Vatican City

“ Though many of the Roman codgers are more or less connected with the Vatican, there are scores who have no relations with it, Protestants, Greek Orthodox, Hebrews, and the like.
Rome must have been more picturesque when the Pope took his airing on the Pincio, instead of walking and driving inside the walls of the Vatican garden, as he does now. In those days the whole populace went down on their knees whenever he appeared. Then the cardinals wore their splendid vermilion robes every day: they must have made a joyful note of color in the landscape! ”

“ Peter's, the Vatican, the Palatine, are for ever ringing with the false note of the languages without style: it is the general oppressive feeling that the city of the soul has become for the time a monstrous mixture of watering-place and curiosity- shop and that its most ardent life is that of the tourists who haggle over false intaglios and yawn through palaces and temples. But you are told of a happy time when these abuses begin to pass away, when Rome becomes Rome again and you may have her all to yourself. ”

“ In the same way the population of Rome would certainly be doubled, tripled, quadrupled, for, as the new centre of national life, the city would necessarily attract all the vis viva of the provinces. And at this thought pride stepped in; the fallen government of the Vatican must be shown what Italy was capable of achieving, what splendor she would bestow on the new and third Rome, which, by the magnificence of its thoroughfares and the multitude of its people, would far excel either the imperial or the papal city. ”

“ Italy was rich, far beyond any other country, in public and private libraries. The Vatican, first in dignity, in antiquity, and in number of books, increased under almost every successive pope, except Julius II., the least favourable to learning of them all. The Laurentian library, purchased by Leo X., before his accession to the papacy, from a monastery at Florence, which had acquired the collection after the fall of the Medici in 1494, was restored to that city by Clement VII., and placed in the newly-erected building which still contains it. ”

“ These form a kind of skeleton for the regulation sight-seeing of the Eternal City; things which, once done, are checked off with the feeling that the entire duty of the tourist has been fulfilled, and that, henceforth in Rome, there is laid up for him the crown of enjoyment, if not rejoicing; that he may go again and again to study the marvellous treasures of the Vatican galleries, the masterpieces of art in the Raphael stanze in the Vatican, the interesting pictures and sculpture in the many rich churches and galleries. ”

“ Pope Martin afterwards removed to the Palace of the Apostles. Another of the Popes preferred to all others the great Palazzo Venezia, which he had built: but 544 the name of the Vatican was henceforth received as the title of the Papal court. The enlargement and embellishment of this palace thus became naturally the great object of the Popes, and nothing was spared upon it. It is put first in every record of achievement even when there is other important work to describe. "Nicolas," says Platina, "builded magnificently both in the Vatican, and in the city. ”

“ I heard afterwards that the crowd tried to break into the Vatican; the soldiers had to keep them back, first breast to breast, then with blows, and then with their bayonets. They say that some people were suffocated in the press. No one knows yet what happened inside the Vatican; there was a rumor that the Pope had. given his blessing from the window—but I didn't see him. I was almost dead when I got to the bridge. The news of what had taken place had already spread over the whole city, and from every direction crowds were still pouring towards the Vatican. ”

“ It is a pleasure that doubles one’s horizon, and one can scarcely say whether it enlarges or limits one’s impression of the city proper. It certainly makes St. Peter’s seem a trifle smaller and blunts the edge of one’s curiosity in the Forum. It must be the effect of the experience, at all extended, that when you think of Rome afterwards you will think still respectfully and regretfully enough of the Vatican and the Pincio, the streets and the picture-making street life ”

“ Venice, Naples, Milan, each vied with the other in attracting and rewarding genius: even the Popes at Rome, whose natural instinct as the guardian of mediaeval tradition was to distrust freedom of thought, were influenced by the atmosphere around them, and to Pope Nicholas V the world owes the foundation of the wonderful Vatican Library.
To the Queen of the Renaissance states we turn last—to Florence, the ‘City of Flowers’, that we left distracted by the internal discords of her ‘Blacks’ and ‘Whites’, and by her wars against Filippo Maria Visconti. ”

