It is now our task to sketch this spiritual movement, not indeed in all
its fullness, but in its most salient features, and especially in its
first beginnings.
The Ruins of Rome
Rome itself, the city of ruins, now became the object of a holly
different sort of piety from that of the time when the 'Mirabilia Roma'
and the collection of William of Malmesbury ere composed. The
imaginations of the devout pilgrim, or of the seeker after marvels and
treasures, are supplanted in contemporary records by the interests of
the patriot and the historian. In this sense we must understand Dante's
words, that the stones of the walls of Rome deserve reverence, and that
the ground on which the city is built is more worthy than men say. The
jubilees, incessant as they were, have scarcely left a single devout
record in literature properly so called. The best thing that Giovanni
Villani brought back from the jubilee of the year 1300 was the
resolution to write his history which bad been awakened in him by the
sight of the ruins of Rome. Petrarch gives evidence of a taste divided
between classical and Christian antiquity. He tells us how often with
Giovanni Colonna he ascended the mighty vaults of the Baths of
Diocletian, and there in the transparent air, amid the wide silence
with the broad panorama stretching far around them, they spoke, not of
business or political affairs, but of the history which the ruins
beneath their feet suggested, Petrarch appearing in these dialogues as
the partisan of classical, Giovanni of Christian antiquity; then they
would discourse of philosophy and of the inventors of the arts.
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