Rome -- medieval

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Kingdom of Italy

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Appearance

Rome by Night medieval.jpg



Climate



Economy



Geography

[[]]

Rome is in the Lazio region of central Italy on the Tiber (Italian: Tevere) river. The original settlement developed on hills that faced onto a ford beside the Tiber Island, the only natural ford of the river in this area. The Rome of the Kings was built on seven hills: the Aventine Hill, the Caelian Hill, the Capitoline Hill, the Esquiline Hill, the Palatine Hill, the Quirinal Hill, and the Viminal Hill. Modern Rome is also crossed by another river, the Aniene, which flows into the Tiber north of the historic centre.

Although the city centre is about 24 kilometres (15 mi) inland from the Tyrrhenian Sea, the city territory extends to the shore, where the south-western district of Ostia is located.

Throughout the history of Rome, the urban limits of the city were considered to be the area within the city’s walls. Originally, these consisted of the Servian Wall, which was built twelve years after the Gaulish sack of the city in 390 BC. This contained most of the Esquiline and Caelian hills, as well as the whole of the other five. Rome outgrew the Servian Wall, but no more walls were constructed until almost 700 years later, when, in 270 AD, Emperor Aurelian began building the Aurelian Walls. These were almost 19 kilometres (12 mi) long, and were still the walls the troops of the Kingdom of Italy had to breach to enter the city in 1870.



History

Timeline

  • 1084 - The city of Rome is attacked by the Normans.
    • The Sack of Rome of May 1084 was a Norman sack, the result of the pope's call for aid from the duke of Apulia, Robert Guiscard. Pope Gregory VII was besieged in the Castel Sant'Angelo by the Emperor Henry IV in June 1083. He held out and called for aid from Guiscard, who was then fighting the Byzantine Emperor Alexius I Comnenus in the Balkans. He returned, however, to the Italian Peninsula and marched north with 36,000 men. He entered Rome and forced Henry to retire, but a riot of the citizens led to a three days sack, after which Guiscard escorted the pope to the Lateran. The Normans had mainly pillaged the old city, which was then one of the richest cities in Italy. After days of unending violence, the Romans rose up causing the Normans to set fire to the city. Many of the buildings of Rome were gutted on the Capitol and Palatine hills along with the area between the Colosseum and the Lateran. In the end the ravaged Roman populace succumbed to the Normans.
  • 1108 - The church of San Clemente is in this year rebuilt.
  • 1140 - The church of Santa Maria in Trastevere is restored.
  • 1200 - The city becomes an independent commune
  • 1232 - The cloisters in the Basilica of St. John Lateran are finished.
  • 1300 - Pope Boniface VIII proclaims the First Holy Year.
  • 1309 - The Papacy is moved to Avignon under Pope Clement V
  • 1347 - The patriot and rebel Cola di Rienzo tries to restore the Roman Republic.
  • 1348 - As in most of Europe, the Black Death strikes Rome.

Imperial Rome: Foundations of the Dark Medieval

The Early Empire

By the end of the Republic, the city of Rome had achieved a grandeur befitting the capital of an empire dominating the whole of the Mediterranean. It was, at the time, the largest city in the world. Estimates of its peak population range from 450,000 to over 3.5 million people with estimates of 1 to 2 million being most popular with historians. This grandeur increased under Augustus, who completed Caesar's projects and added many of his own, such as the Forum of Augustus and the Ara Pacis. He is said to have remarked that he found Rome a city of brick and left it a city of marble (Urbem latericium invenit, marmoream reliquit). Augustus's successors sought to emulate his success in part by adding their own contributions to the city. In AD 64, during the reign of Nero, the Great Fire of Rome left much of the city destroyed, but in many ways it was used as an excuse for new development.

Rome was a subsidized city at the time, with roughly 15 to 25 percent of its grain supply being paid by the central government. Commerce and industry played a smaller role compared to that of other cities like Alexandria. This meant that Rome had to depend upon goods and production from other parts of the Empire to sustain such a large population. This was mostly paid by taxes that were levied by the Roman government. If it had not been subsidized, Rome would have been significantly smaller.

Rome's population declined after its peak in the 2nd century. At the end of that century, during the reign of Marcus Aurelius, the Antonine Plague killed 2,000 people a day. Marcus Aurelius died in 180, his reign being the last of the "Five Good Emperors" and the Pax Romana. His son Commodus, who had been co-emperor since AD 177, assumed full imperial power, which is most generally associated with the gradual decline of the Western Roman Empire. Rome's population was only a fraction of its peak when the Aurelian Wall was completed in the year 273 (in that year its population was only around 500,000).

