Matarazzo was not alone in his admiration for the Baglioni. He tells us that whenever the “magnificent Guido,” his son Astorre, or his nephew Gianpaolo walked in the piazza every citizen paused at his work to admire them, and if perchance a stranger passed through Perugia he was certain to make every effort to see them. The soldiers would hurry from their tents to see Gianpaolo go by, and anyone walking by this noble’s side seemed dwarfed and insignificant by reason of his great stature and his noble form. Gismondo, another of Guide’s sons, was universally admired for his splendid horsemanship. He would make his horse leap into the air, while he sat straight and square in the saddle, not stirring hand or foot. The citizens looked on marvelling at these feats of skill and daring. Gismondo was slim, and walked with the lightness of a cat, so that no man in Perugia, however quick of hearing, knew when he was coming. The richest and perhaps the handsomest of the Baglioni family was young Grifonetto Baglioni, whose beauty Matarazzo compares to Ganymede. He was the son of Grifone and Atalanta Baglioni, and nephew to Guido and Ridolfo. His father had been stabbed at Ponte Ricciolo in 1477, and he lived with his young mother in one of the most beautiful houses in Perugia. This palace had been commenced by Malatesta Baglioni and finished by Braccio Baglioni, who, because of the court of learned men he gathered round him, and the splendid festivals with which he honoured the lovely ladies of the city, was called “Lorenzo il Magnifico di Perugia.” The palace was entered by a large and richly-ornamented hall, hung with beautiful pictures. At the opposite end of the room was a painting of a woman of most venerable and majestic bearing, and over her head the word Perusia. This grave and queenly lady commanded a view of all the celebrated men of the Umbrian city, for on one side of the wall were portraits of the famous captains of adventure, and on the other those of the most learned of the doctors and scholars, with their names and a description of their mighty deeds written in full below them. Grifonetto lived in great magnificence. “He kept numbers of horses, Barbary steeds, to run in the races, jesters and other properties pertaining to a gentleman. He even kept a lion; and all who went to the house compared it to a king’s court.”

Perugia, it seems, was turned into a veritable garden of loveliness on this occasion. Rich velvets, brocades, and tapestries hung from the palace windows, their gorgeous colours mingled with long trails of ivy, with many shrubs and the branches of blossoming trees, which also filled the streets. Colossal arches spanned the roads at the different gates into the city. All vied together to erect the finest arch; and one was hung all over with tapestries showing the military exploits of the young Astorre. As the Roman bride passed in, the ladies of Perugia went to meet her, offering her rich presents. Some were dressed in cloth of gold and silver, others in silk and velvet, and many of them were lovely to behold. But Lavinia Colonna excelled them all by the glory of her broidered gown, and by the pearls and jewels twisted in her hair. Simonetto Baglioni drove round the city in a triumphal car, and as he went he cast great quantities of sugared dainties to the crowd, thus trying, by every means in his power, to add to the merriment of the marriage-day, and to show that love and comradeship united the Baglioni family.

But down in the Borgo S. Angelo men were silent and morose, for they hated these tyrants of Perugia, and held aloof from all rejoicings. They had noted strange auguries of late, and a whisper went round that evil was impending. On the first night of the festivities a terrible storm arose, scattering the decorations in the whirlwind. It was an awful night, and the young Roman bride shuddered, as above the din of the storm, she heard the sinister roars of the Baglioni lions.[27] Lavinia and Astorre were lodged in the palace of their traitorous cousin Grifonetto, and neither dreamt of the treachery that was so near at hand.

Gianpaolo is the last member of the Baglioni brood who succeeded in ruling over his native city, maintaining the despotic traditions of his predecessors by a system of unconscionable brutality. The personality of this tyrant is strongly brought forward in Italian histories. Frolliere gives the following account of the fascination of the outward man:

But there was a very different side to this in the character of Gianpaolo, and we hear that on one occasion

Gianpaolo was also a good diplomatist, as cautious as he was cruel, and one of the most striking pictures in Perugian history is that of his reception of Julius II. in 1506, on which occasion the Pope came to visit the tyrant in person. The Baglioni was perfectly well aware that Julius had come for the purpose of re-establishing papal dominion in the city; but he was too cautious to shove His Holiness over a wall which he was building at the time, and thus to counterfeit the papal plans and set all Italy ablaze with admiration at the audacity of his action:

*   *  *  *  *  *   *  *  

Thus the Baglioni practically killed themselves—stamped out their own power through their own passions. It remained for the Church to crush if possible the spirit of liberty and of self-government in the people of Perugia. It is as though a mighty wheel spun round and we next find the city wholly and entirely in the clutches of Rome.

