Noah and the Janiculum Hill

The Foundations of Rome, the first section of the Mirabilia Urbis Romae, begins with the assertion that the origin myth of the Roman Empire has Biblical roots. Opening with the lines, “After the sons of Noah built the Tower of Confusion [Babel], Noah with his sons entered into a ship, as Hescodius writeth, and came unto Italy,” the Mirabilia explains that Noah’s sons created the city of Janiculum atop the Palatine hill. Thus, their descendants already inhabited the land at the time of Hercules’s epic arrival into the city. This layering of salvation history onto Livy’s classical origin myths reveals a cultural attempt to reconcile Christian Rome with her pagan heritage. While the text’s warmth towards pagan monuments seems incongruous with the Medieval dates of its early publications (the twelfth century), this cultural desire to baptize the Ancient Romans as “proto-Christians” became an impetus in the Renaissance embrace of Classicalism.

Admittedly, the Medieval era was not kind to the architecture of its predecessors. After the confident church building phase of St. Damasus, “a rich and well-born prelate of strong Roman sympathies who was elected Pope in 366, and strove hard to identify the Christian Church more closely with Rome’s long classical past,” the city suffered repeated sacks from northern tribes. These vicious blows severed Rome’s cultural connections with its imperial past. As buildings were destroyed in lawlessness, the people of Rome tore down ancient temples and other structures to salvage the marble for building materials. Even building materials from the Fori Imperiali, such as the Temple of Saturn, were used in lime kilns. Little thought was given to building repair.

In this antipathic culture, the literary meld of Christian story and Roman myth in the Mirabilia was revolutionary. By combining the stories of Noah and Hercules, the Mirabilia allowed the Ancient Romans to claim kinship with the Jewish people through their common Genesis ancestor. As both descended from the Hebrew patriarchs, both awaited the coming of the true religion, Christianity. This narrative cast the Romans as “proto-Christians,” a group of people primed for the acceptance of Christianity. In turn, this made pagan Roman architecture palatable to Christian sensibilities. The editor notes that the inclusion of notable pagan sites in the Mirabilia Urbis Romae reflected a “new spirit of curiosity and reverence...in regards to the ancient works of art and architecture, which had for many centuries been so ruthlessly destroyed.” Codified in the Mirabilia and distributed amongst nations, these ideas legitimized a growing cultural warmth towards Classicism.

Notably, Francesco Petrarch, father of the Renaissance, articulates the necessity of building an intellectual relationship between contemporary Christian believers and the pagans of ancient Rome. In his Rerum Familiarum Libri I - VIII, travel literature based on the Mirabilia’s “walk-around” format, Petrarch argues that the Classical arts should be not scorned by the devout Christian. Writing “Therefore, let us admire their genius in such a way that we venerate the author of such genius; let us have compassion for their errors as we rejoice in our grace,” Petrarch takes the Mirabilia’s warm intermingling of Classical and Christian to its logical end. The pagan art and architecture that is respected is capable of teaching. Continually, art can only be capable to teaching if it shares in higher, universal truths. Petrarch’s argument in this text articulates the revolutionary thought of Renaissance thinkers. All things on Earth have an imprint of God, therefore they all merit prudent study, including the classical arts.

In my research, I repeatedly return to the editor’s note that the Mirabilia fostered a “new spirit of curiosity and reverence...in regards to the ancient works of art and architecture, which had for many centuries been so ruthlessly destroyed.” Noting Petrarch’s debt to the Mirabilia, namely the genre of walk-around travel literature and the intermingling of Christian and pagan monuments, I argue that this “new spirit of curiosity and reverence” was a parent of Renaissance intellectualism. Desiring to incorporate the grandeur of the Roman Empire into its Christian reality, the Mirabilia Urbis Romae legitimized the growth of cultural warmth towards the Classical Arts.

Bibliography: 1. Anonymous. Mirabilia Urbis Romae: Theclassics Us, 2013. 2. Hibbert, Christopher. Rome: The Biography of a City. London: Penguin, 2001. 3. Watkin, David. The Roman Forum. Cumberland: Harvard University Press, 2014. 4. Anonymous. Mirabilia Urbis Romae: Theclassics Us, 2013. 5. Petrarch, Francesco . Rerum Familiarum Libri I-VIII. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1975. 6. Anonymous. Mirabilia Urbis Romae: Theclassics Us, 2013.