Ferdinand Gregorovius Versus Theodor Mommsen on the City of Rome and Its Legends

Ferdinand Gregorovius versus Theodor Mommsen on the City of Rome and Its Legends

Maya Maskarinec, Columbia University

ABSTRACT This article argues that Ferdinand Gregorovius (1821–91) in his popular but much critiqued Geschichte der Stadt Rom im Mittelalter challenged the ideals of an objective, dispassionate historiography advocated by the leading German historians of his generation. To do so it focuses on Gregorovius’s treatment of the city of Rome and its urban legends, comparing Gregorovius’s approach with that taken by his famous contemporary Theodor Mommsen (1817–1903) in his unﬁnished Römische Geschichte. This reveals how, unlike Mommsen, Gregorovius allowed his experiences in Rome to inﬂuence his historical presentation. As a result, the city of Rome and its legends emerge as actors in the drama of history and Gregorovius embeds in his work a narrative of the destruction of Rome that rests uneasily with the pattern of progress that Gregorovius, like his contemporaries, was convinced underpinned history.

hese fools possess nothing of that true blossom of cultivation that is called urbanitas,” wrote Ferdinand Gregorovius (1821–91) in his journal on May 29, T — ﬁ – 1876 referring speci cally to Theodor Mommsen (1817 1903), whom he describes, in the same entry, as “the epitome of German pedantry.”1 More than mere per-

An earlier version of this essay was accepted for presentation at the Making of the Humanities III con- ference at the Royal Netherlands Institute in Rome in 2012. I am grateful to the reviewers of this article for their perceptive criticism. 1. Ferdinand Gregorovius, Römische Tagebücher 1852–1889, ed. Hanno-Walter Kruft and Markus Völkel (Munich: Beck, 1991), 370. Gregorovius reports how Mommsen had delivered a pro-German nationalistic toast at a dinner in Rome and then remarks, “Mommsen ist nicht nur einer der aus- gepichtesten Typen des deutschen Pedantendünkels, sondern auch ganz persönlich mit hochgradiger Arroganz begabt. ...Von der wahren Blüte der Bildung, welche Urbanitas heißt, besitzen diese Narren nichts.” Gregorovius bequeathed his revised journal of the period 1852–74 to his friend Friedrich Althaus, who edited and published it with an introduction: Ferdinand Gregorovius, Römische Tagebücher, ed. Friedrich Althaus (Stuttgart: J. G. Cotta Nachfolger, 1892). The whereabouts of the original manuscript are not known; presumably it was destroyed by Althaus. The continuation

This content downloaded from 160.039.159.048 on March 28, 2016 16:27:15 PM All use subject to University of Chicago Press Terms and Conditions (http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/t-and-c). 102 | HISTORY OF HUMANITIES SPRING 2016 sonal animosity against Mommsen, Gregorovius’s comments indicate his conception of historical scholarship. In 1875 Gregorovius reflected on his fourteen-volume Geschichte der Stadt Rom im Mittelalter, published 1859–72.2 He wrote in his diary, “I am satisfied to have created a spiritual portrait of Rome in its entirety [geistiges Totalbild] that nevertheless rests on the firm foundation of the most comprehensive and solid studies in the archives. Per- haps it will vindicate Wilhelm von Humboldt’s remark that to write a lifelike historical work one must possess the gift of distance.”3 In the same diary entry he repeatedly reflects on his intimate engagement with the city of Rome. He wrote his history “for the sake of myself and my subject, for which I was filled with a passionate ardor [leidenschaftlichen Glut].”4 His history would never have come into being had not “one day on the bridge of the Quattro Capi, the bewitching ideal image [Idealbild] of Rome reflected itself within me.”5 His relationship to the work “was always both a personal and an artistic one.”6 Archival research, so Gregorovius reflects, went hand in hand with his own enthusiasm for his subject to create his masterpiece. It was first and foremost the living city of Rome that bewitched him and inspired and guided his project. This article argues that Gregorovius championed a form of passionate historical scholarship that stood at odds with the professionalized distance advocated by the leading German historians of his generation.7 The centenary of Gregorovius’s death

(1875–89) is now located, together with Gregorovius’s other surviving papers, in the Gregoroviusiana collection at the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Munich. In addition to Gregorovius’s diaries, some of his letters have also been published (despite Gregorovius’s injunction to his friends to destroy them). 2. I follow the Kampf edition: Ferdinand Gregorovius, Geschichte der Stadt Rom im Mittelalter: Vom V. bis zum XVI. Jh., ed. Waldemar Kampf, 4 vols. (1953–57; Munich: Beck, 1978), based primar- ily on Gregorovius’s fourth and last revision, published in Stuttgart by J. G. Cotta/J. G. Cotta Nach- folger, 1886–96. 3. “Ich bin zufrieden, ein geistiges Totalbild Roms verfaßt zu haben, welches doch auf dem festen Grunde der umfassendsten und gediegensten Studien in den Archiven ruht. Vielleicht wird sich an ihm der Ausspruch Wilhelm von Humboldts bewahrheiten, daß nur der ein lebendiges Geschichtswerk schreiben kann, welcher die Gabe der Distanz besitzt” (Gregorovius, entry for June 9, 1875, Römische Tagebücher, ed. Kruft and Völkel, 356). 4. “Ich schrieb es, um meiner selbst und des Gegenstandes willen, von dem ich mit einer leidenschaftlichen Glut erfüllt war” (ibid.). 5. “So wäre auch meine Geschichte der Stadt Rom im Mittelalter nicht entstanden, wenn nicht eines Tags auf der Brücke Quattro Capi das bezaubernde Idealbild Roms sich in meinem Innern abgespiegelt hätte” (ibid.). 6. “Mein Verhältnis zu ihr war stets ein persönliches und künstlerisches” (ibid.). 7. For a convenient overview of predominant trends in nineteenth-century medieval history, see František Graus, “Verfassungsgeschichte des Mittelalters,” Historische Zeitschrift 243 (1986): 529–89. More generally, still useful is G. P. Gooch, History and Historians in the Nineteenth Century (New York:

This content downloaded from 160.039.159.048 on March 28, 2016 16:27:15 PM All use subject to University of Chicago Press Terms and Conditions (http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/t-and-c). GREGOROVIUS VERSUS MOMMSEN ON ROME |103 has increased scholarly interest in this little-known German scholar whose works have always been criticized by professional historians but have continued to attract educated readers to this day; his approach to Rome as a city in his Geschichte der Stadt Rom remains largely unstudied.8 In this article I focus on Gregorovius’s engagement with his subject, the city of Rome, and its legends, in his Geschichte der Stadt Rom, as contrasted with the approach taken by the leading German historian of his generation, Theodor Mommsen, in his unfinished Römische Geschichte, to demonstrate how Gregorovius’s attitude to Rome, simultaneously scholarly and dilettantish, gave particular inflection to his work. Both Gregorovius’s Geschichte der Stadt Rom and Mommsen’s Römische Geschichte received popular acclaim as literary masterpieces in their authors’ lifetimes, and both have continued to influence how later generations imagine ancient and medieval Rome. Yet whereas Mommsen’s Rome is grounded in the close study of ancient sources, Gregorovius’s passion for the city of Rome fed into his conception of medieval Rome. In Mommsen’s history, the city of Rome is an agent in the larger patterns of historical progress, and Roman legends are the cobwebs that historical criticism must sweep away. In Gregorovius’s history, the city of Rome, the Rome that he had explored and imagined, and Rome’s legends, the poetry that populated its monuments, emerge as actors in the drama of history, producing a work that continues to challenge the ideals of an objective, dispassionate historiography. Gregorovius embeds in his work

Smith, 1949). For ninteenth-century approaches to antiquity and the Middle Ages in Germany and Italy more speciﬁcally, see Karl Christ and Arnaldo Momigliano, eds., L’antichità nell’Ottocento in Italia e Germania, Annali dell’Istituto storico italo-germanico in Trento (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1988), and especially the essay by Karl Christ, “Aspekte der Antike-Rezeption in der deutschen Altertumswissenschaft des 19. Jahrhunderts,” 21–38; Annette M. Baertschi and Colin G. King, eds., Die modernen Väter der Antike: Die Entwicklung der Altertumswissenschaften an Akademie und Universität im Berlin des 19. Jahrhunderts, Transformationen der Antike no. 3 (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2009); Reinhard Elze and Pierangelo Schiera, eds., Italia e Germania: Immagini, modelli, miti fra due popoli nell’ottocento; il Medioevo,Annalidell’Istituto storico italo-germanico in Trento (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1988). 8. Scholarship on Gregorovius has tended to focus on the accuracy of Gregorovius’s history or on his writings as a source for late nineteenth-century Rome. Pertinent to the present study is recent work that has drawn attention to the close connection between Gregorovius’s life and work: Hanno-Walter Kruft, “Gregorovius und die Anschauung Roms,” in Ferdinand Gregorovius und Italien: Eine kritische Würdigung, ed. Arnold Esch and Jen Petersen (Tübingen: Niemayer, 1993), 1–11; Markus Völkel, “Rom sehen—die erste vollständige Edition der ‘Römischen Tagebücher 1852–1889,’” in Ferdinand Gregorovius und Italien: Eine kritische Würdigung, ed. Arnold Esch and Jen Petersen (Tübingen: Niemayer, 1993), 59–72. The most up-to-date bibliography of works by and about Gregorovius is found in vol. 4 of Kampf’s edition of Gregorovius’s Geschichte. An introduction to Gregorovius’s Geschichte is also provided by Waldemar Kampf in the same volume: “Entstehung, Aufnahme und Wirkung der Geschichte der Stadt Rom im Mittelalter,” 9–54.

This content downloaded from 160.039.159.048 on March 28, 2016 16:27:15 PM All use subject to University of Chicago Press Terms and Conditions (http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/t-and-c). 104 | HISTORY OF HUMANITIES SPRING 2016 a narrative of the destruction of Rome that rests uneasily with the pattern of progress that he, like his contemporaries, was convinced underpinned history.

