Exam 3 - Exploring Rome

Humanism and philology: Lorenzo Valla and the Donation of Constantine

• Humanists like the great Francesco Petrarca studied rhetoric, ethics, poetry, and history of ancient world 

• Philology: Lorenzo Valla, humanist scholar, analyzed language in Donation Constantine -> proved it was a total fraud (several centuries less ancient than it was supposed to be

Michelangelo and Pope Julius II

• In 1505, Pope Julius II invited Michelangelo to participate in reconstruction of St. Peter’s Basilica

• He built tomb of Pope Julius II using Carrara marble from Tuscany

• Also asked to paint Sistine Chapel

Martin Luther in Rome (1511)

• In 1511, traveled to Rome as legal rep of a monastery in Erfurt  

• He believed as a pilgrim – even if pope could grant remission of penalties of sin, doctrine of indulgences was self-refuting. Everyone agreed that only a truly penitent person could be spared divine punishment -> but that person would seek punishment out, so it revealed unfitness of buying indulgences  

• “Disputation of the Power of Indulgences” (1517) -> Luther nailed it to a church door in Wittenburg. He had 95 theses against indulgences (points) that constituted a great hammer blow against Roman Catholic Church  

• In Germany, his enemies (Archbishop Albrecht, Tetzel and fellow Dominicans, the papal legate Cardinal Cajetan) reacted furiously to Luther’s attack 

• In December 1520, Pope Leo X excommunicated Luther (out of church) 

• In May 1521, Luther was condemned by the pope, emperor, and Reichstag 

Simony and indulgences; the Ninety-five Theses (1517)

• Simony: buying & selling of ecclesiastical offices & privileges  

• Indulgences: By paying or donating something to the Church, Christians could receive a spiritual reward (remission of penalty for sin) 

• “Disputation of the Power of Indulgences” (1517) -> Luther nailed it to a church door in Wittenburg. He had 95 theses against indulgences (points) that constituted a great hammer blow against Roman Catholic Church  

Pope Leo X, Charles V and the imperial election of 1519

• In 1519, Emperor Maximlian I of the Holy Roman Empire died in Austria  

• Grandson Charles V inherited vast empire that encircled the Papal States

• Conflict between pope and emperor set the stage for the catastrophe of 1527 

The Italian War (1521-1526) and the Battle of Pavia

• France -> Swiss mercenaries, republic of Venice, papal states (1524 – 1525) 

• Holy Roman Empire -> Spain, England, papal states (1521 – 1523, 1525-26) 

• The Battle of Pavia (1525) 

• The Sack of Rome (1527) 

• Rome after sack: popes rebuild the city throughout 1600s-1700s 

• Piazza Navona: laid out on ruins of Stadium of Domitian became showpiece of Baroque Rome 

• Gian Lorenzo Bernini (fountain of the four rivers): commissioned by Pope Innocent X, the fountain personified the Nile, the Ganges, the Danube, and Rio de la Plata  

• Rome no longer a metropolis but still attracted travelers of all kind  

The Sack of Rome (1527)

• Charles V troops devastate papal city (end of Renassiance Rome) 

• The landsknechts and the Spaniards killed everyone they met (women, priests, orphans at La Pieta, hospital invalids of San Spirito, nuns at Santa Rufina – tried to defend with boiling water & kitchen skewers) 

• At Ponte Sisto, a group of nobles led by Pier Paolo Tebaldi and 3 Orsini brothers fathered to hold the bridge? 

