Baring-Gould Sabine
A Book of The Riviera
CHAPTER XVIII
ALASSIO
Admirable site – Old Alassio – Church of San Ambrogio – Palace of the Ferreri – Arco Romano – Gallinaria – Saint Martin – Andora – Oneglia – Andrew Doria, the Admiral – Albenga – Retreat of the Sea – Proculus – Cathedral – Baptistery – Piazza dei Leoni – The Towers – S. Maria in Fontibus – Garlenda – Beauty of Drive
ALASSIO falls short of other winter resorts in no degree, in sweetness of situation, shelter from blustering cold winds, and in abundance of objects of interest in the neighbourhood. In climate, in everything but one, it equals San Remo, Bordighera, and Mentone. The one thing it lacks is good shops.
Alassio consists of one narrow street a mile and a half in length, out of which radiate towards the sea passages under arches. It does not contain, in itself, much of interest. The church and the palace of the Ferreri exhaust the place. The church of San Ambrogio has a tower of the thirteenth century, and the old church, altered, remains, with a later church built on to it in the south in late renaissance times, that is distinctly pleasing, with its white and black marble and blue-grey stucco, between the marble pilasters.
The palace of the Ferreri family, with its rich and cumbrous gateways sculptured with the family arms, contains fine tapestries, family portraits, and rich furniture.
The arms of the town are curious: argent, a tower out of which rises a king crowned and wearing garments red and green.
A favourite excursion from Alassio is to the Arco Romano, a Roman arch, through which a lovely peep of the sea is obtained. To the east appears the curious isle of Gallinaria, shaped like a snail, with the ruins of a Benedictine monastery on it. In 358, in the midst of the war against the Allemanni, when the Emperor Julian was at Worms, Martin, who was in the army, and a tribune, asked to be released from military duty. Julian was indignant. A battle was imminent, and he scornfully refused the petition, and charged Martin with cowardice. The young tribune replied, “Put me in the forefront of the army, without weapons or armour, and prove if I be what you say.”
However, the Allemanni asked for peace, it was granted, thereupon Martin obtained his dismissal. He then went to Poitiers and placed himself under the teaching of S. Hilary. Then he departed to visit his parents in Pannonia. As he crossed the Alps he was attacked by robbers and plundered of all he had. On reaching his native city of Sabaria, Martin succeeded in converting his mother to Christ, but his father persisted in his paganism. Then he returned to Italy, and after tarrying awhile at Milan, where he was vexed by the Arians, he took refuge on this islet of Gallinaria. There he lived on roots, and nearly poisoned himself by accidentally eating the hellebore, attracted by its dark green leaves and pale flowers. Providentially the spasms caused by the poison came on so rapidly as to check him from eating enough to kill him; but he suffered great pain, and lay at death’s door. A cave is shown in the island which S. Martin is traditionally held to have inhabited. After some sojourn on Gallinaria, Martin left it and went back to Poitiers.
To visit the curious old mountain village of Andora, one must leave the train at Laigueglia, before it rushes into the tunnel pierced through the spur of rock on which Andora stands. The church dedicated to SS. Philip and James is in Lombardic Gothic of the fourteenth century, and is one of the most interesting monuments of the style in Liguria. Above the high altar is a crucifix of carved wood, the figure of natural size, believed to be still earlier than the church, which dates from 1341.
Adjoining the church is a tower with swallow-tail battlements, that belonged to the old castle, but has now been united to the church. There are also at Andora the ruins of a feudal castle, the Parasio, the residence of the Podesta till 1797. There are also remains of a Roman aqueduct and a Roman bridge over the river, still in good condition.
Oneglia was the birthplace of Andrew Doria, the great admiral. It is an ugly town; the prison is in the shape of a cross, with a huge lantern at the junction of the arms lighted through cockney Gothic windows.
The Dorias, Fieschi, Grimaldi, and Spinolas were the four principal families of Genoa. Simone Doria, who lived in 1270, was a Troubadour, and he once had a dispute with Lanfranc Cigala as to which was preferable, to deserve the favour of a lady or to possess it. Doria maintained the latter proposition. “I did once suppose,” said Lanfranc, “that merit carried a lady’s favour, I now know that impudence gains it. Doria has taught me that.”
