ENGLISH VERSION Cristina Nardella. Il fascino di Roma nel Medioevo. Le 'Meraviglie di Roma' di maestro Gregorio. (review by Chiara Frugoni)

Translation by Francesco Mazzaferro
CLICK HERE FOR ITALIAN VERSION

Cristina Nardella

Il fascino di Roma nel Medioevo [The fascination of Rome in the Middle Age]

Le «Meraviglie di Roma» di maestro Gregorio

Rome, Viella, 1997

Pietro del Massaio, Map of Rome (1472)

[1] Hereafter is displayed the review published in the Italian daily La Repubblica on 3rd March 1998, a few months after the release of the work (the article - signed by Chiara Frugoni - is taken from the CD-Rom Gli anni de la Repubblica ’98 - The years of La Repubblica - 1998. An original of the article is however kept within the volume).

An Unusual Guide written by an XIII Century Englishman, who was indifferent to Christianity 

The Rome without Pope of Master Gregory

by Chiara Frugoni

Despite the many hardships and dangers, medieval streets were not deserted; for those who were going to Rome, the city presented itself from the top of Monte Mario, not surprisingly called the "Mount of Joy" (Mons Gaudii) because it was the final destination of the great fatigue of the journey.

The pilgrims were moving into the city, helped in their itineraries of faith by guides that signalled the major Christian monuments [note of the editor: see Mirabilia Urbis Romae]. However, the spectacle of the great classical buildings in decay did not fail to strike the viewer: "O Rome, there is nothing that is equal to you, although you are now almost a total ruin; albeit destroyed, you teach us how great you would have been, if remained intact." These two verses of the English poet Hildebert of Lavardin, from the beginning of the twelfth century, are mentioned in the prologue of a really unusual guide of Rome, written by "Master Gregory", an Englishman, presumably in the first half of the thirteenth century.

Rome, Trajan's Column

Really unusual, because this scholar (who attends, as he himself says, the papal Curia and claims friendships among the cardinals), is totally indifferent to Christian Rome; he does not seem to visit any church, and even complains - with anger and disappointment - at the causes of the collapse of pagan Rome, in part due to the re-use of materials for the building and in part (in reality for most of all) to the fierce struggle waged against a glorious past by the popes, destroyers of temples and idols, beginning with Pope Gregory the Great.

The only three church buildings mentioned are merely used as a point of reference for topography; just a quick note of emotion the author devotes to medieval Rome, finally appearing from the hill: "I think that we should admire with extraordinary enthusiasm the panorama of the city in which so numerous are the towers to look like ears of corn, so many constructions of buildings that nobody could ever count them."

The eye of Master Gregory, amazed and disturbed, however, is for the Rome of antiquity, for the triumphal arches, obelisks, pyramids and coclide columns, and especially for the splendid bronze statues that still could be seen scattered in the middle of the ruins along with those of marble, the latter "almost all or destroyed or defaced by the blessed Gregory."

A nude Venus, still with traces of paint, particularly fascinates him: "This image is made of Parian marble with so wonderful an art and an indescribable look like a living creature rather than a statue; like a woman ashamed of his nakedness, it has the face covered with a red colour. It seems to the viewer that blood is flowing on the face of the statue, candid as snow. For its wonderful appearance and for I do not know what magical seduction, I was forced to go back to look at her three times, although it was near only two steps from my apartment."

The quotations are from the translation with facing Latin text made ​​by Cristina Nardella (a difficult endeavour that unfortunately the title of the book does not hint in full: Il fascino di Roma nel Medioevo. Le “meraviglie di Roma” di maestro Gregorio - The charm of Rome in the Middle Ages. The "wonders of Rome" by Master Gregoire, Viella publisher, Rome, 1997, p. 208, figs. 15, ITL 35,000 [note of the editor: at present, EUR 19.00]). It is the first translation into Italian, conducted on the original manuscript, with some brilliant solutions for reading, to which the author added an extensive, timely, smooth and illuminating commentary to the Wonders of Rome, as well as two chapters on Master Gregory and the literary gender of medieval guides.

