Читать книгу Crises in the History of the Papacy. Lives and Legacy of the Most Influential Popes Who Shaped the Development & History of Church онлайн

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Hadrian's biographer discreetly ignores these failures of his attempts to assert his authority, and almost confines himself to the record of his work in Rome itself. He restored and extended the walls, and added no less than four hundred towers to their defences. He repaired four aqueducts, and rebuilt, on a grander scale, the colonnade which ran from the Tiber to St. Peter's. The interior of St. Peter's he decorated with a splendour that must have seemed to the degenerate Romans imperial. The choir was adorned with silver-plated doors, and, in part, a silver pavement; while a great silver chandelier, of 1345 lights, was suspended from its ceiling. Large statues of gold and silver were placed on the altars, and the walls were enriched with purple hangings and mosaics. Vestments of the finest silk, shining with gold and precious stones, were provided for the clergy. To other churches, also, Hadrian made liberal gifts of gold and silver statues, Tyrian curtains, gorgeous vestments, and mosaics. The long hostility to images and image-makers in the East had driven large numbers of Greek artists to Italy, and the vast sums which the new temporal dominions sent to Rome enabled Hadrian to employ them. After a long and profound degeneration "the fine arts began slowly to revive."139 For literary culture, however, Hadrian did nothing; the attempt of some writers to associate him with Charlemagne's efforts to relieve the gross illiteracy of Europe is without foundation.