Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber : $b or, The influence of Romanism on trade, justice, and knowledgeWylie, J. A. (James Aitken)
History
Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber : $b or, The influence of Romanism on trade, justice, and knowledge
Wylie, J. A. (James Aitken)
Catholic Church -- Italy; Italy -- Description and travel
Of Verona I can say but little. My stay there, which was not much over
the hour, afforded me no opportunity for observation. Its famous
Amphitheatre, coeval with the great Coliseum at Rome, and the best
preserved Roman Amphitheatre in the world, I had not time to visit. Its
numerous churches, with their frescoes and paintings, I less regret not
having seen. Its _Biblioteca Capitolare_, which is said to be an
unwrought quarry of historic and patristic lore, I should have liked to
visit. There, too, the monks of the middle ages were caught tripping.
"Sophocles or Tacitus," in the words of Gibbon, "had been compelled to
resign the parchment to missals, homilies, and the golden legend." The
"Institutes of Caius," which were the foundation of the Institutes of
Justinian, were discovered in this library palimpsested. A rumour had
been spread that the author of the Pandects had reduced the "Institutes
of Caius" to ashes, that posterity might not discover the source of his
own great work. Gibbon ventured to contradict the scandal, and to point
to the monks as the probable devastators. His sagacity was justified
when Niebuhr discovered in the Biblioteca Capitolare of Verona these
very Institutes beneath the homilies of St. Jerome. Verona yet retains
one grand feature untouched by decay or time,--the river Adige,--which,
passing underneath the walls, dashes through the city in a magnificent
torrent, spanned by several noble bridges of ancient architecture, and
turns in its course several large floating mills, which are anchored
across the stream. The market-place, a large square, was profusely
covered with the produce of the neighbouring plains. I purchased a roll
of bread and a magnificent cluster of grapes, and lunched in fine style.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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