MOMMSEN’ S RÖMISCHE GESCHICHTE: A PROFESSOR WRITES FOR THE PUBLIC Theodor Mommsen embraced the world of institutionalized scholarship. After receiv- ing his degree in Altertumswissenschaft with a specialization in Roman law from the University of Kiel, he taught Roman legal history at the universities of Leipzig, Zurich and then Breslau.9 In 1857 the scholar received a research professorship at the Prussian Academy of Sciences in Berlin; four years later he became a professor of Roman history at the new Friedrich Wilhelm University in Berlin. Mommsen’s literary masterpiece, his Römische Geschichte (vols. 1–3 published 1854–56), was among his earliest works.10 It was commissioned by the publishing house Hirzel und Reimer and quickly became popular. By the time its author died in 1903, the ninth edition had appeared. The Römische Geschichte received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1902 (though not without controversy, both because Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910) was the favored candidate and because the choice was at odds with Alfred Nobel’s (1833–96) stipulation that the prize be awarded to work that had recently appeared).11 Although it was by far his most popular publication, Mommsen distanced himself from his Römische Geschichte even while writing it, referring to it dismissively as “historical scribbles [Geschichtsklitterung],” an incomplete work hastily written, and after he had completed the first three volumes he neither finished it, nor attempted anything similar.12 A fifth volume appeared in the series in 1885, but this work focuses on the political, administrative, and cultural life of the Roman provinces rather than continu- ing the earlier narrative. The author’s next projects, in particular his three-volume Römisches Staatsrecht (1871–88) and his Römisches Strafrecht (1899), were works of great erudition but did not seek to engage the public. In these later years Mommsen was increasingly occupied with organizing large-scale research projects, most ambi-

9. Stefan Rebenich, Theodor Mommsen: Eine Biographie (Munich: Beck, 2002); Lothar Wickert, Theodor Mommsen: Eine Biographie, 4 vols. (Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann, 1959–80). 10. Wickert, Mommsen, 3:399–422. 11. Heinrich Schlange-Schöningen, “Ein ‘goldener Lorbeerkranz’ für die ‘Römische Geschichte’: Theodor Mommsens Nobelpreis für Literatur,” in Theodor Mommsen: Gelehrter, Politiker und Literat, ed. Josef Wiesehöfer (Stuttgart: Steiner, 2005), 207–28. 12. Gerrit Walther, “‘...mehr zu den Künstlern als zu den Gelehrten’: Mommsens historischer Blick,” in Theodor Mommsen: Gelehrter, Politiker und Literat, ed. Josef Wiesehöfer (Stuttgart: Steiner, 2005), 230.

This content downloaded from 160.039.159.048 on March 28, 2016 16:27:15 PM All use subject to University of Chicago Press Terms and Conditions (http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/t-and-c). GREGOROVIUS VERSUS MOMMSEN ON ROME |105 tiously the Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum, intended as a comprehensive collection of all ancient Latin inscriptions.13

GREGOROVIUS’ S GESCHICHTE DER STADT ROM IM MITTELALTER: WRITING HISTORY WITH CREATIVITY In turning down a teaching position in 1865, Gregorovius, as he reports in his diary, explained that he was not suited for such a post, since he “regarded myself as an author who pursued historical studies without any practical vocation for teaching.”14 Gre- gorovius’s self-characterization as learned writer, rather than a professional historian, was one that he sought to cultivate—and was shared by his friends and critics alike. Comments critical of Mommsen and the German academic establishment are found throughout his diary; he complained bitterly that the occupants of professors’ chairs “cannot forgive me my sense for beautiful form.”15 Gregorovius stood apart from the Grosswissenschaft of his day (the term coined by Mommsen in a speech given at the Royal Prussian Academy of Sciences in 1890)—large-scale research projects, but also the increasing institutionalization and specialization of history in academic circles.

13. Stefan Rebenich, “Die Erﬁndung der ‘Großforschung’: Theodor Mommsen als Wissenschafts- organisator,” in Geldgeschichte versus Numismatik: Theodor Mommsen und die antike Münze, ed. Hans-Markus von Kaenel (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2004), 5–20. Regarding the doubts Mommsen may have had about the worth of these endeavors, as expressed in his last testament, see Stefan Rebenich, “‘Unser Werk lobt keinen Meister’: Theodor Mommsen und die Wissenschaft vom Altertum,” in Theodor Mommsen: Gelehrter, Politiker und Literat, ed. Josef Wiesehöfer (Stuttgart: Steiner, 2005), 185–205. 14. “Ich erklärte, daß ich für solche Stellung nicht passe, sondern mich nur als einen Schriftsteller betrachte, welcher historische Studien treibe, ohne einen praktischen Lehrberuf damit zu verbinden, wie viele englische Historiker” (Gregorovius, entry for August 16, 1865, Römische Tagebücher, ed. Kruft and Völkel, 198; trans. Gustavus W. [Annie] Hamilton, The Roman Journals of Ferdinand Gregorovius, 1852–1874 [London: Bell, 1907], 236; all English translations of the Roman Journals from between 1852 and 1874 are cited from Hamilton’s translation, but with modiﬁcations). 15. Gregorovius, in the entry for March 2, 1862, describes Mommsen and his “kritische, destruktive Schärfe” (Römische Tagebücher, ed. Kruft and Völkel, 144); and in his entry for March 30, 1873, he writes: “Mommsen kam nach Rom, wo er sich noch aufhält. Nur zufällig begegnete ich ihm bei einem Diner. Er ist offenbar, wie Richard Wagner, an Größenwahn krank. Die Kathederprofessoren lassen mich nicht gelten, weil ich in freier Tätigkeit schaffe, keine Beamtenstelle einnehme und sogar horribile dictu einiges Dichtertalent besitze. Meinen Sinn für schöne Form verzeiht man mir nicht. Mit Schweigen und Achselzucken ist von den Pedanten Deutschlands die Geschichte der Stadt Rom aufgenommen worden” (ibid., 330). See also n. 1 above. Gregorovius was by no means alone in his strong sentiments against Mommsen. His contemporary Johann Jakob Bachofen (1815– 87) likewise regarded Mommsen as an uncultured pedant, but his objections sprang more from Mommsen’s disregard for the religious, rather than the aesthetic, ideals of history: Lionel Gossman, Orpheus Phil- ologus: Bachofen versus Mommsen on the Study of Antiquity, Transactions of the American Philosoph- ical Society (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1983).

As glowingly described by his friend Friedrich Althaus (1829–97), “the character of [Gregorovius’] features, though serious, was rapidly illumined by the play of imagina- tion, and his conversation was characterized by a thoughtful flow, a full and gentle voice that betrayed a wealth of intellectual gifts and a poetic temperament.”16 Through- out his life Gregorovius continued to write and publish his poetry (although it did not receive much critical acclaim, before or after his death).17 For Gregorovius, his poetry was not far removed from his historical writings. In his conclusion to the last book of his history of Rome, he describes his subject as “the most eventful and moving tragedy in the history of the world,” and he remained proud of the creative talent he had brought to bear on the topic.18 Althaus too claimed that Gregorovius’swritingsreflected his poetic temperament: “And as he remained free from the pedantry and exclusive- ness of his craft, as he united in himself the character of the scholar and the man of the world, so his historical studies offered no obstruction to the keenest sympathy with the greatest movements of the time.”19 Gregorovius’s works met with popular approval; by the time he died in 1891 the fourth edition of the Geschichte der Stadt Rom im Mittelalter was in print. Yet in academic circles his work was heavily critiqued. Critics objected to the poetic license the author allowed himself in his history and his lack of scholarly rigor. A review of the first three volumes of his history by Wilhelm Maurenbrecher (1838–92), a historian of the Reformation, compared Gregorovius’s work to a series of newspaper articles, reminding his audience that “a historical work is an entirely different matter than a series of good newspaper articles or a spirited travel description.”20 Maurenbrecher es-

16. “der Grundton der Züge ernst, aber rasch aufgehellt durch das Spiel der Phantasie; und in der Unterhaltung ein gedankenvoller Fluß, ein weicher voller Klang, der reiche Geistesschätze und ein poetisches Temperament verkündete” (Gregorovius, Römische Tagebücher, ed. Althaus, xvi [trans. Hamilton, xvii]). 17. His last published poem was on the siege of Straßburg, published in the Allgemeine Zeitung, September 2, 1870. For an overview of Gregorovius’s poetry and an evaluation of him as a poet, see Johannes Hönig, Ferdinand Gregorovius der Geschichtschreiber der Stadt Rom: Mit Briefen an Cotta, Franz Rühl und Andere (Stuttgart: Cotta, 1921). 18. “ich schilderte dieses inhaltreichste und erschütterndste Trauerspiel der Weltgeschichte” (Gregorovius, Geschichte der Stadt Rom, bk. 14, conclusion, 3:673; trans. Annie Hamilton, History of the City of Rome in the Middle Ages, 8 vols. [London: Bell, 1894–1902], 8, pt. 2:717; all English translations of the History of the City of Rome are cited from Hamilton’s translation, but with modiﬁcations). 19. “Und wie er sich frei erheilt von der Pedanterie und der Abgeschlossenheit der Zunft, wie er in seinem Wesen die Charaktere des Gelehrten und des Weltmanns vereinigt, so bildeten seine geschichtlichen Studien für ihn kein Hemmniß der eifrigen Teilnahme an den großen Bewegungen der Zeit” (Gregorovius, Römische Tagebücher, ed. Althaus, xxiv [trans. Hamilton, xxiii]). 20. “aber, eine historische Arbeit ist ein ganz anderes Ding, als eine Reihe von guten Journalartikeln oder eine geistreiche Reisebeschreibung” (Wilhelm Maurenbrecher, review of Ferdinand Gregorovius, Geschichte der Stadt Rom, Historische Zeitschrift 6 [1861]: 489).