When the last strong member of the terrible brood, Ridolfo Baglioni, forced his way back into Perugia with the evident intention of ruling there, he seems to have ignored the fact that he had something more powerful to face than the opposition of the people. Ridolfo set fire to the people’s palace, but he went much further, he assassinated the Pope’s Legate. This outrage gave the final push to Rome, who had so often and so impotently interfered before, and Paul Farnese, the reigning Pope, listened, we hear, with the profoundest displeasure to the account of this barefaced murder. He at once took the high hand. He sent troops from Rome to drive out Ridolfo, who retired before them to seek a better fortune elsewhere. He then had the walls of Spello, Bettona, Bastia, and other strongholds of Ridolfo Baglioni demolished, and finally, in order to make his policy more permanent and decisive, the great Farnese Pope arrived in person at Perugia.

Paul’s arrival is one of the most impressive points in the annals of the town. The rule of the Baglioni had been so powerful and so picturesque that in tracing it one is inclined to ignore the undercurrent of affairs in the city. As a matter of fact the old order of rule had not really died out under that of the nobles, and in the description of Paul’s reception we find the familiar names of companies and Priori occurring again and again with all their followers and titles.

The Perugians, wearied to death by the despotic rule of the nobles, hailed the advent of a much more despotic Pope with blind and excessive joy. Paul came in triumph, and in triumph he was received. Great arches were built for him and for his cardinals to pass beneath, and since the town had not sufficient money to spend on his reception they even melted down a beautiful silver ship belonging to the city plate chest. It was on the last day of August 1535, and at about midnight, that “His Blessed Holiness” arrived at the gates with fourteen cardinals and some companies of 600 or 700 horse and 700 infantry. The Pope rode up on horseback, dressed in scarlet. Drums and tambours heralded his approach. The cardinals rode by two and two. On either side of His Holiness rode his two nephews: the Cardinals Alexander Farnese and Guido Ascanio Sforza. The Priori, all in new and gorgeous robes, preceded by the Holy Eucharist, came out to meet him, and through their ambassador or nunzio they presented to His Holiness a silver basin containing the keys of the city. Then a learned doctor of the University delivered “a short but elegant address,” to which the Pope listened attentively, and for that night the Pope turned in to sleep in the monastery of S. Pietro. The following day he entered the city with extraordinary pomp and took up his abode in the Palazzo Pubblico, where the Priori had vacated their own rooms in order to give him proper space; and thither all the professors and all the members of the city guilds and confraternities arrived that afternoon to kiss his foot.

Paul’s first visit to Perugia may be called a triumphal progress rather than anything else. He gave great gifts of grain to the city, and he conferred countless benefits upon its churches and its clergy. But he came to rule, and not to pamper or caress. For a time all went well. The convents and the monasteries grew fat and prosperous, the Baglioni were away, and the people apparently at peace; but storms were brewing. After three years of passive submission Perugia found cause to revolt against her new ruler as she had done against her old. In 1538 Paul III. sent out his decree for raising the price of salt by one half in all the pontifical states, and the Perugians revolted at once against an imposition which they had good reason to feel unjust.[39]

Revolution was declared. Alfano Alfani, the chief of the magistrates, tried to calm the fury of his countrymen, and at first only humble entreaties were sent down to Rome imploring Paul III. to remove a tax so odious to the people. But the Pope was too much in need of money to listen to these prayers. His only answer was an excommunication, which punishment was not unfamiliar to the people of Perugia. During the month of March 1539 the city lay under an interdict, no masses were said, no sacraments given, and the churches seemed as the monuments of a people long since dead. Every day the murmurings of the Perugians grew and strengthened, and finally they took the high-handed measure of arranging matters for themselves. They elected twenty-five citizens who were called “the twenty-five defenders of justice in the city of Perugia,” and before many days were out the “twenty-five” had obtained unlimited power. They exercised an independent and undisputed authority and pushed the priori entirely to one side. Their endeavours to protect their liberty and resist the Pope’s authority soon roused his anger. The Farnese was not a person to be trifled with, and this barefaced rebellion of the little Umbrian city had to be crushed by prompt and powerful means; so the Pope sent his son, Pier Luigi Farnese, at the head of 10,000 Italians and 3000 Spaniards to meet the rulers in the field.

A strange piece of history follows. The Perugians veer round utterly and call in as their leader Ridolfo Baglioni to help them against a Pope, whom but three short years ago they had welcomed as their best benefactor.

Ridolfo went forth to fight against the Papal troops with a mighty flourish of trumpets, but we only hear faint rumours of a skirmish near Ponte S. Giovanni where one or two men were killed, and a few more tumbled off their chargers. The whole account reads like a farce, and yet we know that men and women regarded it with deadly earnest at the time. The city was all unhinged. An extraordinary religious phase which had nothing to do with the Church came over her. The large crucifix which is still to be seen in S. Lorenzo, was placed above the main entrance to the Duomo, and here the people came to pray and tell their beads with an unwonted fervour. Continual processions wound their slow way up from S. Domenico to the Cathedral square, and we hear that the cries for mercy were deafening throughout the city.

