three days that the reception lasted: a cavalcade in state; addresses of welcome from the senators, the conservatori, the delegates from the thirteen wards of the city, and other

Galleria degli Uffizi

officials; a high mass sung in the church of the Aracoli; an interminable oration by the speaker of the day, Lorenzo Vallati; the verbal exposition of all the privileges conferred on the candidate by the S. P. Q. R.; the recital of poetical

compositions with intermezzos of choirs and songs; apparitions of mythological personages; recitals of eclogues and bucolics; theatrical performances, such as the recitation of the "Poenulus" of Plautus; and, last of all, a banquet, the menu of which—as given in the memoirs of Marco Antonio Altieri, one of the forty-four guests who survived the ordeal occupies four and a half sheets of fine print.

The banquet opened with three courses of "innanti pasti," or entrées, which included pastry of pine nuts and sugar, biscuits, sweet wine and whipped cream, prunes, beccaficos, quails, doves, and Eastern sweetmeats. Then followed eighty courses with fourteen varieties of birds, five of venison, five of meat, twenty-two of pastry, and sundry other delicacies in the line of fruit and vegetables. And while the guests were partaking of the heroic meal, the spectators and the crowd at large were continually exploding guns, mortars, and light pieces of artillery, beating drums, and blowing trumpets.

No less curious are the particulars of the feast offered to Eleonora d'Aragona on the occasion of her visit to Rome, mentioned in the preceding chapter. Although the guests were only seven at the first table and three at the second, fifty courses were offered to them, some of the silver dishes containing a whole stag, a whole bear, or else two sturgeons each five feet long. Certain combinations of food sound incredible to our modern tastes, but Cardinal di San Sisto's butler was bent on pleasing the eye in preference to the palate. The bread, for instance, was gilded; there were dishes representing Atalanta and Hippomene, Perseus rescuing Andromeda, Ceres on a chariot drawn by four tigers, and Orpheus playing on the lyre amidst a flock of peacocks in the full splendor of their plumage. The last piece represented a mountain, from the bowels of which a poet emerged, who recited an appropriate set of verses.

Pauperism in its manifold and hideous manifestations. had become a flourishing industry in Rome since the institution of the Jubilees. In the oldest documents concerning the topography of the Vatican the present church of Santa Maria in Campo Santo is called "Eleemosyna," because within its walls thirteen beggars were entertained at dinner daily, and two thousand were given food and drink on Mondays and Fridays. It was customary in those days for every citizen making his will to leave a certain amount to be distributed among the indigent of the parish. Some of the formulas used in these documents are rather touching; for instance: "October 22, 1368, I, Meo Ubere, of the region of the Pigna, call three poor of Christ to be my heirs, regretting that my own poverty does not allow me to leave them more than five soldi provisini each." The custom still exists among us, and no good Roman dictates his last wishes to the notary without leaving a few lire to the hospital of Santo Spirito.

Pope Pius IV in 1561 ordered the Town Council to provide workhouses for the destitute, it being his wish that the sorry and revolting sight of thousands of dirty beggars harassing the citizens in the streets should be stopped at once. On the receipt of this missive a committee of noblemen was elected to carry the Pope's order into execution, but, as far as I know, the committee never met. The only step taken on this occasion was that each caporione, or chief magistrate of one of the thirteen wards of the city, followed by a town councillor, went through his district once a month, with an almsbox in his hands, begging for the poor.

Workhouses were eventually established towards the end of the sixteenth century, which, however, were meant to meet the emergencies of the moment rather than to be perma

nent institutions. Thus I find that in 1592 the beggars of the Rione Colonna had been crowded into the house of the late Bartolomeo Papa, under the care of the Fatebenefratelli. To Sixtus V belongs the honor of having established the first workhouse in the modern sense of the word. It occupied the large building known as the "Casa dei Cento Preti," at the cistiberine end of the Ponte Sisto. It was intended to give shelter to destitute but healthy citizens, those afflicted with contagious diseases being sent to the Porta Angelica and those who were suffering with incurable ones to S. Giacomo in Augusta. A special class was allowed to beg in the streets, provided they had given satisfactory answers to the following questions: "Do you know the Pater, Ave, and Credo? Who was your last confessor, and where does he live? Do you know the articles of the Christian doctrine?" etc. At a later period the beautiful palace of the Lateran, the official residence of the Bishop of Rome, the great memorial of Sixtus V and Domenico Fontana, was turned into a hospice. However, as the Roman beggars have never changed their nature, preferring freedom of movement even to the regal hospitality of the Lateran, they found a way of breaking their bonds, so that Monsignor Berlingerio Gypsio, governor of the city, was obliged to issue a proclamation against the fugitives, ordering their recapture on account of the many crimes and scandals which they had perpetrated.

This, then, was the condition of the city when its inhabitants welcomed the election of the old Cardinal Alessandro Farnese to the chair of St. Peter as a true godsend, in the firm belief that his advent would put an end to the material and moral disadvantages under which they had labored for centuries. The fulfilment of these anticipations will be described in the following chapters.

PAUL III

THE triumphal entry of the Emperor Charles V on April 5 of the year 1536 marks the turning-point in the destiny of the city, and the beginning of its transformation into a modern capital, because the works of improvement, accomplished in haste in the weeks preceding the arrival of the imperial guest, met with such welcome on the part of the people and were obviously so beneficial to their health and comfort and general well-being, that they were continued long after their actual origin and cause had faded from the memory of the living. The merit of this transformation belongs to two men alone, -to Pope Paul III, Alessandro Farnese, and his genial adviser, Latino Giovenale Mannetti.

Alessandro, born on February 28, 1468, of Pier Luigi Farnese and Giovannella Caetani, was promoted to the cardinalship when only twenty-five years old, thanks to the influence that his sister Giulia, the "bellissima," had gained over the reigning Pope Alexander VI. His first thought after receiving the red hat was to secure a suitable residence, and he found it in the house once inhabited by the Spanish cardinal, Pedro Ferriz, which had passed into the hands of the Augustinian monks of Santa Maria del Popolo. The property consisted of a house facing the "major via Arenulae"1 and of two gardens reaching down to the river, on the bank of which stood one of the towers of the old Honorian walls. The Via Giulia, which now separates the palace from the 1 The present thoroughfare Capodi ferro-Venti-Farnese-Monserrato.