This content downloaded from 160.039.159.048 on March 28, 2016 16:27:15 PM All use subject to University of Chicago Press Terms and Conditions (http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/t-and-c). GREGOROVIUS VERSUS MOMMSEN ON ROME |107 pecially objected to the lack of a clearly deﬁned subject to which, according to him, a work of history should restrict itself. The author should have either focused on the city of Rome or the papacy. As a result of trying to do both, along with his stylistic and factual ﬂaws, “the author had done a disservice to the academic world, to which he should have especially directed himself.”21 Maurenbrecher concludes with the hope “that the author advance to further historical works, but avoid everything unnecessary in content and style and apply himself to producing a more precise account.”22 Similarly, Jacob Burckhardt (1818–97) remarked to the church historian Ludwig von Pastor (1854–1928): “Gregorovius has his merits, but he lets his fantasy range too freely.”23 More positively, the historian Paul Kehr (1860–1944), in an address to celebrate Gregorovius’s hundredth birthday, conceded that, “Whether he writes with great pathos or paints with an ambitious brush, there is always an inner warmth, a deep sympathy and a rare artistic understanding.”24

MOMMSEN IN ROME: A JURIST BECOMES A HISTORIAN Both Mommsen and Gregorovius were deeply influenced by their time in the city of Rome and their literary masterpieces were shaped by their experiences in the city. Whereas for Mommsen it was the academic contacts and ancient Roman inscriptions that most influenced his thinking, for Gregorovius it was the living, breathing city, still permeated by the Middle Ages, that most deeply affected him and his work. “A jurist went to Italy—a historian came back.”25 So Mommsen, on the occasion of his sixtieth birthday, summed up his first visit to Italy (1844–47). The scholar had ar-

21. “Durch alle jene gerügten Eigenschaften, besonders durch jene Unklarheit über die Grenzen seine Aufgabe, schadet sich der Verfasser bei der wissenschaftlichen Welt, an die er sich doch vor- zugsweise richten muß” (ibid., 490). 22. “Wir schließen mit dem Wunsche, daß der Verf. zu weitern histor. Arbeiten fortschreiten, aber dabei, alles Ueberﬂüssige in Inhalt und Form vermeidend, sich einer präciseren Darstellung beﬂeißigen möge” (ibid., 494). 23. Reported by Ludwig von Pastor in his diary: “Mein Hinweis auf das Urteil über das moderne Italien in den Tagebüchern von Gregorovius veranlaßte Burckhardt, sich über den Geschichtsschreiber der Stadt Rom zu äußern. Er halt von ihm nicht sehr viel. ‘Gregorovius hat seine Verdienste, aber er läßt der Phantasie zu viel Spielraum’” (entry for March 18, 1895, in Tagebücher-Briefe-Erinnerungen, ed. Wilhelm Wühr [Heidelberg: Kerle, 1950], 276; quoted in Arnold Esch, “Gregorovius als Geschichtsschreiber der Stadt Rom: Sein Spätmittelalter in heutiger Sicht,” in Ferdinand Gregorovius und Italien: Eine kritische Würdigung, ed. Arnold Esch and Jen Petersen [Tübingen: Niemayer, 1993], 132). 24. “Ob er mit hohem Pathos schreibt oder mit anspruchsloser Feder schildert, immer liegt darüber eine innere Wärme, eine tiefe Sympathie und ein seltenes künstlerisches Verständnis” (Paul Fridolin Kehr, “Ferdinand Gregorovius und Italien: Ein Nachruf zu seinem 100. Geburtstag,” Deutsche Rundschau 187 [1921]: 195). 25. “Der Jurist ging nach Italien—der Historiker kam zurück” (cited in Wickert, Mommsen, 2:198).

This content downloaded from 160.039.159.048 on March 28, 2016 16:27:15 PM All use subject to University of Chicago Press Terms and Conditions (http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/t-and-c). 108 | HISTORY OF HUMANITIES SPRING 2016 rived in Italy intending to collect the epigraphic materials pertaining to Roman law; by the time he left he had developed the ambitious plan of a comprehensive corpus of Latin inscriptions.26 In Rome Mommsen settled at the German Istituto di Corres- pondenza Archeologica on the Capitoline Hill, and his friendship and cooperation with many of its members helped shape this new project. His diary reveals his enthusiasm for the ruins of Rome, with their abundance of epigraphic evidence, admiration for the abundance of art in museums and private villas, and his interest in cultivating academic friendships.27 Apart from attending the carnival, however, Mommsen had little time for Rome’s urban life, saturated as it was, from his perspective, with Chris- tian superstition.28 After five months in Rome (December 30, 1844–May 7, 1845), Mommsen continued on his tour of Italy. Thereafter he returned to Rome repeatedly throughout his life, and the historian was highly respected in Rome’s academic circles, although his forceful critique and his nationalist and Protestant outlook led to more than a few diplomatic fiascos.29 Mommsen’s Römische Geschichte (begun after his return from Rome) reflects his self-professed transformation from a jurist to a historian. Although based on careful research, Mommsen nonetheless frames Roman history in contemporary terms (referring to the Latin consul as a “Bürgermeister” or comparing the size of Latium to the canton of Zurich), and the work is written in a lively and engaging style.30 Its subject is the history of the Italian peninsula from the origins of human civilization through the time of Diocletian (this latter part was never completed). He begins with a portrait of the Mediterranean Sea, then focuses on the Italian peninsula. In this introductory

26. Stefan Rebenich, “Ecco Montsene: Theodor Mommsen und Rom,” in Rombilder im deutsch- sprachigen Protestantismus, ed. Martin Wallraff et al. (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2011), 38–58; Mario Talamanca, “Theodor Mommsen, Roma e l’Italia,” Studi Romani 52 (2004): 140– 67; Wickert, Momm- sen, 2:56–101. More generally on Mommsen in Italy, see Arnaldo Marcone, “Die deutsch-italienschen Beziehungen im Spiegel der Biographie Mommsens,” in Theodor Mommsen: Wissenschaft und Politik im 19. Jahrhundert, ed. Alexander Demandt et al. (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2005), 142–62; Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, Theodor Mommsen e l’Italia: Convegno sul tema; Roma, 3–4 novembre 2003, Atti dei Convegni Lincei (Rome: Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, 2004). 27. Theodor Mommsen, Tagebuch der französisch-italienischen Reise, 1844/1845, ed. Gerold Walser and Brigitte Walser (Bern: Lang, 1976), 124–53. 28. In his diary Mommsen repeatedly complains about the number of Christian ceremonies. For example, regarding Holy Thursday in St. Peter’s, he writes, “Die Ceremonie so gleichgültig und unschön wie möglich” (entry for March 20, 1845, ibid., 150). 29. For example, in 1885 the German and Italian press reported on how Theodor Mommsen, while working in the Vatican library, had remained seated when Pope Leo XIII entered the room (Rebenich, “Ecco Montsene,” 52–53). 30. Stefan Rebenich, “Theodor Mommsen,” in Klassiker der Geschichtswissenschaft, vol. 1, Von Ed- ward Gibbon bis Marc Bloch, ed. Lutz Raphael (Munich: Beck, 2006), 90.

This content downloaded from 160.039.159.048 on March 28, 2016 16:27:15 PM All use subject to University of Chicago Press Terms and Conditions (http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/t-and-c). GREGOROVIUS VERSUS MOMMSEN ON ROME |109 chapter, he explicitly clarifies, “We intend here to relate the history of Italy, not simply the history of the city of Rome.”31 The author emphasizes that the Romans are one of many branches of Italian peoples, framing the subjugation of Italy by the Romans as a narrative of the consolidation of the Italian state. Accordingly, Mommsen has no particular interest in describing the city of Rome, its growth or other urban developments per se. His chapters focus on particular peoples, noteworthy historical developments (such as the constitution of Rome or a spe- cific war), or, at the end of each volume, an overview of Roman literature and culture more generally. Architecture, art, festivals, or other aspects of urban life are discussed insomuch as they corroborate the development of the Roman state. So, for example, Mommsen explains that to follow the “mercantile and strategic growth of Rome,” he will consider the “successive circumvallations and fortifications of Rome,” for their formation “necessarily kept pace with the growth of the Roman commonwealth in importance as a city.”32 Material culture is an indicator of political and economical developments; it does not generate them. The city of Rome thus remains throughout the Römische Geschichte a place acted upon by historical forces, never an actor in its own right.

GREGOROVIUS IN ROME: AN ARCHITECTURAL THEATER COMES TO LIFE In contrast, from the very start Gregorovius’s project was born out of its Roman sur- roundings. Gregorovius moved to Rome in 1852 and first decided to write his history of Rome in the Middle Ages in 1854 (the same year Mommsen published the first volume of his Römische Geschichte). At the time Gregorovius was finishing up his work on Corsica, a description of his travels that experimented with a genre of historical landscape writing.33 In his diary he recorded that “I conceived the thought [i.e., to write the history of the city of Rome in the Middle Ages], struck by the view of the city as

31. “Es ist die Geschichte Italiens, die hier erzählt werden soll, nicht die Geschichte der Stadt Rom” (Theodor Mommsen, Römische Geschichte, 8th ed., 4 vols. [Berlin: Weidmann, 1888–89], bk. 1, chap. 1, 1:6; trans. William P. Dickson, History of Rome, 4 vols. [London: Dent, 1911], 1:6; all English translations of the History of Rome are cited from Dickson’s translation, but with modiﬁcations). 32. “Die Verfolgung dieser merkantilen und strategischen Entwicklung der Stadt Rom ist bei weitem wichtiger und ausführbarer als das unfruchtbare Geschäft, unbedeutende und wenig verschiedene Gemeinden der Urzeit chemisch zu analysieren. Jene städtische Entwicklung können wir noch eini- germassen erkennen in den Überlieferungen über die allmählich entstandenen Umwallungen und Ver- schanzungen Roms, deren Anlage mit der Entwicklung des römischen Gemeinwesens zu städtischer Be- deutung notwendig Hand in Hand gegangen sein muss” (Mommsen, Römische Geschichte, bk. 1, chap. 4, 1:48 [trans. Dickson, 1:48]). 33. Ferdinand Gregorovius, Corsica (Stuttgart: J. G. Cotta, 1854).

This content downloaded from 160.039.159.048 on March 28, 2016 16:27:15 PM All use subject to University of Chicago Press Terms and Conditions (http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/t-and-c). 110 | HISTORY OF HUMANITIES SPRING 2016 seen from the bridge leading to the island of S. Bartolomeo. I must undertake something great, something that will give substance to my life.”34 The work, as its author described in his letter urging the Cotta’sche Buchhandlung to accept it for publication, was to contain “a history of the city, as well as political and civic matters, the history of the ruins, the whole metamorphosis of Rome, the history of the Roman state cult and the church, the arts, the sciences, that is to say, in short, the whole life [Gesamtlebens] of Rome.”35 It was to cover eleven centuries, using a variety of materials accessible to him in Rome. As in Edward Gibbon’s (1737–94) history, notes would be sparse: “although rigorous scholarship, [the Geschichte der Stadt Rom im Mittelalter] is light in form and accessible to anyone.”36 As promised, Gregorovius made extensive use of archival material throughout Italy.37 What his description does not convey is the extent to which the living city of Rome would inspire and guide the project. Some months before Gregorovius began to record the first lines of his ambitiously conceived project, he remembered a dream: “One night I found myself in the theatre; instead of actors the walls of Rome appeared on the stage, where they performed a magnificent dance.”38 Such was the role Rome’s urban fabric would come to have in his history. Descriptions of the physical city of Rome are embedded throughout the fourteen volumes that narrate Rome’s history from the beginning of the fifth century to shortly after the sack of Rome in 1527. At the turn of each century, the author pauses the rapid succession of events to provide a portrait of the city as a whole. Meanwhile, throughout his narrative, he is attentive to the layout of the city, the condition of its monuments, and the interactions of Romans and non-Romans with this urban topography.