On a dark night, by the flickering light of many torches, Maria Podiano, the Chancellor of the Commune, delivered a touching oration, and in the sight of all the citizens he placed the city keys at the foot of the great crucifix on the outside of the Cathedral—Christ was to be their defender, Christ their leader, to fight against a Pope![40]

But it was impossible that Perugia should be able to stand against such an army as that of Paul III., and Ridolfo Baglioni was the first to see that his side must lose. With less loyalty than might have been expected from this would-be despot of Perugia, he edged towards peace, and finally, on the 3rd June 1540, peace was concluded between Pier Luigi Farnese and Ridolfo Baglioni. Thus it happened that once again Perugia was cast under the shadow of Pontifical Rome. Neighbouring towns had abandoned her at the moment when she wrestled for her liberty; Ridolfo Baglioni had given her but a half-hearted help, and the Perugians were driven to confess that the only course which now lay open to them was an apology to the Pope. Twenty-five ambassadors were therefore sent to Rome. Dressed in long black robes with halters round their necks, the unhappy Perugian envoys crouched in the portico of S. Peter’s awaiting their absolution.

Pardon was obtained, but at a heavy price. The ambassadors returned home bearing the news that Paul had forgiven the city; but the titles of Preservers of Ecclesiastical Obedience, borne by the Pope’s magistrates, warned Perugia quite sufficiently that her old forms of government were wiped away for ever. A few days later and the foundations of Paul III.’s fortress were laid on the site of the razed palaces of the Baglioni, and the citizens were compelled to lend their help in the erection of this colossal stronghold which was to prove their bane for centuries to follow. On its inner walls it bore the following inscription, which fully indicated the feelings and intentions of the indomitable Farnese: Ad coercendam Perusinorum Audaciam.[41]

Writhing beneath the yoke of priests, the Perugians soon regretted even the rule of the Baglioni: “Help me if you can,” Malatesta Baglioni had cried as he lay dying at Bettona in 1531, “for after my death you will be made to draw the cart like oxen”; and Frolliere, chronicling these words, remarks: “This has been fulfilled to the last letter, for all have borne not only the yoke but the goad.”[42]

In the same year (1540) as that in which Paul III. laid the foundations of his famous fortress, a society, which proved of invaluable service in furthering the work and wishes of the Papacy, sprang forth into vigorous life, and gradually the chief power in Perugia fell into the hands of the Jesuits. These agents of the Pope proceeded to convert the city wholesale by means of religious ceremonies, general confessions, preachings in every square, and in all the corners of the streets, and colossal processions, headed by missionaries wearing crowns of thorns and bearing enormous crosses. Industries died out, poverty, famine, and pestilence decimated the city, and in 1728, from a petition presented to Clement X., it appears that Perugia was reduced to such a state of wretchedness as to bring tears to the eyes of those who remembered her former prosperity.

*   *  *  *  *  *   *  *  

The final history of Perugia, down to the present day, may be compressed into a very few lines. Up to the

FORTRESS OF PAUL III. SHOWING THE UPPER PART NOW OCCUPIED BY THE PREFETTURA, ETC., AND THE LOWER WING WHICH COVERED THE SITE OF THE PRESENT PIAZZA D’ARMI (From a water-colour sketch now in the possession of Madame Brufani at Perugia.)
FORTRESS OF PAUL III. SHOWING THE UPPER PART NOW OCCUPIED BY THE PREFETTURA, ETC., AND THE LOWER WING WHICH COVERED THE SITE OF THE PRESENT PIAZZA D’ARMI
(From a water-colour sketch now in the possession of Madame Brufani at Perugia.)

end of the last century, she was practically ruled by the Popes, and was a city of the Papal States. Her immense convents and churches were filled with monks and nuns. In 1549, Julius III. restored to her some of her ancient privileges of which Paul had deprived her, and in some sort she regained her old forms of government, but she could never again be called by her historians an independent State. In 1797, during the general upheaval of Europe which followed the revolution in France, she underwent a quite new phase, and became a French Prefecture under the title of Departimento del Trasimeno. General la Valette levied tribute from the citizens, who were further harassed by the sudden break up of the Roman Republic and an Austrian occupation. After the Battle of Marengo, in 1800, Perugia ceased to be Pontifical, and in 1809 she was formally annexed to the French Empire, and made a canton of Spoleto under a sub-prefect. By Napoleon’s orders the convents of both sexes and of all orders were suppressed, the bishops and prelates were sent to Rome in carriage loads, and the poor monks and nuns were unfrocked and literally carted through the streets to their homes. When a turn came in the fortunes of the empire, Perugia became the victim of another change, and with the partial introduction of the papal sway, the monks and nuns returned to their convents.

In spite of its tyrannies, the Napoleonic occupation had given the Perugians a taste for better things than a papal despotism, and they never again found rest in the care of the Pope. They fretted and chafed under the Pope’s people; the Pope’s fortress became a veritable eye-sore to them, the daily sight of its walls burned into their hearts like red-hot nails, and whenever they could they pulled a part of it down.

