The Makers of Modern Rome, in Four Books

The career of Hildebrand up to the moment in which he ascended the papal throne could scarcely be called other than a successful one. He had attained many of his aims. He had aw...

It is not our object, the reader is aware, to give here a history of Rome, or of its pontiffs, or of the tumultuous world of the Middle Ages in which a few figures of Popes and...

When Rome had fallen into the last depths of decadence, luxury, weakness, and vice, the time of fierce and fiery trial came. The great city lay like a helpless woman at the merc...

It is a melancholy thing looking back through the long depths of history to find how slow the progress is, even if it can be traced at all, from one age to another, and how, tho...

It is happily possible to pass over the succeeding pontificates of Innocent VIII. and Alexander VI. These Popes did little for Rome except, especially the last of them, to assoc...

The first incident in this new reign, so suddenly inaugurated, was a startling one. Stefano Colonna was the father of all the band--he of whom Petrarch speaks with such enthusia...

It is strange to leave the history of Rome at the climax to which the ablest and strongest of its modern masters had brought it, when it was the home of the highest ambition, an...

It is not unusual even in the strictest of hereditary monarchies to find the policy of one ruler entirely contradicted and upset by his successor; and it is still more natural t...

It was in this age of disorder and anarchy that a child was born, of the humblest parentage, on the bank of the Tiber, in an out-of-the-way suburb, who was destined to become th...

After so strange and so complete a victory over one party, had the Tribune pushed his advantage, and gone against the other with all the prestige of his triumph, he would in all...

Amid all these changes the house on the Aventine--the mother house as it would be called in modern parlance--went on in busy quiet, no longer visible in that fierce light which...

The council which was held in Rome in 382 with the intention of deciding the cases of various contending bishops in distant sees, especially in Antioch where two had been electe...

Paula was a woman of very different character from the passionate and austere Melania who preceded and resembled her in many details of her career. Full of tender and yet sprigh...

When the Papal Seat was transferred to Avignon, and Rome was left to its own devices and that fluctuating popular government which meant little beyond a wavering balance of powe...

It was in the beginning of August 1354 that Rienzi returned to Rome. Great preparations had been made for his reception. The municipal guards, with all the cavalry that were in...

The strong recoil of human nature from those fatal elements which time after time have threatened the destruction of all society is one of the noblest things in history, as it i...

There is no place in the world of which it is less necessary to attempt description (or of which so many descriptions have been attempted) than the once capital of that world, t...

It may be well, however, before continuing this narrative to tell the story of another Roman lady, not of their band, nor in any harmony with them, which had already echoed thro...

The short episode which here follows introduces an entirely new element into Rienzi's life. His nature was not that of a conspirator in the ordinary sense of the word; and thoug...