34. “Ich beabsichtigte, die Geschichte der Stadt Rom im Mittelalter zu schreiben. ...Ich faßte den Gedanken dazu, ergriffen vom Anblick der Stadt, wie sich dieselbe von der Inselbrücke S. Bartolomeo darstellt. Ich muß etwas Großes unternehmen, was meinem Leben Inhalt gäbe” (Gregorovius, entry for October 3, 1854, Römische Tagebücher, ed. Kruft and Völkel, 53 [trans. Hamilton, 16]. 35. “Hier sage ich nur so viel: es soll die Geschichte der Stadt enthalten sowohl die politischen als bürgerlichen Dinge, die Geschichte der Ruinen, die ganze Metamorphose Roms, die Geschichte des römischen Stadtkultus und der Kirche, der Künste, Wissenschaften sc., kurz das Gesamtlebens von Rom” (Gregorovius to Cotta’sche Buchhandlung, May 20, 1858, in Hönig, Ferdinand Gregorovius, 218). At this point Gregorovius had already drafted the ﬁrst two volumes of the work. 36. “Noten begleiten es sparsam wie Gibbon; obwohl streng wissenschaftlich, ist es doch leicht in der Form und allen lesbar” (ibid., 219). 37. For Gregorovius’s use of Roman archives, see esp. David S. Chambers, “Ferdinand Gregorovius and Renaissance Rome,” Renaissance Studies 14, no. 4 (2000): 409–34. 38. “Eines Nachts sah ich mich im Theater: statt der Schauspieler traten die Stadtmauern Roms auf die Bühne, wo sie einen großartigen Tanz aufführten” (Gregorovius, entry for April 6, 1856, Römische Tagebücher, ed. Kruft and Völkel, 60 [trans. Hamilton, 26]). Gregorovius began writing his history on November 12 of the same year.

Rome, he proclaims in his history, “was, and still is, the architectural theatre of the history of the world.”39 For Gregorovius, however, the urban fabric of Rome is not merely the theater of world history, it is itself one of the protagonists of that theatrical performance. The city was (and for Gregorovius, continues to be) a spectacle, a play, to its inhabitants and visitors alike.40 The spectacle of medieval Rome was born out of its unique combination of pasts and present: its ancient classical, pagan past, united with the varied manifestations of Christianity, bestowed upon Rome “the wondrous imprint of a monumental twofold nature, such as no other city in the world has ever possessed.”41 This double classical and Christian monumental legacy, more than any individual, or indeed any other factor, assured Rome her singular role in world history. The city’s “magniﬁcent ruins” of classical antiquity, its “triumphal arches, porticoes, theatres, baths and temples ... displayed to living generations the greatness of the past, the insigniﬁcance of the present. And it is solely by means of this antique character—a character which dominated the city throughout the entire Middle Ages—that many historical phenomena can be explained.”42 The Christian sites of Rome had even more far reaching consequences. With the “fall” of the Roman Empire and the “invasions” of the Germanic “barbaric” hordes (as Gregorovius describes the process) a new Rome “rose again from out of the cata- combs, her subterranean arsenal.”43 Its Christian monuments gave the papacy a “mystical veil” that “removed it from the searching gaze of the world.”44 Accordingly, the

39. “[Sie] war und ist noch das architektonische Theater der Weltgeschichte selbst” (Gregorovius, Geschichte der Stadt Rom, bk. 13, chap. 7.5, 3:325 [trans. Hamilton, 7, pt. 2:729]). 40. See, e.g., ibid., bk. 8, chap. 7.4, 2:289: “Aber die Stadt selbst bot im XII. Jahrhundert ein Schauspiel von chaotischer Trümmerhaftigkeit und Verwilderung dar, für welches auch die lebendigste Phantasie nicht Vorstellungskraft genug besitzt.” 41. “So erhielt die Stadt des Mittelalters durch die Verbindung der Vergangenheit und Gegenwart, durch das Miteinanderbestehen der antiken Gestalt des Heidentums und der neuen des Christentums das wunderbare Gepräge monumentaler Doppelnatur, wie es sich nirgends sonst in der Welt wiederholt hat” (ibid., bk. 1, chap. 2.5, 1:51–52 [trans. Hamilton, 1:112]). 42. “Die Menge der alten Bauwerke war damals noch sehr groß. Die meisten Triumphbogen, Portiken, Theater, Thermen und Tempel standen noch als herrliche Ruinen da und zeigten dem lebenden Geschlecht auf jedem Schritt die Größe der Vergangenheit, die Kleinheit der Gegenwart. Und nur aus diesem das ganze Mittelalter hindurch die Stadt beherrschenden antiken Charakter erklären sich viele geschichtliche Erscheinungen” (ibid., bk. 6, chap. 7.4, 1:706 [trans. Hamilton, 3:537]). 43. “Die christliche Religion zertrümmerte und verwandelte die heidnische Stadt der alten Römer, aber sie hob wie aus den Katakomben, ihrem unterirdischen Arsenal, ein neues Rom empor” (ibid., bk. 1, chap. 1.1, 1:6 [trans. Hamilton, 1:10]). 44. “Dies war die theokratische Stadt, der durch Legende, Geschichte und den Glauben der Menschheit geheiligte Sitz der Kirche, außerhalb dessen das Papsttum aller jener mystischen Schleier entbehrte, die es dem forschenden Blick der Welt entzogen” (ibid., bk. 12, chap. 1.4, 2:766 [trans. Ham- ilton, 6, pt. 2:426]).

This content downloaded from 160.039.159.048 on March 28, 2016 16:27:15 PM All use subject to University of Chicago Press Terms and Conditions (http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/t-and-c). 112 | HISTORY OF HUMANITIES SPRING 2016 papacy could not survive in Avignon, which lacked the layers of legend, history, and belief embedded in the city of Rome. Even by 1500 when cities throughout Europe had begun to blossom with liberal thought, Rome’s spiritual authority persisted: “The pilgrim had beheld more beautiful cities, especially Venice, the wonder of his time; he was nevertheless obliged to confess that this black, irregular and half-ruinous Rome, with her splendid azure sky and the grandeur of her aspect, through the union of life and wilderness, of ruins and charm, like noble nature, far surpassed, as a whole, all other cities.”45 From his diaries we can see how Gregorovius’s own intimate experience of Rome shaped his image of the medieval city. “The air of Rome has an inﬂuence on me like that of champagne,”46 he wrote in 1853 as he was still getting to know the city. When more frustrated, he complains that “Rome is the demon with whom I struggle.”47 The “magic [Zauber]” of Rome, as he frequently calls it, is to be found throughout the city’s extraordinary density of monuments. Rome is a city that has no one center, no one speciﬁc place that can be singled out as representative of the city as a whole.48 Each of the varied parts of its past, classical and Christian, played into its unique role in history. Each site in the city encapsulates something of this dynamic past and offers a partial palimpsest for reconstructing Rome’s history in its entirety. Before writing his history of Rome, Gregorovius had produced an essay, “Grabmäler der Päpste,” narrating papal history according to the tombs of the popes.49 The crypt of St. Peter’s, he reiterates in his history, offers a “subterranean museum of the ruined an-

45. “Der Pilger hatte schönere Städte gesehen, zumal Venedig, das Wunder jener Zeit, und doch mußte er sich sagen, daß dieses schwarze, regellose und halbversunkene Rom mit dem blauen Lichthimmel über sich durch die Großartigkeit seiner Gestaltung und die Verbindung von Leben und Wildnis, von Trümmerwelt und anmutiger, wie erhabener Natur alle anderen Städte als Totalgemälde weit übertraf” (ibid., bk. 13, chap. 7.5, 3:325 [trans. Hamilton, 7, pt. 2:728–29]). 46. “Der Äther Roms wirkt auf mich wie Champagner” (Gregorovius, entry for May 21, 1853, Römische Tagebücher, ed. Kruft and Völkel, 46 [trans. Hamilton, 4]). 47. “Rom ist der Dämon, mit welchem ich ringe” (entry for April 30, 1856, ibid., 61 [trans. Ham- ilton, 28]). 48. For example, in describing Rome around the year 1500 he reﬂects, “Es ist bezeichnend für diese Stadt, daß ihr ein Mittelpunkt des Lebens fehlt. In anderen Städten ist dies der Hauptplatz mit dem Gemeindehaus oder der Kathedrale oder die Burg der Landesfürsten, aber die Größe der Weltstadt Rom schien nichts dergleichen zu dulden” (Gregorovius, Geschichte der Stadt Rom, bk. 13, chap. 7.5, 3:326 [trans. Hamilton, 7, pt. 2:729]). 49. The work was initially published 1854; the revised edition in 1857 eliminated more personal elements, rendering it more of a “historical” study. See Michael Borgolte, “Zwischen ‘englischem Essay’ und ‘historischer Studie’: Gregorovius’‘Grabmäler der Päpste’ von 1854/81,” in Ferdinand Gregorovius und Italien: Eine kritische Würdigung, ed. Arnold Esch and Jen Petersen (Tübingen: Niemayer, 1993), 97–116.