At last, in 1859, they rose in open rebellion, and Papal troops were sent by Pius IX. to besiege the town. Some 2000 of the Swiss Guard, led by Colonel Schmid, arrived from Rome to quell the insurrection. Bonazzi gives a vivid account of the atrocities these men committed in the city. They killed all whom they laid hands on in their raids as they passed through the streets, crying aloud as they went that “their master the Pope had given them orders that none should be spared.” S. Pietro was forced, and, notwithstanding the protests of the Abbot and his monks, its vestments were torn to threads, gold and silver ornaments carried away, and not even the archives with their wealth of long accumulated missals escaped the vandalism of the papal troops. (See p. 162.)

In 1860 the Swiss were finally dislodged by Victor Emanuel’s envoy, General Manfredo Fanti; and, unarmed and closely guarded by a double file of the King’s soldiers, the last representatives of papal power were driven from the fortress of Paul III., and having passed a night in the cathedral, they were ousted for ever from the precincts of Perugia. Paul III.’s fortress had now been entirely pulled down by an infinite number of willing hands, and the present great buildings of the Prefettura, which represents the modern government of a prosperous town, took their place on the former site of the Baglioni palaces.

*   *  *  *  *  *   *  *  

With the loss of Perugia’s independent existence in 1540 the light of romance was lost to her history. But from that minute, and in spite of all her anguish and humiliation, she learned the final lesson of how to live at peace within herself, and be at peace with all her neighbours. This lesson she had never learned through all her battlings in the past. She had risen fighting, and fighting she had flourished. It would be inaccurate to say that fighting she fell.

Perugia never fell. She was merely caught and tamed. Anyone familiar with the cities of Umbria will at once recognise in this, their head, something forcible, strong, grand, and enduring, which neither nobles, emperors, nor popes were able to beat out of her; something which has kept her what she was at the beginning: Perugia, the city of plenty, and fitted her to be what she is now: Perugia the capital of Umbria; as grand in her unity with her great mother, as she was powerful in her strife.

CHAPTER IV

The City of Perugia

Perugia is very distinctly the living capital of the province. After travelling through Umbria and studying one by one the little dreamy old-world cities—each perched upon its separate hillside, which seem to have fallen asleep long centuries ago, letting the silence of

PERUGIA FROM THE ROAD TO THE CAMPO SANTO
PERUGIA FROM THE ROAD TO THE CAMPO SANTO

the grass close in on their paved streets, as the need of self-protection vanished—one returns to Perugia and recognises that she, at least, has never died. She is often very silent, very brown and grim; she has her dreams, but the hope in her: the desire for rule and power, has never really vanished. The most remarkable change about the town, if we are to take what we read of her history for certain fact, is the change in her people. The inhabitants of Perugia, in every class, are unmistakably gentle and amiable, both in mind and manner. They are courteous to strangers, kind, helpful and calm. Even the street boys ask one for stamps instead of pennies. In their leisure they are gay, and in their work persistent. They are never frantic or demonstrative. As one sits at one’s window on warm spring nights, one almost wishes the people in the street would either fight or sing, but they do neither. They take their pleasures calmly, and hang upon their town walls by the hour, gazing out upon a view they love. Perhaps in their inmost hearts they are counting the numberless little cities, all of which their fathers won for them in battles of the past. The fact of their supremacy may make them thrill, but there is nothing to mark their triumph in their faces.

This is no place in which to discuss the rapid change of personality in the Perugians. We note it as a fact, and pass to a description of the town itself, which certainly contains abundant marks of that same “warlike” character which time has washed away from the minds of its inhabitants.

The city is built, as we have shown in our first chapter, on one of the low hills formed after thousands of years by the silting up of the refuse brought down by the Tiber, and not, as one naturally at first imagines, on a spur of the actual Apennines which are divided from her by the river. Much of the power of the town in the past may be traced to her extraordinary topographical position. Perugia stands 1705 feet above the level of the sea, and 1200 above that of the Tiber. She stands perfectly alone at the extreme edge of a long spine of hill, and she commands the Tiber and the two great roads to Rome.[43] But looked at from a merely picturesque point of view, few towns can boast of a more powerful charm. Perugia, if one ignores her history, is not so much a town as an eccentric freak of nature. All the winds and airs of heaven play and rush around her walls in summer and in winter. The sun beats down upon her roofs; one seems to see more stars at night, above her ramparts, than one sees in any other town one knows of. All Umbria is spread like a great pageant at her feet, and the pageant is never one day or one hour like the other. Even in a downpour, even in a tempest the great view fascinates. In spring the land is green with corn and oak trees, and pink with the pink of sainfoin flowers. In winter it seems smaller, nearer; brown and gold, and very grand at sundown. On clear days one can easily trace a whole circle of Umbrian cities from the Umbrian capital. To the east Assisi, Spello, Foligno, Montefalco, and Trevi. The hill above Bettona hides the town of Spoleto, but its ilex woods and its convent of Monte Luco are distinct enough. To the south Todi and Deruta stand out clear upon their hillsides; and to the east the home of Perugino, Città della Pieve, rises half hidden in its oakwoods. Early in the mornings you will see the mists lift slowly from the Tiber; at night the moon will glisten on its waters, drawing your fancy down to Rome. Strange lights shine upon the clouds behind the ridge which covers Trasimene, and to the north the brown hills rise and swell, fold upon fold, to meet the Apennines. In autumn and in winter the basin of the old Umbrian lake will often fill for days with mists, but the Umbrian towns and hamlets rise like the birds above them, and one may live in one of these in splendid sunshine, whilst looking down upon a sea of fog which darkens all the people of the plain.