The Crisis of the Third Century

Starting in the early 3rd century, matters changed. The "Crisis of the third century" defines the disasters and political troubles for the Empire, which nearly collapsed. The new feeling of danger and the menace of barbarian invasions was clearly shown by the decision of Emperor Aurelian, who at year 273 finished encircling the capital itself with a massive wall which had a perimeter that measured close to 20 km (12 mi). Rome formally remained capital of the empire, but emperors spent less and less time there. At the end of 3rd century Diocletian's political reforms, Rome was deprived of its traditional role of administrative capital of the Empire. Later, western emperors ruled from Milan or Ravenna, or cities in Gaul. In 330, Constantine I established a second capital at Constantinople. At this time, part of the Roman aristocratic class moved to this new center, followed by many of the artists and craftsmen who were living in the city.

The Rise of Christianity

Christianity reached Rome during the 1st century AD. For the first two centuries of the Christian era, Imperial authorities largely viewed Christianity simply as a Jewish sect rather than a distinct religion. No emperor issued general laws against the faith or its Church, and persecutions, such as they were, were carried out under the authority of local government officials. A surviving letter from Pliny the Younger, governor of Bythinia, to the emperor Trajan describes his persecution and executions of Christians; Trajan notably responded that Pliny should not seek out Christians nor heed anonymous denunciations, but only punish open Christians who refused to recant.

Suetonius mentions in passing that during the reign of Nero "punishment was inflicted on the Christians, a class of men given to a new and mischievous superstition" (superstitionis novae ac maleficae). He gives no reason for the punishment. Tacitus reports that after the Great Fire of Rome in AD 64, some among the population held Nero responsible and that the emperor attempted to deflect blame onto the Christians. The war against the Jews during Nero's reign, which so destabilized the empire that it led to civil war and Nero's suicide, provided an additional rationale for suppression of this 'Jewish' sect.

Diocletian undertook what was to be the most severe and last major persecution of Christians, lasting from 303 to 311. Christianity had become too widespread to suppress, and in 313, the Edict of Milan made tolerance the official policy. Constantine I (sole ruler 324–337) became the first Christian emperor, and in 380 Theodosius I established Christianity as the official religion.

Under Theodosius, visits to the pagan temples were forbidden, the eternal fire in the Temple of Vesta in the Roman Forum extinguished, the Vestal Virgins disbanded, auspices and witch-crafting punished. Theodosius refused to restore the Altar of Victory in the Senate House, as asked by remaining pagan Senators.

The Empire's conversion to Christianity made the Bishop of Rome (later called the Pope) the senior religious figure in the Western Empire, as officially stated in 380 by the Edict of Thessalonica. In spite of its increasingly marginal role in the Empire, Rome retained its historic prestige, and this period saw the last wave of construction activity: Constantine's predecessor Maxentius built buildings such as its basilica in the Forum, Constantine himself erected the Arch of Constantine to celebrate his victory over the former, and Diocletian built the greatest baths of all. Constantine was also the first patron of official Christian buildings in the city. He donated the Lateran Palace to the Pope, and built the first great basilica, the old St. Peter's Basilica.

The Germanic invasions and collapse of the Western Empire

Still Rome remained one of the strongholds of Paganism, led by the aristocrats and senators. However, the new walls did not stop the city being sacked first by Alaric on 24 August, 410, by Geiseric in 455 and even by general Ricimer's unpaid Roman troops (largely composed of barbarians) on 11 July, 472. This was the first time in almost 800 years that Rome had fallen to an enemy. The previous sack of Rome had been accomplished by the Gauls under their leader Brennus in 387 BC. The sacking of 410 is seen as a major landmark in the decline and fall of the Western Roman Empire. St. Jerome, living in Bethlehem at the time, wrote that "The City which had taken the whole world was itself taken." These sackings of the city astonished all the Roman world. In any case, the damage caused by the sackings may have been overestimated. The population already started to decline from the late 4th century onward, although around the middle of the fifth century it seems that Rome continued to be the most populous city of the two parts of the Empire, with a population of not less than 650,000 inhabitants. The decline greatly accelerated following the capture of Africa Proconsularis by the Vandals. Many inhabitants now fled as the city no longer could be supplied with grain from Africa from the mid-5th century onward.

