| That, of course, was not to be. The 1300s saw the
birth of Humanism
in European philosophy. It was a movement away from the rigid
medieval
mould according to which everything and everyone had a fixed place
within
the Church, the Empire and the feudal hierarchy. Pico della Mirandola
(1463-1494)
put these words in the mouth of God in his Oration on the Dignity
of
Man: "…I have made you neither heavenly nor earthly, neither mortal
nor immortal so that, like a free and sovereign artificer, you might
mold
and fashion yourself into that form you yourself shall have
chosen."
Nothing could be more contrary to the spirit of the papal vision. And
nothing
could be less medieval.
Besides such changes in thinking, which marked the true end of
"The
Middle Ages" and the beginning of the Renaissance, there were much more
tangible events that would underscore the fact that the earthly princes
were no longer willing to have "…His vicar reign over all the
earth."
The most dramatic of these involved a struggle between the Church and
France's
King Philip the Fair over the right of laymen to tax the clergy. It was
a dispute that led to the imprisonment and death of the Pope in Rome in
1305 at the hands of agents of the King. The new Pope, a French
prelate,
agreed to move the Papacy to Avignon in France in 1309. This lasted
until
1377, a period referred to in Christian history as the Babylonian Exile
of the Papacy. It was a period that would decide the centuries-old
contest
between the Church and the kings of Europe for temporal supremacy once
and for all in favor of kings.
The more than half-century of Papal absence from Rome was a
rough period
for the city. Throughout the 1300s, the city was riven by factional
strife.
Also, the Black Plague beset the population, and by 1400 Rome was
described as a city filled with thieves, huts and vermin —a place where
around St. Peter's, itself, wolves could be seen at night. In
comparison
to the great medieval states to the north, such as Florence, for
example,
or the maritime republic of Venice, the city that had once ruled the
known
world was a village.
When the papacy returned to Rome, in one sense it
returned to
a "less believing" city than a century earlier. The years, as
noted,
had been marked, certainly, by confusion, but also by an enormous
revival
of interest in the glories of ancient Rome, indeed, even by a
short-lived
attempt to set up a Roman Republic. And right along with all the
tribulations
of the time, it was also a period when the Italian poet Petrach started
referring to the centuries between the fall of Rome and his own time as
the "Dark Ages," almost heretically ignoring the "light" that
Christianity
had shed on those centuries. A feeling was taking hold that only by a
rebirth
of ancient learning could Europe be brought out of darkness into a new
light. "Rebirth" is the key word. Renaissance. Rome was on the verge of
change.
The Popes began a conscious campaign to make Rome the center
of a normal
Renaissance state, a spiritual center, yes, but also a temporal power
that
might one day unite the peninsula again. They began a wave of
construction,
building streets, bridges, hospitals, fountains, and churches, drawing
on the genius of Renaissance art and architecture to transform the city
into tangible proof of the power and glory of the church. The wave can
be said to have started in the 1450s with the Vatican
fortifications
and the beginning of the rebuilding of St. Peter's under Pope Nicolas
V.
Under a succession of Popes, building was often irrational, but
spectacular.
Like magnificent mushrooms, churches and villas sprang up
helter-skelter
at the whim of Papal egocentric spontaneity and their desire to stamp
their
own mark on the city. The gloriously sprawling city that is modern day
Rome —with no true center of the city— is a direct result of this
urbanism
begun in the Renaissance.
The papal curia —the central administration of the church—
became one
of the most efficient governments in Europe. Through its efforts, Rome,
between 1450 and 1600, took shape. Besides directing new construction,
they set about to rediscover the original ancient city by identifying
major
sites and buildings, and began the task of copying the ancient
inscriptions
that made the city a true textbook on the Roman empire of old. By the
middle
of the 16th century scholars knew Rome better than anyone had in a
thousand
years. The combination of spiritual and intellectual energies
that
propelled such construction and investigation made Renaissance Rome
somewhat
of a paradox. On the one hand, as the center of a major faith, it
promoted
that faith. On the other hand, it was part of the great intellectual
movement
of the Italian Renaissance, Humanism, a movement bursting with earthy
energies
to rediscover the important biological works of Aristotle and
Hippocrates,
to translate the mathematics of Archimedes and the Geography of Ptolemy
(which would inspire Columbus); to study the great Latin encyclopaedia
of Pliny; to promote scholarship in Hebrew, Greek, Arabic and Coptic;
to
let Palestrina invent the music of the future by revising ancient
Gregorian
chants, and to be patron of geniuses such as Michelangelo and Raphael.
Behind it all was the desire to restore the city of the
apostle
Peter to its rightful glory. What Nicholas V said on his deathbed about
building in the new Rome of his day might well be said of the entire
physical
and spiritual rebirth of the Eternal City in the Renaissance:
"Not
for ambition, nor pomp, nor vainglory, nor fame, nor the eternal
perpetuation
of my name, but for the greater dignity of the Apostolic See… did we
conceive
such buildings in mind and spirit."
The US Library of Congress has an excellent on-line exhibit, Rome
Reborn,
at
http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/vatican/toc.html
|
Each
year, tourists, scholars and pilgrims flock to Rome to
admire and study —or simply be awed by— the architecture, art and
history
of The Eternal City. Looking out across the modern city, looking at St.
Peter's, the Castel St. Angelo, Palazzo Farnese, the countless churches
and villas, all spread against a backdrop of ancient splendour, such as
the Colosseum, the Circus Maximus and the arched aqueducts of the
ancient
imperial capital, it is easy to believe that Rome is, indeed,
"eternal".
Yet, the Eternal City has had some very ephemeral moments. It is ironic
that the fortunes of the city of Rome took a turn for the better only
after
so much misfortune had befallen the institution so closely connected
with
that city, the Roman Catholic faith.