With the help of Ms Nardella the statue beloved by master Gregory was traced: it is still in Rome, at the Capitoline Museums, where it landed after a series of adventures (and we see it in one of the sharp figures accompanying the book). Faced with the cycles of the coclide columns or the figurative sculptural programs of the triumphal arches, Master Gregory remains particularly impressed, "even if the events and characters portrayed are not correctly identified, and are described as his contemporaries; the protagonists of the carved stories, in fact, speak in the first person through fantasy dialogues" (pp. 96-97), with a procedure identical to that used by Dante, when he let Trajan and the widow talk (of which the poet misunderstood the identity: in fact, the subject represented was the 'gift of a province kneeling before the Emperor’), carved in the bank which separates the first round of the Purgatorio from the second one (X, vv. 73-81).

Trajan's Column, "round and hollow like a sort of chimney," is, according to master Gregory, "the triumphal column of Fabrizio that the Romans decreed after he had won King Pyrrhus of Epirus"; Fabrizio resists an attempted corruption by the physician of Pyrrhus, as we learn from a close dialogue on the stone. 

The lack of written sources, i.e. of any point of reference, cancels the meaning of the past, to which Gregory is not able to attribute a precise time schedule. This facilitates an anachronistic vision: the statues move, speak and act freely because the observer feels contemporary with the events and the characters represented, whose words he believes to recover. The dialogues are the projection of thoughts and assumptions of the observer, unravelled in the face of ancient images that - just because they do not lean on written sources - would otherwise remain completely mute.

Master Gregory dedicated large space to the statues of bronze and in particular to the equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius now in the Capitol, in his time placed however in front of the Lateran; about this group the author dwells on for pages and pages. In the Middle Ages the true identity of the rider had been lost and various attributions circulated: the best hypothesis was that it was Constantine, the emperor who had granted religious freedom to the Church: a true blessing, given that for this reason the statue was not melted, the fate that befell many other instead.

Rome,  The statue of Marcus Aurelius in the Musei Capitolini 

Master Gregory browses and discusses the various theories by distinguishing its sources critically: he accepts the opinion of the clergy as they are considered the most educated and reliable, while he despises the one of the locals and pilgrims ("chatter"). The knight is neither Constantine nor Theodoric, as locals and foreigners claim respectively, but instead an ancient Roman, or a certain Marco Quinto Quirino. It is very interesting and fun to follow, with Ms Nardella, the origin and the variations of various legends, partly based on visual misunderstandings (the tuft between the ears of the horse believed to be a cuckoo, the barbarian stepped on, which - at the time of master Gregoire - made the horse more stable, believed to be a dwarf king, endowed with magical powers), credited in part to reverse identifications suddenly become uncomfortable. 

Marcus Aurelius was believed to be Constantine without any objection, until the papacy supported the authenticity of the "donation" of the empire to the Church. Already in the eleventh century the Germanic emperors, however, began to openly doubt the veracity of this act, and on the other hand, the Church itself began to find unbecoming do let the fundamentals of the papal power depend upon the concession by an emperor.

Rome, The replica of the statue on Capitoline Hill

That the equestrian group of Constantine stayed in front of the palace of the Pope, in the square of the Lateran, had become very inconvenient: it were the cardinals to remove Constantine and to address master Gregory "at the time of the consuls and senators."

The list of the monuments reviewed (if there were a reprint, I would suggest adding a map of Rome with their locations) is long and I do not want to deprive the reader of the pleasure of discovery. I would only add that this volume inaugurates a new series: La corte dei papi (The court of the popes), directed by Agostino Paravicini Bagliani, published by Viella publishers, addressed to a wide audience of students, but also for non-specialized readers, who want to learn more about the papal court, "one of the most complex sovereign courts in the West." The Jubilee is approaching and better understanding the symbols of the papacy, the face of Boniface VIII, the Rome of his time or immediately before can give a different dimension and depth to the event. In this sense, the other titles in the series appear to be interesting, starting with the second volume, already published, by Jane Sayers, Innocent III, 1198-1216; to continue, as an example, with the phenomenon of nepotism of the Popes (Sandro Carocci); the symbolic and political significance of the Lateran portico (Ingo Herklotz); the prophecies concerning Pope Celestine (Francesco Santi); and then the bankers of the pope in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries (Marco Vendittelli).