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

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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.

CHAPTER III

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 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 Capodiferro-Venti-Farnese-Monserrato.

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river, had not yet been opened by the Pope whose name it bears; nor had the present Piazza Farnese brought air, light, and health into the lurid blocks of hovels which occupied

The "bellissima" Giulia Farnese, sister of Pope Paul III. From the allegorical statue by Guglielmo della Porta, in St. Peter's

the space between the palace and the Campo de' Fiori. For the space of twenty years the young dignitary of the Church showed no particular ambition for improving the old palace, perhaps on account of his constant wanderings to Monte

1 The Campo de' Fiori, upon which cattle were still grazing at the time of Martin V, was levelled and paved by Cardinal Ludovico Scarampo in 1452.

Fiascone and Viterbo, where he met in 1499 King Charles VIII of France; to Bertinoro, Venice, Parma, Valva, Sulmona, St. Pons, and Benevento, of which dioceses he was named bishop successively by Julius II and Leo X; and to the Marca di Ancona, which he governed as legate from 1504 to 1507. Having won the favor of Leo X, whom he had crowned with his own hands, and having settled in Rome as cardinal titular of Sant' Eustachio and bishop of Frascati, he undertook to transform the old Ferriz palace into a residence worthy of the great name of the Farnese, for which purpose leave was given to him by the Apostolic Chamber to lay hands on and despoil of their marbles and columns the half-ruined chapels, cloisters, and porticoes by which the church of San Lorenzo fuori le Mura was then surrounded.

The importance of this grant of building and decorative materials may be gathered from the fact that, to save the treasures within the monumental group of San Lorenzo from hostile invasions (such as the Saracenic of 846, the Teutonic of 1111, etc.), a battlemented wall had been raised round it, and the whole group transformed into an outlying fortress, under the (probable) name of Laurentiopolis. At the time of Cardinal Farnese the wall had collapsed for half its length, as shown by a sketch of Martin Heemskerk, now in the Kunstgewerbe Museum at Berlin ;' but the buildings within, although roofless and tenantless, had not yet been deprived of their wealth of marbles. These were the church of St. Agapetus; the cubicle or oratory of SS. Abundius and Irenæus, whose grave was marked by a metrical epitaph composed by Pope Damasus and engraved by Philocalus; the chapel of St. Stephen; a hospice for

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1 A reproduction of this sketch is given in Ruins and Excavations of Ancient Rome, p. 85, fig. 35.