The inhabitants of Perugia swear by the healthy nature of their air, and indeed, were it not for the winds, the most fragile constitution would probably flourish in the high hill city. But it must be confessed that there come days when man and horse quiver like dead leaves before the tempest, and when the very houses seem to rock. Indeed, it would be almost impossible to exaggerate the arctic power of a Perugian whirlwind. Yet the average temperature is mild, and myrtles grow to the size of considerable trees in the villa gardens round the town.

To fully understand the city of Perugia, the marvellous fashion of its building, and the way in which its houses have become a part of the landscape and seem to creep about and cling to the unsteady crumbling soil, one should pass out into the country through one of its gates, and, rambling round the roads and lanes which wind beneath its walls, look ever up and back again towards the town. In this way only is it possible to understand what man can do with Nature, and how, with the centuries, Nature can gather to herself man’s handiwork and make of it a portion for herself. Birds and beasts have built in this same fashion, but rarely except in Umbria have men.

“The unstable quality of the soil on which Perugia is built,” writes Mariotti, “has made strong walls and very costly buildings a necessity,” and he goes on to point out the different and expensive ways in which the town has been bolstered up with solid masonry. The Etruscans were the first to recognise this necessity. They may have been a peaceful and a rather bourgeois set of human beings, differing in all ways from their combative successors, but they understood the science of building, and their walls, which encompassed only about one-third of the space covered by the mediæval town, remain a monument of splendid solid masonry wherever they can be traced.

ETRUSCAN ARCH. PORTA EBURNEA
ETRUSCAN ARCH. PORTA EBURNEA

The Etruscan walls are a marked feature of some Umbrian cities, and although it is rather the fashion to dispute their authenticity in Perugia, the bits which remain of them there are probably quite genuine. They have, however, become such a part of the mediæval and the modern town, and are often so embedded in later buildings, that without close study it is difficult to trace them; we have therefore marked their course in red on the map of the town.

Five of the present gates of the town, namely, Porta Eburnea, Porta Susanna, Porta Augusta, Porta Mandola, and Porta Marzia are the genuine old gates of the Etruscan town, and although the Romans altered them a little, enlarging them from below, a great part of their masonry is the work of the Etruscans, and from three to four thousand years old. Of these gates, the Porta Augusta is familiar to every one, as it is one of the most remarkable and impressive features of the town. Rome and the Renaissance have combined to give it a fantastic and a fascinating appearance, even as these same influences have made a miniature museum of the now disused Porta Marzia. Strangely enough the work of the Etruscan masons is far better preserved than any which followed them, and the great blocks of travertine neatly placed (as some suppose without mortar) on one another, are easily distinguishable from those built above and below them. Perugia always felt a certain respect for her oldest walls, and even in the fifteenth century, when she was in her prime, and bristling with new towers and churches, the work of the dead people was respected. In 1475 we read that a law was passed for the preservation of the Etruscan walls, as “they were very marvellous, and worthy to be preserved into all eternity.”

Beyond the city walls nothing remains of the Etruscans at Perugia, except what is found in their tombs. That the town was rich in temples and other beauties we may gather, but these, together with the houses, were

MEDIÆVAL STAIRCASE IN THE VIA BARTOLO
MEDIÆVAL STAIRCASE IN THE VIA BARTOLO

destroyed when Augustus took the town in 40 B.C., and when her devoted citizen, Caius Cestius, set fire to his native city, to cover her disgrace. Of the Roman occupation, which covered a period of many centuries, no trace remains in Perugia. The present town is therefore a monument of the purest mediæval building crowned by some rare and beautiful bits of Renaissance architecture.