Baroque Rome: Bernini and Piazza Navona

• Rome after sack: popes rebuild the city throughout 1600s-1700s 

• Piazza Navona: laid out on ruins of Stadium of Domitian became showpiece of Baroque Rome 

• Gian Lorenzo Bernini (fountain of the four rivers): commissioned by Pope Innocent X, the fountain personified the Nile, the Ganges, the Danube, and Rio de la Plata  

The Grand Tour: the milord and the cicerone

• In early years of 18^th & 19^th centuries 

• The milord: son and heir of a wealthy family usually in the late teens and early twenties & sometimes daughters 

• They were sent to complete education – British schooling had Latin & Greek literature and philosophy. Journey was from France to Greece as ana adventurous trip  

• Accompanied by a cicerone - learned guide who acted as a tutor and chaperone and were highly educated 

• Crossing the Alps: Before railways, Alps were the great obstacle, and travelers were carried over Mont Cenis pass in sedan chars by local porters 

• George Keate who made crossing in 1755 praised chairmen as strong and agile  

• Danger & discomfort were part of experience to test the young milord 

• They saw the Ruins (the forum, the colosseum, the pantheon), churches and basilicas, and diminished city  

• Food was miserable 

• Countryside was now bandit-ridden desert, scarred by centuries of despotism and war 

• Musings of what could’ve been achieved with application of good Protestant labor and modern agronomy

Edward Gibbon

• Edward Gibbon (1737 - 1794) 

• He arrived in Rome in 1764 as young Grand Tourist -> wrote about city’s decline in The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1776 – 1789) -> six volumes that made ruins of Rome the central image of European historical thought  

• "The history of empires is the history of human misery” 

Johann Joachim Winckelmann

• He arrived in Rome in 1755 and spent a lot of time among ancient statues  

• He sometimes organized sightseeing tours acting as a learned cicerone  

• History of the Art Antiquity – published in 1764 – landmark in the development of German Altertumswissenschaft – scientific study of ancient world  

• He developed a complete theory of the stylistic evolution and later degeneration of ancient art – dividing ‘antiquity’ into different periods arranged around the zenith  

Goethe in Rome

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe arrived in Rome on November 1, 1786, calling the city the "capital of the world". He spent nearly two years in Italy (1786–1788) seeking a personal and creative rebirth. Italian Journey

The French Revolution and Napoleon as a new Caesar

• On 14 July 1789, Paris mob stormed the Bastille, a royal fortress, and the French Revolution began  

• 1789: Revolutionaries needed a model of liberty & virtue. They found it in ancient Roman Republic – names, slogans, costumes 

• 1799: Napoleon takes power and keeps appearance of a republic like Augustus – senate, tribunate, 3 consuls (The Consulate) 

• Napoleon was first ‘consul for life’ from 1802 

• 1804: Napoleon crowns himself emperor, in the presence of the pope  

• Napoleon’s regiments marched, carrying eagle standards like Roman legions. They took Spain, Italy, pushed deep into Germany, and Poland 

• French Revolution draped itself in the guise of the Roman Republic using it as a political model 

Romantics in Rome: Byron, Shelley, Keats

• George Gordon, Lord Byron (1788 – 1824) 

• After Napoleonic wars, peace was restored in Europe and Grand Tour began again -> notorious & scandalous Byron reached Rome in 1817 

• He had a pessimistic view of the past, viewing it as a lesson about the fate of empires and people: everything is destined to decay  

• Freedom -> Glory -> Wealth, vice, corruption -> Barbarism  

• 1819 Percy Pysshe Shelley: Wrote much of Prometheus Unbound among the ruins of the Baths of Caracalla -> ruins were a promise of renewal  

• 1821 John Keats -> Came to Rome in search of milder climate and died in Feb 1821 at 25 beside the Spanish Steps. He’s buried in Protestant cemetery  

Romanticism and Italian nationalism

• The Romantic turn: Against Enlightenment universalism: feeling, history, the people, and particular character of each nation  

• Nationalism: the idea that a people sharing a language, a history, and a culture should form one political body  

• The Italian question: Italy was politically fragmented -> at the beginning of the 1800s, people began to think more about how to unify it politically  

The Congress of Vienna and the Restoration (Metternich)

• After Napoleon’s fall, great powers met in Vienna to restore old order. Italy was divided again 

• Kingdom of Sardinia in northwest, Lombardy-Venetia under Austria, the duchies of Parma, Modena, and Tuscany, the Papal states across the center, and the bourbon kingdom of the two Sicilies in the south  

• Austria controlled most of peninsula  

The secret societies and the Carbonari

• Post-Napoleonic restoration -> main opportunities for active opposition lay with the secret societies  