Andrew Doria was born at Oneglia in 1468. He was son of Andrew Coeva, of the Dorias, that were Princes of Oneglia, but as this Andrew represented a junior branch, he came into but a small slice of the inheritance, and, dying early, his widow, mother of the great Andrew, thought it well to get as the protector of her boy Dominico Doria, belonging to the elder branch, and this she obtained by ceding to him the rights in Oneglia that had belonged to her husband. Dominico was then captain of the guards to Pope Innocent VIII., and he put the young Andrew in his company. Andrew forged ahead, and became a naval captain of great importance. He had no scruples, and he passed from side to side, as best conduced to his interests. At one time he fought for Francis I., and then he went over to the service of Charles V. When these rivals met at Aigues Mortes, Francis I. mounted the galley of the great admiral, and noticed a bronze cannon with on it the Arms of France. He looked hard at Doria, who said, “This gun is of excellent metal.” “I cast better cannons now,” remarked the King, meaning that he offered better pay than formerly.
“The Emperor’s metal is good enough for me,” retorted Doria. Francis turned to the Emperor and said, “You made a good catch when you netted Doria. Mind you keep him.”
Against the judgment of Doria Charles V. undertook his disastrous expedition against Algiers in 1541. In 1539 Doria, with the Imperial fleet, that of Venice, and that of the Pope, lighted on the very inferior Turkish fleet under Kheyr-ed-din Barbarossa, off Previsa. The Christian strength was really overwhelming. Eighty Venetians, thirty-six Papal and thirty Spanish galleys, together with fifty sailing galleons, made up the formidable total of nearly two hundred ships of war, and they carried scarcely less than 60,000 men and 2,500 guns. Doria was in chief command, Capello and Grimano led the Venetian and Roman contingents. On September 25th the allied fleets appeared off the Gulf. Barbarossa had 122 ships of war.
On the morning of the 27th the corsairs were amazed to see Doria sail away. Germano and Capello went on board the flagship and urged Doria to engage the enemy; they even implored him to depart himself, and allow them to fight the battle with their own ships, but in vain.
“The result was practically a victory, and a signal victory, for the Turks. Two hundred splendid vessels of three great Christian States had fled before an inferior force of Ottomans; and it is no wonder that Sultan Suleyman, when he learnt the news at Yamboli, illuminated the town, and added 100,000 piasters a year to the revenues of Barbarossa.”21
“It was,” says Brantôme, “a common opinion at the time that there existed a secret engagement between Barbarossa and Doria to avoid fighting each other on decisive occasions, so as to prolong the war, which gave both of them employment, and furnished them with means of acquiring wealth.”
What seems to confirm this was the setting at liberty by Doria of the renegade corsair Dragut, who had been made prisoner, and who was a favourite of Barbarossa, and a scourge to the Christians.
In 1547 a conspiracy of the Fieschi almost cost Andrew Doria his life. His nephew was murdered by them, but at the same time Giovanni Luigi Fieschi was drowned. Grief and resentment provoked Andrew Doria to commit acts of atrocious cruelty.
Scarcely was this conspiracy crushed, before Giulio Cibo, brother-in-law of Giovanni Luigi Fieschi, formed another out of the remnant of the faction. This was discovered; Cibo had his head struck off, and all the rest of the Fieschi and those who held by them were banished. The brother of Giovanni Luigi fell into Doria’s hands, and was by his orders sewn up in a sack and thrown into the sea.
Andrew had been much worried by a pilot asking him for this and for that. Doria said, “If you speak again to me more than three words, I will have you hung.” “Pay or discharge,” said the pilot. Doria laughed, gave him his pay, and retained his services.
Andrew Doria met with a great reverse at the hands of that same Dragut whom he had released to please Barbarossa. In 1552 Dragut came on him when he was least awares, and put him to flight. Dragut pursued him, sank two of his vessels, captured seven of his fleet with seven hundred German soldiers, and their captain, Nicolas Madrucci.
Andrew died in his splendid palace near Genoa in 1560, at the age of 93, without leaving issue by his wife who was niece of Pope Innocent VIII.
Albenga, easily reached from Alassio, either by road or rail, is a most interesting but unhealthy town. It lies low where three rivers, uniting, empty into the sea, and the plain is made up of deposits brought down by them. Anciently the sea reached to its walls, and only withdrew in the tenth century. Albenga was the capital of the Ligurian Ingauni, and a great naval station. Thence sailed a fleet of thirty-two ships which fought the Romans in B.C. 20. It helped Hannibal with ships and men, and when Magone, brother of Hannibal, was wounded, he retired to Albenga to be cured.
