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Updated: June 28, 2025
Benedict IX, restored in 1038, protected by his brother Gregory, who ruled the city as senator of the Romans, led unchecked the life of a Turkish sultan in the palace of the Lateran. He and his family filled Rome with robbery and murder; all lawful conditions had ceased.
When loose as buffaloes on the wild Campagna We roved and dined on crust and curds, Olives, thin wine, and thinner birds, And woke the echoes of divine Romagna; And then returning late, After long knocking at the Lateran gate, Suppers and nights of gods; and then Mornings that made us new-born men; Rare nights at the Minerva tavern, With Orvieto from the Cardinal's cavern; Free nights, but fearless and without reproof, For Bayard's word ruled Beppo's roof.
The action of the opera passes at Rome, towards the middle of the fourteenth century. The first act opens at night, in a street near the Church of St. John Lateran, and discovers Orsini, a Roman patrician, accompanied by a crowd of nobles, attempting to abduct Irene, the sister of Rienzi, a papal notary.
He had either less sagacity or less scruple than his predecessor, for in the following year he appeared with an army in Rome. He found the pope ill and in bed before the high altar of S. John Lateran. He surrounded the church and entered it with his men, who were guilty of violence and desecration.
Alexander III. was Pope at that time, and according to this traveller, he included some Jews among his ministers. Among the monuments of special interest in the eternal city, he mentions St. Peter's and St. John Lateran, but his descriptions are not interesting.
Except peradventure they will say thus: that Peter, when he was at Rome, never taught the Gospel, never fed the flock, took away the keys of the kingdom of heaven, hid the treasures of his Lord, sat him down only in his castle in S. John Lateran, and pointed out with his finger all the places of purgatory, and kinds of punishments, committing some poor souls to be tormented, and other some again suddenly releasing thence at his own pleasure, taking money for so doing: or that he gave order to say private masses in every corner: or that he mumbled up the holy service with a low voice, and in an unknown language: or that he hanged up the Sacrament in every temple, and on every altar, and carried the same about before him whithersoever he went, upon an ambling jannet, with lights and bells; or that he consecrated with his holy breath, oil, wax, wool, bells, chalices, churches, and altars, or that he sold jubilees, graces, liberties, advowsons, preventions, first fruits, palls, the wearing of palls, bulls, indulgences, and pardons; or that he called himself by the name of the head of the Church, the highest bishop, bishop of bishops, alone most holy: or that by usurping he took upon himself the right and authority over other folk's churches; or that he exempted himself from the power of any civil government; or that he maintained wars, and set princes together at variance: or that he sitting in his chair, with his triple crown full of labels, with sumptuous and Persian-like gorgeousness, with his royal sceptre, with his diadem of gold, and glittering with stones, was carried about, not upon palfrey, but upon the shoulders of noble men.
John Lateran disappoints you internally, you have an easy compensation in pacing the long lane which connects it with Santa Maria Maggiore and entering the singularly perfect nave of that most delightful of churches.
For years there were inscriptions in the hospitals of the Lateran and of the Consolazione which referred to her endowments and also to provisions for masses on the anniversaries of her death and those of her two husbands. Vannozza died in Rome, November 26, 1518.
Had I attempted to prove that the feather which is now preserved with so much care in the Church of San Juan de Lateran at Rome did not fall from the wing of the angel Gabriel when he came to announce to Mary her conception, and that the whole history of that feather was a fable, notwithstanding it has received the attestations of so many of the Holy Fathers, I should be cursed for my impiety no more than I shall be for raising the question of the authenticity of the histories of the Conquest.
Some days after the public distribution of food in the square of St. John Lateran, Vetranio's favourite freedman might have been observed pursuing his way homeward, sadly and slowly, to his master's palace. It was not without cause that the pace of the intelligent Carrio was funereal and his expression disconsolate.
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