Cosa vide Mark Twain
Premessa
Mark Twain
visitò l'Italia nel 1867
in quello che egli chiamò "il primo party organizzato su un viaggio
transatlantico". Egli pubblicò nel 1869 The Innocents Abroad,
un resoconto dettagliato del suo lungo viaggio attraverso l'Europa e in
Terrasanta. Nel 1867 l'Italia era già un paese unificato, con la
sola eccezione di Roma e il Lazio, ancora governati dal Papa.
Questa
pagina riporta (illustrati!) estratti di quel libro che hanno a che fare
con Roma.
Le frasi in rosso si riferiscono alle immagini nella colonna
di sinistra.
Estratti:
and ..... The Playbill of the
Coliseum!!!!
 |
St. Peter's
Of course we have been
to the monster Church of St. Peter
frequently. I knew its dimensions. I knew it was a prodigious
structure. I knew it was just about the length of the Capitol at
Washington - say seven hundred and thirty feet. I knew three hundred
and sixty-four feet wide and consequently wider than the Capitol. I
knew that the cross on the top of the dome of the church was four
hundred and thirty-eight feet above the ground, and therefore about
a hundred or maybe a hundred and twenty-five feet higher than the
dome of the Capitol. Thus I had one gauge. I wished to come as near
forming a correct idea of how it was going to look as possible; I
had a curiosity to see how much I would err. I erred considerably.
St. Peter's did not look nearly so large as the Capitol, and
certainly not a twentieth part as beautiful, from the
outside.
When we reached the door and stood fairly within the
church, it was impossible to comprehend that it was a very
large building. I had to cipher a comprehension of it. I had
to ransack my memory for some more similes. St. Peter's is bulky.
Its height and size would represent two of the Washington Capitol
set one on top of the other - if the Capitol were wider; or two
blocks or two blocks and a half of ordinary buildings set one on top
of the other. St Peter's was that large, but it could and
would not look so. The trouble was that everything in it and about
it was on such a scale of uniform vastness that there were no
contrasts to judge by - none but the people, and I had not noticed
them. They were insects. The statues of children
holding vases of holy water were immense, according to the
tables of figures, but so was everything else around them. The
mosaic pictures in the dome were huge, and were made of thousands
and thousands of cubes of glass as large as the end of my little
finger, but those pictures looked smooth, and gaudy of color, and in
good proportion to the dome. Evidently they would not answer to
measure by. Away down toward the far end of the church (I thought it
was really clear at the far end, but discovered afterward that it
was in the center, under the dome) stood the thing they call the
baldachino - a great bronze pyramidal framework like that which
upholds a mosquito bar. It only looked like a considerably magnified
bedstead - nothing more. Yet I knew it was a good deal more than
half as high as Niagara Falls. It was overshadowed by a dome so
mighty that its own height was snubbed. The four great square piers
or pillars that stand equidistant from each other in the church and
support the roof, I could not work up to their real dimensions by
any method of comparison. I knew that the faces of each were about
the width of a very large dwelling house front (fifty or sixty feet)
and that they were twice as high as an ordinary three-story
dwelling, but still they looked small. I tried all the different
ways I could think of to compel myself to understand how large St.
Peter's was, but with small success. The mosaic
portrait of an Apostle who was writing with a pen six feet
long seemed only an ordinary Apostle.
But the people attracted my
attention after a while. To stand in the door of St. Peter's and
look at men down toward its further extremity, two blocks away, has
a diminishing effect on them; surrounded by the prodigious pictures
and statues, and lost in the vast spaces, they look very much
smaller than they would if they stood two blocks away in the open
air. I "averaged" a man as he passed me and watched him as he
drifted far down by the baldachino and beyond - watched him dwindle
to an insignificant school-boy, and then, in the midst of the silent
throng of human pygmies gliding about him, I lost him. The church
had lately been decorated, on the occasion of a great ceremony in
honor of St. Peter, and men were engaged now in removing the flowers
and gilt paper from the walls and pillars. As no ladders could reach
the great heights, the men swung themselves down from balustrades
and the capitals of pilasters by ropes to do this work. The upper gallery, which encircles the inner sweep of the
dome, is two hundred and forty feet above the floor of the
church - very few steeples in America could reach up to it. Visitors
always go up there to look down into the church because one gets the
best idea of some of the heights and distances from that point.