Afterwards it became, but reluctantly, allied to Rome. In the times of Probus, A.D. 276-282, a native of Albenga, named Proculus, a man of extraordinary strength, set up to be emperor, but was speedily killed. Constantine, a grandee of the Court of Honorius, A.D. 395-423, fortified the town, and he it was who built the Ponte Longo, a Roman bridge now sunk to the spring of the arches, and deserted by the river, which has completely altered its course.
Albenga has a most interesting cathedral of the twelfth century that has been mutilated and altered internally into a rococo temple. The west front was partly removed in renaissance times and rebuilt, clumsily; but externally, the east end with its apses tells of the true antiquity of the church. Hard by is what is still more venerable: a baptistery, half buried in the soil, of the fifth (?) century. It is descended into by fourteen steps, so greatly has the soil risen since it was built. The building is octagonal, and had its windows filled with pierced slabs of stone; of these fillings in only two remain, one very rich, with carved interlaced work as well as with perforations. Within is a large font for immersion, as at Ventimiglia, and the vault is sustained by eight granite columns, probably taken from a Pagan temple. The altar is ancient, enriched with mosaic work representing the Agnus Dei surrounded by twelve doves.
At the east end of the cathedral is the Piazza dei Leoni, where are three rude stone lions, remains of a monument raised in 1288, but taken from an earlier Roman structure.
That which strikes the visitor especially, coming from France, are the towers of the nobles. “Its thirteen mediæval towers,” says Hare, “remind the Italian traveller of S. Gimignano, rising out of the plain like a number of tall ninepins set close together.” I do not think there are thirteen; certainly not that number of lofty towers; but the earthquake of 1887 damaged, or threw down, several.
The finest are the Torre Balestrino, the cathedral tower, and the Torre del Comune. Five of the old gates remain. The church of S. Maria in Fontibus, in Genoese Gothic, striped black and white marble, takes its name from a spring that rises under the altar, and was supposed to possess miraculous powers for the healing of lepers.
A beautiful drive from Albenga up the valley leads to Garlenda, where are paintings by Domenichino, a S. Maurus, a Martyrdom of S. Erasmus, by Poussin; and a Nativity of Our Lady by Guercino. At the time of the French Revolution, when the troops were pouring over the frontier into Italy, the parishioners of Garlenda, fearful of being robbed of these artistic treasures, removed and hid them.
The road to Garlenda passes through orchards of peaches and fields of narcissus.
“The valley is radiantly beautiful in spring. Overhead are tall peach trees with their luxuriance of pink blossom. Beneath these the vines cling in Bacchanalian festoons, leaping from tree to tree, and below all large melons, young corn, and bright green flax, waving here and there into sheets of blue flower, form the carpet of Nature. Sometimes gaily-painted towers and ancient palazzi, with carved armorial gateways and arched porticoes, break in upon the solitude of the valley.” – Hare.
CHAPTER XIX
SAVONA
The city and port – Pope Sixtus IV. – The Della Rovere family – Nepotism – Assassination of Giuliano di Medici – Methods of filling the treasury – Sixtus and the Spirituals – Julius II. – A fighting pope: his portrait by Raphael – Pius VII. at Savona: his removal from Rome – Death of Princess Borgia – Bishop Grossulano – The Margravate of Savona – The Sanctuario – Crowned images – Jacques de Voragine – The Albizzola Palace: and Gardens – Mme. de Genlis and travelling on Corniche Road – Ruined palaces of Liguria
SAVONA, with its port, its towers, its engirdling mountains, and its wide-stretching orange and lemon orchards, is a very charming town.
The port, with its picturesque tower, engages the eye at once. The cathedral, built in 1604, is in the uninteresting style of that period. It contains some good pictures by Brea, 1495, and Aurelio Robertelli, 1449; and the tomb of the parents of Pope Sixtus IV. who was a native of Celle, near Savona. His father was a poor boat or fisherman called della Rovere; but it was the whim of Francesco della Rovere, when he became Pope under the title of Sixtus IV., to be thought a scion of the ancient house of the same name at Turin. A false pedigree was forged, and he purchased the complaisance of the Turin family, and silenced their jibes, by giving them two cardinal’s hats. He assumed their arms – a golden oak tree on an azure ground – which figures on the tomb at Savona, and which Michael Angelo painted on the roof of the Sistine Chapel, in compliment to Pope Sixtus and to his nephew Julius.
