permission of Selmar Hess.]

REBUILDING OF ROME BY NICHOLAS V, THE "BUILDER-POPE"

A.D. 1447-1455

MRS. MARGARET OLIPHANT

Of those pontiffs who are called the pride of modern Rome--through whom
the city "rose most gloriously from her ashes"--Nicholas V (Tommaso
Parentucelli) was the first. He was born at Sarzana, in the republic of
Genoa, about 1398, was ordained priest at the age of twenty-five, became
Archbishop of Bologna, and in 1447 was elevated to the papal chair. His
election was largely due to the influential part he had taken at the
councils of Basel, 1431-1449, and Ferrara-Florence, 1438-1445. In 1449,
by prevailing upon the Antipope, Felix V, to abdicate, he restored the
peace of the Church. He endeavored, but in vain, to arouse Europe to its
duty of succoring the Greek empire.

Although the coming Reformation was already casting its shadow before,
Nicholas stood calm in face of the inevitable event, devoting himself to
the spiritual welfare of the Church and to the interests of learning and
the arts. But he is chiefly remembered as the first pope to conceive a
systematic plan for the reconstruction and permanent restoration of Rome.
He died before that purpose could be executed in accordance with his
great designs; but others, entering into his labors, carried his work to
a fuller accomplishment.

It was to the centre of ecclesiastical Rome, the shrine of the apostles,
the chief church of Christendom and its adjacent buildings, that the care
of the Builder-pope was first directed. The Leonine City of Borgo, as
it is more familiarly called, is that portion of Rome which lies on the
right side of the Tiber, and which extends from the castle of St. Angelo
to the boundary of the Vatican gardens--enclosing the Church of St.
Peter, the Vatican palace with all its wealth, and the great Hospital of
Santo Spirito, surrounded and intersected by many little streets, and
joining to the other portions of the city by the bridge of St. Angelo.

Behind the mass of picture-galleries, museums, and collections of all
kinds, which now fill up the endless halls and corridors of the papal
palace, comes a sweep of noble gardens full of shade and shelter from the
Roman sun, such a resort for the

"learned leisure
Which in trim gardens takes its pleasure"

as it would be difficult to surpass. In this fine extent of wood and
verdure the Pope's villa or casino, now the only summer palace which the
existing Ponti