Medieval Rome

As I have discussed previously, the idea of a "fall of Rome" ushering in the Middle Ages is a misconception.  Both the city of Rome itself and the idea of a Roman empire continued throughout the Middle Ages.  Since after Charlemagne was crowned Roman emperor by the pope in 800 there were Roman emperors right there in western Europe, as well as the Roman emperors in Constantinople, it's kind of hard to say that Rome disappeared.

But many things were different.  For one thing, Roman emperors were rarely in Rome.  The western emperors were also kings of Germany for much of the Middle Ages and would come to Rome to be crowned by the popes, maybe have a brief war with some Italian city states, and head north again.  For all practical purposes, the real rulers of medieval Rome were the popes, revered at least in the abstract as heirs of Peter.  They had their headquarters at the Lateran palace until the fifteenth century, when they moved to the Vatican to be closer to the basilica of Saint Peter's—the Lateran palace is not even in the modern city-state of the Vatican (officially its own country only since 1929).

Just as the rulers of Rome had changed since antiquity, so had the city itself.  Ancient Rome had been an enormous city, at least a million people, stretched over its seven hills, with a long wall (some twenty kilometers long) surrounding it, punctuated by guard towers.  But with the population declines of the early Middle Ages, it shrank to a fraction of its former size, maybe only twenty thousand people, getting a new set of walls well within the old set, to surround the population of a much smaller city.  (The Colosseum and forum in the center of this shrunken city.)

In between the old, imperial walls and the medieval walls were woodlots, orchards,  and many ancient monuments.  Some of these were monuments of antiquity, while others were basilicas or churches (or remnants thereof) that honored the early Christians who had been martyred by the pagan Romans.  Medieval pilgrims who came to Rome, of which there were always a large number, would visit both the Christian sites and the monuments erected by the ancient Caesars.  There was indeed a popular twelfth-century guidebook, "The Marvels of Rome," which instructed pilgrims on many of the interesting things to see.

Even now, Rome is thick with ancient sites that disrupt traffic and hopelessly delay things like subway tunnels or new sewer lines.  With a thousand year less of wear and tear, medieval Rome had even more.

In my most recent book, "The Knight of the Short Nose," the hero goes to Rome on pilgrimage and, following the guidebook, visits many of these sites.  (He also ends up in a fight to the death with the champion of a king who wants to sack Rome, but you have to read the book to find out what happens.)

The most important site in Rome was the basilica of Saint Peter's.  It was built over what was supposed to be the tomb of Peter, leader of the apostles, and there was a grate in the floor through which the faithful could lower bits of cloth to touch his bones, thus creating their own tertiary relics.  It was not actually within the walls of the medieval city, being instead on the outskirts, across the Tiber river.  The pope built walls around Saint Peter's and the immediately surrounding area in the ninth century.

This was not the Renaissance basilica of Saint Peter's that is there today; that was built only in the sixteenth century.  Old Saint Peter's went back to the fourth century and was considered hopelessly dark and old-fashioned when it was replaced.

Peter was certainly not the only saint venerated in Rome.  In fact, the city was thick with them, both saints who had died in Rome and saints who had died elsewhere but were honored there, with their own altars if not indeed own churches.  And then there were the countless people buried in the catacombs, tunnels below the city where originally building stone had been quarried out (see image below).  The catacombs had become a Roman graveyard, and early Christians met there if they feared persecution, not fearing the dead as did the pagan Romans.  Relics from Rome saw a brisk trade throughout the Middle Ages.

A good recent book on early medieval Rome is by Maya Maskarinec, City of Saints (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018).

© C. Dale Brittain 2022
For more on medieval churches and pilgrimage, see my new ebook, Positively Medieval: Life and Society in the Middle Ages.  Also available in paperback.