Francis de la Rovere was born in 1414, and entered the Franciscan order, became provincial of Liguria, and finally general of the order. He was elevated to be Cardinal by the advice of Bessarion, who had conceived a high notion of his learning and abilities. He became Pope in 1471 and occupied the papal chair till 1484, and was perhaps the second wickedest pontiff seated on that throne, coming only a short way after Alexander VI.
“He began his career with a lie,” says Mr. Addington Symonds, “for though he succeeded to the avaricious Paul, who had spent his time in amassing money which he did not use, he declared that he had only found 5,000 florins in the Papal treasury. This assertion was proved false by the prodigality with which he lavished wealth immediately upon his nephews. It is difficult even to hint at the horrible suspicions which were cast upon the birth of two of the Pope’s nephews. Yet the private life of Sixtus rendered the most monstrous stories plausible. We may, however, dwell on the principal features of his nepotism; for Sixtus was the first pontiff who deliberately organised a system for pillaging the Church in order to exalt his own family to principalities. The names of the Pope’s nephews were Leonardo, Giuliano, and Giovanni della Rovere, the three sons of his brother Raffiello; Pietro and Girolamo Riario, the two sons of his sister Jolanda; and Girolamo, the son of another sister, married to Giovanno Basso. With the notable exception of Giuliano della Rovere, these young men had no claim to distinction beyond good looks and a certain martial spirit which ill suited with the ecclesiastical dignities thrust upon some of them. Leonardo was made Prefect of Rome and married to a natural daughter of King Ferdinand of Naples. Giuliano received a cardinal’s hat, and after a tempestuous warfare with the intervening Popes, ascended the holy chair as Julius II. Girolamo Basso was created Cardinal of San Cristogono.”
But the favourite nephew of all was Pedro Riario, whom his uncle loaded with ecclesiastical benefices, though aged only five-and-twenty. Scandal asserted, and Muratori believed it, that this Pietro was really the son of the Pope. When scarce out of the hobbledehoy age, he was made Cardinal Patriarch of Constantinople and Archbishop of Florence. His annual income was 60,000 gold florins, in our money about £100,000; and yet when he died, broken down by his debaucheries, in 1474, three years after he had been made Cardinal Archbishop, he was deep in debt.
“He had no virtues, no abilities, nothing but his beauty, the scandalous affection of the Pope, and the extravagant profligacy of his own life, to recommend him to the notice of posterity. All Italy during two years rang with the noise of his debaucheries. When Leonora of Aragon passed through Rome, on her way to wed the Marquess of Ferrara, this fop of a Patriarch erected a pavilion in the Piazza di’ Sante Apostole for her entertainment. The air of the banquet hall was cooled with pure water; on a column in the centre stood a naked gilded boy, who poured forth water from an urn. The servants were arrayed in silk, and the seneschal changed his dress of richest stuffs and jewels four times in the course of the banquet. Nymphs and centaurs, singers and buffoons, drank choice wines from golden goblets… Happily for the Church and for Italy, he expired at Rome in January, 1474, after parading his impudent debaucheries through Milan and Venice, as the Pope’s Legate.”
Another nephew was Girolamo Riario, who married a natural daughter of Galeazzo Sforza. For him the Pope bought the town of Imola with Church money. He had created him Count of Bosco in 1472. As Imola did not content his ambition, his uncle gave him Forli, and elevated this boatboy to a dukedom. The young ruffian found that the Medici family stood in the way of extending his power over Florence, and he formed a plot for their destruction. In the conspiracy were involved Francis di Pazzi, head of the bank of that name in Rome, and Salviati, a Florentine, Archbishop of Pisa, whose elevation had been opposed by the Medici. The plot was atrocious; it was no less than to assassinate Giuliano and Lorenzo di Medici in the duomo at Florence on Easter Day at high mass. It had the hearty concurrence of him who held the keys of heaven and hell. Into the wicked confederacy was taken a Captain Montesecco, an intimate friend of Girolamo Riario, the Pope’s nephew, and Bandini, a hired murderer. It was arranged among them that Montesecco was to poignard Giuliano, and Bandini was to stab Lorenzo; and the signal for the deed was to be the Elevation of the Host. On the Sunday appointed, 1478, the assassin Montesecco embraced the two Medici as they entered the church and assured himself by his touch that they were unprotected with coats of chain-mail, such as they usually wore under their silken habits. But at the last moment this captain, cut-throat though he was, felt hesitation at committing the deed in the sacred building and at such a solemn moment, and communicated his scruples to Girolamo Riario; and the latter had hastily to open his scheme to a couple of priests and induce them to undertake the murder. As a chronicler of the time says: “Another man was found, who, being a priest, was more accustomed to the place and therefore less scrupulous about its sanctity.” The second priest was to take the place of Bandini should he entertain qualms.