While we stood on the floor one of the workmen swung loose from that
gallery at the end of a long rope. I had not supposed before that a
man could look so much like a spider. He was insignificant in
size, and his rope seemed only a thread. Seeing that he took up so
little space, I could believe the story then that ten thousand
troops went to St. Peter's once to hear mass, and their commanding
officer came afterwards and, not finding them, supposed they had not
yet arrived. But they were in the church, nevertheless - they were
in one of the transepts. Nearly fifty thousand persons assembled in
St. Peter's to hear the publishing of the dogma of the Immaculate
Conception. It is estimated that the floor of the church affords
standing room for - for a large number of people; I have forgotten
the exact figures. But it s no matter - it is near enough.
They
have twelve small pillars in St. Peter's, which came
from Solomon's Temple. They have also - which was far more
interesting to me - a piece of the true Cross, and some nails, and a
part of the crown of thorns.
Of course we ascended to the summit
of the dome, and of course we also went up into the gilt copper ball
which is above it. There was room there for a dozen persons, with a
little crowding and it was as close and hot as an oven. Some of
these people who are so fond of writing their names in prominent
places had been there before us - a million or two, I should think.
From the dome of St. Peter's one can see every notable object in
Rome from the Castle of
St. Angelo to the Coliseum. He can
discern the seven hills upon which Rome is built. He can see the
Tiber, and the locality of the bridge which
Horatius kept "in the brave days of old" when Lars Porsena attempted
to cross it with his invading host. He can see the spot where the Horatii
and the Curiatii fought their famous battle. He can see the
broad green Campagna, stretching away toward the mountains, with its
scattered arches and broken aqueducts of the olden time, so
picturesque in their gray ruin, and so daintily festooned with
vines. He can see the Alban Mountains, the
Appennines, the Sabine Hills, and the blue Mediterranean. He can see
a panorama that is varied, extensive, beautiful to the eye, and more
illustrious in history than any other in Europe. About his feet is
spread the remnant of a city that once had a population of four
million souls; and among its massed edifices stand the ruins of
temples, columns and triumphal arches that knew the Caesars and the
noonday of Roman splendor; and close by them, in unimpaired
strength, is a drain of arched and heavy masonry that belonged to
that older city which stood here before Romulus and Remus were born
or Rome thought of. The Appian Way is here
yet, and looking much as it did, perhaps, when the triumphal
processions of the emperors moved over it in other days bringing
fettered princes from the confines of the earth. |
Relief in the Monument to Giordano Bruno in Campo de'
Fiori |
The
Inquisition
... we look out upon many
objects of interest from the dome of St. Peter's; and last of all,
almost at our feet, our eyes rest upon the building
which once was the Inquisition. How times changed between the
older ages and the new! Some seventeen or eighteen centuries ago the
ignorant men of Rome were wont to put Christians in the arena of the
Coliseum yonder
and turn the wild beasts in upon them for a show. It was for a
lesson as well. It was to teach the people to abhor and fear the new
doctrine the followers of Christ were teaching. The beasts tore the
victims limb from limb and made poor mangled corpses of them in the
twinkling of an eye. But when the Christians came into power, when
the holy Mother Church became mistress of the barbarians, she taught
them the error of their ways by no such means. No, she put them in
this pleasant Inquisition and pointed to the Blessed Redeemer, who
was so gentle and so merciful toward all men, and they urged the
barbarians to love him; and they did all they could to persuade to
love and honor him - first by twisting their thumbs out of joint
with a screw; then by nipping their flesh with pincers - red-hot
ones, because they are the most comfortable in cold weather; then by
skinning them alive a little; and finally by roasting them in public. They always convinced
those barbarians. The true religion, properly administered, as the
good Mother Church used to administer it, is very, very soothing. It
is wonderfully persuasive also. There is a great difference between
feeding parties to wild beasts and stirring up their finer feelings
in an Inquisition. One is the system of degraded barbarians, the
other of enlightened, civilized people. It is a great pity the
playful Inquisition is no more. |
Details of funerary monuments in S. Pietro in
Vincoli and in S. Maria della
Scala. More on the Representation of
death in Baroque Rome. |
The Capuchin
Convent
From the sanguinary sports of the
Holy Inquisition ... I naturally pass to the picturesque horrors of
the Capuchin
Convent. We stopped a moment in a small chapel in the church ...
and then we descended into the vast vault underneath.