This content downloaded from 160.039.159.048 on March 28, 2016 16:27:15 PM All use subject to University of Chicago Press Terms and Conditions (http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/t-and-c). GREGOROVIUS VERSUS MOMMSEN ON ROME |113 tiquity of St. Peter’s and also the papacy.”50 Nor are only Rome’s most illustrious monuments repositories of the past: “the most sinister and perhaps the most curious part of Rome,” for him, is the medieval fish market by the church called Sant’Angelo in Pescheria, where the most beautiful of all marble goddesses, the Medici Venus, lay buried for centuries under the marble slabs piled high with fish.51 Gregorovius lived in Rome for over twenty years before and while he composed his history. On his frequent walks through the city, on which he usually carried a sketchpad, he identified places and events where medieval Rome appeared to him par- ticularly apparent.52 Some sites he actively searched out. In 1865 he reports in his diary on his quest to find the location of Cola di Rienzo’s (ca. 1313–54) house.53 Other lo- cations presented themselves to him and impressed themselves on his memory. He describes that parts of the Palatine still preserve the “spell-bound solitude [zauberische Verlassenheit]” that characterized it throughout the later Middle Ages.54 With respect to Rome’s massive medieval towers, the Torre de’ Conti and the Torre delle Milizie, he comments, “These two towers are memorial pillars [Denksäulen] of the Roman Middle Ages, as the columns of the Emperors Trajan and Antoninus are memorial stones [Denksteine] of imperial Rome—remarkable characters [Charakterfiguren] of the city which more clearly than stories declare the indomitable energy of that century.”55 These towers become, for him, Rome’s protagonists. The memory of Rome is in its monuments. Gregorovius in his history attempted to reflect that energy onto the written page. In 1874, as he prepared to leave, he meditated in his diary on how his work mirrored his own perception of the city: “When I have

50. “Heute sieht man die Reste dieser Denkmäler in den Vatikanischen Grotten, dem unterirdischen Museum für das zertrümmerte Altertum des St. Peter und auch des Papsttums” (Gregorovius, Geschichte der Stadt Rom, bk. 14, chap. 2.1, 3:418 [trans. Hamilton, 8, pt. 1:139–40]). 51. “Von Schutt bedeckt lag hier die schönste aller Göttinnen von Marmor, die Venus von Medici, über deren Grabe auf dem schmutzigsten der Märkte Juden Tiberﬁsche auf antiken Marmorplatten feilboten. Von diesem Fischmarkt, dem unheimlichsten und vielleicht seltsamsten Lokale Roms, trat man erst auf den Platz der Inselbrücke, die von ihren Hermen Quattro Capi hieß, und dann zum Marcellustheater” (ibid., bk. 13, chap. 7.5, 3:336 [trans. Hamilton, 7, pt. 2:754–55]). 52. Some of his drawings are reproduced in Gregorovius, Römische Tagebücher. 53. Gregorovius, entry for December 17, 1865, Römische Tagebücher, ed. Kruft and Völkel, 203. 54. “Es gibt noch jetzt um den Palatin her einige Stellen, wo diese zauberische Verlassenheit durch Ausgrabungen noch nicht gestört ist: so das stille und tiefe Tal bei S. Giorgio in Velabro und das Lokal von S. Teodoro und von S. Anastasia” (Gregorovius, Geschichte der Stadt Rom, bk. 13, chap. 7.5, 3:343 [trans. Hamilton, 7, pt. 2:770]). 55. “Jene beiden Türme sind die Denksäulen des römischen Mittelalters, wie die Säulen der Kaiser Trajan und Antonin die Denksteine der römischen Kaiserzeit, merkwürdige Charakterﬁguren der Stadt, welche deutlicher als Geschichten die unbändige Kraft jenes Jahrhunderts aussprechen” (ibid., bk. 10, chap. 7.5, 2:578 [trans. Hamilton, 5, pt. 2:667]).

This content downloaded from 160.039.159.048 on March 28, 2016 16:27:15 PM All use subject to University of Chicago Press Terms and Conditions (http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/t-and-c). 114 | HISTORY OF HUMANITIES SPRING 2016 looked from the window of my dwelling in the Gregoriana, the street which almost bears my name, over mighty Rome, I have seen before me—and that through fourteen long years—St. Peter’s, the Vatican, Castel Sant’Angelo, the Capitol, and so many other monuments. Their images seemed reﬂected at the same time on the paper as I sat at this table writing the history of Rome; they continued to inspire and illustrate my work as it gradually arose, imparting to it a local color and a historical personality.”56 This “historical individuality/personality [geschichtliche Persönlichkeit]” that the author con- structed for Rome is thus closely bound up with his own. Unsurprisingly, then, Gregoro- vius’s Rome is rich in creative energy: the traditions and legends that grew up around Rome’s monuments. As the Middle Ages progressed legends proliferated, ﬂourishing, like “climbing plants [Schlinggewächs],” on the ruins and debris of classical and Christian antiquity.57 Gregorovius describes this process, already long under way by the tenth century: “Myth [Sage], which fastens on monuments as soon as they become deserted, had already long woven its webs round the marvels of the city, and had brought many stories and names into vogue among the populace. The more distant Romans grew from antiquity, the more industrious was myth in veiling the pagan monuments, while legend was equally active with regard to Christian churches. For both these muses of the populace are twin sisters and the twofold character of the city frequently produced a curious combination.”58 At many of Rome’s oldest sites legends piled high next to and even on top of one another. At the foot of the Palatine was the Lacus Curtius where a courageous Roman of the Republican period had plunged to his death to save his fatherland. Nearby was the cave once inhabited by the dragon slain by Pope Sylvester.59

56. “Wenn ich hier aus dem Fenster meiner Wohnung in der Gregoriana, die fast meinen Namen trägt, auf das große Rom blickte, sah ich vor mir—und das durch vierzehn lange Jahre—den St. Peter, den Vatikan, die Engelsburg, das Kapitol, so viele andere Monumente. Ihre Bilder spiegelten sich gleichsam auf dem Papiere ab, wenn ich an diesem Tisch an der Geschichte Roms schrieb; sie in- spirierten und illustrierten fort und fort das allmählich entstehende Werk, und sie hauchten ihm Lokalfarbe und geschichtliche Persönlichkeit ein” (Gregorovius, entry for July 14, 1874, Römische Tagebücher, ed. Kruft and Völkel, 343 [trans. Hamilton, 458–59]). 57. Gregorovius, Geschichte der Stadt Rom, bk. 3, chap. 3.2, 1:277: the context here is the legend of Gregory the Great and Trajan. 58. “Die Sage, welche sich an Denkmäler zu heften beginnt, sobald sie veröden, hatte die Wunder der Stadt schon längst mit ihren Gespinsten umwoben und viele Geschichten und Namen beim Volk in Gebrauch gebracht. Je weiter sich die Römer vom Altertum entfernten, desto geschäftiger war sie, die heidnischen Monumente zu verschleiern, während die Legende mit den christlichen Kirchen das gleiche tat. Denn beide Musen des Volks sind Zwillingsschwestern, und die Doppelnatur der Stadt brachte oft ihre wunderlichste Vermischung hervor” (ibid., bk. 6, chap. 7.3, 1:700 [trans. Hamilton, 3:520]). 59. Ibid., bk. 6, chap. 6.5, 1:709.

Indicative of this phenomenon is the nickname, “Memoria,” which the inhabitants of Rome gave to two of Rome’s most prominent monuments where pagan and Chris- tian memories mingled. One was the emperor Hadrian’s mausoleum, modern-day Castel Sant’Angelo, where the archangel Michael with a ﬂaming sword was believed to have appeared to the penitential procession led by Pope Gregory the Great in the sixth century, signaling the end of the plague.60 The other was the Vatican obelisk, on top of which Caesar’s ashes were believed to have been placed, so that he would remain, in death, as in life, higher than the rest of the world.61 Although denying their historical accuracy, Gregorovius populates his history with a spectrum of fantastical stories: legends (Legenden), fables (Fabeln), myths (Sagen), and fairy tales (Märchen). This prevalence and their sympathetic treatment is in particular contrast to the explicitly disparaging treatment that legendary material receives in Mommsen’s Römische Geschichte.

THE TWILIGHT OF LEGENDS In the tradition of Barthold Georg Niebuhr (1776–1831), but with even more exacting severity, Mommsen cast doubt on the authority of Livy and sought to separate history from fables. “We have no information, not even a tradition [Sage], concerning the first migration of the human race into Italy,” begins Mommsen’s first chapter on the earliest phase of Italian history.62 He continues to explain that, although it was the “universal belief [Glaube] of antiquity” that the earliest inhabitants sprang from the soil, “from a historical point of view it is neither possible, nor is it of any importance, to determine whether the oldest recorded population of a country were autochthones or immigrants.”63 This marks the first of Mommsen’s efforts in his Römische Ge- schichte to delineate, and instruct the public, in the subject matter and method appro- priate to historical inquiry. Central to such an endeavor is the rejection of legendary materials and a reframing of historical questions so as not to ask the historically un- answerable. Rather than attempt the futile task of trying to trace the origins of the earliest inhabitants of Italy, Mommsen instead endeavors to establish the “national individual-

60. Ibid., bk. 3, chap. 1.3, 1:253–54. 61. Ibid., bk. 6, chap. 7.3, 1:702–3. 62. “Keine Kunde, ja nicht einmal eine Sage erzählt von der ersten Einwanderung des Men- schengeschlechts in Italien” (Mommsen, Römische Geschichte, bk. 1, chap. 2, 1:8 [trans. Dickson, 1:8]). 63. “geschichtlich ist es weder möglich noch wichtig festzustellen, ob die älteste bezeugte Bevölkerung eines Landes daselbst autochthon oder selbst schon eingewandert ist” (ibid., bk. 1, chap. 2, 1:8 [trans. Dickson, 1:8]).

This content downloaded from 160.039.159.048 on March 28, 2016 16:27:15 PM All use subject to University of Chicago Press Terms and Conditions (http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/t-and-c). 116 | HISTORY OF HUMANITIES SPRING 2016 ity” of these peoples by means of the linguistic evidence. He contrasts language, a reliable form of evidence (if used carefully) with “the chaotic mass of names of tribes and the confusion of what professes to be historical,” which “is composed of a few service- able notices by civilized travelers, and a mass of mostly worthless legends [einer Masse meistens geringhaltiger Sagen], which have usually been combined with little discrim- ination of the true character either of legend [Sage] or of history [Geschichte].”64 Again, in the same chapter, Mommsen reiterates the distinction between “the rich mine of language” and “what must be called for the most part the deaf stones of tradition [tauben Gestein der Überlieferung].”65 Most distorted by tradition is the most momentous event in Roman history: the foundation of Rome. Already in Mommsen’s Roman diary we can see him distancing himself from the “fictions” that have enveloped this event. He records how on his first evening in Rome he visited the Capitoline Hill: “There I am on the Capitol and hear the wind whistling around my hill, as it once must have whistled around Romulus. But away! After all we do not believe in him anymore.”66 In Mommsen’s Römische Geschichte he characterizes the story of Romulus and Remus as “a naïve attempt at primitive quasi-history [Quasihistorie]” and clarifies that “such tales, which profess to be historical but are merely improvised explanations of no very ingenious character, it is the first duty of history to dismiss.”67 Modern historians must continually struggle against the distortions of history brought about by the Romans themselves:

We have been deprived of information as to the early Roman history, not in consequence of the want of a knowledge of writing, or even perhaps of the lack of documents, but in consequence of the incapacity of the historians of the suc- ceeding age, which was called to investigate the history, to work out the mate-