“ The Americans reached the Eternal City at the time of Pope Leo's anniversary celebration, and, on the Pope's invitation, Will visited the Vatican. Its historic walls have rarely, if ever, looked upon a more curious sight than was presented when Will walked in, followed by the cowboys in their buckskins and sombreros and the Indians in war paint and feathers. ”

“ Air Pollution, Environmental Modification Geography - note: urban; landlocked; enclave in Rome, Italy; world's smallest state; outside the Vatican City, 13 buildings in Rome and Castel Gandolfo (the pope's summer residence) enjoy extraterritorial rights
People Holy See (Vatican City) Population: 921 (July 2004 est.) Population growth rate: 0.01% (2004 est.) ”

“ Of the fourteen regions, or quarters, into which Rome was divided by Augustus, only one, the Janiculum, lay on the Tuscan side of the Tyber. But, in the fifth century, the Vatican suburb formed a considerable city; and in the ecclesiastical distribution, which had been recently made by Simplicius, the reigning pope, two of the seven regions, or parishes of Rome, depended on the church of St. Peter. ”

“ Recourses against disciplinary provisions taken in regard to the employees of the State can be proposed before the Court of Appeal, according to its own norms.
Art. 19
The faculty to grant amnesties, indults, remissions and favours is reserved to the Supreme Pontiff.
Art. 20
1. The flag of Vatican City State is constituted by two fields divided vertically, a yellow one next to the staff and a white one, and bears in the latter the tiara with the keys, all according to the model which forms attachment A of the present Law. ”

“ Moreover, the hidden Mazzinists, who agitate throughout the city, don't collect the workmen in the quarter of the Regola to preach submission to them.
I have said that the plebeians of the city of Rome despise the plebeians of the country. Be assured, however, the latter are not deserving of scorn, even in the Mediterranean provinces. In this unhappy half of the Pontifical States, the influence of the Vatican has not yet quite morally destroyed the population. The country people are poor, ignorant, superstitious, rather wild, but kind, hospitable, and generally honest. ”

“ Despite the interdict Venice celebrated the Church feasts with more than usual splendour; and thus the breach seemed almost irreparable. The Cath- olic powers were compelled to intervene lest there be war. The Pope had to content himself with a laconic profession of friendship on the part of Venice, and the Jesuits remained exiles from the city. But a compensating source of comfort for the Pope may well have been the signs of the deepening of Catholic life in those years for example the activity of St. ”

“ From the time one’s carriage rumbles over the stones of the great unshaded courtyard to the side where the Pope’s apartments are situated, one has the sensation of walking over a book of sacred history. It is true all Rome is history. The Vatican, however, is the history of the Catholic Church from the beginning, and as you go up the marble steps you instinctively lower your voice, walking slowly and silently. ”

“ As art rose high then, so did it sink low afterwards: and the Vatican overlooks modern Italian art, stagnant, puny, steril, unwholesome, ague-struck, as Rome itself overlooks the marshes of the Campagna. What then? Does not the Vatican remain, the wonder of succeeding ages and surrounding nations? And when it yields (as yield it must) to time’s destructive rage, and its glories crumble into dust, a new Vatican will arise, and other Raphaels and Michael Angelos will breathe the inspiration of genius upon its walls! ”

“ What the Vatican lacks is architectural nobility. When you gaze on the glowing vaults of Raffaelle's Loggia, the triple tier of arcades which surround the superb Court of Saint Damasus, even when you move in the gorgeous baroque immensity of chambers like the Sala Regia, you feel their majesty. But the Vatican has neither the romantic splendour of Windsor, nor the grandeur of the Louvre. It looks more like a Parliament House than a Palace. ”