At the beginning of the 6th century Rome's population may have been less than 100,000. Many monuments were being destroyed by the citizens themselves, who stripped stones from closed temples and other precious buildings, and even burned statues to make lime for their personal use. In addition, most of the increasing number of churches were built in this way. For example, the first Saint Peter's Basilica was erected using spoils from the abandoned Circus of Nero. This "self-eating" attitude was a constant feature of Rome until the Renaissance. From the 4th century, imperial edicts against stripping of stones and especially marble were common, but the need for their repetition shows that they were ineffective. Sometimes new churches were created by simply taking advantage of early Pagan temples, while sometimes changing the Pagan god or hero to a corresponding Christian saint or martyr. In this way, the Temple of Romulus and Remus became the basilica of the twin saints Cosmas and Damian. Later, the Pantheon, Temple of All Gods, became the church of All Martyrs.

The Rule of the Barbarians and Byzantines

In 480, the last Western Roman emperor, Julius Nepos, was murdered and a Roman general of barbarian origin, Odoacer, declared allegiance to Eastern Roman emperor Zeno. Despite owing nominal allegiance to Constantinople, Odoacer and later the Ostrogoths continued, like the last emperors, to rule Italy as a virtually independent realm from Ravenna. Meanwhile, the Senate, even though long since stripped of wider powers, continued to administer Rome itself, with the Pope usually coming from a senatorial family. This situation continued until Theodahad murdered Amalasuntha, a pro-imperial Gothic queen, and usurped the power in 535. The Eastern Roman emperor, Justinian I (reigned 527–565), used this as a pretext to send forces to Italy under his famed general Belisarius, recapturing the city next year. The Byzantines successfully defended the city in a year-long siege, and eventually took Ravenna.

Gothic resistance revived however, and on 17 December, 546, the Ostrogoths under Totila recaptured and sacked Rome. Belisarius soon recovered the city, but the Ostrogoths retook it in 549. Belisarius was replaced by Narses, who captured Rome from the Ostrogoths for good in 552, ending the so-called Gothic Wars which had devastated much of Italy. The continual war around Rome in the 530s and 540s left it in a state of total disrepair — near-abandoned and desolate with much of its lower-lying parts turned into unhealthy marshes as the drainage systems were neglected and the Tiber's embankments fell into disrepair in the course of the latter half of the 6th century. Here, malaria developed. The aqueducts were never repaired, leading to a shrinking population of less than 50,000 concentrated near the Tiber and around the Campus Martius, abandoning those districts without water supply. There is a legend, significant though untrue, that there was a moment where no one remained living in Rome.

Justinian I tried to grant Rome subsidies for the maintenance of public buildings, aqueducts and bridges — though, being mostly drawn from an Italy dramatically impoverished by the recent wars, these were not always sufficient. He also styled himself the patron of its remaining scholars, orators, physicians and lawyers in the stated hope that eventually more youths would seek a better education. After the wars, the Senate was theoretically restored, but under the supervision of the urban prefect and other officials appointed by, and responsible to, the Byzantine authorities in Ravenna.

However, the Pope was now one of the leading religious figures in the entire Byzantine Empire and effectively more powerful locally than either the remaining senators or local Byzantine officials. In practice, local power in Rome devolved to the Pope and, over the next few decades, both much of the remaining possessions of the senatorial aristocracy and the local Byzantine administration in Rome were absorbed by the Church.

The reign of Justinian's nephew and successor Justin II (reigned 565–578) was marked from the Italian point of view by the invasion of the Lombards under Alboin (568). In capturing the regions of Benevento, Lombardy, Piedmont, Spoleto and Tuscany, the invaders effectively restricted Imperial authority to small islands of land surrounding a number of coastal cities, including Ravenna, Naples, Rome and the area of the future Venice. The one inland city continuing under Byzantine control was Perugia, which provided a repeatedly threatened overland link between Rome and Ravenna. In 578 and again in 580, the Senate, in some of its last recorded acts, had to ask for the support of Tiberius II Constantine (reigned 578–582) against the approaching Dukes, Faroald I of Spoleto and Zotto of Benevento.

Maurice (reigned 582–602) added a new factor in the continuing conflict by creating an alliance with Childebert II of Austrasia (reigned 575–595). The armies of the Frankish King invaded the Lombard territories in 584, 585, 588 and 590. Rome had suffered badly from a disastrous flood of the Tiber in 589, followed by a plague in 590. The latter is notable for the legend of the angel seen, while the newly elected Pope Gregory I (term 590–604) was passing in procession by Hadrian's Tomb, to hover over the building and to sheathe his flaming sword as a sign that the pestilence was about to cease. The city was safe from capture at least.