• Many in Italy with different practices and aspirations 

• The most popular was the Carbonari (the Charcoal Burners) or the good cousins  

• Roots could be traced back to Scotland, medieval Franche, Philip of Macedon or the Bavarian illuminati  

• The first Carbonaro was Jesus Christ – known to masters of the order 

• They played a relevant political role in 2 insurrections  

• 1820 The Kingdom of the two sicilies: An uprising in the bourbon kingdom forced King Ferdinand I to grant constitution that he revoked as an Austrian army arrived 

• 1821 Piedmont: An attempted military coup in the Kingdom of Sardinia, the north-Italian state on the French border aimed at constitution and war against Austria

Giuseppe Mazzini and Young Italy

• Giuseppe Mazzini (1805 – 1872): in 1827 became a member of the Carbonari   

• He realized secret societies could never achieve politically serious goals 

• 1831 from exile in Marseille, he founded new political movement Young Italy – open in its aims, national 

• He’s a hero of the Italian Risorgimento  

• Program: Italy should have liberty (rights, democracy, republican constitution), united, and independent  

• He knew Italy was made on foreigners and treated as a memorial garden (reminder that the greatest civilizations sicken & die) 

Giuseppe Gioachino Belli and the sonnets in Romanesco

• Giuseppe Gioachino Belli (1791 – 1863) 

• Roman poet and papal civil servant 

• Wrote more than 2000 sonnets in Roman dialect (Romanesco, the voice of the common people in the city) and circulated in manuscript -> many savage satires against the pope and the clergy  

• He asked that they be burned after his death  

Pius IX, the 'liberal' pope, and 1848

• 1846 – after the death of the super conservative Gregory XVI, the cardinals elected Giovanni Maria Mastai-Ferretti  

• He was considered liberal 

• Granted amnesty to political prisoners, relaxed censorship, and began to reform the administration of the papal states  

• Supporters of the unification of Italy thought pope would support them and maybe even lead it

The Roman Republic of 1849 and the Third Rome

• 1848 – great revolution broke out throughout Europe and in Italy people began to rebel 

• Spring -> Pope granted liberal constitution to the Papal states like other kings & rulers 

• Autumn -> Pius IX released uprisings could create serious problems for leadership and appointed moderate Count Pellegrino Rossi as chief minister 

• Nov 15 -> He was stabbed to death on the steps of the Chancellery and radicals took over. The pope fled from Rome to Gaeta in disguise  

• Birth of the Roman Republic  

• Pope gone, a constituent assembly elected by universal male suffrage declared the end of the temporal power of the popes and proclaimed the Roman Republic

• Mazzini granted citizenship and he thought that Rome could lead Italy and Europe toward freedom 

• Roman republic (1849) - led by triumvirate 

• Giuseppe Mazzini: idealogue and effective head of the government. He abolished the Inquisition, secularized Church property, and guaranteed freedom of the press  

• Carlo Armellini: Roman lawyer and moderate, the link between republicans and the city’s professional classes 

• Aurelio Saffi: young patriot from the Romagna and Mazzini’s closest follower; later a professor and historian of the Risorgimento  

Garibaldi and the Mille; the unification of Italy (1861)

• He organizes an expedition of 1000 men (the Mille) to liberate the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies and the Papal States 

• Successful expedition, defeating the Bourbon army in three months 

• Victor Emmanuel II meets the Mille at Teano to prevent them from marching on Rome (under protection of the French) so Garibaldi hands the Bourbon kingdom overt to the king and it’s annexed to the Kingdom of Sardinia  

• Italian peninsula is united except for Rome and Venetia

Porta Pia (1870): Rome capital of Italy

• September 20, 1870 – French army recalled to fight Prussia, the Italian troops breach the walls at Porta Piazza and take Rome  

• Temporal power of the popes is over  

• 1871 – Rome is made the capital of the Kingdom of Italy 

• Parliament approves Law of Guarantees, declaring pope the new nation’s spiritual leader but Pius IX refuses and declares himself ‘prisoner in the Vatican’ 

