I. S. Williams

“ Of all the men who have filled what is called the Chair of St. Peter there is no more interesting and on the whole more respectable figure than that of Sixtus the Fifth, a fairly good biography of whom has just been presented to the English public. As a diplomatist, Baron Hübner naturally dwells with much unction on those passages of the Pope's life in which he played the politician, and coped alternately with Queen Elizabeth of England, Philip of Spain, Henry of France, Rudolph of Austria, the Grand Turk, and the Venetian Republic. ”

“ Of the thousands of intelligent persons from all quarters of the globe who annually visit the Eternal City, how many are there who take away with them on their departure any more distinct impression of the scenes that have in the course of centuries been enacted within its walls than that it was once the seat of a secular empire which has long since passed away, and of a spiritual empire which is slowly nodding to its fall? ”

“ Monasteries do not babble of their inmates to the world, but the world soon began to babble of the eloquent young Franciscan when his shrewd superiors sent him forth, as yet only a youth of nineteen, to electrify the various towns where their convents were planted, by his fiery and fervent tongue. ”

“ The gigantic ruins of the old Roman aqueducts still cover the Campagna; but just as the Forum had become a mere field for cattle, and the Capitol once more the abode of browsing goats, so had a goodly portion of papal Rome come to be worse supplied with the first necessary of life than a ruined village or a deserted seaport. His plan was to bring the water all the way from Palestrina, a distance of some twenty miles from the city; and its ambitious character alarmed the cardinals, and even petrified sober men of science. ”

“ On the following morning, despite a host of entreaties and of protestations from the Sacred College that such a spectacle as that of an execution between the election and coronation of a Pope was unheard of, they were hanged by the bridge of Sant' Angelo and their bodies exposed to the public gaze. "Whilst I live," said the Pope, "every criminal must die." Paolo Giordano Orsini ventured into the Pope's presence, and received from him such a reception that he at once took horse and never rested till he found himself within the shelter of the Venetian Republic. ”

“ Yet as far as that dramatic interest is concerned which springs from the play of individual character, and which has such attractions for the modern public, it is almost beyond doubt that the Papacy offers a wider and more varied field than either Republican or Imperial Rome. The long story of the Pontiffs is studded with examples of every form of public and private virtue, of public and private vice. The peculiar mode of papal election has raised to the pontifical chair men from all ranks of society, from almost every European nation, and of all conceivable types of character. ”

“ That little, however, is of such remarkable interest, that whilst altogether discarding that portion of his career on which Baron Hübner dilates so extensively, we shall make no apology for inviting our readers to follow us as we track the footsteps of the singular person who, born in the very lowest rank of life, embraced the habit of Saint Francis, and, borne along by no tide of fortune, save such as spring, from ability, energy, and opportunity combined, was freely elected to be the head of Catholic Christendom, and into little more than five years crowded the activity of a life-time. ”

“ When his cardinals suggested that he should seek the repose of a suburban villa, he answered that his chief pleasure was to see many roofs. He raised the great tower of Belvidere at the Vatican, and carried far forward that portion of the palace, afterwards completed by Clement the Eighth, which has since remained the principal residence of the Popes. Well might an eloquent observer exclaim: "I revisit Rome after an absence of ten years, and do not recognize it, so new does all appear to me. Monuments, streets, piazzas, fountains, obelisks, and other wonders—all the work of Sixtus the Fifth. ”

“ The history of the Papacy is one long drama, in which every passion plays a part, in which the most earthly motives are abetted by celestial sanctions, in which the chief actors succeed each other with unexampled rapidity, where poetical justice plays its due part, and where it seldom happens that we are sent away with a disappointing anti-climax. ”

“ There he contrived, according to an opinion cherished by both Ranke and Baron Hübner, to hire a small plot of ground; but it is more probable that he cultivated it for Ludovico Vecchia, of Fermo. It is certain that his wife, the future mother of Sixtus the Fifth, assisted in keeping Vecchia's house in order; and as when a hero cannot be proved to be of illustrious parentage, the other extreme is relied upon as a source of interest, and every straw clutched at to deepen the obscurity of his origin, several writers have spoken of his aunt as a washerwoman. ”

“ In the fourth year of that Pontiff's reign there was a creation of cardinals, and a hat was bestowed on Fra Felice. Henceforth he was known as Cardinal Montalto. In consideration of his poverty, what is called "the poor Cardinal's dish," or a hundred scudi a month, was added to his dignity, and the expenses of his in stallation were defrayed out of the Pope's own purse.
He took a modest, and, according to the testimony of the Venetian envoy, mean-looking house in the Via Papale; but soon proved the accuracy of the saying that people's houses are generally as large as their hearts. ”

“ Then we behold an infamous boy, bearing the title of John the Twelfth, wallowing in homicide, incest, perjury, and sacrilege, and answering the threats of his cardinals by mutilating some and excommunicating the rest. Anon a versatile, accomplished Leo the Tenth rises before us, the companion of wits and poets, the patron of architects and musicians, a Cyprian crowned with the tiara. Turn we back the pace, and a Hildebrand is thundering in our ears, forcing an emperor on his knees, and claiming for himself and his successors a practical supremacy over kings and peoples. ”