But this change of persons spoiled all. The priest, though more irreligious, was less expert. Giuliano was indeed stabbed to death by Bandini di Pazzi, at the moment of the Elevation of the Host, but Lorenzo escaped with a flesh wound from the inexperienced hand of the priest, and fled into the sacristy. The congregation, the whole populace of Florence, rose as a man, and pursued the murderers. The Archbishop Salviati di Pazzi, and some of the others, were seized and hung from the windows of the Palazzo Pubblico, the same day; and the eighteen-year-old Cardinal Raphael Riario was flung into prison.
Sixtus was furious at the failure of the plot, and demanded the liberation of his great nephew, the boy-Cardinal, and at the same time the expulsion of the Medici from Florence. As the citizens refused to do this, he excommunicated Lorenzo di Medici, and all the heads of the Republic, and placed Florence under an interdict. After a few days the boy was released; but that was as far as the Florentines would go. Accordingly the Pope, his nephew Riario, and the King of Naples, who had entered into league with the Pope, raised armies to attack Florence, and a savage war of revenge raged for years. It was not till 1481 that a descent of the Turks on Otranto made Sixtus tremble for his own safety, and forced him to make peace with Florence.
After the death of Pietro, Sixtus took his nephew, Giovanni della Rovere, into the favour that Pietro had enjoyed. He married him to Giovanna, daughter of the Duke of Urbino, and created him Duke of Sinigaglia. This fellow founded the second dynasty of the Dukes of Urbino.
“The plebeian violence of the Della Rovere temper,” says Mr. Addington Symonds, “reached a climax in Giovanni’s son, the Duke Francesco Maria, who murdered his sister’s lover with his own hands, when a youth of sixteen, and stabbed the Papal Legate to death in the streets of Bologna, when at the age of twenty, and knocked Guicciardini, the historian, down with a blow of his fist during a council of war in 1526.
“Christendom beheld in Sixtus the spectacle of a Pope who trafficked in the bodies of his subjects, and the holy things of God, to squander basely-gotten gold upon abandoned minions. The peace of Italy was destroyed by desolating wars in the advancement of the same worthless favourites. Sixtus destroyed to annex Ferrara to the dominions of Girolamo Riario. Nothing stood in his way but the House of Este, firmly planted for centuries and connected by marriage or alliance with the chief families of Italy. The Pope, whose lust for blood and broils were equalled only by his avarice and his libertinism, rushed with wild delight into a project which involved the discord of the whole peninsula. He made treaties with Venice and unmade them, stirred up all the passions of the despots and set them together by the ears, called the Swiss mercenaries into Lombardy, and when, finally, tired of fighting for his nephew, the Italian powers concluded the peace of Bagnolo, he died of rage in 1484. The Pope did actually die of disappointed fury, because peace had been restored to the country he had mangled for the sake of a favourite nephew.”
This Pope seemed unable to exist without some cringing favourite about his person. In 1463 he made his valet, a lad of no character and parts, of base birth, with nothing but his good looks and obsequiousness to speak for him – Cardinal and Bishop of Parma, when his age was only twenty.
Sixtus was always impecunious. To replenish his treasury he had two resources. One was the public sale of places about the Court, and of benefices and of ecclesiastical privileges. “Our churches, priests, altars, sacred rites, our prayers, even heaven and our God, are all purchasable,” is the exclamation of Baptista Mantuanus, a scholar of the period. His second expedient was the monopoly of corn throughout the Papal States. Fictitious dearths were created; the value of wheat was raised to famine prices, and good grain was sold out of the States of the Church and bad grain was imported, that the Pope might pocket the profits of the transaction. Sixtus forced his subjects to buy at his stores, and regarded their sufferings, and the disease bred of famine, with indifferent eye.
But, bad as he was, Sixtus did some good things. He laid the basis of the great Vatican library, built a bridge over the Tiber, and widened some of the streets.
To him is due the introduction into the calendar of the Feasts of the Conception of the Blessed Virgin, also of the Presentation in the Temple, and of Ste. Anne, all three of which find their place in the Anglican calendar; also of S. Joseph.