“ There is no other palace in the world which is so rich in hoarded treasures as the Vatican, the thrice voluptuous Roman home of the Pope, where he lives surrounded by a populace which leads a life of penury and semi-starvation. Little heeds he of such trifling matters, while he "quaffs his Rhenish down." Appreciative travelers speak of the "cold wilderness of the Vatican." This sensation is easily accounted for. It is because this grand palace is so much more of a museum than a home, or human habitation. ”

“ Of all the secret places of the Vatican there is none which fires the imagination of the visitor more than the Garden of the Pope, so often called his Eden. The allusion is inevitable for at the very gates of the Vatican, on the pinnacle of the Castle of Sant' Angelo, is the great Bronze Angel with the drawn sword, whom the Pope will not pass, because the tomb of the heathen Emperor below is filled with the soldiers of the re-born Rome, which dispossessed the Church of the kingdom of this world. ”

“ On reaching the summit, a panoramic view of Rome and the Campagna is had, quite repaying the labour of the ascent.
THE VATICAN.
From the vestibule of S. Peter's we see, to the fullest advantage, the fine piazza, with the Vatican on our left, which presents very much the appearance of a large factory. Having been erected by different architects in various eras, it has no systematic design, and is, in fact, a collection of palaces built by different Popes. The entrance is at the bend of the colonnade. ”

“ Oct. 8.—First visit to the Glypthothek—just returned—my imagination, still filled with "the blaze, the splendour, and the symmetry,"—excited as I never thought it could be again excited after seeing the Vatican; but this is the Vatican in miniature. Can it be possible that this glorious edifice was planned by a young prince, and erected out of his yearly savings? I am wonder-struck! I was not prepared for any thing so spacious, so magnificent, so perfect in taste and arrangement. ”

“ Peter's like a saint in glory, on his Sedia Gestatoria.
Every visitor must needs enter the Vatican by one of three entrances: by whichever he may enter he must be dead of soul whose imagination is not fired.
If it is the gate in the little pavilion, as graceful as a Classical temple, which admits the unprivileged to the Pope's Garden, the Vatican Library and the Museum of Sculpture, the Sistine Chapel and Raffaelle's Stanze and Loggia, he will be met by a procession of the gods of Greece, chiselled out of fair white marble in the workshops of two thousand years ago. ”

“ When all is seen, the tourist gets into his cab and drives down the empty paved way by the wall of the library, along the basilica, and out once more to the great square before the church. Or, if he be too strong to be tired, he will get out at the steps and go in for a few minutes to breathe the quiet air before going home, to get the impression of unity, after the impressions of variety which he has received in the Vatican, and to take away with him something of the peace which fills the cathedral of Christendom. ”

“ From the above it will be seen that I have aimed at giving the traveller who goes to Rome for sight-seeing, and the stay-at-home who has to do his sight-seeing in books of travel, some idea of the parts of the Vatican which are not generally seen; either because the visitor does not know where to look for them, or because they are only shown as a special favour. I am myself a Protestant, a member of the Church of England. My idea of patriotism makes it impossible that I should ever leave the Church of my forefathers. ”

“ Portions of the substructure of the earlier building were no doubt utilized by Nicholas, and the secret [Pg 270] gallery which connects the Vatican with the mausoleum of Hadrian is generally attributed to Pope John the Twenty-third, who died in 1417; but on the whole it may be said that the Vatican Palace is originally a building of the period of the Renascence, to which all successive popes have made additions.
The ordinary tourist first sees the Vatican from the square as he approaches from the bridge of Sant' Angelo. ”

“ The sky was cloudless, as it mainly is here save in winter, but the day was not yet warm, for the summer nights are cooler here than in New-York, and the current English talk of the excessive heat which prevails in Rome at this season is calculated to deceive Americans. No one fails to realize from the first the great beauty and admirable accessories of this edifice, with the far-stretching but quite other than lofty pile of the Vatican on its right and its own magnificent colonnade in front, but you do not feel that it is lofty, nor spacious, nor anything but perfect. ”