64. “den wirren Wust der Völkernamen und der zerrütteten, angeblich geschichtlichen Über- lieferung, welche aus wenigen brauchbaren Notizen zivilisierter Reisender und einer Masse meistens geringhaltiger Sagen, gewöhnlich ohne Sinn für Sage wie für Geschichte zusammengesetzt und kon- ventionell ﬁxiert ist” (ibid., bk. 1, chap. 2, 1:9 [trans. Dickson, 1:9]). 65. “die Geschichtsschreibung entnimmt immer noch ihre Darstellung der Urzeit vorwiegend, statt dem reichen Schacht der Sprachen, vielmehr dem grösstenteils tauben Gestein der Überlieferung” (ibid., bk. 1, chap. 2, 1:19 [trans. Dickson, 1:20]). 66. “Da bin ich auf dem Capitol und höre den Wind um meinen Hügel pfeifen, wie wer wohl um Romulus gepﬁffen hat. Doch via! an den glauben wir ja nicht mehr” (Mommsen, entry for Decem- ber 30, 1844, Tagebuch, 124). 67. “das Geschichtchen von der Anlage Roms durch Ausgetretene von Alba unter Führung der albanischen Fürstensühne Romulus und Remus ist nichts als ein naiver Versuch der ältesten Quasihistorie. ...Von solchen Märchen, die Geschichte sein wollen und nichts sind als nicht gerade geistreiche Autoschediasmen, wird die Geschichte vor allen Dingen sich frei zu machen haben” (Mommsen, Römische Geschichte, bk. 1, chap. 4, 1:45 –46 [trans. Dickson, 1:45]).

rials furnished by the archives, and of the perversity which led them to desire for the earliest epoch a delineation of motives and of characters, accounts of battles and narratives of revolutions, and while engaged in inventing these, to neglect what the extant written tradition would not have refused to yield to the serious and self-denying inquirer.68

It is with great relief that Mommsen in the fourth book of his Römische Geschichte comes to the second-century BCE historian Polybius, who “ﬁrst stepped beyond these miserable limits, [and] treated the Roman materials with mature Hellenic criticism.”69 With Polybius, “The legend, the anecdote, the mass of worthless chronicle-notices are thrown aside.”70 Polybius embodies the qualities of the critical historian: “Polybius is not an attractive author; but as truth and truthfulness are of more value than all orna- ment and elegance, no other author of antiquity perhaps can be named to whom we are indebted for so much real instruction. His books are like the sun in the ﬁeld of Ro- man history; at the point where they begin the veil of mist which still envelops the Samnite and Pyrrhic wars is raised, and at the point where they end a new and, if possible, still more vexatious twilight begins.”71 Whereas Mommsen embraces the sunshine of critical historiography, Gregorovius lingers in the veils of mist and twilight that legends provide. Gregorovius criticizes some legends as malicious (boshaft) or senseless (sinnlos), but many are beautiful (schön), ingenious (sinnreich), or, more neutrally, simply strange (seltsam) or noteworthy (merkwürdig). Throughout he is adamant about their relevance for writing Rome’s

68. “Nicht die Unkunde der Schrift, vielleicht nicht einmal der Mangel an Dokumenten hat uns die Kunde der ältesten römischen Geschichte entzogen, sondern die Unfähigkeit der Historiker derjenigen Zeit, die zur Geschichtsforschung berufen war, die archivalischen Nachrichten zu verarbeiten, und ihre Verkehrtheit, für die älteste Epoche Schilderung von Motiven und Charakteren, Schlachtberichte und Revolutionserzählungen zu begehren und über deren Erﬁndung zu vernachlässigen, was die vor- handene schriftliche Überlieferung dem ernsten und entsagenden Forscher nicht verweigert haben würde” (ibid., bk. 1, chap. 14, 1:216–17 [trans. Dickson, 1:218]). 69. “Zuerst Polybios, ein Peloponnesier, wie man mit Recht erinnert hat, und geistig den Attikern wenigstens ebensofern stehend wie den Römern, überschritt diese kümmerlichen Schranken, be- handelte den römischen Stoff mit hellenisch gereifter Kritik” (ibid., bk. 4, chap. 12, 2:451 [trans. Dickson, 3:437–38]). 70. “Die Sage, die Anekdote, die Masse der wertlosen Chroniknotizen wird beiseite geworfen” (ibid., bk. 4, chap. 12, 2:451 [trans. Dickson, 3:438]). 71. “Polybios ist kein liebenswürdiger Schriftsteller; aber wie die Wahrheit und Wahrhaftigkeit mehr ist als alle Zier und Zierlichkeit, so ist vielleicht kein Schriftsteller des Altertums zu nennen, dem wir so viele ernstliche Belehrung verdanken wie ihm. Seine Bücher sind wie die Sonne auf diesem Gebiet; wo sie anfangen, da heben sich die Nebelschleier, die noch die Samnitischen und den Pyrrhischen Krieg bedecken, und wo sie endigen, beginnt eine neue, womöglich noch lästigere Dämmerung” (ibid., bk. 4, chap. 12, 2:453 [trans. Dickson, 3:439–40]).

This content downloaded from 160.039.159.048 on March 28, 2016 16:27:15 PM All use subject to University of Chicago Press Terms and Conditions (http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/t-and-c). 118 | HISTORY OF HUMANITIES SPRING 2016 history. They provide the historian with a means for deciphering the spectacle of Rome. On the one hand, even where factually incorrect, legends often contain some truth about the past; some even deserve to be true. More importantly, legends can themselves act as historical truths. Certain sites, like the Capitoline Hill, have little but legend for a historian trying to reconstruct their history. Gregorovius writes, “The grave-like stillness which broods over the Capitoline in the Middle Ages is thus only broken by a convent-bell and a legend.”72 Yet this solitary legend, one of his favorites, can offer, to the resourceful historian, rich insights into linkages between imperial and Christian Rome. According to the legend, the emperor Augustus, when deliberating whether to allow himself to be named a god, had a vision of the Virgin Mary with Christ. As a result he refused to be called Lord and even erected an altar to this “first-born son of God” on the Capi- toline. Fanciful as it is, this legend captures one of the fundamental premises of Gregorovius’s history: the city’s Christian greatness was predicated on its imperial past. Another legend that connects pagan antiquity with Christianity is that of a certain late antique monk, Telemachus, who, to protest against the continued enthusiasm of the Romans for the gladiatorial games, threw himself into the arena. Gregorovius remarks, “The legend is beautiful and deserves to be true, since of all the games of antiquity to which Christianity put an end, there was none whose suppression redounded more to the honor of humanity.”73 Despite Gregorovius’s disgust for the many “superstitions” perpetuated by the papacy, this legend reflects his firm belief that Christian Rome was indeed the bulwark that prevented Western Europe from falling into even deeper barbarity than it did. In a similar vein, the author praises the legends that made St. Cecilia into “the muse of music in the heaven of saints.” She and St. Agnes “hovered as luminous ideals of virtue through the darkness of Rome’s most barbarous period.”74 Legends have, however, more than heuristic power. Like the monuments to which they attach themselves, legends are agents in history, exerting their grasp over the minds of men. In explaining how Rome in Late Antiquity built the myth of its Chris-

72. “So durchbricht das tiefe Grabesschweigen des Kapitols im Mittelalter nur die Stimme der Glocke eines Klosters und die einer Legende” (Gregorovius, Geschichte der Stadt Rom, bk. 8. chap. 4.2, 2:201 [trans. Hamilton, 4, pt. 2:475]). 73. “Die Legende ist schön und verdient wahr zu sein, denn von allen antiken Spielen, welchen das Christentum ein Ende gemacht hat, gab es keins, dessen Unterdrückung der Menschheit mehr zur Ehre gereichen konnte” (ibid., bk. 1, chap. 3.1, 1:55 [trans. Hamilton, 1:119]). 74. “Caecilia ist die musikalische Muse im Himmel römischer Heiliger. ...In den Zeiten tiefster Barbarei schwebten diese Mädchengestalten, Caecilia und Agnes, wie lichte Ideale der Tugend durch das ﬁnstere Rom” (ibid., bk. 5, chap. 2.2, 1:489 [trans. Hamilton, 3:49]).

This content downloaded from 160.039.159.048 on March 28, 2016 16:27:15 PM All use subject to University of Chicago Press Terms and Conditions (http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/t-and-c). GREGOROVIUS VERSUS MOMMSEN ON ROME | 119 tian foundation through Peter and Paul, Gregorovius writes, “we must remember that in every form of successful religion, tradition and myth form the basis of practical op- erations. As soon as they have been recognized by the world, they are accepted as facts.”75 There is no clearer example of this for him than the Donation of Constantine, the legendary document according to which the emperor Constantine, in the early fourth century, had given to Rome’s popes temporal dominion in the West.76 This greatest of papal myths served as a thick haze clouding western perceptions of Rome for centuries. Throughout Rome it was reinforced by additional stories and monuments. At St. Peter’s, a legend told how Constantine himself had taken the spade in hand to dig the church’s foundations and had brought twelve baskets of earth there in honor of the twelve apostles.77 For Gregorovius, this medieval world of Christian legend could still be conjured in his own day by the church festivals that both fascinated and repelled him. Comment- ing in his diary on the processions that accompanied a mass canonization on Whit Sunday in 1862, he writes, “This religious comedy is the greatest theatrical spectacle which the Church has displayed for a long time.”78 Even stronger, he admits, remains the spell cast by the legends of Rome’s hidden treasures. Throughout his history stories about treasures stashed away in the city ﬁgure frequently. For example, the Goths were said to have buried their treasures throughout Rome and had left instructions for their descendants to return to Rome and retrieve them.79 With relish Gregorovius recounts how in the late sixteenth century visitors to Rome surreptitiously dug for treasure among the ruins. Meanwhile, in his diary, he reports that he himself twice visited excavations searching for buried treasures

75. “Wenn nun die Macht einer übrigens ehrwürdigen, auf dem Glauben von Jahrhunderten ruhenden Überlieferung wunderbar erscheint, so erwäge man, daß in jeder Gestalt gewinnenden Re- ligion Traditionen und Legenden den Grund für praktische Wirkungen bilden. Sobald sie die Welt anerkannt hat, werden sie in ihr zu Tatsachen” (ibid., bk. 1. chap. 1.1, 1:8 [trans. Hamilton, 1:16]). 76. Ibid., bk. 4, chap. 4.4, 1:402–8. 77. “Die Legende erzählt, daß Constantin selbst den Spaten in die Hand genommen, um den ersten Stich beim Graben der Fundamente zu tun, und daß er zu Ehren der zwölf Apostel zwölf Körbe voll Erde herbeigetragen habe” (ibid., bk. 1, chap. 2:4, 1:42 [trans. Hamilton, 1:90–91]). 78. “Am 8., dem Pﬁngstfest, fand die Kanonisation der 28 japanesischen Märtyrer statt. Die Prozession begann um 7 Uhr. Diese göttliche Komödie ist das größte Theaterstück, welches die Kirche seit langem aufgeführt hat” (Gregorovius, entry for June 10, 1862, Römische Tagebücher, ed. Kruft and Völkel, 147 [trans. Hamilton, 159]); and, see the entry for June 2, 1861: “Rom kehrt das Mittelalter wieder stark hervor. Der Papst weihte beim Fest des Filippo Neri seinen neuen Wagen ein (die Vergoldung kostet 6000 Scudi); ihm ritt vorauf der Crucifer auf einem weißen Maultier, in ganz mittelalterlicher Weise, wie sonst nur bei den Possessen des Laterans geschieht” (ibid., 131). 79. Gregorovius, Geschichte der Stadt Rom, bk. 2, chap. 6.3, 1:221–23.

