Kardinäle, Künstler, Kurtisanen: Wahre Geschichten aus dem pä pstlichen Rom (review)

This is a collection of nineteen "stories from papal Rome" meant to recall now-lost days. The tales are divided into six sections, "Grand Politics," "Family Connections and Family Conflicts," "Careers and Crashes," "Lives of Artists," "Culture and Conflicts," "The World of the Simple People," followed by an eight-page conclusion. Almost every one of the short tales includes one picture and some include more. The book is without apparatus and tells well-known stories. The aim seems to be to characterize an age much as Robert Brentano did in his Rome before Avignon or as numerous critics have done when looking at the idiosyncrasies of contemporary Rome.

The most original sections seem to be those that deal with court society and the declining influence of the papacy and its officers in the seventeenth century. The Thirty Years' War and the growing influence of the French are evident in the consternation of papal officials at their lack of influence and their inability to act against a brigand under French protection. Many of the stories seem to find their context from remarks in the diary of Giacinto Gigli or other chroniclers and diarists. "Frightful Diplomats, Politics of Illusion on the Way to the Sack of Rome" tells of the failed papacy of Clement VII largely from the point of view of Francesco Guicciardini. Most stories begin in a sharply edged moment or place that is particularly Roman. Reinhardt tells the story of Galileo's confrontation with the Church, but he wants to emphasize Michelangelo Seghizi's 1616 letter to Galileo, the brass plaque visible near the Villa Medici recording Galileo's imprisonment, and even Bertold Brecht's Life of Galileo. His point is that the controversy was without result for science, but for Romans and Italian nationalists it createda sort of "Black Legend" (153). Karsten uses the life of Maria Veralli as an entryinto elite families threatened with extinction because too many sons became cardinals. Stories also evoke the volatile world at the papal court. "The War over a Picture . . ." recounts the sudden fall of Felice Contelori, who lost his position and his chance at a cardinal's cap after the death of Urban VIII. Karsten also tells the famous story of the murder of Francesco Cenci and the execution of his wife and children. Karsten includes Guido Reni's famous portrait of Beatrice Cenci, but in the end it is a morality tale about abuse of wealth and power in Baroque Rome. In the section on the simple people they tell of a seventeenth-century Sweeney Todd. "Delicatessen" tells of two butchers famed for their sausage who spiced their highly prized products with a number of cooks, including one who served the Colonna family!

As these stories indicate, the book is difficult to characterize. One cannot follow up on the stories since even the bibliography is only a brief list of secondary works organized by century. It is clearly a book meant to introduce old Rome to a popular audience. One theme the authors mean to emphasize is certainly the changing role of the papacy and Rome in Italy and Christendom. A second theme relates to the wealth, power, and basic inequality of an absolutist court society. And finally, there are attempts to characterize daily life in the city. But the stories are uneven. Some simply retell famous tales while others are unusual, but it is not always clear why they are being told. And finally, the vignettes range from the late fifteenth to the late eighteenth centuries. The short tales are enjoyable and the writing style is often engaging, but the result is neither a complete, nor a clear, picture of the lost Rome they mean to evoke.