But before entering into a description of the city, it may be well to insist once more on the fact already made plain in our history, that if men made Perugia, men also marred her.[44] The impatience of man is everywhere discernible in her streets her palaces and churches, and only the latest buildings have their towers and stones intact. The towers of S. Pietro, S. Domenico, and others have had their tops all truncated by popes, by nobles, and by people in moments of their fury or their vengeance. The city was built for warfare and defence, and not for beauty, luxury and peace. In these comparatively quiet times of ours we go about in foreign towns and look for art, and art alone. We seem to forget that art is but a small affair—a little landmark in the history of nations. There is an art in Umbria, an art so pure, so sweet, so tender that thinking of it we may easily forget the history of her men, or, if remembering, we seem to dream a dual dream. The art of Perugia was, maybe, the outcome of her almost fanatical religion, but the wars of her inhabitants have always been her life-blood. The very first walls were built for defence, or, as some say, to store the crops, the corn and hay, in; and the houses of the earliest mediæval town were also built purely with a view to personal safety and protection. Bonazzi gives a curious account of the growth of the city, and the almost fantastic fashion in which its inhabitants hammered its houses together, and then proceeded to live in them. “There were,” he says, describing the town in about 1100 and 1200, “few monuments or buildings of importance up to the sixteenth century. The houses were all on one floor, the sun barely reached them; some of them were of stone and bricks, but the greater part of mud, clay and straw. Hence incessant and considerable fires, increased by the lack of chimneys. And they were so inconveniently arranged that often eight or ten persons slept in a single room. A motto, a saint, some small sign took the place of our modern numbers, and the lamp which burned in front of the many shrines served to light the streets at nightfall. There were no flags or pavements then upon the streets, which took their names from the churches or houses of the nobles which happened to look down upon them; these were narrow and tortuous, simply because they grew without any method or premeditation, they were horrible to behold as all the dirt was thrown into them, and because of the herds of swine which passed along them, grunting and squeaking as they went.”[45] Bonazzi next goes on to trace the topography of the mediæval town, which was much smaller than the present one, and lacking in large monuments. There was no Corso in those days, no Piazza Sopramuro, no Palazzo Pubblico. Where the present cathedral now stands there was only the little old church of S. Lorenzo and a big and beautiful tower with a cock on the top of it. The towers of Perugia were a most marked feature of her architecture and, indeed, in old writings she is always mentioned as Turrena because of them.[46] “About this time,” says Bonazzi, “another great work began in our city, which was continued into the following centuries. The feudal lords who came in from their own places in the country to inhabit the town, brought with them each the tradition of his own strong tower in the abandoned castle. Great therefore was the competition between them of who should build the highest, and this each noble did, not so much for decoration as for a means of defence and of offence, and according to the amount of power possessed by himself or by his neighbour.... In the shadow of the massive feudal towers,” Bonazzi writes in another place, “like grass which is shaded by giant plants, rose the little houses of the poor. The more elegant houses were of terra-cotta (bricks) without plaster or mortar, and their windows were arched in the Roman fashion.[47] After 600 they were roofed with flat tiles in imitation of the Lombards.”

The city gates were always closed at nightfall, and some of the streets were blocked by means of huge iron chains which stretched across the road, preventing the passage of horse or carts, from one house to another. One can still see the hooks and holes belonging to these somewhat barbaric defences in some of the more solid houses of Perugia; and in the neighbouring town of Spello the chains themselves have been left hanging to one of the houses. In 1276 we read that the law of closing the city gates was abolished, but a little later on it was again found necessary to barricade the town at nightfall, and during some of the fights between the nobles in 1400 and in 1500 we hear of the difficulties which one or the other party had to combat in the “chains across their path.”

Strange scattered relics of this nest of mediæval man linger and come down to us even in the nineteenth century. Amongst these are the porte del mortuccio, or doors of the dead. All the best houses had these doors alongside of their house-doors, but they are bricked up now and quite disused, and might easily be ignored in passing through the streets. The porta del mortuccio is tall, narrow, and pointed at the top; it is, indeed, just wide enough to pass a coffin through. It seems that in very early days, even so far back as the Etruscans, there was a superstition that through the door where Death had passed, Death must enter in again. By building a separate door, which was only used by the dead, the spirit of Death passed out with the corpse, the narrow door was closely locked behind it, and the safety of the living was secured, as far as the living can secure, from Death. Other charming details of the mediæval city are the house doors. They are built of travertine or pietra serena, and have little garlands of flowers and fruit bound with ribbons, and delicate friezes above them. Some of them have very beautiful Latin inscriptions, which show a strong religious sentiment. We quote a few of them here: Janua coeli (door of heaven, over a church); Pulchra janua ubi honesta domus (beautiful the door of the house which is honest); A Deo cuncta—a domino omnia (all things from God); Ora ut vivas et Deo vives (pray to live and thou shalt live to God); Prius mori quam fædari (die rather than be disgraced); In parvis quies (in small things peace); Solicitudo mater divitiarum (carefulness is the mother of riches); Ecce spes I.H.S. mea semper (Christ always my hope).

Over one or two of the doorways in Perugia you will find almost byzantine bits of tracery with figures of unknown animals—beasts of the Apocalypse—carved in grey travertine all round them. One of the very earliest bits of mediæval building is the fragment of a door of this sort, belonging to the first palace of the Priori, which is now almost buried in the more modern buildings of the sixteenth century. There is another amusing procession of beasts over a gateway below S. Ercolano. These odd animal friezes were probably first designed for some sort of closed market where beasts were sold, and the old Pescheria has medallions of lasche on its walls.