Agilulf, however, the new Lombard King (reigned 591 to c. 616), managed to secure peace with Childebert, reorganized his territories and resumed activities against both Naples and Rome by 592. With the Emperor preoccupied with wars in the eastern borders and the various succeeding Exarchs unable to secure Rome from invasion, Gregory took personal initiative in starting negotiations for a peace treaty. This was completed in the autumn of 598—later recognized by Maurice—lasting until the end of his reign.

The position of the Bishop of Rome was further strengthened under the usurper Phocas (reigned 602–610). Phocas recognized his primacy over that of the Patriarch of Constantinople and even decreed Pope Boniface III (607) to be "the head of all the Churches". Phocas's reign saw the erection of the last imperial monument in the Roman Forum, the column bearing his name. He also gave the Pope the Pantheon, at the time closed for centuries, and thus probably saved it from destruction.

During the 7th century, an influx of both Byzantine officials and churchmen from elsewhere in the empire made both the local lay aristocracy and Church leadership largely Greek speaking. However, the strong Byzantine cultural influence did not always lead to political harmony between Rome and Constantinople. In the controversy over Monothelitism, popes found themselves under severe pressure (sometimes amounting to physical force) when they failed to keep in step with Constantinople's shifting theological positions. In 653, Pope Martin I was deported to Constantinople and, after a show trial, exiled to the Crimea, where he died.

Then, in 663, Rome had its first imperial visit for two centuries, by Constans II — its worst disaster since the Gothic Wars when the Emperor proceeded to strip Rome of metal, including that from buildings and statues, to provide armament materials for use against the Saracens. However, for the next half century, despite further tensions, Rome and the Papacy continued to prefer continued Byzantine rule—in part because the alternative was Lombard rule, and in part because Rome's food was largely coming from Papal estates elsewhere in the Empire, particularly Sicily.

Medieval Rome

The Break with Byzantium and formation of the Papal States

Though seat of the papacy, condition that assured to the city a certain number of inhabitants, the population of Rome, that in the 4th century was estimated at about 500,000, soon underwent a precipitous decline. During the Middle Age, the built-up area shrank until Romans settlement was confined to the shore of the Tiber, where water was available. Only one of the ancient aqueducts was still operating. The decline was momentarily arrested under Pope Gregory I (590-604), whose pontificate signed the first step towards the temporal power of the Church. His work of conversation did not follow a despotic design, and eventually contributed to improve the contacts between Rome and the barbaric peoples. His papacy marked the foundation of medieval Rome, although not much is known about the city in this period since little archeological evidence has survived. For a while Italy underwent a period of peace but soon became a battleground again. In the 6th century, the possession of the city was still disputed by Goths and Byzantines. But in the 7th century Rome passed under the temporary protection of the popes, who ruled the city up until the 19th century, period in which the history of the papacy is intricately connected with the history of Rome. When Pope Stephen III was threatened by the Lombards, he appealed for help to Pepin, king of the Franks. He defeated the barbars and granted the Pope a portion of Lombard territory (754), marking the beginning of the temporal power of the popes over the States of the Church. The 25th of December 800, Pepin's son, Charlemagne, was crowned by Leo III in Saint Peter's as Augustus and Emperor. The Holy Roman Empire survived until the abdication of Francis II of Austria in 1806. The walls of the Leonine City, built to defend the Borgo and St Peter's, date from the 9th century. The strength of the papacy increased under Pope Nicholas I (858-67) but with his death the prestige of the popes declined and the German emperors took an active part in the papal elections throughout the 10th and early 11th centuries. Gregory VII (1073-85), helped by some Roman noble families, reasserted papal authority, but turned out to be unable to prevent the Norman Robert Guiscard from conquering Sicily and devasting Rome in 1084.