• Third Rome is a capital of monarchy  

Mussolini: from Socialism to Fascism

• Born in Romagna, son of blacksmith  

• Schoolteacher and socialist agitator 

• In 1912, he was editor of Avanti! the newspaper of the Italian Socialist Party  

• To socialists, the war was the international revolutionary struggle of the proletariat 

• He was pro-war and expelled from the Socialist Party so he founded the Fasci di Azione Rivoluzionaria in 1914 

World War I: Caporetto, the Piave, the arditi; D'Annunzio

• Gabriele D’Annunzio: Against the Museum – pro war  

• Caporetto (1917) and the Piave (1917-18)  

• In 1917, the Austrians broke the Italian line at Caporetto and Italians surrendered  

• Italians held at the Piave River close to Venice  

• Bravest Italian soldiers drafted into special units adriti (the daring ones) and the exploits of these assault troops became legendary

The March on Rome and the Fascist dictatorship

• October 1922 – The March on Rome 

• Mussolini became prime minister after 3 years of near civil war in the country and an armed invasion of Rome  

• He was appointed by the king & headed a coalition gov 

• For 18 months, he ruled through usual gov. Machinery, pursued a policy of “normalization” and gradually concentrated power in his own hands  

• Fascist squads were incorporated into an official voluntary militia for national security, ordinary middle-class job seekers flooded into the fascist party, nationalists merged their organizations into it  

• Corporativism: third way to modernization – framework of a belief system committed to endowing “mere” economic reason with a higher, more spiritual logic 

• The Fascist motto- “the leader is my light” or “dux mea lux” turns dux into object of devotion  

• Rome becomes stage: the city is excavated, isolated, and rebuilt to frame the regime

Fascism and the city of Rome: the cult of Augustus, EUR

• The Mausoleum of Augustus: to celebrate the 2000-year anniversary he approved the restoration of the Mausoleum of Augustus which was being used as a concert hall 

• Mussolini lay claim to the Roman emperor’s legacy 

• Fascist architecture  

• Roman geometry: architecture of rigorous geometries and structures, of power 

• Fascism between tying itself to the past of ancient imperial Rome and building a new city on top/around of the inherited one  

• EUR designed for never-held 1942 Esposizione Universale Roma, the Palazzo della Civilta Italiana: the Square Colosseum.  

• It has an inscription celebrating a people of poets, artists, heroes, saints, thinkers, scientists, navigators, migrants 

The Fascist Empire: the Ethiopian War (1935-36)

• October 1935 – Italy invaded Ethiopia, the last independent state in Africa  

• War won in 7 months with the use of poison gas 

• May 9, 1936 – Mussolini proclaimed the return of the Empire as Italian East Africa (Eritrea, Somalia, Ethiopia) joined Libya as colonies of new Rome 

The Jews of Rome: the Carnival race and the Ghetto

• The Carnival Race 

• In 1468, it was decreed that Jews should join the Roman carnival (mandatory) for a special running case along the Corso  

• Twists were added and by 1600s, they were running dressed in only loincloths  

• The Ghetto 

• In 1555, Pope Paul IV confined the Jews of Rome to a walled quarter, locked at night 

• Lasted for over 3 centuries -> walls only came down after 1870 with the Kingdom of Italy 

• The Great Synagogue (1904) rose on the site of the demolished Ghetto 

The Racial Laws (1938)

• Jews expelled from public schools/universities, civil service, army, and professions 

• They were forbidden to marry ‘Aryans’, employ them, own business, or own land above a minimum size 

• Roman Jews – oldest Jewish community in Europe  

October 16, 1943: the roundup of the Roman Jews

• Month after German occupation of Rome, SS troops surrounded the Ghetto 

• Each family found a slip of paper with instructions about being transferred 

• Monday, October 18, 1943, at 2:05pm – the Roman Jews kidnapped left Rome from Tiburtina station in 18 sealed cattle cars 

• Friday, October 22, 11pm – they arrived in Auschwitz