This content downloaded from 160.039.159.048 on March 28, 2016 16:27:15 PM All use subject to University of Chicago Press Terms and Conditions (http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/t-and-c). 120 | HISTORY OF HUMANITIES SPRING 2016 under the Colosseum.80 Indeed the “magic” of Rome that prompted Gregorovius to write his history may be characterized as an analogous thrill to that which seized hold of these treasure hunters. Discussing a legend of a statue gesturing cryptically with a sign afﬁxed “hic percute [strike here]” indicating a hidden treasure, he comments: “The legend pointed in truth to the mysteries of the antique world which lay buried beneath the soil of the city. How often when walking through the ruins of the Forum, in the deserted baths, might we not halt and cry ‘hic percute’!”81

AN ALTERNATE HISTORY OF MEDIEVAL ROME In his attentiveness to the urban fabric of Rome and the legends that envelop its monuments, Gregorovius embeds in his teleological history of Rome as a civilization a history of the reuse of the city’s monumental antiquity that complicates the dominant framework of the text. The author traces how later generations interacted with Rome’s ancient heritage—whether ignoring, destroying, reusing, appreciating or preserving it—but by examining these attitudes he grapples with a paradox. The mystical greatness of Rome was predicated on its past and so “progress,” whenever and wherever it oblit- erated the city’s monumental heritage, simultaneously undermined Rome itself. Fittingly, the fate of Rome is anticipated in a legend. When in the mid-sixth century Totila had marched on Rome, the Romans feared that the Goths would raze the city to the ground. A bishop reported this fear to St. Benedict, but he reassured them: “Rome will not be destroyed by the barbarian,” adding that, “the city will decay into itself.”82 A slow process of destruction was to envelop Rome, gradually tearing the mythical veil from the city. In the early fourth century, when Gregorovius ﬁrst turns his gaze to the condition of Rome’s monuments, the city was at the height of its splendor: “Rome, the embodi- ment in stone and metal of the world’s history, was surrounded by walls worthy of her majesty.”83 At the same time Christian monuments were appearing, adding complexity

80. An ofﬁcial had received papal permission to dig for buried treasures under the Colosseum, whose location, he claimed, was described in detail by a document he had found: Gregorovius, entry for December 11, 1864, Römische Tagebücher, ed. Kruft and Völkel, 189. 81. “In Wahrheit bezeichnet diese Sage sinnvoll die Geheimnisse der in die Tiefen des Bodens der Stadt versunkenen Welt des Altertums. Wer noch heute dort umherwandelt, möchte wohl oft auf dem Schutte des Forum oder im Marsfelde oder in den öden Thermen stille stehen und rufen: hic percute!” (Gregorovius, Geschichte der Stadt Rom, bk. 8, chap. 7.3, 2:279 [trans. Hamilton, 4, pt. 2:668]). 82. “aber der Mann Gottes tröstete ihn mit der Versicherung: ‘Rom wird nicht von den Barbaren zerstört werden, sondern von Wettern und Blitzen, von Wirbelwinden und Erdbeben gegeißelt, wird die Stadt in sich selbst vermodern’” (ibid., bk. 2, chap. 5.3, 1:206 [trans. Hamilton, 1:441]). 83. “Dies große, in Stein und Metall kunstvoll dargestellte Relief der Weltgeschichte umschloß als Gürtel eine solcher Majestät würdige Mauer” (ibid., bk. 1, chap. 1.2, 1:13 [trans. Hamilton, 1:24]).

This content downloaded from 160.039.159.048 on March 28, 2016 16:27:15 PM All use subject to University of Chicago Press Terms and Conditions (http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/t-and-c). GREGOROVIUS VERSUS MOMMSEN ON ROME |121 to the cityscape. In the ﬁfth century, its ancient monuments were still protected by imperial laws, enforced by city prefects. Despite surges of Christian hatred, there was no comprehensive destruction because of the Romans’ reverence, respect, and pride for the greatness of the ancient city. Indeed, despite the rising barbarity of the age, there developed an appreciation for pagan monuments as works of art.84 A legend about Gregory the Great—although a pope to whom Gregorovius attributes responsibility for laying the foundation of the medieval papacy—most poignantly captures this attitude. One day in Rome Gregory the Great had seen bronze statues depicting Trajan dismounting to render justice to a widow. Pope Gregory was so saddened by the thought of eternal punishment to which the pagan emperor was damned that he had Trajan’s dust reanimated and baptized.85 Moved by the expressiveness of ancient sculpture, a Christian pope had preserved the legacy of a pagan emperor notorious for his persecution of Christians. Already by this time, however, Gregorovius reports that “the time had come when Rome, preying on her own vitals, became little better than a great lime-pit or public stone-quarry, and as such served the Romans themselves for more than a thousand years.”86 This disregard for antiquity mutated into the indifference of the tenth century when Romans plundered their own city at will. Whether rich or poor, ecclesiastical or lay, all inhabitants of the city made use of the ruins for their own purposes. Clergy took marble for their churches, nobles for their towers, the poor took shelter in ruined buildings: “When the ﬁsherman of the Tiber offered his spoils for sale on the bridges, or the butcher displayed his meat, or the baker his loaves in the theatre of Marcellus, these wares were exposed on blocks of rarest marble, which had once perhaps served as seats in the theatre or circus for the rulers of the world, for Caesar, Mark Antony or Augustus, and for many a consul and senator.”87 Rome had reached a new low point

84. “Die Tempel in Rom waren indes stehengeblieben, man darf sagen alle, welche irgend Größe und Pracht in den Schutz des Nationalstolzes und des Gefühls für Kunstwerke gestellt hatte; und wenn man auch von den geringeren Heiligtümern nicht wenige zerstört hatte, so beweist selbst noch die Gegenwart, daß viele von solchen noch im V. Jahrhundert aufrecht standen” (ibid., bk. 1, chap. 2.2, 1:35 [trans. Hamilton, 1:75]). 85. “wir haben diese Sage als eine der merkwürdigsten Erinnerungen des versinkenden Rom aufgenommen. Sie zeigt uns die Römer des VIII. Jahrhunderts, wie sie mit schwächerem Gedächtnis die Säule Trajans bestaunten und sich wunderbare Geschichten von den Taten dieses edlen Kaisers erzählten; so wuchs jene Legende wie ein Schlinggewächs auf den Trümmern des Trajanischen Forum” (ibid., bk. 3, chap. 3.2, 1:277 [trans. Hamilton, 2:83]). 86. “Die Zeit war gekommen, wo Rom, sich selbst zerstörend, als eine große Kalkgrube und ein öffentlicher Steinbruch ausgebeutet wurde; und als solche hat die Stadt den Römern selbst mehr als tausend Jahre lang gedient” (ibid., bk. 1, chap. 7.1, 1:107 [trans. Hamilton, 1:226]). 87. “Wenn der Tiberﬁscher an den Brücken oder der Fleischer am Theater des Marcellus oder der Bäcker seine Ware feilbot, lag sie auf Marmorplatten, die einst vielleicht den Herren der Welt, dem

This content downloaded from 160.039.159.048 on March 28, 2016 16:27:15 PM All use subject to University of Chicago Press Terms and Conditions (http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/t-and-c). 122 | HISTORY OF HUMANITIES SPRING 2016 in its appreciation of its heritage. Yet, as he progresses, Gregorovius becomes unsure. For despite indifference, in the thirteenth century “this world of ruins must have been very imposing, and a well-informed antiquarian might still have been able to distin- guish the palaces of Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula, Nero and Domitian.”88 The greatest destruction was yet to come. The thirteenth-century Roman senator Brancaleone is one of Gregorovius’s heroes in the progression toward republican lib- erty. Nonetheless, according to Gregorovius, he must be numbered among “the worst enemies of the Roman monuments, and a new period of the ruin of the ancient city must take its date from him.”89 With the Renaissance, the reawakening of the west from its superstitions, came the most severe period of devastation. “Meanwhile a reverence for the ancient ruins was awakened among the educated,”90 and yet “especially that most energetic of all the papal builders, Nicholas V [r. 1447–55], had remorse- lessly destroyed several remnants of antiquity for his own ends. ...Thus the most cultured of all popes was the worst destroyer of ancient Rome.”91 Gregorovius encapsulates this paradox of progress well in a journal article written in 1885, “Neue Schicksale alter Ruinen.”92 In it he reﬂects on how it was the Renais- sance that ﬁrst discovered a love for ruins as such, but that the Middle Ages treated ruins much better since it used them for the present.93 Once the process of closely ex-

Caesar, Marc Anton, Augustus und so vielen Konsuln und Senatoren im Theater oder Circus zum Sitze gedient hatten” (ibid., bk. 6, chap. 7.4, 1:706 [trans. Hamilton, 3:538]). 88. “Großartig muß damals diese Trümmerwelt gewesen sein, und noch hätte vielleicht ein kundiger Antiquar die Paläste des Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula, Nero und Domitian unterscheiden können” (ibid., bk. 10, chap. 7.5, 2:576 [trans. Hamilton, 5, pt. 2:664]). 89. “Da viele dieser Türme, die zugleich einen wesentlichen Teil der Adelspaläste ausmachten, auf Bauwerken des Altertums erbaut waren, so mußte jene systematische Zerstörung den Untergang mancher Denkmäler in sich schließen. Brancaleone wird daher unter die schlimmsten Feinde der römischen Monumente gezählt und von ihm eine neue Epoche des Ruins der antiken Stadt datiert” (ibid., bk. 9, chap. 7.4, 2:430 [trans. Hamilton, 5, pt. 1:324]). 90. “Indes war unter den Gebildeten die Pietät für die antiken Ruinen erwacht” (ibid., bk. 13, chap.6.3,3:265[trans.Hamilton,7,pt.2:588]). 91. “Zumal hat der baulustigste aller Päpste, Nikolaus V., viele Reste des Altertums schonungslos zu solchem Zweck zerstört. Er ließ Travertinquadern und Marmor vom Colosseum fortnehmen, in einem einzigen Jahr mehr als 2300 Wagenlasten; vom sogenannten Friedenstempel, vom Circus Max- imus, vom Tempel der Venus und Roma Hadrians am Titusbogen, vom Forum, von Bauwerken vor der Porta Viridaria ließ er Material losbrechen, und er war es, wie wir zu glauben Grund haben, welcher den Wall des Servius Tullius am Fuß des Aventin zerstören ließ. Von diesem ältesten Denkmal der Stadt hat sich heute dort nur ein kleiner Rest erhalten. So war gerade der gebildetste aller Päpste der schlimmste Zerstörer des alten Rom” (ibid., bk. 13, chap. 6.3, 3:264 [trans. Hamilton, 7, pt. 2:585–86]). 92. Republished in Ferdinand Gregorovius, “Der Umbau Rom’s,” in Kleine Schriften zur Geschichte und Cultur (Leipzig: Brockhaus, 1888), 2:283–315, 293–301. 93. “Das Mittelalter aber verfuhr mit den antiken Bauwerken oft schoender als die Renaissance, denn es benutzte dieselben für die Zwecke der fortlebenden Welt” (ibid., 2:295).

