. Against the pier on the right is the grand statue of S. Bruno, by _Houdon_, of which Clement XIV. (Ganganelli) used to say, "He would speak, if the rule of his Order did not forbid it."

The body of the church is now a perfect gallery of very large pictures, most of which were brought from St. Peter's, where their places have been supplied by mosaic copies. In what is now the right transept, on the right, is the Crucifixion of St. Peter, _Ricciolini_; the Fall of Simon Magus, a copy of _Francesco Vanni_ (the original in St. Peter's); on the left, St. Jerome, with St. Bruno and St. Francis, _Muziano_ (1528--92) (the landscape by _Brill_); and the Miracles of St. Peter, _Baglioni_. This transept ends in the chapel of the Beato Nicolo Albergati, a Carthusian Cardinal, who was sent as legate by Martin V., in 1422, to make a reconciliation between Charles VI. of France and Henry V. of England. The principal miracle ascribed to him, the conversion of bread into coal in order to convince the Emperor of Germany of his divine authority, is represented in the indifferent altar-piece. In the left transept, which ends in the chapel of S. Bruno, are: on the left, St. Basil by the solemnity of the Mass rebuking the Emperor Valens, _Subleyras_; and the Fall of Simon Magus, _Pompeo Battoni_;--on the right, the Immaculate Conception, _P. Bianchi_; and Tabitha raised from the Dead, _P. Costanzi_.

In the tribune are, on the right, the Presentation of the Virgin in the Temple, _Romanelli_; and the Martyrdom of St. Sebastian, a grand fresco of _Domenichino_, painted originally on the walls of St. Peter's, and removed here with great skill by the engineer Zabaglia;--on the left, the Death of Ananias and Sapphira, _Pomarancio_; and the Baptism of Christ, _Maratta_.

On the right of the choir is the tomb of Cardinal Antonio Serbelloni; on the left that of Pius IV., Giovanni Angelo Medici (1559-1565), under whose reign the Council of Trent was closed,--uncle of S. Carlo Borromeo, a lively and mundane pope, but the cruel persecutor of the Caraffa nephews of his predecessor, Paul IV., whom he executed in the Castle of S. Angelo.

Of the sixteen columns in this church (45 feet in height, 16 feet in diameter), only the eight in the transept are of ancient Egyptian granite; the rest are in brick, stuccoed in imitation, and were additions of Vanvitelli. On the pavement is a meridian line, laid down in 1703.

"Quand Dioclétien faisait travailler les pauvres chrétiens à ses
étuves, ce n'était pas son dessein de bâtir des églises à leurs
successeurs; il ne pensait pas être fondateur, comme il l'a été,
d'un monastère de Pères Chartreux et d'un monastère de Pères
Feuillants.... C'est aux dépens de Dioclétien, de ses pierres et de
son ciment qu'on fait des autels et des chapelles à Jesus-Christ,
des dortoirs et des réfectoires à ses serviteurs. La providence de
Dieu se joue de cette sorte des pensées des hommes, et les
événements sont bien éloignés des intentions quand la terre a un
dessein et le ciel un autre."--_Balzac._

The Carthusian convent behind the church (ladies are not admitted) contains several picturesque fountains. That in the great cloister, built from designs of Michael Angelò, is surrounded by a group of huge and grand cypresses, said to have been planted by his hand.

"Il semble que la vie ne sert ici qu'à contempler la mort--les
hommes qui existent ainsi sont pourtant les mêmes à qui la guerre
et toute son activité suffirait à peine s'ils y étaient accoutumés.
C'est un sujet inépuisable de réflexion que les différentes
combinaisons de la destinée humaine sur la terre. Il se passe dans
l'intérieur de l'âme mille accidents, il se forme mille habitudes,
qui font de chaque individu un monde et son histoire."--_Madame de
Staël._

On a line with the monastery is a Prison for Women--then an Institution for Deaf, Dumb, and Blind--then the ugly _Fountain of the Termini_ (designed by Fontana), sometimes called Fontanone dell' Acqua Felice, (Felice, from Fra Felice, the name by which Sixtus V. was known before his papacy,) to which the Acqua Felice was brought from Colonna 22 miles distant in the Alban hills, in 1583, by Sixtus V. It is surmounted by a hideous statue of Moses by _Prospero Bresciano_, who is said to have died of vexation at the ridicule it excited when uncovered. The side statues, of Aaron and Gideon, are by _Giov. Batt. della Porta_ and _Flaminio Vacca_.

Opposite this, in the Via della Porta Pia, is the _Church of Sta. Maria della Vittoria_, built in 1605, by Carlo Maderno, for Paul V. Its façade was added from designs of Giov. Batt. Soria, by Cardinal Borghese, in payment to the monks of the adjoining Carmelite convent, for the statue of the Hermaphrodite, which had been found in their vineyard.