“ They have schoolboy recollections of mythical kings, of stubborn tribunes of the people, of grasping consuls, of ostentatious Cæsars, and no recollection at all of solemn, erudite, worldly, saintly, licentious cardinals, and of pious, impious, cynical, superstitious, canonized, accursed, indolent, energetic, contemptible, ever memorable Popes. They fancy they are acquainted with the history of the most marvellous city the world has ever seen ”

“ A man of burning energy, condemned by circumstances to an obscure and inactive life, will seem to the ordinary spectator lethargic, perhaps indolent, and even worn out. But the sacred spark can be extinguished only by death ”

“ It has been said that every French soldier carries a marshal's baton in his knapsack. Every priest then carried the tiara under his cassock; and it required neither birth nor affluence for a man to aspire to the tonsure. Even already the Peretti family was linked to that respectable institution, the Church, by one of its members, Fra Salvatore, a Franciscan monk; and thanks to his intervention the aspiring lad was taken into the Franciscan monastery at Montalto, and indoctrinated in all the learning which such a community could convey. ”

“ The difficulty is all the greater, because no true explanation can be given of his elevation to the Papacy which does not enter minutely into the petty intrigues and bickerings of Conclave, for an account of which in this place our readers would scarcely thank us. Any one who wishes to make himself thoroughly acquainted with the constitution and proceedings of papal conclaves can refer to the excellent work on that subject by Mr. Cartwright; and those who seek for a singular and sug gestive instance of what conclaves can do may turn to Baron Hübner's recent work. ”

“ Of the Roman Church it might have been then said, with far more truth than Mr. Disraeli has said it of the English constitution, that within its dominion power was a privilege within reach of all who struggled to attain it. No poor or obscurely-born person can hope in this country to scale the noble heights of influence unless he spends half his life at the bottom occupied in the endeavour to become rich. Felice Peretti never became much richer than he was at starting, if wealth is to be counted by a well-filled purse. ”

“ His fame had preceded him to the Eternal City; and when at length, in the Lent of 1552, or when he was in his thirty-second year, he entered the pulpit of the well-known church attached to the Franciscan monastery in the Piazza Santi Apostoli in Rome, he found before him a crowded and motley audience, consisting of ladies of rank and fashion, cardinals of taste and erudition, court theologians, and the poor and pious who invariably bring up the rear in a Roman church. There were three men however present whose attention was worth that of all the rest ”

“ The nobles in their rural castles protected them, from sympathy and a common interest; the communes harboured them from fear. Now and then the head of a solitary bandit, who had provoked some one's spite or greed, was brought into Rome, and a handsome price was paid for it out of the public treasury. Sixtus raised the price still hi ~her, but decreed that it should be paid by the outlaws' relatives, or, if they were too indigent to collect the amount amongst them, that then the fine should devolve on the commune in which the bandit was born. ”

“ During Gregory's reign Cardinal Montalto led a retired but withal active life, though the marriage of his nephew Francesco with the lovely and accomplished Vittoria Accoramboni, with its tragical consequences, caused his name and that of his household to be for a time in all men's mouths. ”

“ A king without money is nobody." His system of finance has been condemned by the economical science of our day; but if the familiar old adage be true which assures us that the proof of the pudding is in the eating, Sixtus the Fifth must needs be regarded as a chancellor of the exchequer of the highest order. ”

“ It would be tedious to enumerate all the churches and convents he raised or repaired; but his fame will for all time be associated with the completion of the cupola of St. Peter's, which everybody began to think was to remain unfinished, and the cost of carrying which to a successful termination was estimated at a million golden scudi. Ten years, it was said, would be required for the execution of the task. Sixtus kept six hundred men working at it for two-and-twenty months, day and night, and only the leaden covering was wanted when death came upon him. ”

“ The effort was a tremendous one and it cannot be said that it failed; for indeed earnest movements never wholly fail. Italy was saved to Rome; so was France; so was Spain. Germany was divided. England alone was wholly lost. Two of the most active Pontiffs in promoting this spiritual revival were Paul the Fourth, more widely known as Cardinal Caraffa, and Paul the Fifth ”

“ He was employed as regent of all the convents of his order at the comparatively early age of thirty-six, in the important cities of Venice, Naples, and Vienna. At Venice he found a task at once difficult and delicate. The Venetian Republic, always governed by unadulterated worldly wisdom, was opposed to the religious crusade of which we have spoken, and covertly supported the monks of the famous Convent of the Frari in their opposition to his reforming superintendence. ”

“ But a more intimate acquaintance with Italian life in such places as Grottamare lets us know that washing is any woman's business at times, and no woman's business in particular. The boy himself, when old enough, was set to tend sheep, to watch fruit, even to keep an eye on the swine ”

“ When he succeeded he caused medals to be struck in commemoration of the event, which he himself, in the language doubtless of self-congratulatory hyperbole, speaks of as the most difficult enterprise to be conceived by man, officially informed all the great powers of his triumph, and received the homage of poets and poetasters. ”

“ But that does not prevent a Benedict the Ninth from selling the Popedom, to which he had been raised by the violence of his father, the Count of Tusculum, to a simoniacal priest, and after spending the proceeds of the sale in shameless debauchery, from recovering his throne and poisoning his rival. ”