This content downloaded from 160.039.159.048 on March 28, 2016 16:27:15 PM All use subject to University of Chicago Press Terms and Conditions (http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/t-and-c). GREGOROVIUS VERSUS MOMMSEN ON ROME |123 amining Rome’s ruins and sifting the ancient from the medieval began, Rome was deprived of the animated connection of past and present that had so uniquely characterized the city.94 Now, with Rome the capital of a new Italian state, this process had reached a new degree of severity. Gregorovius was loath to endorse this destruction.

GREGOROVIUS ON THE DESTRUCTION OF “ ROME THE LEGEND” Gregorovius’s love for the city added texture and nuance to his interpretation of history. Monuments and their legends are agents of history, but of a history of Rome as a city that does not coincide with the history of Rome as a civilization. Gregorovius believed in an overarching pattern of human history and regarded the Middle Ages as a necessary stage in this progress of humankind.95 In the conclusion to his history he reasserts that “the Middle Ages are the development of the Western races, by the influence of the principles of the Christian religion operating on the foundations of ancient culture; they are the great factory and the treasure-house of all the ideas of our culture.”96 The Middle Ages in Rome were a step in the right direction, but one that had been long since concluded. Already the period of Roman history after the sixteenth century, Gregorovius reflects, is not worthy of attention from the perspective of universal history because by then Rome had forfeited its universal significance. And now, as the capital of Italy, the city had entered, after its long process of Christianization, a second metamorphosis, that of its secularization.97 This was a “necessary historical process.” Yet Gregorovius could not but watch with horror as the pace of destruction quickened: “the venerable goddess Roma” was dis-

94. “Der Prozeß der Reinigung aller großen Ruinen Rom’s von Mittelalter ist heute fast zu Ende geführt, und dadurch auch der geschichtliche Charakter der Stadt nicht wenig verändert worden, denn gerade die lebensvolle Verbindung der Antike mit dem Mittelalter hatte Rom sein einiges, unverg- leichliches Gepräge verliehen” (ibid., 296). 95. Friedrich-Carl Scheibe, “Mittelalterbild und liberaler Fortschrittsglaube in der Geschichts- schreibung von Ferdinand Gregorovius,” Archiv für Kulturgeschichte 61 (1979): 191–230; Girolamo Arnaldi, “Tramonto e rinascita di Roma nella Storia di Gregorovius,” in Società, istituzioni, spiritualità: Studi in onore di Cinzio Violante, Collectanea no. 1 (Spoleto: Centro italiano di studi sull’alto Medioevo, 1994), 109–22. 96. “Das Mittelalter ist die Entwicklung der abendländischen Menschheit durch das Prinzip der christlichen Religion auf dem Grunde der antiken Kultur; es ist die große Werkstätte und das Schatzhaus aller unserer Kulturideen” (Gregorovius, Geschichte der Stadt Rom, bk. 14, conclusion, 3:666 [trans. Hamilton, 8, pt. 2:703–4]). 97. “die Stadt Rom, nach der langen Dauer ihrer Vergeistlichung, einer zweiten Metamorphose, ihrer Wiederverweltlichung, entgegensehe” (ibid., bk. 14, conclusion, 3:667 [trans. Hamilton, 8, pt. 2:705]).

This content downloaded from 160.039.159.048 on March 28, 2016 16:27:15 PM All use subject to University of Chicago Press Terms and Conditions (http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/t-and-c). 124 | HISTORY OF HUMANITIES SPRING 2016 appearing.98 Already in 1870 as he neared the end of his work he reﬂected: “It is for- tunate for me that I have almost ﬁnished my work; it would no longer be possible for me to steep myself in it. Only three months more of toil and I shall have reached my goal. The Middle Ages have, as it were, been blown away by a tramontana, with all the historic spirit of the past; yes, the spell of Rome has been completely stripped away.”99 In 1871 he wrote in his diary, “Ancient Rome is vanishing. In the course of twenty years the world here will be a new one. I am glad to have lived so long in old Rome; only in it could I have written my historical work.”100 When Gregorovius had arrived in Rome he had fallen under the spell of its medieval past that lurked around ever corner. The quiet mystique of the Middle Ages was rapidly disappearing. In 1875, he writes, “The wonderful charm of history has fallen victim to modern construction speculation. The magisterial silence of the city has been changed into feverish unrest.”101 In the same year: “The centuries-old veil of mystery, which covered so many of its locales and rules is being drawn back ever more and all mystery is destroyed.”102 A few years later, in a letter to his friend Hermann von Thile (1812–99), he commented: “Rome the legend has, in any case, already been destroyed by the railway.”103

98. “Diese Transformation ist ein notwendiger geschichtlicher Prozeß, und ich sage mir, daß es das höchste Interesse gewähren muß, ihn zu erleben und anzusehen. Aber trotzdem macht mir all das neue Wesen nur Pein. Ich muß von dem Rom scheiden, welches durch ein halbes Leben meine Heimat war—die ehrwürdige Göttin Roma, die ich liebte und kannte, ist hinweggenommen und eine moderne Puppe an ihre Stelle gesetzt” (Gregorovius, entry for June 9, 1875, Kruft and Völkel, Römische Tagebücher,357;translationmyown). 99. “Es ist ein Glück, daß ich meine Arbeit fast vollendet habe—heute könnte ich mich nicht mehr in sie versenken. Nur noch drei Monate der Mühe und ich bin am Ziel. Das Mittelalter ist wie von einer Tramontana hinweggeweht, mit allem geschichtlichen Geist der Vergangenheit. Ja, dies Rom ist ganz entzaubert worden” (entry for October 30, 1870, ibid., 298 [trans. Hamilton, 389]). 100. “Das alte Rom geht unter. Nach 20 Jahren wird hier eine neue Welt sein. Ich aber bin froh, daß ich im alten Rom so lange gelebt habe. Nur in ihm konnte ich mein Geschichtwerk schreiben” (entry for June 18, 1871, ibid., 307 [trans. Hamilton, 403]). 101. “Der wundervolle Zauber der Geschichtlichkeit ist der modernsten Bauspekulation zum Opfer gefallen. Die majestätische Stille der Stadt hat sich in ﬁeberhafte Unruhe verwandelt” (entry for June 9, 1875, ibid., 357; translation my own). 102. “Der jahrhundertealte Schleier des Geheimnisses, welcher so viele ihrer Lokale und Ruinen verhüllt hält, wird immer mehr hinweggezogen und alles Mysterium zerstört” (entry for March 31, 1875, ibid., 350; translation my own). 103. “Die Legende ‘Rom’ überhaupt ist schon durch die Eisenbahn zerstört worden” (Ferdinand Gregorovius to Hermann von Thile, May 7, 1881, in Hermann von Petersdorff, ed., Briefe von Ferdi- nand Gregorovius an den Staatssekretär Hermann von Thile [Berlin: Gebrüder Paetel, 1894], 125).

THE HISTORIAN’ STASK “Tradition, with its confused mass of national names and its dim legends, resembles withered leaves which with difficulty we recognize to have once been green,” asserts Mommsen in his Römische Geschichte.104 To the contrary, Gregorovius argued, tradition was the green growth that his contemporaries were misguidedly pruning. With particular fervor he lamented in his 1885 article on the fate of Rome’s ruins that the fervor of archeologists had stripped the Colosseum of all its flora: “After the Colosseum had been shaved (as the Romans joked), it stood there as a naked, frosty, profane skeleton of walls, an entirely outlandish and ghostlike appearance.”105 The trees and shrubs, the purple snapdragons, jasmine, wallflower and other flowers, that, together with legends, had proliferated on top of Rome’s ruins—and the dead skeleton that remained when these were stripped away, return us to the question of the historian’s task. Was it, as Gregorovius mocked Rome’s new generation of archeologists, to act as moles, dig- ging beneath the ruins and creating piles of dirt, or was it to bedeck with poetic fullness the skeleton of occurrences?106 In their approaches to the city of Rome and its legends, Gregorovius and Momm- sen articulated sharply divergent roles for the historian. For Mommsen, historical work involved, first and foremost, the gathering of reliable material and its careful dis- section and reconstruction. The mass of fables was to be left aside; only solid evidence was to be admitted. Furthermore, in crafting a history, a historian should always main- tain control over his materials: they should never take on a life of their own. In contrast, according to Gregorovius, it was urbanitas, that indescribable quality of cultured refinement, which characterized a historian worthy of his task. Without a deep appreciation for urban culture, including its legendary outgrowths, erudition was meaning- less. The city, not the historian, should dominate its history.

104. “Unsere Überlieferung mit ihren verwirrten Völkernamen und getrübten Sagen ist wie die dürren Blätter, von denen wir mühsam begreifen, dass sie einst grün gewesen sind” (Mommsen, Römische Geschichte, bk. 1, chap. 11, 1:144 [trans. Dickson, 1:148]). 105. “Nachdem das Colosseum abrasiert war, wie die Römer spotteten, stand es als ein nacktes, frostiges profanes Mauergerippe da, ganz fremdartig und gespensterhaft anzusehen” (Gregorovius, “Der Umbau,” 298). 106. “Doch es gibt einem furchtbareren Feind, welcher die Ruinenpoesie gründlicher zerstört, und dieser Feind ist der Maulwurf der Archäologie. Der topographische Ausgräber wühlt den Boden tief und ringsumher auf, und er entstellt durch angehäufte Schuttmassen das geschichtliche Ruinenbild” (ibid., 298–99).

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