Here was a
spectacle for sensitive nerves! Evidently the old masters had been
at work in this place. There were six divisions in the apartment,
and each division was ornamented with a style of decoration peculiar
to itself - and these decorations were in every instance formed of
human bones! There were shapely arches, built
wholly of thighbones; there were startling pyramids, built wholly of
grinning skulls; there were quaint architectural structures of
various kinds, built of shinbones and the bones of the arm; on the
wall were elaborate frescoes, whose curving vines were made of
knotted human vertebrae, whose delicate tendrils were made of sinews
and tendons, whose flowers were formed of kneecaps and toenails.
Every lasting portion of the human frame was represented in these
intricate designs (they were by Michelangelo, I think), and there
was a careful finish about the work and an attention to details that
betrayed the artist's love of his labors as well as his schooled
ability. I asked the good-natured monk who accompanied us, "Who did
this?" And he said, "We did it" - meaning himself and his
brethren upstairs, I could see that the old friar took a high pride
in his curious show. We made him talkative by exhibiting an interest
we never betrayed to guides.
"Who were these people?"
"We -
upstairs - monks of the Capuchin order - my brethren."
"How many
departed monks were required to upholster these six
parlors?"
"These are the bones of four thousand."
"It took a
long time to get enough?"
"Many, many centuries."
"Their
different parts are well separated - skulls in one room, legs in
another, ribs in another - there would be stirring times here for a
while if the last trump should blow. Some of the brethren might get
hold of the wrong leg in the confusion, and the wrong skull, and
find themselves limping, and looking through eyes that were wider
apart or closer together than they were used to. You cannot tell any
of these parties apart, I suppose?"
"Oh, yes, I know many of
them."
he put his finger on a skull. "This was Brother Anselmo -
dead three hundred years - a good man."
He touched another. "This
was Brother Alexander - dead two hundred and eighty years. This was
Brother Carlo - dead about as long."
Then he took a skull and
held it in his hand and looked reflectively upon it, after the
manner of the grave-digger when he discourses of Yorick.
"This,"
he said, "was Brother Thomas. He was a young prince the scion of a
proud house that traced its lineage back to the grand old days of
Rome well-nigh two thousand years ago. He loved beneath his estate.
His family persecuted him, persecuted the girl as well. They drove
her from Rome; he sought her far and wide; he found no trace of her.
He came back and offered his broken heart at our altar and his weary
life to the service of God. But look you. Shortly his father died,
and likewise his mother. The girl returned, rejoicing. She sought
everywhere for him whose eyes had used to look tenderly into hers
out of this poor skull, but she could not find him. At last, in this
coarse garb we wear, she recognized him in the street. He knew her.
It was too late. He fell where he stood. They took him up and
brought him here. He never spoke afterward. Within the week he died.
You can see the color of his hair - faded somewhat - by this thin
shred that clings still to the temple. This (taking up a thighbone)
was his. The veins of this leaf in the decorations over your head
were his finger joints a hundred and fifty years ago."
This
businesslike way of illustrating a touching story of the heart by
laying the several fragments of the lover before us and naming them
was as grotesque a performance, and as ghastly, as any I ever
witnessed. I hardly knew whether to smile or shudder. ... I asked
the monk if all the brethren upstairs expected to be put in this
place when they died. He answered quietly:
"We must all lie here
at last."
See what one can accustom himself to. The reflection
that he must someday be taken apart like an engine or a clock or
like a house whose owner is gone, and worked up into arches and
pyramids and hideous frescoes, did not distress this monk in the
least. I thought he even looked as if he were thinking, with
complacent vanity, that his own skull would look well on top of the
heap and his own ribs add a charm to the frescoes which possibly
they lacked at present.
Here and there, in ornamental alcoves,
stretched upon beds of bones, lay dead and dried-up monks, with lank
frames dressed in the black robes one sees ordinarily upon priests.
We examined one closely. The skinny hands were clasped upon the
breast; two lusterless tufts of hair stuck to the skull; the skin
was brown and sunken; it stretched tightly over the cheekbones and
made them stand out sharply; the crisp, dead eyes were deep in the
sockets; the nostrils were painfully prominent, the end of the nose
being gone; the lips had shriveled away from the yellow teeth; and
brought down to us through the circling years, and petrified there,
was a weird laugh a full century old!
It was the jolliest laugh,
but yet the most dreadful, that one can imagine. Surely, I thought,
it must have been a most extraordinary joke this veteran produced
with his latest breath that he has not got done laughing at it yet.