As for the ways and manners of the people who inhabited this mediæval city, Ciatti and other writers supply us with plenty of fantastic information:

“Perugia lies beneath the sign of the Lion and of the Virgin,” Ciatti says in his account, which is as usual, unlike the account of anybody else, and highly entertaining, “and from this cause it comes that the city is called Leonina[48] and Sanguinia, and the habits of the Perugians are neither luxurious nor effeminate. Like those of whom Siderius writes, they came forth strong in war, they delighted in fish, were humorous in speech, swift in counsel, and loved the law of the Pope.... The women,” he continues with a certain monastic indifference to female charm, “were not beautiful, although Siderius calls them elegant;[49] the genius of Perugia was ever more inclined to the exercise of arms than the cultivation of beauty, and many famous captains have brought fame to this their native city through their brave deeds. In Tuscany the Sienese have the reputation of being frivolous, the Pisans astute and malicious, the Florentines slow and serious, and the Perugians ferocious and of a warlike spirit.”

Concerning the clothes and the feasts of this combative race of people who lived for warfare rather than for delight, we hear that they were accustomed to wear a great deal of fur, the nobles using pelisses of martin and of sable, the poor, sheep or foxes’ skins. The fur tippets still worn by the canons of cathedrals in Italian towns in winter are probably a remnant of these days. For the rest an adaptation of the Roman tunic was perhaps worn by the men, whilst the women kept to the tradition of the Etruscan headgear. “Victuals,” Bonazzi tells us, “were of a coarse description, more lard and pepper was eaten in those days, than meat and coffee in ours. But at the feasts of the priests and nobles an incredible quantity of exquisite viands was consumed; great animals stuffed with dainties were cooked entire, and monstrous pasties served at table, from which, when the knife touched them, a living and jovial dwarf jumped out upon the table, unexpected and to the great delight of all the company.”

*   *  *  *  *  *   *  *  

But from the Age of Darkness men awoke both in their manners and in their buildings. Perugia of the Middle Ages shook the sleep from off her heavy eyelids, and with that passionate impulse towards Light which was perhaps the secret of the Renaissance, she too strove toward the Beautiful, and in a hurried, fevered fashion, she too decked herself with fairer things than castle towers and hovels. The fourteenth and the fifteenth centuries were, as we know, the Age of Gold in later art, and Perugia, in spite of all her tumults, in spite of her feuds, and even her passionate religious abstinences, woke with the waking world. Most of her churches, and most of those monuments which mark her as a point for travellers, date from that period. “And at that time,” says the chronicler Fabretti, “there was so great a building going on in different parts of the city that neither mortar nor stones nor masons could have been procured even for money, unless a number of Lombards had come in to build. And they were building the palace of the Priori (Palazzo Pubblico), they were building S. Lorenzo, Santa Maria dei Servi, S. Domenico, S. Francesco, the houses of Messer Raniero ... the tower of the Palazzo, and numerous other houses of private citizens all at that same time.”

But it was not merely a love of beauty which prompted the Perugians to this sudden departure in the way of architecture; the spirit of the great saint of Umbria had much to do with it. In Perugian chronicles and histories we find a strange silence about the influence of S. Francis on a city which was only separated by some fourteen miles from Assisi. Yet it is not possible that so strong a force as that of this man’s preaching could have been kept outside the walls of the neighbour town, and Ciatti declares that at one time nearly a third part of the inhabitants of Perugia took the Franciscan habit. In 1500 and 1600 there were more than fifty convents in Perugia, many of which had sixty to eighty inhabitants, but that was during the rule of the popes. Of the great period of building in the fourteenth century, which included many fine churches and convents, the buildings of the people and not of the priests remain intact. The splendid Palazzo Pubblico and Pisano’s fountain in the square belong to this period. But because the work of the Renaissance is so conspicuous and charming we have described it in another place, and in our description of the town have lingered rather over the fragments of the Etruscan and the mediæval city.

As it would be impossible in this small book to give anything beyond a cursory sketch of all the different buildings of the town, we have decided to deal with the details of some of the principal ones, leaving the rest for the discovery of those whose leisure and intelligence will always make such exploration a delight. There is no lack of excellent guide-books to Perugia. Of the fuller and rarer ones we would mention those of Siepi and Orsini and the more modern one of Count Rossi Scotti. These are in Italian. Murray’s last edition of “Central Italy” contains clear and excellent general information, and there are several small local guides—the best of these by Lupatelli—which can be had in the hotel. No one who really desires to study the town should fail to read the fascinating books of its best lover, Annibale Mariotti; and the works of Conestabile and Vermiglioli are invaluable for students. All these can be had in the public library of the town where there is a pleasant quiet room in which to study them, and the excessive courtesy of whose head—Count Vincenzo Ansidei—makes research an easy pleasure there.