Current Events



Population

  • Annual Census, 1100 A.D.: 35,350



Cemeteries



Citizens

Clergy

Patriciate

  • -- Crescenzi family



Fortifications

  • Aurelian Walls [1]



Holy Ground

Churches

Convents



Inns



Law & Lawlessness



Monuments

Aqueducts

Triumphal Arches

  • Arch of Constantine
  • Arch of Septimius Severus
  • Arcus Argentariorum
  • Arcus Novus
  • Arch of Arcadius, Honorius and Theodosius
  • Arch of Augustus
  • Arch of Claudius (British victory)
  • Arches of Claudius
  • Arch of Constantine
  • Arch of Dolabella and Silanus
  • Arch of Drusus
  • Arches of Drusus and Germanicus
  • Arch of Gallienus
  • Arch of Gratian, Valentinian and Theodosius
  • Arch of Janus
  • Arch of Lentulus and Crispinus
  • Arch of Nero
  • Arch of Octavius
  • Arch of Pietas
  • Arch of Septimius Severus
  • Arch of Tiberius
  • Arch of Titus (Circus Maximus)
  • Arch of Titus (Roman Forum)

Columns

  • Trajan's Column
  • Column of Antoninus Pius
  • Column of Marcus Aurelius
  • Column of Phocas

Statues

  • Colossus of Constantine
  • Colossus of Nero
  • Equestrian Statue of Marcus Aurelius

Tombs

  • Casal Rotondo
  • Pyramid of Cestius
  • Tomb of Caecilia Metella
  • Tomb of Eurysaces the Baker
  • Tomb of Geta
  • Tomb of the Scipios

Mausoleums

  • Hadrian's Mausoleum
  • Mausoleum of Augustus
  • Mausoleum of Helena
  • Mausoleum of Maxentius



Regiones de Roma

During the Middle Ages, Rome was divided into a number of administrative regions (Latin, regiones), usually numbering between twelve and fourteen, which changed over time.

Evolution of the Regions

Originally the city of Rome had been divided by Augustus into 14 regions in 7 BC. Then sometime during the 4th century, Christian authorities instituted seven ecclesiastical regions, which ran parallel to the civil regions. With the collapse of Imperial authority in the Western Roman Empire, after the death of Julius Nepos in 480, much of the old imperial administrative structures began to fall into abeyance.

After the destructive Gothic Wars of the 6th century, the city of Rome had become virtually depopulated. When the city began to recover it was inhabited in new parts and whole districts were in ruins. Consequently, the Augustan regions now had no relationship to the administration of the city, but they continued to be used as a means for identifying property. But as Rome slowly recovered from the disasters of the Gothic wars it became necessary to organize the city for the purpose of defense, and one theory contends that this was the origin of the twelve medieval regions. In particular, it is suggested that it was connected with the Byzantine military system (the scholae militiae) and was introduced into Rome in the 7th century, along with its implementation at Ravenna. This saw the creation of a new series of regions based upon a different principle from either of the older ones. However, this revision did not last much longer than two centuries after the fall of the Exarchate of Ravenna in 751.

Certainly, the division of the city according to the revised civil and ecclesiastical regions appears to have fallen out of use in the confusion of the 10th century. Local variations seem to have sprung up that were adopted, used and then discarded as the years progressed. It has been conjectured that the sack of Rome by Robert Guiscard in 1084 caused a displacement of the population which probably made a revision of the regions necessary. The district from the Lateran Palace to the Colosseum was engulfed and ruined by fire, and the Caelian and Aventine hills were gradually abandoned. The number of regions needed for the south and south-east of the city became smaller, while there emerged a greater need for the organization of the rapidly growing districts to the north-west and along the Tiber.

The next major reform was after the revolution of 1143 and the establishment of the Commune of Rome, as the city was redivided into 14 regions. There was a minor adjustment made in the 13th century, bringing the total number down to thirteen, and it wasn’t until 1586 that another region was created, once again bringing the total number up to fourteen, and Rome kept these administrative divisions intact until the 19th century.

The 14 Regiones of Rome

Unlike the Augustan regions of Rome, the medieval regions were not numbered, and few had any relationship to the ancient Roman divisions. They are numbered here merely for convenience.



Private Residences



Taverns



Temples



Visitors



Whore Houses



Creaturae ex Superno Romae

  • Dryadales
  • Figura Mutante
  • Magus Princeps
  • Fraternitatem Noctis



Nocturna Animalia

Lasombra: De Romae Obumbratio

  • -- Constantius -- Elder Caesar of the Eternal City
    • -- Varinius -- Second childe of Constantius
    • -- Antonia -- Third childe of Constantius



Malkavians: Romani et Lunaticos



Nosferatu: Coloniam Romanam Leprosus



Toreador: Filii Helenam



Ventrue: Sanguis Regnum

  • -- Fabrizio Ulfila -- Ashen priest
  • -- Albrecht -- Grand childe of Alexander of Paris
  • -- Radobod -- Gangrel Sheriff of Albrecht



Pupilli Noctis: Cainites of Lesser Blood

  • -- Mus Regem (Rat King) -- Leader of the Untouchables



Websites



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