Sixtus happily put an end to the cruel persecution of the “Spirituals,” a branch of the Franciscan Order which advocated absolute poverty, and adherence to the original mandates of the founder. Their prophet and theologian had been d’Oliva. Pope John XXII. had pronounced the writings of d’Oliva heretical, and had handed over the “Spirituals” to the Inquisition, to be dealt with as heretics. Between 1316 and 1352 as many as 114 of them were burnt at the stake; but Sixtus IV. reversed the judgment of John XXII. and declared this teaching of Oliva to be orthodox; so that those who had been burnt in accordance with the judgment of one Pope, were martyrs for the truth according to the decision of another.
Sixtus died in 1484.
Stephanus Infessura, a contemporary diarist, writes on his death: —
“Sixtus died, on which most happy day God showed His power on earth, in that He liberated His Christian people from the hand of such an impious and iniquitous ruler, in whom was no fear of God, no love for the rule of Christian people, no charity, no tenderness, nothing but vile lusts, avarice, pride, and vain glory.”
He goes on with a catalogue of his crimes too horrible to be quoted.
So impressed was the College of Cardinals, on the death of Sixtus IV., with the injury done to the Church by the nepotism of the deceased Pope, by his alienation of Church fiefs to his kinsmen and favourites, that on the election of his successor, Innocent VIII., they made him swear on every relic and by everything that is held most sacred in Christendom, that he would not continue the same abuses. He took the required oath, and no sooner was he enthroned than he absolved himself from the oaths he had taken.
The same farce was enacted with Julius II. in 1503. It really seemed like a Nemesis, that the Popes, who, since the time of Gregory VII., had shown a rare ingenuity in inventing oaths by means of which to entangle men’s consciences and bring everything under their power, now themselves took oaths, which they as regularly broke. Indeed, it became obvious that no solemn oath taken by a Pope was worth the breath that uttered it, as he could at once absolve himself from observing it; and it is a riddle how the cardinals should have persisted in exacting capitulations from the Popes, when they must have known that they would break their plighted word as soon as ever they assumed the tiara. Julius II. pushed on the fortunes of his family, which had been already aggrandised by Sixtus IV. This done, he could devote himself, undisturbed by the importunities of his kindred, to the gratification of that innate love for war and broil which was the ruling passion of his life.
He was the fighting Pope, stern, resolute, indomitable. The whippings he had received from his father had steeled his spirit instead of breaking it. His portrait by Raphael admirably expresses the character of this second Della Rovere Pope. The hard, cold eye, the set frown, the determined mouth, about which a smile never quivered, and the flowing white beard, are eminently characteristic of the man. There is not in the face a trace of the ecclesiastic, not an indication of his having led a spiritual life. But for the habit, he might have been a doge or a military leader.
Ranke thus describes him: —
“Old as Julius was, worn by the vicissitudes of good and evil fortune experienced through a long life, by the fatigues of war and exile, and, above all, by the consequences of intemperance and profligacy, he yet did not know what fear or irresolution meant. In the extremity of age, he still retained that great characteristic of manhood, an indomitable spirit. He felt little respect for princes, and believed himself capable of mastering them all. He took the field in person, and having stormed Mirandola, he pressed into the city across the frozen ditches and through the breach; the most disastrous reverses could not shake his purpose, but seemed rather to waken new resources in him. He was accordingly successful; not only were his own baronies rescued from the Venetians, but in the fierce contest that ensued he finally made himself master of Parma, Placentia, and even Reggio, thus laying the foundation of a power such as no Pope ever possessed before him.”
A shrewd, dissolute, wicked man, he was superior to Sixtus in ability.
He had his mistresses, his luxury, his simony, and his cruelty, as Macchiavelli wrote of him.22 Savona has no cause to glory in those whom she sent to occupy the chair of S. Peter.
But the place is associated with another Pope, and that one of a different stamp altogether, the unfortunate Pius VII., relegated there in 1809, and obliged to remain there till 1814. Pius was a good, quiet man, without force of character. When Napoleon let him understand that the States of the Church were to be taken from him, Pius was in dire distress and perplexity. Acting on the advice of his confidential attendant, Cardinal Pacca, he launched an excommunication at Bonaparte, Miollis, governor of Rome, all the French, and all such Romans as participated in the annexation of the States to the kingdom. The document was nailed up to the doors of several of the Churches of Rome, —
“But nobody seemed a penny the worse.”
till an event occurred which startled the good people of the Eternal City.