The topography of Perugia is simple: “The entire city,” says Mariotti, “since the very earliest days, was divided into five quarters or rioni, which from the centre, that is to say, the highest point of the town, and with as gentle an incline as the condition of the ground allows, stretch out in five different directions like so many sunbeams across the mountain side. These gates are: Porta Sole to the east, Porta Susanna to the west (formerly called Trasimene), Porta S. Angelo (formerly Porta Augusta) to the north, Porta S. Pietro to the south, and Porta Eburnea to the southwest. Each of these separate gates bears its own armorial design and colour. Porta Sole is white and bears a sun with rays; Porta Susanna blue, with a chain; Porta S. Angelo red, with a branch of arbutus; Porta S. Pietro yellow, with a balance, and Porta Eburnea green, with a pilgrim’s staff.”

Owing to the extraordinary situation of the town there are hardly any level squares or streets. The two considerable flat open spaces on either side of the Prefettura, the site of the Prefettura itself and of the hotel Brufani are artificial spaces, the result of the demolition of Paul III.’s fortress (see chap. vi.). We imagine that many intelligent persons have passed through the comfortable hotel of Perugia not realising at all the artificial nature of the ground on which it stands. The Corso and the Piazza di S. Lorenzo may be said to be the heart of the town; its pulse beats a little lower down in the Piazza Sopramuro where fruit and vegetables are sold and where there is a perpetual market-day.[50] The other big open square is the Piazza d’Armi, on a lower level of the hill and to the south of the town. There the cattle fair is held on Tuesdays, and there the beautiful white Umbrian oxen, with skins that are finer than the cattle of the plain, and the grey Umbrian pigs, and tall Umbrian men and girls can be seen in all their glory. Here too is the convent of S. Giuliana with its splendid cloisters and little Gothic campanile, and here above all do the soldiers of Perugia practice their bands, their horses, and their bugles every morning.

There are three things lacking in Perugia, as there are naturally in all hill-cities, and these are gardens, carriages, and running water. But all these wants have been delightfully overcome by the inhabitants. As a matter of fact, there are plenty of hidden gardens, behind the houses in the town, but in almost every house you will see that iron sockets or rings have been fastened to the walls below the windows, and in

PIAZZA SOPRAMURO, SHOWING THE PALACE OF THE CAPITANO DEL POPOLO AND THE BUILDINGS OF THE FIRST UNIVERSITY OF PERUGIA
PIAZZA SOPRAMURO, SHOWING THE PALACE OF THE CAPITANO DEL POPOLO AND THE BUILDINGS OF THE FIRST UNIVERSITY OF PERUGIA

these, pots of geraniums, daisies, and carnations are hung and tended with excessive care. Some of the better palaces or convents have stone brackets in the shape of shells for window gardens, and even in the dusk of grim December days the old stone walls seem green and living. The lack of carriages is really only felt in winter when the inhabitants seem to fall for the while asleep, leaving the streets to assume their mediæval character, and to be swept by winter hurricanes; in spring and summer the place is gay enough; indeed the Corso is a very good specimen of Umbrian Piccadilly on a fine May evening, and there are plenty of carriages in the tourist season. But go into any palace of Perugia and you will find the sedan chairs of our grandfathers ready for instant use, proving that carriages are quite a modern innovation in the town.

The need of running water is, of course, the most serious point about so big and prosperous a city, and a running stream to turn a paper mill would heal more ills than all her pictures and her wide calm view. The great rushing stream of the Tiber down at the foot of the hill seems like a sort of solemn mockery to people who have only wells and a little river from the hill to drink from and to wash their linen in. We have realized this on winter nights when the Tiber was out in flood in the moonlight down below our windows, and small drops freezing, one by one, on Pisano’s fountain behind us in the square.

Yet the town is prosperous. Its inhabitants and those of the commune have increased by some six thousand since the days of its first prosperity. Commerce, it is true, seems somewhat at a standstill. There is the commerce of travellers, which is by no means inconsiderable; and there is the commerce of Mind. This last Perugia has always had since the days when she grew powerful, and the University of Perugia has played a constant and important part throughout her annals. It was founded in the beginning of the fourteenth century, and its management, like other things in the city, was chiefly in the hands of the people and their representatives, the Priori. Five Savi, one from each rione, were told off to regulate its affairs and to elect its professors. Urban VIII. brought it under the management of the Church, but this did not in any way alter its first rules and laws. We hear that “the Emperor Charles IV. bestowed upon the University all those distinctions which were enjoyed by the most celebrated universities of the Empire,” and Napoleon confirmed these and added much to the magnificence of Perugia’s university. It was during the Napoleonic rule that the college was transferred from its old quarters in the Piazza Sopramuro to the vast new buildings at Montemorcino. Her three main branches of study are jurisprudence, science, and theology. Several of the popes studied in Perugia. S. Thomas Aquinas lectured here, and many distinguished men of science and of law passed through their first schools in the Umbrian hill town. The two great lawyers Baldo Baldeschi and Bartolo Alfani were students in the University of Perugia, and Alberico Gentile, who afterwards lectured in Oxford, studied here at the University. The affairs of war were never allowed to interfere with those of the mind, and we hear that a guarantee of safe conduct was given to any scholar who came here from a distance.