At this moment I saw that the old instinct was strong upon the boys,
and I said we had better hurry to St. Peter's. They were trying to
keep from asking, "Is-is he dead?" |
 |
The Mosaic in Piazza di Porta S.
Giovanni
I wish here to mention an
inscription I have seen, before I forget it:
"Glory to God in
highest, peace on earth TO MEN OF GOOD WILL!" It is not good
scripture, but it is sound Catholic and human nature.
This is in
letters of gold around the apsis of a mosaic group at the side of
the scala
santa, Church of
St. John Lateran, the mother and mistress of all the Catholic
churches of the world. The group represents the Saviour, St. Peter,
Pope Leo, St. Silvester, Constantine, and Charlemagne. Peter is giving the pallium to the Pope and a
standard to Charlemagne. The Saviour is
giving the keys to St. Silvester and a standard to
Constantine. No prayer is offered to the Saviour, who seems
to be of little importance anywhere in Rome; but an inscription
below says "Blessed Peter, give life to Pope Leo and victory to
King Charles." It does not say, "Intercede for us,
through the Saviour, with the Father, for this boon," but "Blessed
Peter, give it us."
In all seriousness -without meaning to
be frivolous - without meaning to be irreverent, and more than all,
without meaning to be blasphemous - I state as my simple deduction
from the things I have seen and the things I have heard that the
Holy Personages rank thus in Rome:
First: "The Mother of
God" - otherwise the Virgin Mary.
Second: The Deity.
Third: Peter.
Fourth: Some twelve or fifteen
canonized popes and martyrs.
Fifth: Jesus Christ the
Saviour (but always as an infant in arms).
I may be wrong in this
. my judgement errs often, just as is the case with other men's -
but it is my judgement, be it good or bad.
Just here I
will mention something that seems curious to me. There are no
"Christ's churches" in Rome and no "churches of the Holy Ghost" that
I can discover. There are some four hundred churches, but about a
fourth of them seem to be named for the Madonna and St. Peter. There
are so many named for Mary that they have to be distinguished by all
sorts of affixes, if I understand the matter rightly. Then we have
churches of St. Louis, St. Augustine, St. Agnes, St. Calixtus, St.
Lorenzo in Lucina, St. Lorenzo in Damaso, St. Cecilia, St.
Athanasius, St. Philip Neri, St. Catherine, St. Dominico, and a
multitude of lesser saints whose names are not familiar in the world
- and away down, clear out of the list of the churches, comes a
couple of hospitals: one of them is named for the Saviour and the
other for the Holy Ghost! |
ROMAN COLISEUM
________________________________________
UNPARALLELED ATTRACTION!
NEW PROPERTIES! NEW LIONS!
NEW GLADIATORS!
Engagement of the renowned
MARCUS MARCELLUS VALERIAN!
FOR SIX
NIGHTS ONLY!
The management beg leave to offer to
the public an entertainment surpassing in magnificence anything that
has heretofore been attempted on any stage. No expense has been
spared to make the opening season one which shall be worthy the
generous patronage which the management feel sure will crown their
efforts. The management beg leave to state that they have succeeded
in securing the services of a
GALAXY OF
TALENT!
such as has not been beheld in Rome
before.
The performance will commence this evening with a
GRAND BROADSWORD
COMBAT!
between two young and promising amateurs
and a celebrated Parthian gladiator who has just arrived a prisoner
from the Camp of Verus.
This will be followed by a grand moral
BATTLE-AX
ENGAGEMENT!
between the renowned Valerian (with
one hand tied behind him) and two gigantic savages from
Britain.
After which the renowned Valerian (if he survive) will
fight with the broadsword
LEFT-HANDED!
against six sophomores and a
freshman from the Gladiatorial College!
A long series of
brilliant engagements will follow, in which the finest talent of the
empire will take part.
After which the celebrated Infant Prodigy,
known as
"THE YOUNG
ACHILLES,"
will engage four tiger whelps in
combat, armed with no other weapon than his little spear!
The
whole to conclude with a chaste and elegant
GENERAL
SLAUGHTER!
in which thirteen African lions and
twenty-two barbarian prisoners will war with each other until all
are exterminated.
BOX OFFICE NOW
OPEN
Dress Circle One Dollar; Children and
Servants half price.
An efficient police force will be on
hand to preserve order and keep the wild beasts from leaping the
railings and discommoding the audience.
Doors open at 7;
performance begins at 8.
POSITIVELY NO FREE LIST.
__________________________________________________
Diodorus
Job Press
| |