When the poor canon died, leaving his orphan kinswomen unprovided for, the _corpo di santo sano_, which might have fetched something, was taken away at once because it was against ecclesiastical rules for them to keep it, but the pictures, which could fetch nothing, continued to gaze on the struggles of the little sisters, reminding them of the poor canon and also of the fickleness of the public taste in _articles de virtu_--for during his lifetime these pictures had received their full meed of respectful admiration. As our pedestrian enters his own house door, which is covered with _immagini_ and texts serving as charms--among which S. Anna the mother of the Madonna is not absent as a house-patron, and the faded rose brought from the festa of the _Divin Amore_ figures conspicuously--he may indeed have a vague sense that the _annus Domini_ will soon be too strong for the life he has just been witnessing, but he will hardly be disturbed by any speculation as to the elements which have conspired to form the atmosphere surrounding the first Bishop of Christendom in this his capital once the capital of the world. He will not think of the apotheosis of the emperor in ancient Rome, of the orientalism which crept into Western Christendom through Byzantium, imposing things which especially here in Rome were alien to its religious genius; he will scarcely remember that the Pope's temporal sovereignty added a diadem to his tiara, for he has never distinguished the temporal from the spiritual arm, or discerned the part which the former has played in determining the manifestations of the latter. [Illustration: ARCH OF CONSTANTINE Erected by the Senate in his honour A.D. 312. Eighteen years later he retired to Byzantium, leaving the Roman Bishops in virtual possession of the eternal city. See pages 32, 42, 237.] CHAPTER XII THE ROMAN QUESTION I. _Before 1870_ The "Roman Question" represents the only "religious" question in Italy. The problems which agitate other lands leave the Italian unaffected, uninterested. He has no genius for reforming, and no genius for sect-making, he is as tolerant of abuses as of diversities. So it comes about that the one and only "religious" question in Italy is a political question--the rights and wrongs of the situation created for the papacy when it was despoiled of its temporalities.