The name of the church commemorates an image of the Virgin, burnt in 1833, which was revered as having been instrumental in gaining the victory for the Catholic imperial troops over the Protestant Frederick and Elizabeth of Bohemia, at the battle of the White Mountain, near Prague. The third chapel on the left contains the Trinity, by _Guercino_; a Crucifixion, by _Guido_; and a portrait of Cardinal Cornaro, _Guido_. The altar-piece of the second chapel on the right, representing St. Francis receiving the Infant Christ from the Virgin, is by _Domenichino_, as are two frescoes on the side walls. In the left transept, above an altar adorned with a gilt bronze-relief of the Last Supper, by Cav. d'Arpino, is a group representing Sta. Teresa transfixed by the dart of the Angel of Death, by _Bernini_. The following criticisms upon it are fair specimens of the contrast between English and French taste.

"All the Spanish pictures of Sta. Theresa sin in their materialism;
but the grossest example--the most offensive--is the marble group
of Bernini, in the Santa Maria della Vittoria at Rome. The head of
Sta. Theresa is that of a languishing nymph, the angel is a sort of
Eros; the whole has been significantly described as 'a parody of
Divine love.' The vehicle, white marble,--its place in a Christian
church,--enhance all its vileness. The least destructive, the
least prudish in matters of art, would here willingly throw the
first stone."--_Mrs. Jameson's Monastic Orders_, p. 421.

"La sainte Thérèse de Bernin est adorable! couchée, évanouie
d'amour les mains, les pieds nus pendants, les yeux demiclos, elle
s'est laissée tomber de bonheur et d'extase. Son visage est maigri,
mais combien noble! C'est la vraie grande dame qui a séché dans les
feux, dans les larmes, en attendant celui qu'elle aime. Jusqu'aux
draperies tortillées, jusqu'à l'allanguissement des mains
défaillantes, jusqu'au soupir qui meurt sur ses levres
entr'ouvertes, il n'y a rien en elle ni autour d'elle qui n'exprime
l'angoisse volupteuse et le divin élancement de son transport. On
ne peut pas rendre avec des mots une attitude si enivrée et si
touchante. Renversée sur le dos, elle pâme, tout son être se
dissout; le moment poignant arrive, elle gémit; c'est son dernier
gémissement, la sensation est trop forte. L'ange cependant, un
jeune page de quatorze ans, en légère tunique, la poitrine
découverte jusqu'au dessous du sein, arrive gracieux, aimable;
c'est le plus joli page de grand seigneur qui vient faire le
bonheur d'une vassal trop tendre. Un sourire demi-complaisant,
demi-malin, creuse des fossettes dans ses fraîches joues luisantes;
sa flêche d'or à la main indique le tressaillement délicieux et
terrible dont il va secouer tous les nerfs de ce corps charmant,
ardent, qui s'étale devant sa main. On n'a jamais fait ce roman si
séduisant et si tendre."--_Taine, Voyage en Italie._

Close by is the handsome _Church of Sta. Susanna_, rebuilt by _Carlo Maderno_, for Sixtus V., on the site of an oratory founded by Pope Caius (A.D. 283), in the house of his brother Gabinus, who was martyred with his daughter Susanna because she refused to break her vow of virginity by a marriage with Maximianus Galerus, adopted son of the Emperor Diocletian, to whom this family were related. The bodies of these martyrs are said to rest beneath the high altar. The side chapel of St. Laurence was presented by Camilla Peretti, the sister of Sixtus V., together with a dowry of fifty scudi, to be paid every year to the nine best girls in the parish, on the festival of Sta. Susanna. The frescoes of the story of Susanna and the Elders, painted here on the side walls, from the analogy of names, are by _Baldassare Croce_; those in the tribune are by _Cesare Nebbia_.

Opposite this, is the Cistercian convent and _Church of S. Bernardo_, a rotunda of the Baths of Diocletian, turned into a church in 1598, by Caterina Sforza, Contessa di Santa Fiora.

Hence the Via della Porta Pia leads to the Quattro Fontane. On the left is the small _Church of S. Caio_, which encloses the tomb of that pope, inscribed "Sancti Caii, Papæ, martyris ossa." Further, on the left, is the great recently suppressed convent of the Carmelites, and the _Church of Sta. Teresa_. The right of the street is bordered by the orange-shaded wall of the Barberini garden.

Between S. Caio and Sta. Teresa, is the _Studio of Overbeck_, the venerable German devotional painter, who died 1869. His daughter allows visitors to be admitted on Sunday afternoons.