World Battlefronts: BATTLE OF ITALY: Time and the Teuton

Through a millennium and a half Rome has known many a German master. Now, as the bloody battle of Italy moves up from the south, Nazi tanks and cannon rumble not far from the Forum, Colosseum and Pantheon. Truck convoys roll by the churches, palaces and museums where the sculptures of the Caesars, the frescoes of the Renaissance are stored.

In Naples the Nazis had wrecked military installations (TIME, Oct. 11). They had also planted time bombs in the post office and other nonmilitary buildings. By & large, they had spared Naples’ art and churches, but enough damage had been done by Germans and by Allied bombs to make Romans shudder. Persistent report had the Nazis systematically looting the capital’s art treasures. Northbound trains were said to be bearing plunder to the castles and villas where Göring, Himmler and lesser German collectors had stored the loot of Warsaw, Paris and Kiev.

On the Tiber’s west bank, behind the gates of the Vatican, Pope Pius XII, silent and aloof, is a virtual prisoner of the Nazis. The Wehrmacht polices the Vatican’s entrances and exits, even struts across the colonnaded piazza of St. Peter. The tall, picturesque Swiss Guards, organized by Pope Julius II in 1505, have put aside their ancient halberds for modern rifles.

London reported last week that the Germans had advised Pius to seek refuse in Liechtenstein, the tiny (65 sq. mi.) Catholic principality tucked in the mountains between Switzerland and Germany. But Pius would not voluntarily leave his neutral haven.

The Record. The first Teutonic conqueror of Rome was the ferocious Alaric. In August 410, he and his horde of Goths and Huns stood before the city that St. Jerome called the “clearest light of the universe.” Once Rome’s terror-shaken citizens had bought off the barbarian with ransom of gold, silver, silk, skins, and 3,000 Ib. of pepper. Now, by stealth or treason, Alaric’s men burst the Salarian Gate. For three days and nights they pillaged palaces and temples, dragged Romans into slavery. Moved perhaps by awe, they spared the precious vessels which “belonged to St. Peter,” respected the sanctuary of Christian churches, did not fire Rome’s noble buildings. But when their booty-laden wagons trundled away, they left behind a city reduced to beggary. Between Alaric and Hitler, none of the many sackings of Rome surpassed in wanton ferocity that of the German and Spanish mercenaries of Emperor Charles V in 1527. They came down from Lombardy, where they had mutinied for 150,000 ducats in back pay. In a misty May dawn, the Germans and Spaniards breached Rome’s walls, ran amuck. They ransacked, burned, profaned, tortured, raped, murdered. The Pope became the Emperor’s captive.* Wrote Eyewitness Cardinal Salviati: “Every possible infamy was committed. . . . They were Christians, yet they did that which I never heard of being done by Turks.”

Thine Own City. The great Byzantine general, Belisarius, more than once defended Rome against Teuton raids. To a barbarian chief he wrote a letter that is still timely:

“It is the act of men experienced in intellectual and civil life to decorate towns with beautiful works; the action of the ignorant to destroy these ornaments. . . . Beyond all cities . . . Rome is . . . a monument of the virtues of the world to all posterity, and a trespass against her greatness would justly be regarded as an outrage against all time. . . . Destroying Rome thou wilt lose not the city of another, but thine own. Preserving her . . . thou wilt enrich thyself with the most splendid possession of the earth.”

* Charles, a devout Catholic, was in Spain, did not know that his troops had pillaged Rome. Clement was held a captive for seven months, then escaped, eventually officiated at Charles’s coronation.