Literature, Medieval -- Translations into English; Tales
Well, forward he went to Rome, which lay, and doth yet lie, on the river
Tibris, the which divideth the city into two parts. Over the river are
four great stone bridges, and upon the one bridge, called Ponte St.
Angelo, is the Castle of St. Angelo, wherein are so many great cast
pieces as there are days in the year, and such pieces as will shoot
seven bullets off with one fire. To this castle cometh a privy vault
from the church and the palace of St. Peter, through the which the pope
(if any danger be) passeth from his palace to the castle for safeguard.
The city hath eleven gates, and a hill called Vaticinium, whereupon St.
Peter's church is built. In that church the holy fathers will hear no
confessions without the penitent bring money in his hand. Adjoining to
the church is the Campo Santo, the which Carolus Magnus built, where
every day thirteen pilgrims have their dinners served of the best; that
is to say, Christ and his twelve apostles. Hard by this he visited the
churchyard of St. Peter, where he saw that pyramid that Julius Cæsar
brought forth of Africa; it stood in Faustus's time leaning against the
church-wall of St. Peter's; but Pope Sixtus hath erected it in the
middle of St. Peter's churchyard. It is fourteen fathom long, and at the
lower end five fathom four square, and so forth smaller upwards. On the
top is a crucifix of beaten gold, the stone standing on four lions of
brass. Then he visited the seven churches of Rome, that were St. Peter,
St. Paul, St. Sebastian, St. John Lateran, St. Laurence, St. Mary
Magdalen, and St. Mary Majora. Then went he without the town, where he
saw the conduits of water that run level through hill and dale, bringing
water into the town fifteen Italian miles off. Other mountains he saw,
too many to recite.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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