debrand lived when he was young, and called himself Gregory when he
was Pope, perhaps, because he had so often meditated here upon the life
and acts of the wise Saint, in the places hallowed by his footsteps.

Later, the Aventine was held by the Savelli, who dwelt in castles long
since destroyed, even to the foundations, by the fury of their enemies;
and there the two Popes of the house, Honorius the Third--a famous
chronicler in his day--and Honorius the Fourth, found refuge when the
restless Romans 'annoyed them,' as Muratori mildly puts it. They were
brave men in their day, mostly Guelphs, and faithful friends of the
Colonna, and it is told how one of them died in a great fight between
Colonna and Orsini.

It was in that same struggle which culminated in the execution of
Lorenzo Colonna, the Protonotary, that Pope Sixtus the Fourth destroyed
the last remains of the Sublician Bridge, at the foot of the Aventine.
So, at least, tradition says. From that bridge the Roman pontiffs had
taken their title, 'Pontifex,' a bridge-maker, because it was one of
their chief duties to keep it in repair, when it was the only means of
crossing the Tiber, and the safety of the city might depend upon it at
any time; and for many centuries the bridge was built of oak, and
without nails or bolts of iron, in memory of the first bridge which
Horatius had kept. Now those who love to ponder on coincidences may see
one in this, that the last remnant of the once oaken bridge, kept whole
by the heathen Pontifex, was destroyed by the Christian Pontifex, whose
name was 'of the oak'--for so 'della Rovere' may be translated if one
please.

Years ago, one might still distinctly see in the Tiber the remains of
piers, when the water was low, at the foot of the Aventine, a little
above the Ripa Grande; and those who saw them looked on the very last
vestige of the Sublician Bridge, that is to say, of the stone structure
which in later times took the place of the wooden one; and that last
trace has been destroyed to deepen the little harbour. In older days
there were strange superstitions and ceremonies connected with the
bridge that had meant so much to Rome. Strangest of all was the
procession on the Ides of May,--the fifteenth of that month,--when the
Pontiffs and the Vestals came to the bridge in solemn state, with men
who bore thirty effigies made of bulrushes in likeness to men's bodies,
and threw them into the river, one after the other, with pra